ART MACHINE Any Warhol ‘nt-Oecpus, 1978 Given thelr diferences — in syle, sens billy, aesthetic ideology and artistic prac- ‘ces —Ieisvather remarkable that Inthe 1960s both Andy Warhol and Sol eit, paradigms of the Pop Arist. and Conceptucl Arts respectively, shared the desire to model thei artiste practices on ‘the machine. What made the machine so attractive a an object of imitation? Of course the easiest answer i that Being ‘a machine was 2 way not to be Abstract Expressionist The rhetoric of the machine was ready-made for the aesthetic ideo fogical work of negeting the perceived humanism and romantica of Abstract Expressoniom because it aggressively ref ttences the rationalized and alensting ‘mode of labor which had been for most Of the century the exact opposite of art" Imitating the machine. enabled Lewitt and Warhol to change thee art Historical referent from Abstract Expresionism towards “non-composition,” an ant-art tradition that canbe traced back to Duchamp and the Russian svant-gerde, The noncompositional tesk involves finding an ordering principle for ones art or Itrature that depends ae Ite 35 possible (ideally not at al) on subjective choice, where a presiven system machine — produce the artwork in a may that erases one’s own subjectivity fn indivi” Arist’ baldly proclaimed and widely publicized embrace of the machine in the 1960e carried with tthe danger of appearing to affirm post-war industrial socety, and the new forms of labor organization, maze culture and the commodity thet Characterized i. Everyday Ife, the argument would go, has alreaey turned vt into ‘machines, 2 consumes of mais produced commodities and culture and 3¢ workers, [At then, should help us reconnect with wat Is human and creative, not under ‘ore our subjection to the machine. The notion ofthe person-aemachine conjures Lup images of workers on the assembly line, Marx summed up the postion well“ handicrafts and manufacture, the worker makes wie ofa tool In he factory, the ‘machine makes use of him. In the factory we have a Iifslese mechanism wich independent of the workers, who are incorporated int ita ving sppendoger."? [And modern designers of the factory did, infact, think of the human Body as @ ‘machine n his influential 1811 study, The Princples of Scientific Management EW. Taylor argued that a radical increase in the efiiency ef work processes could be achieved by conducting rigorous time and motion studes of each part of the labor process. Once the most efficient bodily movements were determined, they would fsablsh a tonderd thet the "scientific manager" would teach and enforce? Henty Ford implemented and expanded Taylor nsghts In his automobile factories more or less institutlonaizing the assembly line and the repetitive motions ie required from workers a the Batt of modern industrial prod before the 1960s, the main contexts In ‘which it seemed posible to bring the fhmarmatn ated roman machine into artmaking were’ the explicitly ant-capitalist ones of Soviet Constructivism and. the Bauhaus. In ‘those movements, the artist took the Machine out of the Teylorized, Fordist {factory and put tin the conte of an an attempt to reinvent the machine, to insist mat the machine and mechanical. ness were not inherently slienating (ne poet Vladimir: Mayakovsky, for ‘example, could speak of his *machine- Dares" mn proclaiming: “1 myself fee ke 2 Soviet factory, manufacturing happi- ress") Machinesike art and. poetyy Shared with the eutonomous art that it paralleled the ronse that art ata space for saving subjectivity rom the alienat- oie See eee an 8Ing forces of modernization, a space for experimenting with altinative moderites. ‘The Constructivist reconceptualization ofthe role ofthe arte slong technologies! lines was part of an effort to figure out how the artist coula ply a role In the tion of norceapitlist modernity. her study of the "machine nthe studio" {Caroline Jones makes the case that those political motivations had more o less levaporated by the 1960s when artist lke Frank Stella, Warhol and Robert ‘Smithson started not only to represent the machine but to imitata it While does seem clear, a5 Jones writes, that “postwar Industral capitalism Inhabited ‘the consciousness" of there artiste and “motivated the making oftheir ar," this, inhabiting” and “motivation” does nat necessarily Imply affirmation. Neither ‘warhol nor Lewitt ever embraced the explicitly political tance of a movement like Soviet constructivism, not least because they lacked the revolutionary social context However, this lack of explicit alignment with a politcal movement does ‘not make their work any less eitieal a response tothe world in which they live. In fact, both Warhol and Lewitt hold open a space for critique and oppestion, For those who experience the particular melancholy ofthe revolutionary in nonrevo™ lutlonery times, the artwork of LeWitt ang Warhol, Iwill argue, oer two very diferent Kinds of existance ‘The advantages of examining Warhol and LeWitt together here are several, Thele. |ustaporiton put them each into a different context and thus helps to render both ‘of them newly unfamiliar While Wathol and LeWitt are each Interested in the ‘machine ina highly diosymeratic way, its precy by looking at these to alosyn- {atic wayr of reing the world in relation to each other that we can best appreciate ‘nt oly thee singularity but alo the historical sltution that they share In my effort to understand what the art of Warhol and LeWit is aying about the ‘ord in whic they ved, my ceteal question wl be! what ithe emotional content ‘the histrical mood, in whieh tho aesthetic experiance offred to viewers in the work fof Warhol