HOw 7A | te merevan | ef me 0ewr ar tosz Dan Graham's Kammerspiel Don Graham's unrealized, and possibly unrealizable project, leeration to a Suburban House (ag78), genetotes a hallucinatory, almost Expressionire image by means of & historical eitique of Conceptual art. In this work, conceptualism is the discourse which fuses together thrne of the zost resonant architectural tropes of this eentiry (tie glass skyaceaper, the glass house, and the suburban wact heuse) inte a momumen. tal exprestion of apocalypse and historical tragedy. Tn 1978, a a momert when the denunciation of Conceprual art began 10 be openly arsiculated by advocates of new subjective, narcissistic, und frankly commer ial atitudes, Graham constructs a profoundly expressive work on the basis of coucep- twaliam, Ata moment when conceptuslism’s suppression of dhe expressive element ie, is decried ts she vource of its at, once seen as that movement's radical achieveres failure and collapse. Graham wonsforms Conceptual methods into their opposites, drawing unexpected conclusions from therm. These conclusions, embodied i the Abaration project, syggest a new histories) zaoment in regard to Goneeptual ary ‘emergence of @ new period in its jateypretation, and ist cegnrd te its historical significance, Graham, wo, begins from the failure of conceptualise’ critique of art. But intnation is not co celebrate that failure and ro throw sovay the lessons of the radical art of the 1980s in a theatricslized revival of the myth of suthentiity: Rather, he intends with he Alteration project to bul critical memorial to that filaze. And in the spltit of the movement he memorialize, he builds it as a counteermenument, J developing the eration projet, Grsam begins fram a detested recoguition of conceptoalsm’s failure to rebuild ar rosa ie core outward, which was its sim. He reflects upon the forces unleashed in ert by’ thst allure, ad his emstic language a2 2 ge from hia struggle within the @Srof vadicaT mole-acmajoxerpliied lar bis generation by Conceptual art. What is the content of this nntion of xis? Conceptutlirm intensified and Aaified axivedes devaloped by the pair af artis whole eme tis movements which emerged from the decline of Abstract Rapressionism in @ eal- sure industry setting. Both the Minimalist and the Pop aztists based thomselves on a repadiation of the extravagant inwerdness of the 1g4os generaior. Ber rHressed the ixapingement of the division of labor upou the image of the unitied and groupe oxgunie artistic process witieh Abstract Rxpressionian took over from its Bropeanaero _ Bret the enclosures of eacie by the subsequent spee their places in the au reawakening of critical nacy of the very work central jetent is of cour ‘posed: what is the proce muted into subme fhe Once again—and Constrweivist terms of souress Both were “Constructive” ip this regard, and therefore implicitly opened instieuulone for which © an artistic argument which charscterized she early decades of this century. Thatargu- Sinvervogates modern a1 went developed around the form art would take as society was liberated from the rule object, and discourse, + of eapitalism, which was then seen 1 bein its “desth-agon.” But the aspect of both Pop foremost, asthe acader and Minimal art which moat affected the younger artists who became "Couceptsal”™ This inverrogatir | was precisely the inability of both types to free theunselves from the social aloofncas tualiam developed. Thy and emotional indifference cherseteriete of portag4s American wr, which was which idess, waditions expressed ahove all in Greenbergian formalism, the institutional orthodoxy of the pressed und discredited corporatized art business, Minimalism's suburbanite asceticism and the smirking collapse of the liberatie ironies of Pop representationalism hoth took on the anca of serenity imposed fram of tovlicarian regimes above, of euttura) “normalisation,” charactevstie af cold wor and cos ornteewdture in In general, Conce the eyes of the young artists inspired by the anti-Viemnam upheaval and May 1968, the politicized ealtural Conceprial art emerged from the disappointaent end dissatisfoetion with these axt the dastitusions of wre movements, a disappointinent over the fact that tre social forces and ideas which hae ideas of the eucirelem, ‘been stinted and revived by the aggrestively mechanistic and antiexpressive aspects of citical consciousness the wew art did net extend into the kind of radically explosive