Annie Le Brun interview with Le Média and Aude Lancelin

I had the immense pleasure of finding this recent interview of Annie Le Brun on Youtube.  For my non French-speaking friends, I spent some time translating the interview into English, which is below.  It is heartening to find like-minded voices speaking so beautifully and forcefully about ideas I myself have been thinking about for so long.

An interview with Annie Le Brun

Aude Lancelin (AL): Hello everyone, today I have the immense pleasure to have Annie Le Brun in our offices at Le Média. Writer, and independent thinker amongst others, the great specialist of the Marquis de Sade and of Surrealism in France today, author of essays and pamphlets that have become true classics, Le Château de la subversion (“The Chateau of Subversion”) as well as Lâchez tout (“Let it all go”).  Today, she is publishing a new important book, Ce qui n’a pas de prix (“That which has no price”) from Stock [the publisher], a powerful reflection on the capture of our senses and sensibilities by global capitalism.  She is doing so with her own words, not those of the social sciences, the words of a writer, strong words which seek to awaken.  One almost no longer sees Annie Le Brun on television, where she will have from now on a presence.  She is today with us at Montreuil.  Bonjour

Annie Le Brun (ALB): Bonjour

AL: I would like to begin this discussion by reading the first sentences of the first paragraph of the first chapter of your new book in order to elucidate the problem at hand with your own words — 

“In fact, it is war.  A war that has lasted for a long time.  A war that takes place at all levels.  A war that has no frontiers, and that which becomes more terrible as the anonymity of Power increase its strength at the same time as the weakening of those who oppose it.  Many will only see there a small fire, nothing serious, and the majority ignore even that they are in fact the actors in this strange battle which is occurring between that which is shown, that which is hidden, and that which must not be shown.  This is why contemporary art plays such an important role, even the central role, having all the symbolic means to bring forth, at the same moment, all that concerns the object, the body, and space.  It would be, however, easy to conclude that this is only a war of representation, but that is only one aspect of the battle, where the scope and the complexity paradoxically are able to hide their existence, for I speak of a war against silence, a war against being attentive, as well as a war against sleep, or even a war against boredom, a war against dreaming, but also, and above all, a war against passion.  In other words, a war waged against all that we cannot extract financial value.”

Who is waging this war, Annie Le Brun? And how does it operate?

ALB: I don’t believe in the existence of conspiracies but this does not mean that there isn’t an overall movement which has put us all into a strange if not comical narrative.  If I speak of a war, this war is at baseline, always and still, a war for profit.  Since the mid-nineteenth century, William Morris had defined it as such.  Well, it has become even more worrying, and today, although for a long period of time there were preserved domains, in particular in the sphere of the senses which allowed everyone to find the weapons necessary to oppose the prescribed world order, today, it seems to me, we have moved on to another phase, an intensive war against that which does not have a price, by way of the merchandizing of everything.

AL: Well, one of the stakes of this book is to show that beauty and aesthetics are also in the domain of the political.  That is something that you will need to help our listeners understand because it is not the usual way that we have seen the posing of this question.

ALB: One can always be dissatisfied with the fact that critical discourse has always hit dead ends in that which concerns the analysis of the senses.  Obviously, this may be because there are always other apparently more urgent issues which must be resolved but that does not mean that we have not paid some attention in that which is occurring in the domain of the senses, and especially the events of the last few years.

AL:  Well, how do those in Power try to seize our senses and to modify them at their root?

ALB: We are under a state of Capital, of Money, where everything is merchandised.  And in particular, within domains which until recently had been preserved from it.  There is an accent made especially in that which is in the order of aesthetics.  Moreover, this emphasis on aesthetics is a win-win situation for those in power, meaning, their work of aestheticizing society, which has been occurring for quite a few years now; it is at the same time a surface makeover which is more a lie to cover-up that which is really happening, and also on the other hand, it is a weapon to cause people to slumber.  The war is against beauty.  We are sold an impacted form of beauty, whose actions seem to make things pretty but it is in fact a profound threat to beauty itself, which in fact is always transgressive, which is always something that opposes the established order.

AL: You touch on, in your book, the domains of design, of fashion, of name-brands, of the brands of luxury, and also that of contemporary art, our new official art.

