It’s the Fall of 2015, and the 47th year of the Whitney Independent Study Program.

Each new participant gives an artist’s talk or an academic introduction into one’s field of study.

Abbey asks two fellow participants in the ISP studio program, David Birkin and Gavan Blau, to assist her with the presentation.

Abbey sits before the class in a darkened room. Projected onto the wall behind her are the lyrics from Ice Cube’s 2007 “Gansta Rap Made Me Do It.”

“I can act like an animal, ain’t nothing to it. Gangsta rap made me do it.
If I eat you like a cannibal, ain’t nothing to it. Gangsta rap made me do it. . .
If I shoot up your college, ain’t nothing to it. Gangsta rap made me do it.
If I rob you of knowledge, ain’t nothing to it. Gangsta rap made me do it. .
If I sell a little crack, ain’t nothing to it. Gangsta rap made me do it.
If I die in Iraq, ain’t nothing to it. Gangsta rap made me do it. . .
If I take you for granted, ain’t nothing to it. Gangsta rap made me do it.
If I fuck up the planet, ain’t nothing to it. Gangsta rap made me do it.”

Abbey Shaine Dubin: Let’s follow Ice Cube and say that (scare quotes) “gangsta rap” embodies a kind of shorthand, catchall term for a pervasive, intense, disruptive psychological force that shapes crucial aspects of the early twenty-first century. Or, perhaps we could say that, in Freudian terms, (scare quotes) “gangsta rap” functions as a psychic placeholder that stands for much more than a genre of popular music, it more accurately represents something like the Id of contemporary capitalism.

David Birkin: Okay, so gangsta rap is das Es, the Id, of contemporary capitalism?

ASD: Uhm. No, no, I’m not saying it is the Id of contemporary capitalism. I’m just saying that there’s obviously something in this particular American phenomenon. . .

DB: which, I mean, is already thirty plus years old. . .

ASD: Right. . . But something still allows it to stand in, even if ironically, as the (scare quotes) “reason” behind this gigantic reservoir of destructive activity: War. Addiction. Environmental Collapse. . .

DB(cutting in): So, it’s probably the timing. You know, it’s important when gangsta rap came along then. . .

ASD (cutting in): Right. (pause) What later gets called gangsta rap appears in the United States.

DB: What, around 1985?

ASD: Sure. We could argue about the exact moment. Whether it was Ice-T, or N.W.A., or someone else who made the decisive step to gangsta, but what is clear is that (scare quotes) “gangsta rap” comes on the scene, and achieves mass popularity, at a very specific moment.

DB (slowly): In other words, from a geopolitical perspective, it’s no accident that the emergence, the. . .

ASD: the efflorescence

DB: yeah, sure, of this extremely hedonistic and violent mode of cultural expression directly parallels. . . hmmm. . .

ASD (slightly over DB): the arrival of glasnost and perestroika. . .

DB: the eventual collapse of (scare quotes) “actually existing” socialism.

ASD: So. . . it’s no accident that N.W.A.’s Straight Outta Compton comes out the year before the Berlin Wall comes down.

DB: You mean that the black urban proletariat is rising up in Los Angeles and N.W.A. is voicing a desire similar to the Velvet Revolution, just a year in advance. . .

ASD (cutting in): No. No. (pause) No. The bond. The synchronicity. The coevality, you know, it’s a lot darker, a lot more complicated. From now on: No One Is Getting Out of Compton. It’s like hedge fund managers on Wall Street, their fantasies of possession, aggression, and domination: all of their hunger for maximum profit in sexy new markets and all of the violence that comes with it. . .

DB (blandly): “Gangsta Rap Made Me Do It.”

ASD: Exactly.

DB (blandly): “Get Rich or Die Trying.”

ASD: Precisely. That’s the situation that gangsta rap makes legible. (pause) That’s Das Gangsta Kapital.

