Quote of the day, yay!

'It is necessary for the system to continually expand the range of things considered "art", partly for economic reasons (planned obsolescence!) but mainly to alienate and thus render safe, areas of existence which are dangerous to the existing social structure, which expose the contradiction between supposed cultural values and the violence and exploitation they disguise. Once an activity can be accommodated within the scheme of "cultural patronage" it can obviously have no real force as a political gesture.

[...]

Cultural change and political change form an equation, which results in each being the cause of the other while impossible without the other. The substitution of "official" culture" for everyday life, real culture, in the general consciousness, is the means capitalist society uses to break the connection. Since we are all brought up with this false view of cultural history we are alienated from our real history and are therefore unable to interpret our experience vis-à-vis society properly.

[...]

The "official" values which must be rejected are often so ingrained as to be mistaken for reality.

[...]

The instilled values of capitalist-technological society lead us to make value judgments which bring about the division between "culture" and the way we actually live ...'

-- Ian Milliss, 'New artist?', Object & Idea: new work by Australian artists, National Gallery of Victoria 1973