One of the traps is the idea of making dangerous art in the controversial, disturbing sense. This kind of art is quickly subsumed by the media machine and after much huffing and puffing becomes accepted and loses it’s power in subsequent legitimacy. Where artistic revolution succeeds most is in denying us any kind of easy, judgmental assurances and helping us to embrace even our supposed enemies as part of the wonderful confusion of life. I don’t mean the refusal to judge acts but rather the multivalent truth that our enemies are us and that in judging their acts we are questioning ourselves as much or more than others. The best art raises so many questions that it invalidates the tendentious semi-fascist nature of absolute answers and that can only enrich us in the long run.

Michael, I know Whitehead has written a few novels since his filmmaking days, but I haven’t read them or any comments by him about them – you may find some on Paul Cronin’s website, which has a terrific selection of Whitehead essays and interviews.

I think I basically agree with you about art being about perceptual rather than physical transformation, but I suppose it depends on what you mean by “physical”. Obviously, I am very interested in the ways in which art can be used to engage with and transform our social relations, and the way we organise our lives. It’s naive to think that art can do this “by itself” but I do think there are (localised) situations in which the perceptual shifts generated by art can have physical (at least, social and organisational) ramifications.

For me, the big mistake is pinning hopes on massive, sudden seismic transformations and becoming bitter and disillusioned when this fails to come about. I read an interesting book recently called WE HAVE NEVER BEEN MODERN by Bruno Latour, which had some great critiques of the very idea of “revolution” as a symptom of modernist culture, one aspect of a hopeless aspiration to break completely with the past, ad infinitum…