...the Purple Resistance Army does not in general support or condone artists or, in particular, art discourse, although bullshit artists and their discourses are provisionally accepted. The art world has become a purely reactive and reactionary institution whose trends and tendencies are determined and circumscribed by the broader conservative cultural forces and socio-economic policies of an exploitative capitalist ruling class, having long since foregone its function as a vanguard or avant-garde, or as serving a therapeutic, cathartic, or even critical function, let alone a political or revolutionary one. Devised by a laissez- faire haute bourgeoisie, art discourse, an Emperor dressed in what he believes are the most au current designer clothes, gets lost in the elaborate, solipsistic layers of his own nakedness, lording his self-importance over an unwitting and uncomprehending public whose idea of art is the fruit in a slot machine. Modern trends in art include escapist folk fantasies involving psilocybin unicorns and golden-tressed maidens with dirty feet locked in pornographic carnal embrace, a new twist on a purely decorative seventies throwback that reinvigorates questionable commodity fetishism. More conceptual, “dialogic” art, including the use of readymades or relational art practice, while less commoditizable than traditional art objects, is nonetheless reified and marketed by the same hierarchical economic institutions and international exhibition superstructures that confine it to the amusement of an insider elite. As an alternative to the art orthodoxy, the PRA promotes finger painting, free range graffiti, tattooing (although not on pigs), home movies, ad hoc shrines – or, for conceptualists, practical jokes, pranks, hoaxes, and public nudity not organized and sanctioned by institutionalized art stars.
The Purple Resistance Army
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