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  • To Hell with Herbert Read

Jordan, Mel, Beech, Dave and Hewitt, Andy, 2014, Conference or Workshop, To Hell with Herbert Read at To Hell with Culture? Re-examining the commodification of culture in contemporary capitalism, Manchester, UK, 30 October 2014.

Abstract or Description:

Freee write manifestos by taking a pencil (or a laptop) to an historical text, usually belonging to the entwined traditions of the avant-garde and political activism. Sometimes, as Tristan Tzara advised, we choose the text according to its length, while other times, such as in this instance, we selected the text according to the conditions of the invitation that triggered the writing of the manifesto. Our manifesto ‘To Hell with Herbert Read’ was written originally as a contribution to a conference held in Manchester that took its title from Herbert Read’s book ‘To Hell with Culture’.
‘To Hell with Culture’ is a book that cuts itself off from the world whereas ‘To Hell with Herbert Read’ relocates Read’s book in a world of cultural, social, economic and political actualities that are part of common experience. Read rejects culture because he thinks it is a useless, wasteful, elitist, puffed-up, decorative supplement to the functional, factual, palpable, purposeful world of things. He is a positivist kind of modernist who presents himself as the opposite, an enemy of the status quo. He is an anarchist of a particularly bourgeois hue: he wants us all to have decent pots and pans, not the inferior ones that are supplied by market forces cheaply. Rather than taking his aim precisely to target the dominant forces of his day - the industrial capitalists and their financiers - he rejects the world and all its inhabitants. He not only despises elitist culture but popular culture too.

Official URL: https://tohellwithculturemanchester.wordpress.com/
Subjects: Creative Arts and Design > W100 Fine Art
School or Centre: School of Arts & Humanities
Funders: Manchester Metropolitan University
Date Deposited: 11 Apr 2016 13:24
Last Modified: 09 Nov 2018 15:45
URI: https://researchonline.rca.ac.uk/id/eprint/1748
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