Artist as Trickster

The separation of sciences and arts in classic academic culture situates the Trickster of contemporary culture in the arts. Scientific research and theory is intentionally the antithesis of trickery. This separation may not be an actual division, but it is taken quite seriously by classic academic culture. Trends that disrupt the orthodoxy of classic academics do exist. These are instances in the structure of academics where the boundaries between traditional disciplines are crossed. Scientists writing in a literary manner, and artists engaging with scientific methods, are examples of such trends. Identifying these boundary-crossing deviants as tricksters engages them in an academic discourse of Tricksterology. But, tricksters are only tricky in the context of a rigid system. In a system where boundaries are flexible, there is nothing tricky in interdisciplinary work.

The classic desire to universalize, categorize and package relates the idea of trickster to art and culture in new and interesting ways. We can extract a definition and extend terminology to trace the Trickster in European history. For example fools, jesters, jokers and magicians may all be regarded and evaluated as Tricksters. We create a history of Academic Tricksters modeled after Folk Tricksters. The context, the domain of these tricksters is academic.

If we look at art to find Tricksters they are everywhere. We can apply the title of Trickster to modernists and postmodernists alike. We can identify tricksters from Manet to Rothko, and from Annie Sprinkle to users of toy cameras. We can even look at Michelangelo and Rembrandt as tricksters. After all, their work is complex and carries information that is not immediately apparent or obvious. Commentary on politics and sexuality are there in the, “biblical” work of Michelangelo. And Rembrandt’s “portraits” are devices of psychological and philosophic inquiry. The work of both classically revered masters is saturated with socioeconomic content.

The trickster character scenario, applied to traditional Western civilization, indicates several breeds of trickster. One is the Silly Trickster who embraces fun, play and delight as trickster behavior. The Silly Trickster is accepted on the basis of her silliness. Since she does not claim to require serious consideration, her work is categorized as entertainment. Shakespearian plays are an example of the powerful potential of the Silly Trickster. Silly Tricksters get away with radical behavior because they are shrouded in laughter and they defend offensiveness as theatrical acting. Humor and comedy are useful techniques for working with seriously controversial subjects. So, sometimes the Serious Trickster is disguised as a Silly Trickster.

Much of the art we consider relevant has dimensions of content that are not superficial or obvious. Art that remains interesting through the ages tends to be art that contains multiple layers of information. We can look at the art of Greece, Rome and the Middle ages as tricksteresque. In these eras art was a device of monumental trickery representing the various power structures as inevitable and glorious. Similarly, the art/literature of social realism produces pictures and slogans that are designed to trick the populace into accepting oppressive political systems, and even rallying for them. It is here that the term Classical Trickery is designated. Art as Trickery has ties to all breeds of trickster. And, trickery may be part of a definition for art. This makes sense in a rigidly partitioned culture that allows increasing levels of flexibility in the name of art.

The active component of myth is ritual. A myth is a story and a ritual is an enactment. Symbolic languages of mythologies correspond to symbolic objects and actions in the performance of rituals. Going against the rules of a context is a way to shift perception. And in contemporary culture artists are often appreciated as Ritualistic Tricksters.

Dividing myth from ritual is an academic construct since trickster behavior is fundamentally action based. A trickster act is one that disturbs a status quo. The trick is to shift perception by interrupting the habitual, expected or normal structure of a stable system. A trickster that brings attention to the complexity of definitions, perceptions and communication methods might disturb by using language in uncommon ways, and showing things that don’t seem to make sense. This unfolding of the trickery in an academic context may not appear noticeably ritualistic or academic.

Artful smart trickery that disrupts, comment on, and questions, norms and standards opposes the rigid classic trickery used to coerce people conform. This divides traditional institutional trickery and, dissident counter-cultural trickery. JJS of the Chicago Trickster project quotes Henry Louis Gates Jr. to identify the trickster.

