Showing posts with label theory. Show all posts
Showing posts with label theory. Show all posts
Saturday, January 1, 2011

Four Propositions Concerning Art Blogging


    My first proposition is: Blogging is about being stupid.
    It is accepting that I do not know what I should know before starting to write. But wait! "Should know"? Let me rephrase that: blogging is accepting that there is no required knowledge to write. In part, it is accepting Beuys' affirmation that everyone is an artist. Everyone is an art-writer. Everyone is a potential member of the art milieu. And this everyone also means different aspects of me. Suddenly, the quickness of the form, it's simplicity, encourages me to move forward. To take risks. To dare write something I am not sure of. One could say this is the continuation of the beautiful tradition of Montaigne's Essays (which translates into Attempts). Yet here, the very way it is created and shared encourages the risk, encourages the attempting to see where the thoughts, the words, took me, take me, might take me. But that is just the first step. Because the consequences are quite far-going.

    My second proposition is: Thanks to the internet, writing about art can become closer to making art.
    The problem with writing is what is usually considered it's greatest advantage: it stays. Letters form words which form sentences which are a pest - they do not let go. So anything you write can and will be used against you, be it literally or metaphorically, by someone, or by yourself, reading what you wrote many years ago.
    Writing, then, must become serious. You have to weigh your words. You become responsible. Meaning, what you write needs to pass the test of an imaginary future reading.
    The internet may not seem different, because here things also stay (you can find all the internet publications from the past at archives.org). However, there is so much happening, and what you publish has so little apparent weight (you don't feel it, hold it in your hand, share it physically), that even the concept of a "virtual" world seems logical. And yet the beauty is that "virtual", here, is quite real. The letters still turn into meaning - and practically instantly, they turn into social meaning.
    But maybe because of the lack of weight, as opposed to other circumstances, when writing the blog, I don't feel obliged to anything. My distance to what I write about can change. I can be a distant observer, and then suddenly move close, challenge the work, ask it questions, see where it takes my thinking. This limit of private/public allows me to think to myself, but in a way that creates a new type of space, a new type of relation. Am I still writing about the work, or am I writing myself into the work? After all, I have no obligation to be a critic. Because I define what the blog is, I do not need to correspond to any criteria - and so the writing can become more personal, more experiential - sharing the experience I am living. And, as my experience is often related to creating new works, the limit becomes blurred - the work I write "about" (or "from" or "out of") is working its way into the one I am (sometimes unconsciously) thinking about or preparing.

    My third proposition is: The models of participation in art change because of the internet.
    This new type of sharing has other consequences. As opposed to most art writing, it becomes difficult to define what exactly is my position in the (traditional) world of art. Am I reviewing, creating, alluding? It is up to the reader to define what role my text plays in his experience of the art/world.
    But also on the scale of the art milieu, the situation becomes more fun.
    Am I a big, important fish, or an insignificant lost fish? Reading the blog it is hard to say. And that is, because it really is hard to say. The art market tries to establish market rules - artists have values that either go up or down, and if the art businesspeople had it their way, art would really be an extension of the art market. But this model is greatly inadequate for art, and I am the proof. After a few years writing the blog, I had more and more people contact me. One of them was a curator at the Warsaw Centre for Contemporary Art. He wanted to link to me on the Centre's online (and sometimes offline) review called Obieg. Suddenly, people from the milieu now considered me as an insider. Several people asked me "How did you manage to convince them?". Apparently, they were not used to a model which goes beyond traditional, linear processes. Of course, these new models are far more complex, which can be quite exciting: I can participate in a review and be written about, my work can be the subject of my own analysis picked up by someone from another site, the blog could potentially be published in a paper edition, it becomes a sort of a one-man-show that keeps evolving. Galleries start considering the blog as a serious partner, they become interested in the person, other artists contact me, first as a publisher, then as a person, new unexpected projects come up... All this has been happening. And every time it does, it seems the definition of what I do shifts.