ALB: It is not by chance that since the 1990’s, which corresponds to the beginnings of the rise of the economy of finance, there has been an incredible collusion which has occurred between the world of finance, the world of art, and that which we call the industries of luxury, of fashion.  Something important is at play, in my opinion, because of the insistence upon which one is made to believe that all of these worlds are equivalent.  There is a merchandizing of art and an aesthetisation of merchandise, which results in our loss of the ability and space to find ourselves.

AL: Your book is an immense accusation against Contemporary Art, the new Official Art, the art of the billionaires of the stock exchange, the art of François Pinault, of Bernard Arnault.  Well, I spell this out because you are not trying to restart the debate on Contemporary Art, because you say that the debate is fruitless.  What exactly is happening?

ALB: For a long time, I did not understand what was happening.  Eighteen years or so ago, I had written a book entitled Du trop de réalité  (“too much reality”), which questioned the overproduction of images, of information, of objects.  We were living in a moment where there was a new form of censorship in the form of excess.  This overproduction of signs, of things and of merchandise, supposed that our world is made uglier and uglier.  But over time, it appears to me that something has become even more terrible, we are no longer just in a society of overproduction of things, but in a society that produces so much garbage that we are no longer even able to resorb it, something that we have been capable of doing until now.  Slowly, while observing the movements within Contemporary Art, and this crazy marriage between art and Capital, it appeared to me that Money has a vested interest and reason to insert itself into Contemporary Art, which until now, had a prescriptive power. That is to say, all at once, something is imposed upon us through Contemporary Art.  While analyzing that which is  imposed on us, I recognized processes which are those in many other domains, more specifically, a kind of brutality, which until now did not exist in the art of the 20th century, which manifests itself through the gigantism of Contemporary Art.  

I then asked myself, what is this gigantism?  Why?  And on reflection, I understood that it was a play on a kind of staggering spectacle causing a stunned psychic paralysis [“sidération” in French] which stopped all spectators from reacting.  These things are so enormous that all of a sudden, one is so psychically stunned, that one is unable to have critical judgement.  Moreover, on seeing all that accompanies Contemporary Art, the writings, the discourse, we see clearly that it seeks to suspend the critical gaze.  

AL: You quote contemporary artists, in your book, some of the most stupendous words coming from the mouths of the most celebrated, the most highly valued contemporary artists, Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, the most cynical and obscene declarations which show the overlapping forces which are crossing over into the art world from the world of Capital, the violence of money.  All this accompanied by a discourse from the media that is, to say the least, of extreme complacency, of which you give examples.  From Le Monde, writing of the infamous LVMH dinner at the Louvre, calling the gathering a “learned mixture of kitsch, of glamour and irony . . .” Or even more notable, in The Guardian, where they wrote [no doubt in regards to the Louis Vuitton/Jeff Koons handbag collaboration] that “it is not just a simple line of luxury handbags but an artist’s meditation on the Old Masters, a meditation in the form of handbags.”

ALB: That’s it, we are there.  All those who question this state of affairs are immediately considered as completely stupid, or have not understood the irony behind the work, etc.  Through the terrorism, which is the way that this contemporary art is imposed, when I speak of prescriptions, there is a sort of “education” where one is imposed the same cynicism of these people.  This cynicism also rests on the total annihilation of sensibility.  Through this gigantism, we also see the annihilation of public space, which was already being destroyed by all the branding, the billboards.  Through the recycling of old ideas, by way of irony or by humor, etc., there is a hostage taking of the whole history of our senses.  It is something that works in human time and public space and aims to destroy sensibility.  At heart, in place of sensibility, we are imposed sensations, powerful sensations, which reduces the entire domain of the senses to a simple matter of special effects.  

AL: We know this, it is one of the main weapons of Contemporary Art, which unendingly speak of subversion.  If you are not duped by it, if you reject it, then you are a part of the old stupid bourgeoisie who rejected the Impressionists.  How does one free people from this complex?