and Lewit is attractive? My presumption hace I thatthe affective nature (of aesthetic experience is always at feast partly compensatory. In other words, the fexperience of at has an emotional force because I offers us something inthe sp3ce fofart” that wa do not get elsewhere. Artin this view, always partly utopian. OF course, utoplas are always also a critique of the word in which they appear. Every esthetic experience (in giving us something tht is otherwise missing) provides 8 Plture of the world from which t has sprung. But it does so in reverse, ike @ Photographic negative. And each artwork has Its own way of Seing ts own “theory” {0 the world. ach ha ts own relationship tothe aggregate of siting, competing fand contradictory forces that shape everyday life. The task ofthe clic, the, Isto Feconstruct thi world — which we might also call "history" — in ordar to make Sense of the attractions of the specific experience that the artwork offers. This Feconstrction must stat from the aesthetic experience that the aft promotes because itis prociely here, onthe level of afer, Ll conten, that we can most leary See the residue of historicity. Subjective affects the shutle on which Mistry Sets nto art and alo how it comes back. So when | sy (at! wil) that LeWtt's and ‘Warhot’s art contains within it an implicit theory of the historical situation, by history." Ido not mean “historical event” of what is sometimes called the “neat history" that is offered in textbooks. History in the sense | am using it not “thes 4 fn ony Immediately observable way Rather hirtory is only conceivable aan absent cause? tis the set of problems in Sttractive and interesting. My claim is that one wey t0 access Warhol's and Lowi ertgue of and utopian response to their world is in their engagement ‘wth the machine and machine ness il argue that the idea ofthe machine provides the ste through which Warhol nd UeWitt are able to mediate — to Faprerent and transform, t9 reproduce and allegorie —ewo related historical procestes. The ist, mentioned above is the Taylorization of labor: the trestment ff the human body es « machine, an instrument. In order t0 increase the Doays eicleny inthe context of Induse trial Iabor. Ths instrumentaization of the human body of course was net liit- fed to the factory content, and wos brood iy perceived by the postwar period to ot eae eran (Siedage whe rarer tle 22 Frere Iacono ahave penetrated many areas of American inn meanest, Incuing the Ife ofthe professional pancreas) managerial class The second process (one "that closely related £0 the frst Is what mating ce in ea ghe German ecologist kas han hes lied the "differentiation of soclety” By {hie means (andere | simply the dv: Sion of sclety into afferent autonomous Sobystems al of which have thet own logic nd function: cl rocety, Jaw, meseine, the economy, art. and so on* We might call {his development the syrtematization f the rime fewort, but a sstematization that works SRST AME MTREA Tm not according to single loge, But one in ‘sits tytn Sneath there are multiple systems each with evbntrt ar Siw ghelr own logic To Ie in this world not henna otie only eequires that we learn the internal conteaditasnfen en won LEE logle ane procedures of multiple systems, ‘but that we lesen to negotiate among them ‘swell. Before examining this idea further, however, ® might help to explore exactly meine What mean by "sjstem” here [A system, Luhmann write, i @ way t0 reduce “Infinite to finite information Tada" The system achieves this through a form of "funciona simplification = ‘auction of complexity thet can be constructed and realized even though the ‘World and the society where this taker place is unknown." | propose that we Understand the "machines In both LeWitt ané Warhol to mean this moment of “functional simplfiestion.* "Systems theory” Luhmann writes, “supplanted the ical model of & whole made out of parts and relations between parts with 2 node! emphesiing the difference between systems and environments.“ The foun ‘otonal gertue ofthe sytem sto distinguish an inside (he system) from an out Side (the environment) and to setup a “feedback mechanism" or “feedback loop” {or dealing with that environment. Feedback describes the process whereby the fesults of an act (output) are Fed back (ar Input) to modify the intial act.* The ‘hermestat fs 8 common example of feedback mechanism. The thermostat the Iechanism by which the system regulates fret, tests the results of Its acts (the _urning on or off of the furnace and takes It back ina Information to determine ‘whet to do nex (the turning an or aff ofthe furnact), “The thermostat, lke any feedback mechanism, does its work by seeing everything Tue the cenvironment” — only on the terms relevant to the system, nothing Spout the world matters to the thermostat except the temperature, which Indeed 2 reduction of infinite information loads to qute finite ones, Systems ace ‘Momoiogle they see the entire world in their own terms. OF as Deleuze and Gusteart have putt but speaking now of human physiological systems: “Doubtless Such organmmachine interprets the entire world from the point of view of is own ‘ux, from the point of view of the ener ‘gy thet lows from i the eye interprets Everything speaking, understanding, Shiting, fucking —ia tems of seoing."