John Zerzan, a
noted anarchist
writer, reflects in
front of a statue
across from the
New Day Bakery
on Van Buren
street in the
Whiteaker
neighborhood
on Saturday.
Tim Kupsick
Photographer
Writer John Zerzan critiques
importance, origins of art
. The controversial writer
discusses his essays, his
philosophy and problems
of symbolic representation
By Aaron Shakra
Pulse Editor
John Zerzan is no stranger to contro
versy. The Eugene resident and anar
chist writer is the author of three books,
including "Elements of Refusal," "Fu
ture Primitive & Other Essays" and
"Running on Emptiness: The Patholo
gy of Civilization," which espouse per
spectives direcdy contradicting almost
every norm of Western civilization. He
hosts "Anarchy Radio, "which airs Sun
days at 11 p.m. on KWVA, and is a fre
quent contributor to the public-access
series "Cascadia Alive!"
In his essay "The Case Against
Art," written in the mid-1980s,
Zerzan critiques art as the creation of
a symbolic culture alienated from
the natural world.
"Art anesthetizes the sense organs
and removes the natural world from
their purview. This reproduces culture,
which can never compensate for the
disability," he writes. "The primary
function of art is to objectify feeling,
by which one's own motivations and
identity are transformed into symbol
and metaphor."
Later, he asks, "Why then would
one respond positively to art? As
compensation and palliative, be
cause our relationship to nature and
life is so deficient and disallows an
authentic one.... (A)rt, like religion,
arises from unsatisfied desire."
Zerzan notes the piece "was proba
bly the most attacked or controversial
essays of mine out of all of them."
Emerald: What is the definition of
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art you re using in this essay?
John Zerzan: It's representation,
most basically. That urge or desire to
represent reality. Art is just part of
the symbolic culture, symbolic
communication.
Emerald: That seems to be describ
ing it from a materialistic standpoint.
Like art as the creation of an artifact,
or as a materialistic thing.
JZ: You could describe it in different
ways. You could talk about it in a more
spiritual way, too. That's an open ques
tion, too. I don't claim this is some ab
solute right answer or this is the truth
— it's more of an exploration. It just
makes it a question rather than a giv
en, like "Well, you've got to have art.
We all love art. How could you ques
tion art?" It's just the fact that, well,
we've gotten along without it, and
what kind of life was that where peo
ple didn't seem to do that.
Emerald: Do you think that's a
place we need to return to?
JZ: Maybe there's a time when once
again, it wouldn't be needed. With this
essay and some other ones, what I was
really trying to do was link it up to the
development of becoming estranged
from the natural world, and noticing
that as this kind of estrangement de
velops, and maybe tensions in certain
societies develop, such as inequalities,
then you start getting these new things,
and some of them are trying to heal
the problems by ritual and so forth;
they're an attempt to address these
problems that evidently, didn't exist
before. So the question is, can you heal
social problems by the means of the
symbolic? And I think the answer is
no. Other people disagree.
Emerald: Have you rethought any
of your perspectives since you origi
nally wrote the essay?
JZ: Yes. It's important to stay open,
because it's just speculation. It was part
of a series of so-called origins pieces. 1
just wrote a new one about the origins
of gender and what that has to do with
the movement to the symbolic. One
thing is, of course, it has a very provoca
tive title. But actually, it is trying to
show that the reason why art comes
along as part of the whole movement
into the symbolic realm is interesting.
Not to condemn it in some abstract
way, like "I hate art" or "down with
art." It's just to show like with religion
and other things, there was a time
when evidently, people didn't need it
and then it comes in as an interesting
kind of consolation or compensation.
It's not an eternal thing.
For example, one thing that really
struck me, is some of the anthropologi
cal data, for example that we were cook
ing with fire almost 2 million years ago,
and doing other interesting things. An
other recent thing is, they've deter
mined that humans were able to navi
gate on the open sea 800,000 years ago.
And yet, art is very recent. Art is only like
30,000 years old. So people were obvi
ously intelligent for a couple of million
years, and they didn't seem to need art.
Emerald: Do you feel that art
in popular culture is a tool of
social control?
JZ: One of the things popular cul
ture strikes me as is a kind of loss of
faith in art. When pop art comes along
starting in the late 1950s — especially
the post-modem which starts up a lit
tle later but is part of that whole trend
— the distinction between serious art
and pop art becomes dissolved. It
doesn't look like serious art anymore,
and in a way it isn't. I don't know if it's
so much a matter of control. You
could write a piece called "The End of
Art" and certainly various people have.
A lot of people thought art was
TurntoZERZAN, page 12
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