Understanding the constant flux of existence is the knowledge or awareness of the trickster. However, the idea that all tricksters expose, is not as useful as the idea that tricksters expose, or exploit, the uncertain flux of existence. The folk trickster character, with history in non-European cultures, is sometimes wise and sometimes wicked. But, either way, she understands that existence and reality are uncertain, and that knowledge and survival are precarious.

According to JJS’s statement the Classic Tricksters are those who manipulate for, “personal gain.” This extends to individuals and groups who manipulate for the sake of gaining wealth and power. In contrast, Smart Tricksters manipulate for the sake of education and human rights. The similarity in the methods of both breeds of trickster can confuse the identity of either. Classic Tricksters often pose as Smart in both ruling and revolutionary costumes. And, Smart Tricksters may work within or outside of a dominant rigid system. It is inappropriate to call either Classic or Smart Tricksters good or bad, because the perspective, or allegiance of the name-caller determines the valuation. In different contexts the Classic and Smart Tricksters are considered wise or wicked.

Classic Tricksters understand that existence and survival are precarious. In this context, it is right to protect the wealth and power we possess by whatever means that work. First, because possession of wealth and power, like all things, fluxgate, and second, because, so do the rules. Life is short. Resources are limited. There will always be someone else willing to push us out and take what we have. From this perspective it is logical, not bad, to perpetuate whatever trick, hoax or lie is necessary to survive in the best way possible. This sort of Tricksterism is normal, common and reasonable. It is so obvious and prevalent that a meta-trick calls classic acts of trickery “Human Nature.” Other classic slogans designate essential classic functions, like “Survival of the Fittest,” and, “Everyone is Either a Sheep or a Wolf.”

This functional, classy perspective is not Bad or Evil. In fact ideas of Bad and Evil function as part of the grand hoax in a classic context. Well-defined, picturesque, notions of Good and Evil are classic distractions. Like a magician’s slight of hand, distraction is played to accomplish a trick. This breed of trickster exploits, and is reluctant to expose its methods or intentions. Initiates and players who understand survival strategies tend to conduct their business meetings behind closed doors. But, a Classic Trickster trick is to proclaim a Sophistic or Postmodern philosophy of total relative opinion. Nothing is true, so, anything goes. A wide range of classic theologies and philosophies are extremist and present doctrines that describes the inevitable. Whatever else it might contain, classic indoctrination is designed, or adapted, to serve a status quo where the mighty maintain their might.

The Smart trickster falls into the category of one who manipulates, “for magnanimous reasons.”  So, in one way or another magnanimity is valued. Smart Tricksters are idealists but not necessarily naive. The rebelliousness of the Smart Trickster exists in opposition to rigidity and dogmas. So, the rigid trickery of classicism is the Smart Trickster’s functioning adversary. Smart Tricksters use humor in a more cynical and ironic way than Silly Tricksters. They engage fun and mirth to jab at classicism. They enact silliness in a notably serious way. Trickster behavior is not frivolous or accidental. Yet, there are Accidental Tricksters.

Accidental Tricksters

Serious Tricksters may be Classic or Smart. The manipulative tricksters of JJS are openly serious. The Classic Trickster is serious about survival. And, the Smart Trickster is a serious revolutionary. Serious Tricksters are not joking. They differ from Silly Tricksters because they have a describable agenda. And, they motivate, or manipulate Accidental Tricksters. At home, the Serious Trickster is not laughing.

The system in which the Classic Trickster thrives depends on an army of willing accomplices who are team players, but not team owners. The soldiers, or players, are not concerned with the uncertain nature of reality. But, their lives and work support classic trickery. These Accidental Classic Tricksters function to maintain a system that serves a classic structure. Confident Classic and Accidental Classic Tricksters laugh along with Silly Tricksters and see Smart Tricksters as naive. But, when they are insecure, Classic and Accidental Classic Tricksters are threatened by the dissidence of Smart Tricksters and confused by babbling Silliness.

