hell’s handmaiden

We are not at war because our operations of war are not directed towards any end that could qualify them as war, nor are they directed against any enemy that could serve to vindicate the choice of term.

Art.

Art should speak. Try as I might, I cannot imagine why one would want to produce art that does not speak, as some schools have intentionally tried to do. I can say nothing worse, I think, about a piece than that it is silent.

Strangely enough, it is realism that has produced the bulk of the silent works. Too often a landscape, or portrait, or a still-life just doesn’t say anything. Home furnishing and craft stores are filled with such lifeless prints. Even supermarkets frequently sell such things. They are the captured corpses of the past, nothing more– not messages to the future, not creators of soul. They may be useful to historians and scientists, but they are not art. Art needs to speak.

A friend recently introduced me to Santiago Theory (ST) and his brief description and, honestly, over-trumpeting, of the theory quickly led to some debate.

The theory is essentially an application of systems theory to life and as such is not terribly revolutionary. Systems theory has been applied by the sciences to living organisms and groups of organisms for decades. There really is no other way to treat ecology, for example., and cultural ecology plugged humans into the equation. Practically speaking, most people know that flowers depend upon insect to reproduce. In other words, flowers are part of a system. Santiago theory carries the idea a bit further than this colloquial understanding though and makes the point that even individual organisms are agregates– systems, or patterns of constantly changing parts. This, also, is common knowledge in the sciences but perhaps ST could find its reason to be in popularizing the idea.