The refusal of the work of art: aesthetics and autonomy in Italy, 1965-1985

Abstract

The Refusal of the Work of Art: Aesthetics and Autonomy in Italy, 1965-1985, explores the nature of doing things together through a cultural history of aesthetics and politics in post-1968 Italy, organized around a theoretical investigation of the concept of work. During this period the political strategy of "the refusal of work" (as employment or productive-labor) coincided with changing conceptions of the “work" of art, a dematerialization that manifested in a turn towards performance and conceptualism. Aesthetic and political radicalism shared a desire for immediacy and a rejection of representation (be it the figurative representation of painting or the political representation of party politics and trade unionism), often leading to conflict with traditional institutions. Each chapter compares increasingly mediated attempts at organizing, building, and sustaining collective alternatives outside of traditional institutions—radical street theatre and performance art, cooperative arts organizations and attempts at imbuing art with a “social practice,” self-managed social centers, collective musical improvisation and cooperatives, counter-cultural publications, and mail art networks. Grouped under the name Italian Actionism, as they all downplay the work of art as object in favor of action, these collective practices are construed as forms of refusal (of theatre, of the composer, of the artists, of architecture, of the art world, etc.) done in relation to the socio-political goals of the post-68 movements. Participants devised creative means of organizing and acting collectively, both politically and artistically, developing autonomous and decentralized networks in contrast to the strict hierarchies which characterize traditional institutions. They also share an experimental and free relationship with technology described as Poor Media, which developed in Italy over the course of long 1970s. The Living Theatre’s street performances, Musica Elettronica Viva’s “junktronics,” the material innovations of Arte Povera, anarchitectural designs, the experimental use of cassettes, these are all forms of refusal, but they are also media through which the politics refusal of the work of art could be thought and acted upon. As the conditions which made Italy unique in the 1970s have become globalized in the decades since (precarious labor, a crisis of faith in liberal democratic institutions, a rise in political violence), there is greater urgency in reassessing the utopian, but often failed, experiments of these years, avoiding the pitfalls while recuperating the tactics which still have relevance to contemporary politics.