Is it okay to sell out?
"Plunda," a play penned by faculty member Jim Linnell, didn't think so.
The play follows modern Dadaists who steal resources to create art. A company buys out their warehouse/club and give the Dadaists an ultimatum: sell your show or leave. Instead of "selling-out" the protagonists gather their artistic strength and move on toward a hopeful future.
Linnell puts his protagonists on the street rather than allowing capitalist hands to profit from their work. They end up abandoning the artwork's dignity they had struggled to protect.
Linnell isn't alone in this view. Many 'booed' at Common's recent hip-hop concert in Albuquerque as a Coca-Cola ad saying "Real" was projected on the stage. Many former underground hip-hop stars have begun endorsing Coke and Dr. Pepper like the Black-Eyed Peas and the Roots.
It is the antithesis of Linnell's ending - here the Dadaists sell their ideas to continue their work. These rap artists are revered, but respect of their artistic integrity has been called into question.
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How fair is this? Is the acquisition of money for art detrimental to the artistic process? Did Linnell's fictional Dadaists really do the right thing?
History shows us that the Dada movement did just the opposite of Linnell's artists. Originally, Dada was a form of protest by a group of European artists against World War I, bourgeois society and the conservatism of classical thought.
One method the Dadaists chose to subvert the classical aesthetic was the use of found art. Marcel Duchamp would take ordinary objects, sign his name on them and display them in galleries for sale.
The selling of this art was not "selling-out," it was a response to the elitism of classical art, and within that aesthetic, perfectly valid.
So what does this have to do with Common? Though hip-hop is spread across multiple mediums one key idea is a constant - the reclamation of public space. Through break-dancing in parks, tagging their names on walls and blaring rap music out of car stereos, hip-hop artists seek to saturate the public world with their creations that, because of race and class oppression, may not be given a forum in the mainstream.
The problem is hip-hop has won on the public airways. Because hip-hop is created through struggle, the aesthetic becomes confused when struggle is no longer necessary. To resolve this dispute, many hip-hop fans turn away from their favorite underground artist when they become successful, though oftentimes the quality of the artwork is unchanged.
Common, the Roots and the Black-Eyed Peas have used their small commercial success to endorse a mainstream product, and have arguably gained more commercial success. Though unconventional to the hip-hop tactic, these three artists perform a means to hip-hop's common end: reclamation of public space.
Inevitably their commercial success through the propagation of mainstream products helps to place hip-hop firmly within the public sphere and achieves a hip-hop goal. Like Duchamp, these artists subvert the dominant paradigm through their own unique means to further their collective goals. So is it okay to sell out? If you're clever enough, yes.
