Outsider Art Is A Lie

February 28, 2019 Adam Turl

Ralph Fasanella, New York (1957) — Ralph Fasanella, *New York* (1957)

The concept of outsider art, or self-taught art, is a lie. It conceals the actual artistic arguments and content articulated by the artists who are described in this way. While the history of the concept is more complicated, its present usage is bound up with a racial, class and geographic othering, which centers the bourgeois and petit-bourgeois institutional art world (located in New York City first and foremost) as the norm (when it is itself the outlier).

Aesthetics and Politics? Shit, Man…

February 15, 2019 Shit Man

It happens that nowadays making political music is often considered gauche, and everything needs to be dressed up in nine layers of irony in order to be considered legitimate. Ironic detachment is itself an attitude and aesthetic born of a feeling of political impotence against a backdrop of rapid technological change and the immense, constant, and overwhelming deluge of contradictory information. Like it or not, artists must grapple with this ironic detachment and find ways to appeal to or circumvent it.

Pandering to that ironic detachment is risky, because the work will just get lost in the wash, or will reinforce a detached affect that defuses political power.

An Avant-Garde Defense of Nicolas Cage

February 13, 2019 Jordy Cummings

Sitting at a piano, decked out in Ray Bans and a black suit, Nicolas Cage sings his heart out about “Pachinko”. A sort of cross between a slot machine and pinball, Pachinko is, like your favorite late seventies rock band, big in Japan, indeed it is part of the fabric of modern Japanese capitalism. Gambling is illegal in Japan, yet Pachinko is tolerated. Instead of winning money at Pachinko parlours, players are awarded golden tickets which are thus exchangeable for cash at other locations affiliated with the parlours themselves. The industry, targeting poor and working-class people not unlike video terminal gambling in North America, is primarily staffed by ex-police.

"Bring Back Rock Against Racism" ... But How?

February 8, 2019 David Renton

There Ain’t No Black In the Union Jack by Ruth Gregory. — *There Ain’t No Black In the Union Jack* by Ruth Gregory.

In August 2018, Labour’s John McDonnell called on Twitter and then in a press release for the relaunch of the Anti-Nazi League. Citing the success of Tommy Robinson and Boris Johnson’s Islamophobic likening of Muslim women to letterboxes, the shadow chancellor said, "Maybe it’s time for an Anti-Nazi League type cultural and political campaign... The ANL pioneered highly influential cultural movements like the Rock Against Racism, which attracted tens of thousands of people of all ages to anti-racist festivals and protests.” The response was predictably partisan: the New Socialist was in favour, Dan Hodges against. Stephen Pollard, editor of the Jewish Chronicle, complained that McDonell was plotting against parliament. ‘McDonnell believes – and says so – that true democracy is on the streets. This seemingly well-meaning tweet needs to be seen in that context. In government, ‘the street’ would be a key weapon in the hard left armoury.’

Red Wedge #7: Call for Submissions

February 1, 2019 The Editors

Red Wedge is pleased to announce a call for submissions for our next issue, intended for release in late spring of 2019. The theme of the issue, our seventh, is fifty years since the 1960s.

Decades are fictions, albeit useful ones. Same with anniversaries. When we mark time and look back, we can either wallow and anesthetize, or cast an eye back to the present, colliding the two in such a way that the tension reveals a future.

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