DB (quizzically): Hmm. . . so, there’s a subterranean bond between the arrival of capitalism on an integrated global scale and this form of cultural expression that is all about possession, aggression, and domination. (pause, as if thinking to himself) So if we were trying to write a psychic history of the late Cold War, the antipode of gangsta rap would be. . . uh. . . what exactly?

ASD: You mean, gangsta rap’s opposite term?

DB: Yeah.

ASD: You mean. . . the Super Ego. . . to. . . gangsta rap’s Id, so to speak?

DB (slightly speaking over ASD): I suppose. Yeah. (pause) So to speak.

ASD: Well, with hindsight, I’d say capitalism’s Super Ego, so to speak,

DB (rapidly): so to speak

ASD: was, well, embodied by the liberal, Eastern European intelligentsia’s most treasured possession:

DB: And what’s that?

ASD (long pause): the research institute.

DB: You mean, like…the (scare quotes) “research” institute. . . you mean: capital “I,” capital “S,” capital “P” and everything we popularly associate with the Whitney Independent Study Program, its “atmosphere?”

ASD: Right. Right. (spreads hands, looks up and around quickly to indicate the room)This embodies something like the Super Ego of contemporary capitalism.

DB: Okay, I’m with you.

ASD: But, hey, let’s go further: okay, maybe we can say that the dynamic interplay of gangsta rap-ism

DB: the Id

ASD: and research institute-ism

DB: the Super Ego

ASD: represents the symbolic drama of the Ego within the culture of contemporary capitalism. (pauses, surveys room)

DB: So you’re saying that gangsta rap symbolically brings the antinomian energies within the culture of contemporary capitalism to a kind of self-annihilating crescendo, while at roughly the same moment actually existing socialism’s ethos of pedagogical propriety and self-discipline begins to collapse. So the Id wins?

ASD: For now, yeah, the Id wins. (pause) And the bottom line is this. The future of capitalism is now a global race to Gangsta Everything. Not just rap. Not just music. Everything.

DB: EVERYTHING?

ASD (cuts in): Everything. Everything’s gonna get gangstafied.

DB: Like we used to just have the news. . . you know, the nightly news and CNN, newspapers. . .

ASD: Then everything got gangstafied.

DB: The approach to information distribution got more

ASD (rapidly): sexualized. . .

DB: belligerent. . .

ASD: The newscasters started to look like porn stars. . .

DB: reporters started to attack the people they interviewed. . .

ASD: business programs—I mean, they used to be the most boring programming on television—started having flashing lights,

DB (slightly over ASD): with jump cuts, guys leaping around, clutching microphones

ASD (slightly over JS): shouting “boo yah” above a bank of stock tickers. . .

DB (pauses, then speaking directly to the audience, as if knowingly): And now you can see where all of this is going.

ASD: If everything will be gangstafied in contemporary capitalism, if everything is going to be saturated by the Id, then it’s only a matter of time before we get the gangstafied research institute.

DB: Okay, I accept that. That’s logical. But I mean we already have this gangstafied research institute in its embryonic form, don’t we?

ASD: Well, yes, we have its first wave, though it hasn’t transformed the whole university, yet, but, yes. . . the gangstafied research institute has a name, and that name is. . .

DB and ASD (in unison): The business school. (long pause)

ASD: Strangely enough, business education, which had once been viewed as the prototypical bourgeois engine of stultification, codification, and middle class propriety, has become a kind of GLOBAL GANGSTA RAP.

DB: You mean Naomi Klein’s “disaster capitalism”, that kind of thing?

ASD: Right; a world economy grounded in “disruptive innovation,” but what they really mean is that we will witness the progressive gangstafication of everything, everywhere, all the time.

GAVAN: So if the present-day business school functions as a gangstafying research institute, a zone dedicated in the last instance to churning sensual exploration ruled only by the demands of the market, okay, then. . . (as if thinking to himself) what embodies the research institute dedicated to understanding this process of global gangstafication? What today, if anything, embodies the antipode to the all encompassing all devouring ID?

ASD (pause): The answer? The answer. . . is art.