    My fourth and last proposition is: Blogging about art can be an exercise in moving.
    The great and crazy composer Cornelius Cardew once wrote: "Notation is a way of making people move. If you lack others, like aggression or persuasion. The notation should do it. This is the most rewarding aspect of work in a notation. Trouble is: just as you find your sounds are too alien, intended for a 'different culture', you make the same discovery about your beautiful notation: no one is willing to understand it. No one moves."
    A similar thing happens with writing my art blog. This is one way of changing the conditions of living, or appreciating, art. When it works, you feel how it takes you elsewhere. "You" meaning me, but also you, the potential reader. And yet, every once in a while, you, no, I discover that the reading remains on a level I am not satisfied with. It becomes a reading of another text, and so, once again, I have written a different text to the one I was writing. This happens, of course, with every creation. However, the blog, the internet, has this wonderful capacity of allowing for the exercise to be constantly exercised. I go back, I rewrite, I answer myself. I enter dialogues. Exercise. Yes, that is what blogging is for me - an exercise in moving.

    The above text first appeared (in a Russian translation) in the Korydor online magazine, as part of the Kyiv Offline project.
    The picture is Seeing Got Us Here (A Bunch of Leaves), 2010, by Wojtek Ziemilski.
    Source URL: https://tattoosnyong.blogspot.com/search/label/theory
    Visit tattoos nyong for Daily Updated Hairstyles Collection

Four Propositions Concerning Art Blogging


    My first proposition is: Blogging is about being stupid.
    It is accepting that I do not know what I should know before starting to write. But wait! "Should know"? Let me rephrase that: blogging is accepting that there is no required knowledge to write. In part, it is accepting Beuys' affirmation that everyone is an artist. Everyone is an art-writer. Everyone is a potential member of the art milieu. And this everyone also means different aspects of me. Suddenly, the quickness of the form, it's simplicity, encourages me to move forward. To take risks. To dare write something I am not sure of. One could say this is the continuation of the beautiful tradition of Montaigne's Essays (which translates into Attempts). Yet here, the very way it is created and shared encourages the risk, encourages the attempting to see where the thoughts, the words, took me, take me, might take me. But that is just the first step. Because the consequences are quite far-going.

    My second proposition is: Thanks to the internet, writing about art can become closer to making art.
    The problem with writing is what is usually considered it's greatest advantage: it stays. Letters form words which form sentences which are a pest - they do not let go. So anything you write can and will be used against you, be it literally or metaphorically, by someone, or by yourself, reading what you wrote many years ago.
    Writing, then, must become serious. You have to weigh your words. You become responsible. Meaning, what you write needs to pass the test of an imaginary future reading.
    The internet may not seem different, because here things also stay (you can find all the internet publications from the past at archives.org). However, there is so much happening, and what you publish has so little apparent weight (you don't feel it, hold it in your hand, share it physically), that even the concept of a "virtual" world seems logical. And yet the beauty is that "virtual", here, is quite real. The letters still turn into meaning - and practically instantly, they turn into social meaning.
    But maybe because of the lack of weight, as opposed to other circumstances, when writing the blog, I don't feel obliged to anything. My distance to what I write about can change. I can be a distant observer, and then suddenly move close, challenge the work, ask it questions, see where it takes my thinking. This limit of private/public allows me to think to myself, but in a way that creates a new type of space, a new type of relation. Am I still writing about the work, or am I writing myself into the work? After all, I have no obligation to be a critic. Because I define what the blog is, I do not need to correspond to any criteria - and so the writing can become more personal, more experiential - sharing the experience I am living. And, as my experience is often related to creating new works, the limit becomes blurred - the work I write "about" (or "from" or "out of") is working its way into the one I am (sometimes unconsciously) thinking about or preparing.

    My third proposition is: The models of participation in art change because of the internet.
    This new type of sharing has other consequences. As opposed to most art writing, it becomes difficult to define what exactly is my position in the (traditional) world of art. Am I reviewing, creating, alluding? It is up to the reader to define what role my text plays in his experience of the art/world.
    But also on the scale of the art milieu, the situation becomes more fun.
    Am I a big, important fish, or an insignificant lost fish? Reading the blog it is hard to say. And that is, because it really is hard to say. The art market tries to establish market rules - artists have values that either go up or down, and if the art businesspeople had it their way, art would really be an extension of the art market. But this model is greatly inadequate for art, and I am the proof. After a few years writing the blog, I had more and more people contact me. One of them was a curator at the Warsaw Centre for Contemporary Art. He wanted to link to me on the Centre's online (and sometimes offline) review called Obieg. Suddenly, people from the milieu now considered me as an insider. Several people asked me "How did you manage to convince them?". Apparently, they were not used to a model which goes beyond traditional, linear processes. Of course, these new models are far more complex, which can be quite exciting: I can participate in a review and be written about, my work can be the subject of my own analysis picked up by someone from another site, the blog could potentially be published in a paper edition, it becomes a sort of a one-man-show that keeps evolving. Galleries start considering the blog as a serious partner, they become interested in the person, other artists contact me, first as a publisher, then as a person, new unexpected projects come up... All this has been happening. And every time it does, it seems the definition of what I do shifts.