Smart Tricksters also understand that existence and survival are precarious. Both Classic and Smart tricksters value information. But they view information with a different perspective. For example, the information that human life exists and is perishable may be interpreted to support a position that we should take what we can while we can. It can propagate self-serving and mercenary behavior. And, the same information can lead to ideas that attach inherent value and inalienable rights to all life. It can propagate expectations of virtuous and constructive behaviors.

As mentioned above an Accidental Classic Trickster is one who unintentionally serves the projects of Classic Tricksters. And, an Accidental Smart Trickster inadvertently serves the agenda of Smart Tricksters. Serious revolutionaries are Accidental Smart Tricksters and function as rebel forces against an establishment of Accidental Classic Tricksters.

Trickster actions are neither frivolous nor accidental. The trickster utilizes methods of hoax, lying and deception. But, any hoax, lie or deception does not fall into the category of trickster. The behavior of Accidental Tricksters is not accidental. It is structured and strategic, the accident is that they are unaware of the uncertain nature of reality. They are actual active, and occasionally willing, dupes. Common understanding of frivolity and accident are part of a Good/Bad vocabulary that functions in the rigid ranks of Accidental Tricksters. Actual Tricksters understand that vocabulary, like existence, is uncertain.

Trickster Codes

The actual counterpart of the Smart trickster is the Classic Trickster. A conversation between Classic and Smart Tricksters is likely to change the world; whereas, wars between Accidental Smart Tricksters and Accidental Classic Tricksters maintain it.

Actual Tricksters lace their actions with clues and hints. So, tricks function quite differently with people that pay attention and those that do not. The Actual Trickster vocabulary functions as code, because in an uncertain world all meaning must be deciphered. A hoax, lie or deception that is recognized as an encryption is quite different from a hoax, lie or deception that is perpetrated inside of a rigidly defined world.

Environments where established orders are tightly defined are fertile ground for Trickster actions, because Tricksters acts thrive on assumptions. The public arena of trickery must be hostile to complexity, flexibility and uncertainty. Classic Tricksters manipulate and deceive the public. Their tricks recruit and maintain uniform supporters. Smart Tricksters tricks disturb standards and recruit to educate or reveal the world of trickery to the public. We could say that the classic tricks function to entice the public to serve a classic world; whereas the smart tricks function to entice the public to participate in a smart world.

Folk and Academic tricksters may be considered good or bad. The bad trickster is perceived as a Classic Trickster, victimizing sympathetic characters by manipulating for selfish gain, in a culture that admires the Smart Trickster. And, the Smart Trickster is seen as a threat to a community that embraces Classic values. Classic Tricksters may be admired within a community that pursues a mutual survival at the expense of underlings and outsiders. And, communities of underlings and outsiders tend to admire Smart Tricksters.

A person that comes in contact with trickery and perceives it as a lesson is identified as potential insider or collaborator. On the other hand, a person that is duped or victimized gets got. Bang you got got, or Bang you are dead, depending on the circumstances. The dupe is teased, taught, recruited or destroyed, depending on the breed of trickster. In this context we are well advised to consider that the trickster acts are not frivolous or accidental. Accepting the unexpected will facilitate access to the workings of the trickster mind and behavior. And, this information may allow the receiver of a trick to play, learn, join or escape.

The grand foundation of Tricksterism is that knowledge of the messy, insecure, uncertain and questionable nature of existence is restricted to a minority of the population. The majority must believe in ideas that are unified, secure, certain and answerable. The intent of the Classic Trickster is reasonable and conservative, the goal is self-preservation; whereas, the intent of the Smart Trickster irrational and radical, the goal is self-destruction.

The Inadvertent Trickster

Classic and Smart Tricksterism do not flourish in a cultural context that embraces flexibility, questioning and uncertainty as normal. Notable acts of trickery in a rigid system appear and function in a flexible system as more or less interesting instances of information or experience.