GAVAN: Art? So, the future of art is the opposite of the business school? You mean, then, that art will bring us closer to the Super Ego and business is going to bring us closer to the Id?

ASD (hesitantly): Yes, yes, to me. (shaking head) I know it contradicts every idea of artists and business people that we have historically possessed, but, yes, that’s the situation today. Art, which had been modernity and postmodernity’s engine for disrupting and sensualizing the world. . .

DB (speaking partially over ASD): . . .from Courbet to Mapplethorpe, it’s true. . .

ASD: will now begin to perform the opposite role. It must. It will haul all of these gangstafying gestures from the larger culture into places where the gestures can begin to educate and teach.

GAVAN (questioningly): So, miniature? Uh, you know. . . virtual? . . .uh. . . research institutes built out of self-reflexive gangstafication would be the future of contemporary art? Right?

ASD: Yes. Sure. I think that’s right. Like, important contemporary art is no longer about making individual objects, things to sell, or anything like that. It self-consciously intensifies gangastification and reproduces it in the most inappropriate places. You could say that art after the fall of the Berlin Wall. . .

DB (cutting in): you mean, in a way, post-Soviet art. . .

ASD (cutting in, as if having a “Eureka” moment): Right, like ALL art today is conceptually (scare quotes) “post-Soviet art”. . . art after actually existing socialism.

DB: Right. That seems right.

ASD: So ALL art after the fall of the Berlin Wall—post-Soviet art—has to come to terms with the psychological debris of the Cold War. . .

DB: global commodification and mass gangstafication

ASD: and some art runs with that commodification, channels that gangstafication. You know, this is the art. . . this is the art of the art market. The stuff you see in galleries and museums of contemporary art.

DB: Okay, and then some art. . .

ASD (emphatically, gesturing with hands): Some art, the serious art. . .

DB: . . .important art. . .

ASD: the art that matters. Today, this art usually doesn’t look like art at all. These days real art always seems to show up in the wrong place at the wrong time in the wrong form. Like, you want to educate people about LGBT rights in a repressive society? Go make some art that no one will even know is art until it’s already over.

DB (questioningly): Like this art might appear as an unannounced punk rock prayer performed in a church?

ASD: Right.

DB: So, you basically can’t find important contemporary art in galleries or museums anymore?

ASD: Let me put it like this: it’s kind of like food and fast food. Most food is fast food because you can make a profit producing it, even though everyone agrees that fast food is barely even food. Same with art.

GAVAN: Going to a gallery to see art is the same thing as going to Chili’s for dinner?

ASD: That’s too extreme, but there are similarities. Today, here’s what real, serious art looks like: it looks like somebody’s making a big, mystifying mistake in public. . . but then later you realize, “Oh, hey, that was art.”

DB: You mean, you could be sitting in a room and looking directly at contemporary art and not even know that contemporary art’s happening?

ASD: That’s right. It’s almost axiomatic. That’s what usually happens. The spectator ends up feeling like she’s been summoned to an experiment against her will. That’s the virtual research institute in action. That’s art in action. You’re given artful information and you got to deal with it, whether you want to, or not.

DB: And that’s art?

ASD: That’s art. That’s what art is today.

DB: And what about actual research institutes? Like the one we’re sitting in right now, what happens to them?

ASD: Well, I think you could argue that the analogy of the vaccine explains the situation best: the real research institute must contemplate a certain amount of gangstafication in order not to become gradually and surreptitiously gangstafied.

DB: Immunization through self-aware exposure?

ASD: Exactly.

DB: So, you could say that today we’ve made our effort to vaccinate this research institute?

ASD: Correct. (long pause)

The lights come on and the next artist takes the podium to express his discontentment with African conflict diamonds, and the trans-global effects of this trade as viewed through a Marxist materials lense. He proposes his oil paintings, produced for distribution through the gallery system, as speaking points to a Chantal Mouffe-ian exploration of agonostic pluralism. Abbey wonders why she’s doing any of this. At All. Ever. And To What End.