ALB: Simply, one must not be intimidated.  One is not even given the chance to have some distance from that which is shown.  In fact, one must go above and beyond being psychically stunned to try to understand what is really happening.  And also, one must not accept that those who are imposing this work knows more than you.  It is important for each person to try to see what is happening inside oneself.  In general, usually nothing much is happening anyway in this art, so one can at least try to analyze this emptiness that is presented.

AL: This discourse that is constantly opposed to the adversaries of Contemporary Art, is that all new form in art is a new breakthrough, and so impossible to be comprehended at first sight, you know how this is constantly cited.  What is the difference between this and the true revolution in aesthetics of the start of the 20th century, for example?

ALB: There is no real break-through, there is only spectacle.  They play on that which is quantifiable, that is to say, they play on gigantism, and they play on embezzling all that which has occurred before them.  At heart, there is no newness.  It is a use of technical things, there is a recycling of all that has occurred in the artistic adventures of the 20th century, that is what we are seeing.

This is something that intrigued me, one only needs to take a little voyage.  In each new city visited, one finds the same brands, the same franchises, the same products, the same clothes, etc.  And if you have the bad luck of going into the different art galleries or museums, you find the same artists, the same work, and since we know that there is collusion between art and capital, all of a sudden, all of this becomes very suspect.  In my opinion, this is the School of Cynicism.  One of the aspects of this intimidation that we spoke of, is that we are convinced that we have to be cynical as well.  This is very important because it is one of the motors of this society, a society that tells people that if they do not partake in the prescribed order and in the prescribed way, then they are trash.  One must, at whatever the price, accept to take part in it, without it, one does not exist.  And this is the same violence against the intellect and the senses that we see in operation against the people, the workers, that are being exploited and also thrown away as trash at the same time.  

AL:  In your book, you speak of the problem of brandnames, of the fact that branding is also used in livestock farming, a symbolic submission to Capital, all the way to the level of our bodies.  You evoke, in very impressive passages in your book, the merchant gallerists, all absolutely resembling one another throughout the world, their luxurious art spaces, which exhibit “airport beauty.”  What is this “airport beauty”?

ALB: Simply said, it is a synthetic construct, something that is completely formulaic, ultimately, a sort of Barbie doll.  One has made a list of the things and the effects that are the most sought after, and so ultimately, it suffices to exploit this list.  We have a formatting of an idea of beauty and it is synthetic, and wherever one can go, it is the same thing which is sold.  We are in this instance involved in processes which are very close to what La Boétie had analyzed on the subject of voluntary servitude [in sixteenth century France].  It appears to me that it is even more serious today, as there is obviously this voluntary servitude to buy branded items, to become a brandname oneself, but on the other hand, there is all the violence against the sensibilities, which is done outside of the conscious mind.

AL: To stay on the subject of contemporary art and its hold on our sensibilities by the imposition of its canon, even though at the start, it seems that this art is destined for an elite class of people, you demonstrate how deeply it infiltrates the gaze of millions and millions of people.  Concerning the innumerable festivals, fairs, biennales, on which this art prospers, you quote an extraordinary phrase, of Rhonda Lieberman, in an article called “Art Accumulator”, “the sect of the fortunes exalts to find in this way how art transforms the spoils of social exploitation into a ticket of entry into high society, and even into the noble attire of philanthropy.”  Effectively, in art foundations, like that of Cartier or LVMH, we have, taking for example  Bernard Arnault, someone who is at the same time, in the luxury industry, in Contemporary Art, and who also has his feet firmly embedded in the Carrefour Supermarket chain, that is to say, in a business that exercises the most brutal exploitation possible of its workers.

ALB:  And it is this which is also new, There is a stream, the poison comes from high up and it attacks and poisons all levels of society, down to those who are the most marginalized.  Not only are they making horrors, like the infamous LV handbags, one uglier than the next, which exist only by their metallic peripherals, and then there are all the imitations, even in the most remote places; something has been made ill.  Before, there was a whole culture of the people, of the workers, which was free from this sort of thing, and which preserved us from this, but now, no longer.  And this is very worrying.  One of the things which was a thought of mine during the origins of this book is that if you look at all popular objects, local traditional costumes, no matter from which country, in which land, each time, they were beautiful objects, extraordinary exaltations of color and a knowledge of material, etc.  How is it possible that all of a sudden, this beauty, as William Morris said, which came from below, how is it all suddenly jeopardized if not annihilated by all the poison that comes from above?