    My fourth and last proposition is: Blogging about art can be an exercise in moving.
    The great and crazy composer Cornelius Cardew once wrote: "Notation is a way of making people move. If you lack others, like aggression or persuasion. The notation should do it. This is the most rewarding aspect of work in a notation. Trouble is: just as you find your sounds are too alien, intended for a 'different culture', you make the same discovery about your beautiful notation: no one is willing to understand it. No one moves."
    A similar thing happens with writing my art blog. This is one way of changing the conditions of living, or appreciating, art. When it works, you feel how it takes you elsewhere. "You" meaning me, but also you, the potential reader. And yet, every once in a while, you, no, I discover that the reading remains on a level I am not satisfied with. It becomes a reading of another text, and so, once again, I have written a different text to the one I was writing. This happens, of course, with every creation. However, the blog, the internet, has this wonderful capacity of allowing for the exercise to be constantly exercised. I go back, I rewrite, I answer myself. I enter dialogues. Exercise. Yes, that is what blogging is for me - an exercise in moving.

    The above text first appeared (in a Russian translation) in the Korydor online magazine, as part of the Kyiv Offline project.
    The picture is Seeing Got Us Here (A Bunch of Leaves), 2010, by Wojtek Ziemilski.
    Source URL: https://tattoosnyong.blogspot.com/search/label/theory
    Visit tattoos nyong for Daily Updated Hairstyles Collection
Sunday, August 1, 2010

Within the Lines


    What if there was nothing to discover? No story, no thousand words, no answer to a non-riddle? What if it was really, really, just a game of forms and colors?
    Would it be a sin?
    Does this lady need a past?
    Is it really so bad for something to be "just" a pretty picture?
    We know of the danger of beauty, we know the seductive spectacle means flirting with submission, yet is it really so immoral?

    We possibly wouldn't say it about Rafał Wilk's works. They are often witty, playful, insightful. They play with the idea of light, of bi-dimensionality, of what a work is.
    But, to continue on my doubt - does having a story constitute a challenge? Or is it just because we like the indolence of layered thinking, the safety net of there being "something else", so as to let our imagination ride a little further...? But haven't we turned it into a rule for (a lot of) contemporary art? This story-telling capacity? (Can someone say a good story about this? If so, the author of the story and the author of the work get a bonus.)
    What if it's a pretty picture? What if it's pretty, pretty, pretty, a thousand times pretty? What if it's so damned pretty you don't want it to be a story, to go beyond it being pretty?
    Of course, I have the right to omit the depth. And then also, every good story is many stories deep. But some of the best works I know present a fascinating resistance to storytelling. They are like a stone, at once attractive and opaque. They make me want to read within the lines.

    And here, somewhat related, is a summer holiday bonus:
    Source URL: https://tattoosnyong.blogspot.com/search/label/theory
    Visit tattoos nyong for Daily Updated Hairstyles Collection

Within the Lines


    What if there was nothing to discover? No story, no thousand words, no answer to a non-riddle? What if it was really, really, just a game of forms and colors?
    Would it be a sin?
    Does this lady need a past?
    Is it really so bad for something to be "just" a pretty picture?
    We know of the danger of beauty, we know the seductive spectacle means flirting with submission, yet is it really so immoral?

    We possibly wouldn't say it about Rafał Wilk's works. They are often witty, playful, insightful. They play with the idea of light, of bi-dimensionality, of what a work is.
    But, to continue on my doubt - does having a story constitute a challenge? Or is it just because we like the indolence of layered thinking, the safety net of there being "something else", so as to let our imagination ride a little further...? But haven't we turned it into a rule for (a lot of) contemporary art? This story-telling capacity? (Can someone say a good story about this? If so, the author of the story and the author of the work get a bonus.)
    What if it's a pretty picture? What if it's pretty, pretty, pretty, a thousand times pretty? What if it's so damned pretty you don't want it to be a story, to go beyond it being pretty?
    Of course, I have the right to omit the depth. And then also, every good story is many stories deep. But some of the best works I know present a fascinating resistance to storytelling. They are like a stone, at once attractive and opaque. They make me want to read within the lines.