and disruptive expres: stretegies of guorella sion desized within the culzaral New Left, In the eyes of the Conceptuaists the cul: student revolts of 16 tural shock effects of Minimal and Pop art had, by the late 1980, given rise only v0 8 ‘oF coneeptnalism starr rnew, more complex, and distressed version of the art-commedity. This guilt-ridden the Dialecnis of Rnlign commodity could do no more thant dramatize :s own problematic and marginal char acerbic deteatiem of th acter esa sonree of surpine value and as transcendent foeni! ent concretion aod er Ii this crsis-ridden precess of selE-dramativation, there isa reversion to an ar Debord's indignant cul tier unuetolved dilenmna of European modernism, The problem of the artistic eri- selves mos deliberate) sique of social unfreedom, which ls disappointed or frustrated by political disasters rancously struggle tow sind wie ig thereby transformed inta mosumental emblems of social and spiriual the "productivist” dea wath |23/08 ae ain and implicitly reopened 2 century. Thst argue stated from the rule ‘aspect af both Pop ame “Conceptual” the social aloofness an art, which was orthodexy of the and the smirking iy imposed from, rporate culture ia ral and May 1968, jon with these art ideas which had pressive aspects of disruptive expres: plualists, the oul- ven rise only to a This guitrelden dd margenal char- the artiste eri ttical disasters jal and apintual F 2009 09:39 Fax «17 22033761 Oca Noaway coldsratbes thax breaking trsugh nto symbolising beraon, was one feed by ll he aera acre movements of the “beroic” period of revolutionary ephetval(igoge 2) The somber history of AbvractBxpcesioniam shows that this rage emlence cism was enshrined es the highest and most subliove val American ng’ [The liberating shock of the assault of Pop and Minimal srt os ths encosaresof ware werk was aggravated and vomed in amore ete dnecsion by che mubeequent spectacle of the great Rauchenbergs, hudds,and Flavine ing their places in the museums alongside the Pi bing, Latch, and Roches, The Teakeing of richie though in heart of he 160s eorvdes elie macy ofthe very work which mow diel instal the proces onsepal ws centr] intent iof course to imerrogate the bass af that egsnacy The queaen ane sted wnt the peo Iv buctrans ‘uted into sublime Exation upon immolalied symbol and fetishes? ess in which the cultural erisis is not resolved soc Once again—and here the Conceptualits resumed aspects of the Conrrustivis: term of ersique—she syle of myaderm art ae ateched Decause of the ind of essootial faende, Conceptoal art interrogates moder sit as a comples of institution Institutions for which they ere seen to fm which produce styles, ypes of nd object, and discourse, rather than questioning at foremost, at the academies aught. ‘This interrogation i inconceivable outside the esis cotent in which concep tals developed, The poles) upheavals of the 19608 provided fuze throug which ides, redsons nd methods of arte thought—pvimacily Maraiscenp Prevwd and dlsredited by anathema and verzor dusig the period which witnesad dhe callepe ofthe liberetionic desis which animated Euxopean croderusmm and the tise of tomitarian regimes inthe .950, could make a drazutie return tothe outaral file. ‘Ye general, Conceptual art draws ics themes, its statogics adits content from the polisisized caltralexitique identified brosdly with the New Left The assault on the insticutions of art draws, on the one hand, upon the revival of Frankfurt Schoo! ‘eas of the encirclement and falsification of avant-garde culture and its aditioval Grieal consciousness by the culture induszy, and on the other, upon Sitvetionis ‘vegies of guerilla acivien, which found their most complete expression in the student revlts of 1968. Thus, in» sens, the historical character and the limitarions of conceptuaism seem from it intellectual and politcal leemon midway between the Dialers of Enlightenment and The Secity ofthe Spectacle; that i, berween the sourbicdefeatisin of the Adorno-Morkheimer position, which sees art a8 a trnteen dent coneretion and emblem of existing unfreedom, end the desperate anarchism of Dabor!s indignant cultural srrorism. The aewsal works of art which o7gunize theme selves mos dliberstety around this dyanmic display, ite doal tendencies they simul New Left activism and taneously struggle toward political immediacy in the sense of ‘he “produetiviae” desire for resolution of vecial confit, ora beak or leap, and at the