AL:  Your book shows very clearly the formatting and uniforming of sensibility and the destruction of the culture of the workers, which existed through the middle half of the 20th century.

ALB:  Everything is going so fast now and one must constantly merchandise all the forms of existence, there is all of a sudden a need to change exterior signs.  One must from one day to the next, change styles.  There is this strange expression called “lifestyle.”  Even the most “progressive” of people speak of “lifestyle” but it is the very thing which completely seeks to erase class conflict and struggle.  What is this “lifestyle” thing?  Effectively, one can play at passing from one lifestyle to the next, by fashion.  One can change costumes from one day to the next, and suddenly, nothing has meaning anymore.  It is a circulation of postures, of signs, and those who are at the origins of these signs, those who control these signs, they are the ones who have this power over our senses.  

AL: In regards to the control of signs, you have an extraordinary anecdote, where the celebrated artist of contemporary art, Anish Kapoor, bought the rights to a color, venta-black.  He privatized this color which had been elaborated by the military, and thus depriving everyone else from using it.  What is your take on this?

ALB: I was thinking initially of the uglification of society, and all of a sudden, this story unfolded.  A world renowned artist, who makes the “art of the conquerors,” to reuse the expression of a German critic, announces that he has bought the rights of a shade of black, that he has the monopoly of this so-called absolute black, which has the quality of annihilating all contours and relief of objects that have been covered by it.  When one tries to photograph the object that has been painted by this venta-black, one only sees black.  This seemed to be something that was completely surprising to me because, for one, that an artist is in a situation to buy the monopoly of a color, is a monstrous thing to begin with. Furthermore, he has the financial monopoly of this black.  To me, this is something particularly significant because, we know of the importance of the darkness of shadows in the history of art.  Understanding that it was always in the shadows of this darkness that artists have found extraordinary things and have given birth to new worlds.  All of a sudden, there is a black that stops one from seeing anything at all, it is nothing but a kind of emptiness, a black vacuum.  The fact that this was also a color that was researched by the military, all of a sudden, the collusion of Money, of the Military, of total blindness, it appeared to me that this was all significant of all that was being played out at that instance.

AL: To speak of the modifications of our senses, the gravity of the situation, we can quote a defender of the Commune, that you love very much, Elisée Reclus, who was a geographer, voyager, and who became an anarchist during the Paris Commune [1871], “there where poetry has disappeared from language, the imaginations also burns out, spirits are made poor, and the routine of servitude takes over and makes people lethargic and kills them.”  How is this happening to us, in your opinion?

ALB: We are told constantly, all this that we have spoken about, and it tries to convince us that there is no alternative, that we cannot get out of this prescribed world, and that it must be accepted.  It is simple, and it is not by chance, that this began in the 1990’s, after Margaret Thatcher.  We are still in the thick of it.  When I began working on this book, I had a kind of revelation, when I discovered that the person who had promoted Thatcher, and her notorious success, was no other than Charles Saatchi, who has now become one of the biggest gallerists, collectors, and promoters of Contemporary Art.  All of a sudden, there was a sort of short circuit, and I said to myself that it is all clear to me.  We are being convinced that we cannot be free from this.   One must reflect on the violence of today, at the violence of the police, which imposes itself in particular on the youth, because clearly, the youth have another idea of what is beauty, they have the idea of the beauty that Rimbaud wrote about.  It is a living beauty, one which must be constantly reinvented.  This beauty is always a means, a solution, of breaking out of What Is.  Beauty, ultimately, is a door, an exit, towards Utopia.  It is this that is being suppressed.  The world is being convinced that this is not possible.  And this violence, something that I call the “globalist realism” which attacks all the senses and sensibility, and insists that there is no exit.  

AL: In face of this phenomenon, you say that social critique finishes by becoming nothing more than a soundtrack, that it has no longer any agency, and has become simply a means of giving peace of mind in those who already are followers, for example, in social media.  Why is this discourse no longer able to change things?