    And here, somewhat related, is a summer holiday bonus:
    Source URL: https://tattoosnyong.blogspot.com/search/label/theory
    Visit tattoos nyong for Daily Updated Hairstyles Collection
Monday, April 5, 2010

The Pleasure of Absence





    It is the pleasure of imagining a performance - or rather, of imagining a universe. A narrative, an aesthetics, an experience, a unity.
    It is the pleasure of imagining a liveness, a directness, a presence.
    The pleasure of experiencing the echo, the recording, the extract, the fragment of a copy of a copy. The pleasure Plato was so afraid of.
    It is the joy of watching something on a small pixellated video image and imagining it live and juicily 3D.
    It is the ecstatic moderato of my computer screen, of yours, which acts out the world that supposedly tastes better off-screen (heck, it tastes). Yet it is not off-screen, not in the performance space, but here, at this very desk, dressed in dark-green boxers, brown socks and a t-shirt, among the hills of papers and books and accompanied by the delicate sound of the washing machine and an occasional sms, that I experience it. The pleasure of absence. The ecstatic moderato.Source URL: https://tattoosnyong.blogspot.com/search/label/theory
    Visit tattoos nyong for Daily Updated Hairstyles Collection

The Pleasure of Absence





    It is the pleasure of imagining a performance - or rather, of imagining a universe. A narrative, an aesthetics, an experience, a unity.
    It is the pleasure of imagining a liveness, a directness, a presence.
    The pleasure of experiencing the echo, the recording, the extract, the fragment of a copy of a copy. The pleasure Plato was so afraid of.
    It is the joy of watching something on a small pixellated video image and imagining it live and juicily 3D.
    It is the ecstatic moderato of my computer screen, of yours, which acts out the world that supposedly tastes better off-screen (heck, it tastes). Yet it is not off-screen, not in the performance space, but here, at this very desk, dressed in dark-green boxers, brown socks and a t-shirt, among the hills of papers and books and accompanied by the delicate sound of the washing machine and an occasional sms, that I experience it. The pleasure of absence. The ecstatic moderato.Source URL: https://tattoosnyong.blogspot.com/search/label/theory
    Visit tattoos nyong for Daily Updated Hairstyles Collection
Tuesday, December 29, 2009

The Splendorous Form of Noise

    To see the following video you should enlarge it (double-click once playing).



    The above is a compilation of works by the Swiss artist Zimoun.

    1. Funny, one keeps telling oneself, enough of the minimal already, somehow feeling that less is a bore should be embraced, and the outrageously overflowing art of the recent years - appreciated and encouraged. And then, something like this appears, and it's irresistible. We've seen things from this universe before, also on this blog, and yet, the simplicity, yes, the damn purity takes over again.

    2. I had a chance, recently, to visit several large factories. There were wonders there that could probably match most of the things on this video. Yet there was one thing they couldn't do: be useless. It's the sheer uselessness of it that gives it the power. We are not attached to anything but the thing. Art as the thing-that-cannot-be-used? Not necessarily, not in some purist sense. Great industrial design is to be cherished. And yet, there is a level of insanity here, of out-of-this-world-ness, that takes us to an exotic land, allowing for the silliest and most delicious connections to be made.

    3. Luxury requires waste. A truly luxurious lifestyle is one where perfectly good things get wasted, as if to outplay their natural use and dying away. The true master of luxury seems to be saying her opulence is so great, the very perseverence of things is no match - they lose their original function and only exist to the extent they are participating in this out-of-this-world-ness of luxury.
    You know what I'm aiming at? Here's the hypothesis:

    4. This, this minimalist joyful pleasure-making, is the true luxury. Not the apparent richness of the new complexities. In the world of useless purity, everything only serves the joy of simple aesthetic pleasure. More complex works are not quite like that - they have an inner game to play. The elements enter a dialogue, start relations and societies, with their conflicts and functions and disruptions. Here, there is only the ping of a shot of pleasure. This engine moves nothing. It is here to make me smile (or bring inspiration, or scare) - and I turn it off as soon as I have. And don't be mistaken - if I had one of those and got bored with and could afford it, it would go to waste.

