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images from Can't Get No Satisfaction
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by
Edith Abeyta
with contributions by:
Robert Abeyta Jr., Eric Anthony, Marshall Astor, Javier Barboza,
John
M. Bennett, Jeremy Carnahan, Carina DiMarcellis, Mia Farrell,
Bean
Gilsdorf,
Dan
Gilsdorf,
Andy
Jenkins, Michele Hubacek, Nicholas Klemek,
Tony Larson, Betsy Lohrer Hall, Alexis Mackenzie,
Issac McKay Randozzi, Nan,
Ert O'Hara,
Merry-Beth Noble,
Claire Reay,
Lisa
Romero, Michael Row,
Allyson Shaw, Valerie Scott,
Robert Tower,
Rebecca Trawick, and
Porous
Walker,
Hague Williams
Can’t Get No Satisfaction,
a project by Los Angeles artist Edith Abeyta. Abeyta works with
materials that have been abandoned, thrown away, shunned and otherwise
have become trash. Considered meaningless, these materials linger
on the streets where she finds them and brings purpose to their post-use
existence.
Can’t Get No
Satisfaction
contains two complementary ideas. First, is a critique of the street
art phenomenon that espouses rebellion, but whose intentions contain the
raw mimicry of the advertising campaigns that multinational corporations
engage in to promote their “brands.” The pressure to have a
successful street art “campaign” distinctly apes the competitive and
corporate atmosphere found in any marketing department. Secondly,
it serves as a reminder of the inability and failure of capitalism to
satisfy, despite the environment of excess and abundance that it
creates.
Abeyta has termed
this her “sellout show.” A horde of friends and artists have been
invited to make art from handgun shaped pieces of wood that she has cut
from discarded furniture, mocking the way street artists are brought
together to paint donated Nike shoes, record covers and other
paraphernalia of big business. Rather than sell Pabst Blue Ribbon
to trucker hat hipsters, Abetya will be hawking commemorative shot
glasses, custom printed with the exhibition’s logo, the vulture, and
soaking the crowd with whiskey. T-shirts bearing her vulture logo
will be sold prominently and aggressively, aping the business model of
Street Art, which itself apes the business model of big business.
Artist Statement
Edith Abeyta has chosen to
appropriate a pre-existing text by
Situationist writer Raoul Vaneigem to serve as her statement for this
show.
You do not pay for happiness; you tear
it from society selling it. In the midst of the sweetest pleasures we
are still so conditioned to expect the handle flying back, the next
ratchet where misfortune's wheel gets stuck, the next bill to pay, that
the adventure already includes the unhappy ending to all acts of
subversion. However, the spirit of defeat and despair is chewing its own
tail today, like every other vicious circle in trade. The passion for
destruction has ceased to be creative, and is no more than a substitute
for it.
The industrial societies have led us into the depths of despair, free
activity, gratuitousness, leads us on out. When cashiers on strike cause
customers to drop their roles and help them take and give away the goods
freely, when workers start distributing the stockpile, when people stop
paying for rent, electricity bills, and transport, when looting ceases
merely to be sudden, sporadic and irrational and plays in the joyful
distribution of abundance, it is clear that proletarianisation demands
to be rooted out and liquidated.
But then the free fall into gratuity is part of working-class tradition.
If I were to draw a geographical and temporal map of the will to live as
it directly concerns how our society and my life are evolving, I would,
alongside the traps set for me, underline the moments of lived intensity
as places sheltered from the radiation of commerce, places where I have
succeeded in annihilating the economic hydra during moments of pleasure.
I would ink in the towns of Prat Llobregat that were burning money one
morning in 1932, the Catalan and Aragonese collectives trying out
universal self-management from 1936 onwards, and the instances of
refusing to pay which fresh innocence is multiplying everywhere. I also
would gouge in bureaucracy's victories, and areas infested by the ruling
class, spots where police and bankers like to nest, and places flattened
by rapidly increasing proletarianisation. The map would reveal how
giving freely and intense pleasure develop around a person's needs, and,
in spite of the deadly shadows cast by profit and power, what a unique
effect these two elements have on his life.
Setting fire to commissariats and barracks, prisons, tax-offices, banks,
money and factories brings me less pleasure than the change in
understanding profiled by these acts, namely breaking what prevents us
enjoying everything, and tolerating no check on pleasure. Sudden
outbursts of destructiveness have had their day; they now simply reflect
homage to this death-ridden society by would-be suicides or alms that
the old dowager of leftist good works gives to the poor of her perish.
Giving as universal practice is central to setting intense pleasure free
and will cause civilization to perish. Red dawns I find less significant
than the spark of life which sets them blazing.
- Raoul Vaneigem
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