\n(Yukio Mishima, Spiritual Lessons for Young Samurais<\/em>)<\/p>\n
We know that the figure of Mishima leaves no one indifferent. It is highly controversial and often vilified. Even the authors of the introduction to the edition in which I found the quote refer to him with undisguised malice. It is also true that the Shield Society * could be considered a silly gesture if it weren\u2019t for the fact that its ideologue was anything but silly. Nonsense such as the Society was fated to be the subject of public mockery from the moment of its inception, true enough; but Mishima\u2019s determination and intellectual defence both of the paramilitary groupuscle and of his own literary works (as he declares in the epigraph) saved him from the cruellest public mockery. Despite the inevitable attacks to which he was subjected, he took his extravagant gesture to an end. I\u2019m not saying it was a good end. But it certainly was an end.<\/p>\n
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Scene of seppuku<\/em> (ritual suicide) of Mishima<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n I am writing about Mishima and his private army not so much for you to end up liking him more, but rather to make people understand what it means to have \u2018determination.\u2019 Mishima may be accused of many things, but there is no question but that he was one of the select few who know how to finish what they start.<\/p>\n And now, I have a joke for you: Obviously, the tragic end of both characters in my dark joke has more to do with their powerful death wish than with the determination they both showed to get things done.<\/p>\n At this point, note that the concept of risk <\/em>in the heading of this article has made itself pretty scarce so far, as has the concept of commitment<\/em>. Instead, I\u2019ve been speaking of determination. <\/em>The explanation is as follows: to consider a risk involves calculating. It\u2019s true that this is probably determined by the verb to consider, <\/em>but it is no less true that the noblest of things (in Montaigne’s terms) tend to deprecate risk. They don\u2019t \u2018consider\u2019 it. Or not much. Risk in art is nothing in itself. At the most, it is a subsidiary element to other deeper things, by no means an ultimate goal. Does risk really mean anything at all in art? Isn\u2019t risk simply a token of what we had previously been determined to do?<\/p>\n Untitled<\/i>, 1993<\/span>. Manifesto by David Wojnarowicz<\/p>\n Now let\u2019s have a look at commitment<\/em>. Mishima and Imre Kert\u00e9sz considered writing, or the \u2018need to say,\u2019 as an inevitable curse. And thus Mishima said: Kert\u00e9sz phrased his thoughts more elegantly: Untitled<\/em>, 1990, de David Wojnarowicz (in collaboration with Phil Zwickler and Rosa von Praunheim) still from the film Silence = Death<\/em><\/p>\n In very different ways, they both describe what it means to be doomed to say things. What Kert\u00e9sz is actually claiming is that an artist\u2019s only real commitment is to work for his or her thoughts and I don\u2019t think I\u2019m saying anything new or aberrant if I state here and now that artists basically look out for themselves. That is their peculiarity, and their appeal as well, because their biased eye is what sees things differently from others. Personally, I don\u2019t believe in the artist\u2019s commitment to society. If you read the following quote from Josep Vicen\u00e7 Foix, you will see that it provides an excellent explanation of what I am trying to convey in my ramblings about commitment.<\/p>\n \u2018The poet, as a poet, must have no lyrical motivation other than that of poetry itself. All that counts for him is the revolution caused by the process of adapting to the lyrical impulse that exalts him, that enlightens him, in his time. A revolution, be it social or political, offers the poet unprecedented elements for escape. The new symbols allow the poet to find that which is eternal.<\/p>\n \u2018The poet, as a poet, has his revolutionary obligations. However, his revolution is oblivious to the revolution of the majority. When the latter occurs, the poet falls silent. If he chooses to participate as such, his poetry flounders in the morbid swamps of rhetoric. But rhetoric is so adverse to poetry! Maybe as much so as poetry contests.<\/p>\n \u2018Moreover, poets move against the tide of their times. They wander among the monuments and ruins of each civilization in search of the elements of Mystery. In every period, under all sorts of political regimes, they protect Mystery and its continuity. They cultivate magic and cast shadow plays on the wall of eternity with the material elements provided by sad, mobile \u201creality.\u201d They look for true reality, the \u201cother reality\u201d (the surreal, the superreal, or the supernatural) \u2014 which is (fear not), anti-history. Through the cave, poets listen to the mysterious world of echoes and take them on. Thanks to poets, the same nostalgic melody is conveyed through the grid of time.\u2019<\/p>\n (Josep Vicen\u00e7 Foix, Darrer comunicat<\/em>. Edicions 62. (Els llibres de l’Escorp\u00ed), page 7).<\/p>\n Closing statement:<\/p>\n Neither risk nor commitment have enough weight of their own in the making of art. Risk can easily become calculation, and commitment can be a nod to others.<\/p>\n Is that why I\u2019ve never managed to consider Chris Burden\u2019s Shoot<\/em> a remarkable piece of art?<\/p>\n What I mean is: Moment immediately after the action Shoot<\/em> by Chris Burden<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n In addition, Burden\u2019s action was the starting shot for his career as an artist. In fact, if he had proposed Shoot <\/em>openly as a tactic, I would have liked it much better than with its lofty conceptual scaffolding as a critique of weapons policies, the mess in Vietnam, etc., which everyone gobbled up in a matter of minutes. As to the risk and commitment of his little arm…<\/p>\n To have himself shot that way, at that very time in the questioning of the boundaries of the art object, conjures up, above all, the image of someone treading on fresh snow. Wojnarowicz, for instance, has always struck me as a thousand times more determined to do what he had to do.<\/p>\n I, on the other hand, being fearful by nature, am now calculating the implications of having been openly critical of a piece like Shoot<\/em>, with its legion of fans, as well as of carrying on and on about Mr. Mishima, with his legion of detractors. I can also make some calculations about the slaps in the face I could get for being such a big mouth. And the fact is that there are more ways than one to get oneself shot, and what\u2019s a shame is that this one, unlike Burden\u2019s, won\u2019t even get me ahead in the game.<\/p>\n Last of all, I would like to raise a wonderful question that Fischli and Weiss posed as an epilogue: \u2018Should I just go to sleep and stop making things all the time?\u2019<\/p>\n Ah, the curse of saying! It\u2019s the artist\u2019s only true commitment.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n *The Shield Society was a private army funded by Yukio Mishima, who presented himself as the guardian of Japanese national pride. Its carefully designed uniform and the controversial figure of Mishima placed this paramilitary group in the limelight of the media of its times.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\nBas Jan Ader and Mishima are in the midst of a conversation and one says to the other:
\n\u2014Want to come for a ride on my sailboat?
\n\u2014Not right now. I\u2019ve got to take a few things to the knife sharpener.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.fmirobcn.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/07594.jpg\")
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\n\u2018For an author, piles of written pages are like piles of excrement.\u2019<\/p>\n
\n\u2018[…] I never stop working, and I don\u2019t only do so to survive, because if I didn\u2019t work, I would exist, and if I existed, I don\u2019t know what I would be forced to do, and it\u2019s better not to know. But I can sense it; needless to say, my cells can sense it […] there is a very serious connection between my survival and my work, […] which is entirely obvious yet not at all normal […] not everyone who writes does so because they have to write.\u2019
\n(Kaddish for an Unborn Child<\/em>)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.fmirobcn.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/david-wojnarowicz-02.jpg\")
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\nWas a bullet shot without determination?
\nA highly calculated shot?<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.fmirobcn.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/chris-burden-after-getting-shot.jpg\")
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