    4a. Ah, you might say, but the truly great art is one we don't get bored with. Possibly. Yet how often do we actually go back to contemplate (not just think about or admire or analyze) a work of contemporary "minimalist" art? Does it mean it's because it's not that great? What if it's about something else? What if it is an element of luxury, a game we play with ourselves, to feel the exquisite taste of the sophisticated dish, and then to ditch it as soon as we're fed up? It wouldn't be a question of bluff, of fakeness, of shallowness. It would be a question of use. Of why we crave it, this new. Of how we make it useful after all.

    David Foldvari, Wrestler


    (via)

    Source URL: https://tattoosnyong.blogspot.com/search/label/theory
    Visit tattoos nyong for Daily Updated Hairstyles Collection

The Splendorous Form of Noise

    To see the following video you should enlarge it (double-click once playing).



    The above is a compilation of works by the Swiss artist Zimoun.

    1. Funny, one keeps telling oneself, enough of the minimal already, somehow feeling that less is a bore should be embraced, and the outrageously overflowing art of the recent years - appreciated and encouraged. And then, something like this appears, and it's irresistible. We've seen things from this universe before, also on this blog, and yet, the simplicity, yes, the damn purity takes over again.

    2. I had a chance, recently, to visit several large factories. There were wonders there that could probably match most of the things on this video. Yet there was one thing they couldn't do: be useless. It's the sheer uselessness of it that gives it the power. We are not attached to anything but the thing. Art as the thing-that-cannot-be-used? Not necessarily, not in some purist sense. Great industrial design is to be cherished. And yet, there is a level of insanity here, of out-of-this-world-ness, that takes us to an exotic land, allowing for the silliest and most delicious connections to be made.

    3. Luxury requires waste. A truly luxurious lifestyle is one where perfectly good things get wasted, as if to outplay their natural use and dying away. The true master of luxury seems to be saying her opulence is so great, the very perseverence of things is no match - they lose their original function and only exist to the extent they are participating in this out-of-this-world-ness of luxury.
    You know what I'm aiming at? Here's the hypothesis:

    4. This, this minimalist joyful pleasure-making, is the true luxury. Not the apparent richness of the new complexities. In the world of useless purity, everything only serves the joy of simple aesthetic pleasure. More complex works are not quite like that - they have an inner game to play. The elements enter a dialogue, start relations and societies, with their conflicts and functions and disruptions. Here, there is only the ping of a shot of pleasure. This engine moves nothing. It is here to make me smile (or bring inspiration, or scare) - and I turn it off as soon as I have. And don't be mistaken - if I had one of those and got bored with and could afford it, it would go to waste.

    4a. Ah, you might say, but the truly great art is one we don't get bored with. Possibly. Yet how often do we actually go back to contemplate (not just think about or admire or analyze) a work of contemporary "minimalist" art? Does it mean it's because it's not that great? What if it's about something else? What if it is an element of luxury, a game we play with ourselves, to feel the exquisite taste of the sophisticated dish, and then to ditch it as soon as we're fed up? It wouldn't be a question of bluff, of fakeness, of shallowness. It would be a question of use. Of why we crave it, this new. Of how we make it useful after all.

    David Foldvari, Wrestler


    (via)

    Source URL: https://tattoosnyong.blogspot.com/search/label/theory
    Visit tattoos nyong for Daily Updated Hairstyles Collection
Saturday, September 26, 2009

Do You Believe In Magic? Grospierre vs. Radziszewski

    a comparison of Karol Radziszewski's To Pee In a Bun and Nicolas Grospierre's Kunstkamera

    The two recently* opened exhibitions at the main two contemporary art centers in Warsaw – Zachęta and the Contemporary Art Center – have some clear similarities.

    Both exhibitions are witty, explicit dialogues with art history. They both play on the distance that separates contemporary art conventions from what has been somewhat recklessly left behind. Radziszewski exhibits works hidden in the depths of the national gallery’s archives. Some are excruciating to look at, others are curious discoveries or brilliant works. Grospierre goes back to the format of the Kunstkammer and does what he does best – plays with it.

    They both focus on the structure of an exhibition, and make it an essential aspect, a sort of a meta-work which goes far beyond the classical idea of curator and uses the ambiguity of this function to the utmost. It is impossible to say where the curator’s role stops and the artist’s begins. This goes far beyond the inclusion of the curator’s own works in the exhibition, or his manipulation of the showing. We never know when the appreciation of the shown works is genuine, and when it is ironic. And because of the artists’ works being part of the selection, the self-irony is, as always, disarming.