If classic culture evolves into a new form, then smartness is redefined along with it. Meanwhile, within and along side classic super-culture, non-classic cultures maintain strands of existence. These cultures feed the Smart Tricksters of a classic academic discourse. Sometimes native non-classics go out and play active roles in super cultural reformations. And, sometimes they stay home. At home they are ordinary members of a community where their work as researchers, theorists, artists and laborers is just part of an overall cultural conversation.

As mentioned above, the public arena of trickery must be hostile to complexity, flexibility and uncertainty. But, the trickster dwells in a context that is complex, flexible and uncertain. So, when the Trickster is at home the subject of her work is not trickery at all. It is survival strategy or an ontological exploration of knowledge structures. The home environment is one of work and research that only becomes trickery when it is activated in a public setting of certainty. A community based on an appreciation of complex, flexible and uncertain structures might appreciate the fun and humor of the Silly Trickster. But, the sociopolitical function of trickery has no meaning. Without a dogma no trick is at play. [5]

In the domain of uncertainty the language changes. Communication is willingly complex, confused and flexible, and the judgmental baggage attached to words like frivolity and accidental do not exist. Silly and atypical behavior is enjoyed and appreciated not despised. Ideas and experiences take on interwoven or networked patterns. Understandably the arts and sciences are nourished from this environment. Interpretation and commentary are normal methods of discourse. Meaning is not really discovered or imposed. It is sorted and resorted. The character that is called Trickster in public is called teacher, colleague or friend in private.

A character may perform an action that is fairly obvious in the context of complexity, flexibility and uncertainty. Within the environment of uncertainty it is more or less interesting, but not radical. The intent is not trickery. It is contemplation and commentary. The same act may become active as trickery in the context of certain simply dogmatic societies.

An Inadvertent Trickster is a character that is immersed in the complex, uncertain and flexible domain. This character imagines herself a normal intelligent person. She considers her projects and actions attempts to engage with others in a complex, flexible and uncertain experience or discourse. The content of the work has structural elements of uncertainty and complexity that are native to a flexible context. She finds the work interesting but not necessarily exceptional. The information of the project is a subject, not the act of a trick. But, the work may be perceived as trickery if it is it is presented to an audience that clings to certainty. In this case, the work is identified or experienced as trickery by a foreign audience. So, the work of the Inadvertent Trickster is not Trickster work until a rigid environment creates the trickery.

The Inadvertent Trickster may seem like a naive youth or a snide hoaxer if she inadvertently misgauges the flexibility level of the location where a conversation or event occurs. The Silly Inadvertent Trickster may be perceived and may function as a Serious Trickster. If analyzed as an Actual Trickster there is ample evidence to indicate that the Inadvertent Trickster is actually a traditional Trickster. She knows that some traditions are rigid and that slogans fortify them and questioning is likely to make cracks. The glitch is in the contextual and temperamental contrast between the character and the environment.

Incorrect estimation of context may achieve unexpected results that may be dangerous and destructive or useful and constructive. A Trickster intentionally manipulates a dogmatic environment. And a character who tricks inadvertently is not really a Trickster. An inadvertent trick may be an actual example of an uncertain reality mingling with an illusion of certainty. It is conversation or presentation based on understanding that existence, reality and survival are precarious can be productive or destructive.

The artist as trickster has become acceptable in the context of modern/postmodern civilization. But the artist who rejects the categorization artist and the trickster who rejects the categorization trickster functions as a denial of categorizations. If smart tricksters refuse to be categorized is it possible to conceive that classic tricksterism will be exposed?

The subject is no longer the art of trickery, or the trickery of power and propaganda, or the trickery of art as a tool. The subjects are social and cognitive science, multicultural anthropology and ontology. Or whatever. Tricks function as symptoms as well as tools. The alleged Trickster that has the confidence to deny trickery may actually be a different species. If the Inadvertent Trickster is not destroyed then she may be a symptom of a certain system evolving away from its need for certainty.