™ Because the reason for the systems Coming Into being is precisely 0 cope ‘vith an environment, to simplify wt and make it manageable, all systems are Shays interacting with other ones. By definition, although the system is total- Jzing and monotogic ins own space, it fe never singular: "one machine “lays coupled with another == 2 co fection with another machine I always tabled, slong a transverse path, s0 ‘hat one machine interrupts te current of the other "sees" it own current Interrupted." Here, | can provislonsly Sate my argument about Lewitt and ‘Warhol: where Warhol i interested In ‘hit moment of system coupling or 35 tem interface, Levit i concerned with the construction of systems themselves his art duplicates and abstracts the pleasures of "a reduction of complexity hat can be constructed and realized ven though the world and the society shore the taker place i unknown.” ‘ut if my claim eth ystoms are inter= fsting to Warhol and Lewitt because ‘they allow them to mediate the historical Sitvation, teed now to describe that Situation. “Functional differentiation,” Luhmann writes, “leads toa condition In which the genesis of problems and the solution to problems fall asunder Problens can no longer be solved by the system that produces them. They have {0 be transferred tothe system that Is bert equipped and specialized to solve them." Each subsystem has to be sty to deal with problems generated Sut ofits sphere, Life i tess end less ‘etermined by loca contexts a the local System content — whether fis the fais forthe city or medline, oF & particularprofession o the lagal system — is aiays Fesponding to problems produced some- lahere lee, While ach stem has Increased “autonomy” —fe an ability to ply “specie rules and procedures t0 Special problems" — It also. has decreased “avtarchy” fe les and ess tthority outside of sown subrystem, Sand let of an ability to. decide what probes I would be dealing with.” The Increased autonomy can produce a false ence of confidence in the effesciourness fof ones own operations. Modernism ‘ould be seen the recurring moment of misrecogntion whereby each. systorm ‘perstes a8 ft can and should solve the ‘Worlds problems, Modernist legal theory, ‘economics, international relations (hie ofthe League of Nations linguistic (the Invention of Esperanto) and of course Tterature and art ae all clored with a strong redemptive strain There isa strong tradition wherein ets undestood as space that can redeem, repair, or at least offer « temporary hiding place (for arst and viewer) trom a depressing worl, trom that thing Inthe world from which ane wants to escape: whether tis means-ends rationality, reification, mizogyny, homophobia, racism or another oppressive social force. The {rtique of thie idea of avtonomour art hos been that ii essentially compensatory, nd therefore afimative of the order of things. That "at develops its awn strate: Gles to satis needs that originate in other realms of socal Interaction’ prevents people trom trying to actually change these other realms of socal interaction. It trae aginst tin idea of ert oso separate sphere thatthe historical avant-garde the Russlan futurists, dada and surrealism — reacted." The idea was that you ‘destroyed art, then all those creative energies that were being wasted in the phere of art would be relesied into the world. Hence the avant-garde slogan it nto Lite" [Asa rejoinder to the avant-gardlate desire to sublate at int life, Luhmano might point out that there are nat ust two systems art and life,” but multiple rystems nd dzolving one opposition doesnot overthrow the entire aggregate. Indeed, the Givferentiation of socety makes opposition aifcut, Because inasmuch 9 we are always seing the world from within a system at any given time its impossible to have 8 total plctre of all the systems, This ea major sstnetion from the whole — parts model of society here, tne na halite loge, there leno Unified syrtom ‘organizing the syste. One thing this means is thet there i ineutably 2 contradle~ tion between "a phenomenological description ofthe life ofan individual ond more properly srictural mode! of the conditions af existence ofthat experence”™ Because that overall structural model ix imporibie to attain. This contradiction between the experience of everyaay fe and the possibilty of describing the transpersona, storcal forces that make thot everyday experience possible has become endemie- As such it constitutes a Basc problem for any attempt to represent ‘he world Litt and Warhol offer quit afferent responses to the problem created by thie contradiction, but thay are both, | argue, preoccupied with In sum, am figgesting thet the insights of stems theory provide us with the conceptual \oeabulary to reconstruct the world thet ir implied by the work of Warhol and Lowi contend that the atractions of thelr arta well a he significance of their ‘iferencer make more rant wen we presume sha the world structured by what {hmann calle"functiona ferentiation” thelr conte. Warhol's Pop represents a move away from autonomout art For Warhol, there is not going te be any redemption going on In any one system: art is not going to {ave the world, Instead, Warhol poacher on already existing spaces (the of Worl, the artist studio, enema, advertising, as ultra) to create alternative spaces in ‘sich he can set himeei tothe tarkof learning how to imagine and inhabit system Interfaces" The Warholian task sbaseally to study, to figure out ane work with the Interna logic of each of these subsystems, and to imagine and to experiment ‘nth diferent momants of system coupling, What | want to cacas nat is how this ‘moment of Interface was especialy promising fer Warhol because it enabled him na hit audience to perceive likenestes, whieh | wil argue, wes for Warhel the {Condition of possiblity for king things. That for Warhol to be a machine was to be coupied sith other machines, and thet this was fr him the locus of emotional ittachment and liking, Indlated by the fact that Warhol fr many years cared