Megaphone for Anti-Vertical Demonstration
Alex Martinis Roe. Megaphone for Anti-Vertical Demonstration, 2010.
Description:
As an alternative option to the Anti-Vertical Demonstration, Megaphone for Anti-Vertical Demonstration is an assemblage of instruments of resistance which have been immobilized by their aestheticization. Reducing these historic apparatus to the function of image prevents their productive utilization. These objects (the flag, megaphone, the brick) are isolated from any specific “cause”/positive representational politics and now enter into the discourse of the universal, eternal, and legitimate languages protected and produced by the museum. Conversely, Megaphone for Anti-Vertical Demonstration asserts the performative agency of the artwork and its potential to shift the ideological force of dominant aesthetic regimes. Interrogating the enduring assumption of the autonomy of the art object, especially in relation to the art market and the museum’s “permanent collection," Megaphone for Anti-Vertical Demonstration, alludes to a positive political actionism which is precluded by the context specific rules of the art encounter (i.e. don’t touch/use). Thus, the assemblage points to its own negativity as the latent ideological hegemony of the universal “void." This negativity relies on some other positivity, perhaps a juxtaposed artwork, a companion text or even a series of allegiances held by the viewer, in order to direct that inherent agency. Implicating the consumer in the way the object produces significance is an attempt to enact a positive politics, which rejects the assumption of the artwork’s autonomy and the claim that its enduring relevance is apolitical.
Image courtesy of Monash University Museum of Art, Australia.
Medium:
Sculpture
Tags:
alternative, demonstration, workplace relations, labor rights, Victorian trades hall council, loud-hailer, megaphone, flag, politics
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