Public Enemy are genius, Flavor Flav in all those clocks - it had to be here as i am still thinking about validation and more i suppose quality or perhaps it value... I found this by F. Mattarrasso and it made a lot of sense about whose good or not, whose of worth or not, whose in whose out and so on... But it also reminds us to Fight the Powers.
The art world is as prone to power games as any other field of human endeavour. Dividing the world into goats and sheep, based on the special insight of the person doing the dividing, is an ancient power play, and a bad one. We must make distinctions of quality and value if we are to improve, whether in technology, ethics, culture or anything else. But unless we make those distinctions afresh, each time, with rigour and honesty, and willing to explain our criteria and reasons, we are just exercising power. Blanket condemnations are not enough. Nor is blanket approval. Those of us without the power to declare value in art need to keep honest those who do, and one way of doing that is by challenging them to explain themselves.
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