034: 101 Things I Didn't Learn in Art School

In terms of audience reception, art can be a source of ridicule and scandal in mainstream society: as seen in Marcel Duchamp's notorious Fountain – a readymade sculpture that's a porcelain urinal flipped upside down and signed "R. Mutt"; but just as well, art can also create terrifying horror with a political charge (Edward Kienholz's Five Car Stud), spectral presence and spiritual depth (Louise Bourgeois's Spiders series) or art can become a psychedelic wonderland for the masses: as seen in Yayoi Kusama's Infinity Mirrored Room – a dazzling and diaphanous fractal maze of half-silvered mirrors that make one feel endless and glowing. But when it comes to how we feel and breathe about art's raison d'être: What's art's purpose for existing? Who gets to make art? Who gets to experience art? Sadly and grotesquely, just the rich. In this capitalist hellscape of commodified depravity and celebrity-driven attention hoarding, all measures of real freedom, including the ability to choose a life in the arts, are reserved only for the rich & famous. No matter who you are or where you were born, there is an alternative version of you behind every dollar of your parents; the money your family has or doesn't have, shapes the trajectory of your life and determines your available options. As such, this tragic lottery is ultimately a game best tossed into history's garbage bin. Our co-hosts will reflect on lifetimes of dashed dreams, yearning for freedom and imagining what art might be like in a socialist future – sketching visions of a New Renaissance waiting just behind the doors concealing humanity's suppressed imagination. Once achieving The Golden Square, where dignified lives no longer worry about food, shelter, healthcare and education, art is inevitably what comes next. We don't need Willy Wonka's Golden Ticket to 15 seconds of Ocean Spray © TikTok fame, which is the newer, crueler, sadder reality of the American Dream. The Golden Square is how we get freedom for everyone, not just a few lucky lottery winners in this vicious, boring dystopia. Building real Socialism will unleash a gazillion blooming flowers of human creativity – singing out in a joyous weave toward The Utopian Sphere. New art will ask new questions, make new demands, and push us toward the unknown horizons of belonging, fulfillment, and happiness never-before realized in human history.

Comprehensive Show Notes Can Be Found at thefutureisamixtape.com

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