    However, each artist enacts the role of contemporary art trickster in a different way. Beyond questions of scale, budget and context of production, the two exhibitions are at two opposite sides of an old aesthetic debate. They present two different approaches to the question of value in aesthetics. But first, let me give you a brief description of each of the exhibitions.

    Karol Radziszewski’s exhibition To Pee in a Bun, is grandiose. It is a personal take on the collection of Poland’s most renowned and respected public gallery of Modern Art (charmingly called The Encouragement for Fine Art).
    In it, he acts “merely” as curator, and also as one of the numerous exhibited artists. Here is what the curator had to say in a conversation with himself as artist :
    C: Curators are the ones who make the artists conscious of
    ‘what’ they have created and ‘why’; often, they also manipulate the
    works being displayed, creating their own narratives from pre-existing
    works, at the same time disregarding their previous context.
    A: Like you did in this exhibition?
    C: Yes. (laughs)
    A: Why?
    C: I treat other artists’ works as elements of a larger whole, like
    tubes of paint, from which I have to squeeze out colours in order
    to paint one complex painting.
    A: That’s a very colourful metaphor . . .
    C: Thank you.

    We could say that Nicolas Grospierre creates a similar procedure of remixing curator and artist when in the Kunstkamera installation, (which is the size of one of the smaller rooms in Radziszewski’s exhibition), he hangs mainly pictures of objects and photos created by other people, and signs the whole as his piece.
    Yet the vectors, here, point elsewhere. Instead of spreading the works and opening, if not exploding, them, he seems to move inwards, closing the space and folding it yet again. Upon entering the "room", we discover a game of images reproducing images reproducing the same space with other images. The game goes on, like a play with mirrors, ad infinitum. The "meaning" is still ambiguous - yet it concentrates, thickens, moves toward inhabiting the space instead of abandoning it.


    So what does all of this have to do with philosophical debates?

    In an article published in 1936, Stanisław Ossowski, one of Poland’s most notable thinkers from the famous Lvov-Warsaw school of thought, argued against aesthetics understood as the “construction of value systems”. The generalizing of arbitrary aesthetic feelings and opinions to the level of theory should, in his opinion, give way to a sociological perspective on art and the aesthetic, one which would embrace the richness of opinions and points of view instead of imposing them.
    This bold proposal was answered the same year by another great mind, Henryk Elzenberg, who argued that no matter how weak and prone to error, our aesthetic judgments remain anchored in value systems that can and should be discussed – as we cannot speak of aesthetics without referring to value, and values are open to discussion.

    To put it bluntly: in Radziszewski’s exhibition I see Ossowski’s distancing from aesthetics as a system of values, while Grospierre’s installation follows Elzenberg’s ideals.

    These are really two different ways of approaching the world.

    Ossowski claims that any discussion about aesthetic values comes down to a power struggle. And this overpowering does not go through a sharing of enthusiasm or disgust, but goes through the attribution of value. Why? Elzenberg explains:
    Apparently [the value-based aestheticist] lacks qualifications: he does not have the authority, or the suggestive strength, or the capacity to contaminate others with his feeling. And he is overfilled with the will to rule. Thus, he tries to convince the victim that if this victim feels the same things he does, the victim will be right, he will be somehow objectively correct; and he will be wrong if he dares otherwise.

    Hence the need for distance.
    It seems Radziszewski claims it on every single step. On one hand, his collection is a moving away from an engaged position, it is rather a questioning of our aesthetic values, of their ever-astounding relativity and apparent insignificance. Who are we to say that this is pretty, and this isn’t? How are we to judge the works that a mere 30 years ago were judged outstanding, while today they’re hidden away in a museum cellar?

    On the other hand though, Radziszewski’s approach differs from Ossowski’s philosophy in one respect: being an artist, and not a social scientist, he does not feel the need to eradicate the position of power. To the contrary, he exposes it by exploring it to the fullest. Why bring a porn film into the gallery? Because it’s shocking, and attracts audiences. The aestheticist’s position allows him to create values arbitrarily:
    A: You’re a curator — does that mean power?
    C: Absolute power! (laughs)
    A: Most people believe curators are unfulfilled artists.
    C: I think that does hold true for me. Besides, to quote Krasiński
    yet again, ‘Art is too serious a business to be left in artists’ hands.’

