#overculture

[wetapplewomaneater]

NOW Courtney Love AND Lana Del Rey have deleted all their socials 🥰🫢

[devinclaire]

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With Chiron in Aries you use your anger to be the warrior. Chiron was in the same placement of Aries as it is now during the civil rights movement. ⠀ ✊🏾⠀ With Mercury Retrograde don’t believe this is only a time for confusion, it’s a time to say what is not right with the mainstream overculture. ⠀ ✊🏾⠀ #blacklivesmatter #blm #overculture #stephonclark #saytheirnames #mercuryretrograde #astrology #civilrights #community #activism ⠀ ⠀ Reposting @blavitypolitics:⠀ ...⠀ "Whew, the chills. Shortly after the Sacramento County DA ruled not to charge the officers involved in the fatal killing of #StephonClark, protesters rallied against the decision at the Sacramento City Council. Although an officer almost ruined the peaceful protest, the group of activists involved demonstrated true solidarity and prevented a potentially different outcome. Tag a friend 👇🏿 to share. #JusticeForStephonClark" https://www.instagram.com/p/BuwnoVcn3xb/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1t1ym9ulejj2n

[rustbeltjessie]

We are living in a system in which human worth is determined by money, material wealth, color of skin, religion and other capricious factors that do not tell the true value of a soul. This is an insane system. Those who profit from this system have also determined, by rationale and plundering, that the earth also has no soul, neither do the creatures, plants, or other life forms matter. I call this system the overculture. There is no culture rooted here from the heart, or the need to sing. It is a system of buying and selling. Power is based on ownership of land, the work force, on the devaluation of life. The power centers are the multinational corporations who exploit many to profit a few. True power does not amass through the pain and suffering of others. -Joy Harjo, from A Map to the Next World

Oh Lil! You promised me secrets of mushroom & fern elf language of mosses, you swore that I'd hear yr blood sing, took me to burial grounds where blue bones danced to bikers' radios sank in a murky lake where I cd not follow you. You promised endless, perfect afternoons where wood rots slow; where house falls to dust in slanting light thru the redwoods, but left w/ only the red glint of meat between yr teeth red glint of yr lipstick, blood of muledeer & jackrabbit on yr murderous black crossroads -Diane Di Prima, from Loba

[thenowandhere]

William Powhida

Overculture 1: (noun) 1.a small cultural group (artists) within the larger culture, often affirming the beliefs or interests of the ruling class (collectors). "The two parties thus engage in an uneasy courtship around unspoken divisions and unacknowledged aspirations, where each seeks the perceived (and performed) freedoms of the other." -David Geers (verb) 1. a negative or ambivalent feeling about culture often in relation to socio-economic conditions. "If art comes from everywhere and everyone thinks differently, why does so much of what we see these days look the same?" -Jerry Saltz "We have a great big art world with a lot of stupid people in it. It's just about sales. We don't do negative reviews. We love everything. It's all mainstream. Look at what's out there. I don't think that's good, but that's the way it is." -Dave Hickey, semi-retired art critic

Recognition of overculture is necessary to avoid misidentifying it as subculture (marked by resistance to ruling class values). Overculture and its capital may be identified as the cultural knowledge and commodities traded between members of the overculture, raising their status and helping differentiate themselves from the majority culture or resistant subcultures.  The sphere of the visual arts has increasingly become associated with overculture in a market-oriented ontology where price functions as the sign of absolute cultural value (Art) that subordinates all other relative cultural values (creative labor). The principle form of judgment in overculture is an expression of capital through the market. Price functions as a single variable for the success (or failure) for the participants in the exchange (artist to collector, seller to buyer, reporter to public).  "The danger here is less that this art promotes an illusory autonomy or cynically concedes to the market than that it reveals the discourse of art as now consisting of nothing but the market." -David Geers Overculture poses significant challenges to the visual arts. It proposes that art no longer has any role in theoretically resisting the 'superior' values of the ruling class and market-orientation has turned it into a closed system of exchange between members that ceases to be relevant to the larger culture.  "Want to see a very big show of very bad art? Sure you do, to be up on present trends in bigness and badness...Gigantic in scale and pipsqueak in imagination, the show must be seen to be properly disbelieved. You'll want to talk about it." -Anonymous Critic, New Yorker

[jenbekmanprojects]

Why You Shouldn't Buy Art by William Powhida. His solo show, Overculture, at Postmasters Gallery in NYC is open through April 19 and got a great review in the Village Voice. Check out the show before it closes, + his 20x200 editions here.