Pulling Back the Curtain of Certainty: There is no Trickster

Pulling back the curtain to reveal that the Wizard of Oz did not turn out to be what Dorothy from Kansas or her bizarre companions may have expected. Falling through a hole in the ground, or passing through a mirror above the fire, lead to strange adventures. In varying contexts stories are called myths, allegories, commentary, metaphors, children’s literature, science fiction, and the list goes on. Strands that use fiction to be sincere intertwine with strands that separate fiction from fact. Knowledge and experience are all over the board. The board both exists and does not exist. Absurdity and reason are sometimes productive and sometimes destructive. Language depends on vocabulary and syntax. Vocabulary and syntax can only be standardized in limited contexts. And, contexts do not always maintain boarders, they merge, mingle and transform.

When a story or act from one person or culture is read by another, and it is believed completely or clearly perceived and comprehended, rather than recognized as partial and uncertain, then translation replaces transmission in an absurd charade. Our ineptness at comprehending outside of our clique, culture and language, is aggravated by our unwillingness to recognize our own limitations.

The idea of trickster makes sense in the context of a culture that considers conformity a virtue. Tricks might disturb audiences that are sure of what they are seeing. We might need to be tricked and become confused in order to remain uncertain and peer beyond the current curtain, skin or surface. Whatever the devices, if we continually re-sort, rather than repeat the same arrangements, we may understand a little better.

 

Notes

[1]        The Figurative Language of the Art Myth an essay by R. Cronk, http://www.westland.net/venice/art/cronk/artmyth.htm

[2]        The Trickster Shift by Allan J. Ryan, http://www.interchange.ubc.ca/raeryan/ajryan.html

[3]        The Chicago Trickster Project; the Trickster project What is a trickster figure?
http://www.crhet.com/CRweb/prj/trck/ISSUES/trickster_figure.htm, (Gates 6) Gates, Jr., Henry Louis. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism. New York: Oxford UP, 1988.

[4]        The Trickster Shift by Allan J. Ryan, http://www.interchange.ubc.ca/raeryan/ajryan.html
“Humour and Irony in Contemporary Native Art Richly illustrated, The Trickster Shift presents some of the most stunningly original examples of contemporary Native art produced over the last twenty years. It also allows the artists to offer their own insights into the creative process and the nature of Native humour.”

[6a]      Cargo Cults, Ronald M. Berndt, http://enzo.gen.nz/jonfrum, Bibliography: Burridge, K. O. L., Mambu (1960); Lawrence, Peter, Road Belong Cargo (1965); Mead,Margaret, New Lives for Old, rev. ed., (1975; repr. 1980); Worsley, Peter M., The Trumpet Shall Sound: A Study of Cargo Cults in Melanesia (1957; repr. 1968). Copyright - 1993 Grolier Electronic Publishing, Inc.

“Cargo cults are usually revivalist, and in some cases messianic and millenarian, movements found among certain peoples indigenous to Oceania. The word cargo refers to foreign goods possessed by Europeans; cult adherents believe that such goods belong to themselves and that, with the help of ancestral spirits, the goods can be returned to them through magico-religious means. Some cult prophets promise that the arrival of cargo will herald a period of prosperity and well-being.

“Such movements represent the efforts of local inhabitants to cope with problems arising from contact with foreign cultures acculturation. They first appeared during the late 19th century among Papua New Guinea and other Oceanic peoples impressed by the abundance of material wealth they saw. The Papuan Vailala Madness of 1919 had iconoclastic elements; like some of the cults, it reflected the merging of Christian missionary teachings with indigenous mythological beliefs. The movements received new impetus during World War II. In a Irian Jaya (western New Guinea) cult of 1942, entire villages were organized into an imitation army, with officers and dummy equipment, in the hope that this would be transformed into real equipment. Followers of John Frum on Tanna  (Vanuatu, former, New Hebrides) built landing strips and warehouses in anticipation of the arrival of air cargo. All such movements draw on traditional custom, experience, and ideology. Essentially, they are attempts to fill the gap between new wants and the available means of satisfying them.”

