15 Apr Art and revolution

“Art is not revolution!” I’ve heard this twice over the course of the past few days. I wrote in my notebook:

Note: the revolutionary moment in art, e.g. Stravinsky’s Firebird led to rioting when it was first heard live –> it broke through a barrier of sendentary acceptance of things as they are –> to break those barriers in a space that is safe – to make it unsafe is to open it to the possibility of revolution…Marx says, “the unions are negotiating our unfreedom” –> much as consumtive processes, affect and arts do the same … Setting a state of comfort, even in our discomfort, through “guilt, blame, and shame” that keeps us in tension with our own contradictions
The revolution must start with the self (crime think) – to do that will be an individual process whether through art, affect, theory, caring, etc. There is room for all frames of the revolution of the individual frame of recognizing without paralyzing, making room for the multiplicities of pathways –> seizing happens at it’s own point of social common. This points back to issues of the nebulous self-appointment of “the social commons” (read: community). To theorize on it is not to discount all other forms of revolution but to open the door to all possibilities.

As to the comment that “the political is immanent in itself”: is not the political also a nebulous moment of self-identification? How do we theorize from the outside? So then: how is “the political” defined?

And when I catch up on sleep, I’ll try to decipher all of that…