ALB:  This discourse is impotent because, it seems to me, the powers that manipulate us, are not those which are being analyzed.  There is an anachronism, which makes critics blind.  Given the complexity of the financial structures, all is done so that we do not see the violence of money.  We pass from one bank to the next, in the most sophisticated financial operations, to a point where everything is done in this world so that we cannot see the link between the cause and the effect.  And in turn, it is extremely difficult to untangle all of this.  It seems significant to me that in Contemporary Art, there is an effect without cause.  All of a sudden, there is this enormous thing presented that one is not to try to understand, something that is supposedly unknowable.  We are told,  “it is so,” or “that’s the way it is.”  One must apparently simply accept this.  There is a blindness in critical discourse, which is unable to do much today, because there is a double denial.  One is trying always to convince you that what you are seeing is not actually what you are seeing.  That even if you see it, well, there is always another take, another exit.  And this is why I discuss in my book the incredible success of this saying, which is known through a painting by Margritte, “ceci n’est pas une pipe.”  All is done to impose upon us a world which is thus.  If you are not in agreement with that which is taking place, one tells you that, well, “it is not exactly that.”  It is the famous, “at the same time”, there is a flattening and neutralization of all that is negative.  And speak not of dialectics, because there no longer is any.  Of course, there are opposing opinions, but they participate in the same movement, the illusion that there is actually something happening.  We are in the necessity of occupying time, so, according to the model of the internet, there must be something that is happening all the time. Like the slogan of the Lafayette Galleries.  Everything is interchangeable, indifferent.  One has the impression of living but we are in fact in, what I call, the presence of the present.  This goes hand in hand with the price paid for the desensitization and erasing of the body.  

AL:  You speak of the cynicism of the famous artists of contemporary art, which they don’t hide.  I quote Damien Hirst, from 2008, when he was organizing the auction of 118 of his own works.  “I play money against art, and as an artists, I hope that it is art that will win, but if it turns out that money wins, then art needs to go away.”

ALB:  He said it, and he is well placed to as he has done his utmost to achieve it.  It is a question that was asked in 1912 by the nephew of Oscar Wilde, Arthur Craven, a boxer-poet who died young, he disappeared while swimming one day, who said, “one day in the street, we will only see artists and we will have the hardest time finding a man.”  We are actually now in that situation.  

AL: The war which is waged on us through all of these means, that we have just spoken about, a ferocious war, you say, the following in your book: “ a ferocious war where the smallest thing which does not have a price tag must be immediately neutralized, if not, diverted, perverted, or annihilated.  Obviously, this is the question which comes up — what are our means of resistance?  Are there any?

ALB:  It is a difficult situation but there are always possibilities.  It may be this idea that was so important to the anarchists of the start of the 20th century, that each individual tries to find his or her own time.   A student of Hegel once said, I forget his name, that “There is always another world and it is in this one.”  And it is true, One must find the open passages, as not everything is completely perverted, if I may say so, or poisoned, in each of us, there are resources for refusal.  One can still fall in love, one can still love things, one can still feel passion.  These are small individual solutions that I speak of, in order to not have a particular message, but I think that in each of us, there is a revolt, and a need to find some distance from that which is imposed on us.  We have the agency to not participate in this circus, which is something that is frightening.  One notices also that there is also something going on of hope,  that those who have been trained and formatted to participate in this circus refuse to enter into it.  They don’t want to.  If in the street demonstrations, one sees so many youths, it is also because they do not want to, they resist.  And this is very important.  Despite it all, and this is what makes life worth living, it is that one finds hope and beauty in moments where one least expects it.  It is often in the place and the obscure corner the most shadowy landscape that something can appear.   Rimbaud came out from the moment the most repugnant of the 19th century’s, at the end of the Commune of Paris, and it is still his voice which even today continues to have an echo in our youth, those who have not accepted to comply.

AL: The last sentence of this book, “At this hour, it is for each individual to instigate the systematic sabotage individually or collectively” of this system of enslavement of the senses.

ALB:  The fact is that despite it all, this idea of Utopia is still there and the desire of utopia is not over.  

AL:  Thank you very much Annie Le Brun for your visit to our offices.  I remind our listeners that the title of your new book is “Ce qui n’a pas de prix” from Stock.