[6b]      On Cargo Cults and Educational Innovation, http://www.edweek.org/ew/vol-17/34starne.h17

“The brilliant Nobel Prize-winning physicist and teacher Richard Feynman tells this story in his 1985 memoir Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman about the self-delusion of a group of primitive yet industrious South Sea Islanders, circa World War II:

During the war they saw airplanes land with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they've arranged to make things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head like headphones and bars of bamboo pieces sticking out like antennas--he's the controller--and they wait for the airplanes to land. They're doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn't work. No airplanes land."

“Change is not simple. Understanding what underlies successful change is even  more complex, and guarding against cargo cults is tedious and treacherous. While the absence of understanding creates empty and meaningless activity, the search for the complexity that underlies our work is both exhilarating and liberating. And, like the invisible work in my son's art, it is the apparent simplicity of the complicated process we seek to understand that gives rise to its beauty.”

[6c]      Cargo cult programming, http://www.jargon.net/jargonfile/c/cargocultprogramming.html

“cargo cult programming /n./ A style of (incompetent) programming dominated by ritual inclusion of code or program structures that serve no real purpose. A cargo cult programmer will usually explain the extra code as a way of working around some bug encountered in the past, but usually neither the bug nor the reason the code apparently avoided the bug was ever fully understood (compare shotgun debugging, voodoo programming).

The term `cargo cult' is a reference to aboriginal religions that grew up in the South Pacific after World War II. The practices of these cults center on building elaborate mockups of airplanes and military style landing strips in the hope of bringing the return of the god-like airplanes that brought such marvelous cargo during the war. Hackish usage probably derives from Richard Feynman's characterization of certain practices as "cargo cult science" in his book "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" (W. W. Norton & Co, New York 1985, ISBN 0-393-01921-7).

[7]        Thinking about Thought by Piero Scaruffi, http://www.thymos.com/tat/physics.html

“1.Our mind has no limitations. It can perfectly perceive nature as it is. It observes only one value because that is what nature does: the multiple choices for a quantity's value collapse to just one value when that quantity is observed by an observer.

2.Our mind has limitations. The quantum collapse from many values to just one value is due to a limitation of our mind. Our mind cannot perceive nature as it is. It can only perceive one value for each quantity.

“Heisenberg’s famous "uncertainty principle" states that there is a limit to the precision with which we can measure, at the same time, the momentum and the position of a particle. If one measures the momentum, then it cannot measure the position, and viceversa. This is actually a direct consequence of Einstein's equation that related the wavelength and the momentum (or the frequency and the energy) of a light wave: if coordinates (wavelength) and momentum are related, they are no longer independent quantities.

“Note that the observer does more than just observe something: the observer also decides "what" to observe. That decision has an effect on the state of the system, because it forces the system to choose among all the possible states. Nature's role is really only to choose one of those possible states, and Quantum Theory can only presume that this is done randomly.

“Von Neumann pointed out that measurement of a system consists in a process of interactions between the instrument and the system, whereby the states of the instrument become dependent on the states of the system. There is a chain of interactions that leads from the system to the observer’s consciousness.

“In Relativity, space and time are simply different dimensions of the same space-time continuum (as stated in 1908 by the Russian mathematician Hermann Minkowski). Einstein had shown that the length of an object and the duration of an event are relative to the observer. This is equivalent to calculating a trajectory in a four-dimensional spacetime which is absolute. The spacetime is the same for all reference frames and what changes is the component of time and space that is visible from your perspective.

“All quantities are redefined in space-time and must have four dimensions. For example, energy is no longer a simple (mono-dimensional) value, and momentum is no longer a three-dimensional quantity: energy and momentum are one space-time quantity which has four dimensions. Which part of this quantity is energy and which part is momentum depends on the observer: different observers see different things depending on their state of motion, because, based on their state of motion, a four-dimensional quantity gets divided in different ways into an energy component and a momentum component. All quantities are decomposed into a time component and a space component, but how that occurs depends on the observer’s state of motion.”