    Grospierre is at a very different point. He does not feel the necessity to question everything – art history has done it sufficiently. Instead, he looks for ways of exploring the place of art today while not undoing it all yet again. Romantic? Certainly. It is a self-ironic romanticism, one that takes great effort in presenting itself as distanced and eye-winking. No wonder Grospierre cites Italo Calvino and Borges: this is the romantic universe that leads the battle for saving beauty. It is not, however, an intuitive aesthetic experience kind of beauty. The Kunstkamera is all about unending layers of initiation. It is a dive into the possibility of image, the possibility of the reflection of things, of some sort of hidden and evolving harmony between the object and the subject.

    It reminds one of Heidegger’s conception of art as a window to some other realm we can in no other way describe. Here, this realm always crosses first an image of the reality we know – and so, we never know if this is the level of work-of-art, or it is only a description thereof. Fittingly, the exhibition flyer (a photocopy with clear photocopy marks) explains it all, and more. It seems to impose its vision of the work before we even get to see it.
    Take, for instance, the “Trophies” section.
    Trophies represent four dog muzzles, belonging to the commonest of mongrels. Bolek, Majka, Eryk and Gucio are four doggies among thousands. In the old Wunderkammer we would find extraordinary or unique natural objects: the horn of a unicorn, huge crystals, stuffed reptiles and other monstrosities. The idea was to show nature in the most surprising forms. Today the world seems devoid of the mysteries and much simpler than in the sixteenth century: the monsters disappeared from biology books. Might it be that the world is less poetic, more prosaic? I don’t think so. Even if science discovered many of nature’s secrets, for me poetry and mystery are still present in nature – we can find them in the most common species, such as house dogs.
    The two positions can be called “metaphisical” and “positivist”. Elzenberg’s metaphisicist is
    quite aware that there are hundreds of traps on his way; that his individual chances of error are bigger than his chances of winning; he feels that his results are to the highest degree uncertain, endangered by others’ critique and by his own. He feels the constant risk. Yet this risk is also his joy, since, as a psychological type, he has in him – and indeed needs to have – a little bit of a man of adventure and his attitude towards the “positivist” is somewhat like the attitude of a sailor that knows he can drown, towards the landlubber, who has no such fiercely unpleasant risk awaiting. It gives him a sort of satisfaction, but that is not what decides about his behavior in terms of acquiring knowledge; the decisive factor is that he does not want to drown. And that is why he is first and foremost careful. The “Metaphisicist” – or rather, to put it in more serious terms, the valuing aestheticist – knows well that his subject is unclear and unattainable and that what he discovers in it flees any adequate descriptions. Thus, although he is a sui generis racionalist to start off, it is nonetheless easy to discover a trait in him that is the contrary of a strict rationalism: the tendency to treat concepts and judgments as merely a type of highly uncertain symbols of a reality that resists human thought. Thus, he will not suggest that the chiaroscuro in which he sees the thing is full light, nor will he bond himself till death due him part with this or that linguistic formula or even this or that discursive elaboration of his intuition. He – yes he! - has something in him of the spirit of empiricism, as he understands his moving into the subject as a multiplicity of attempts and returns, as the entering in contact, as a progressive bonding with reality. Hence, he has the quality of being critical towards his own achievements, he consciously softens the edges of his statements, and is ready for changes and corrections, and, generally speaking, is moderate and more moderate even.
    So do you believe in magic? In the aesthetic wonder of art, that keeps evolving beyond all expectations, that is in some strange way always related to beauty, and maintains some sort of objective common ground, some platform of shared values?
    Or did the whole building of aesthetics collapse, leaving us in a void where any new creation of value is so easily ridiculed, art may at best be looked from a great distance, with an ironic, witty, sensitive yet unaffirming stance?

    I must say I prefer Grospierre's installation: it's discursive and communicative, inquiring and playful, desperately searching for beauty, or maybe: aiming at beauty. This is a work of a believer. And although I'm not exactly a believer, I can repeat after one of my favorite characters, Samuel Hamilton: I don't really believe in it save that it works.

    *It took me some time to write this... and tomorrow is the last day of Kunstkamera! Hurry if you want to see it.Source URL: https://tattoosnyong.blogspot.com/search/label/theory
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Do You Believe In Magic? Grospierre vs. Radziszewski

    a comparison of Karol Radziszewski's To Pee In a Bun and Nicolas Grospierre's Kunstkamera

    The two recently* opened exhibitions at the main two contemporary art centers in Warsaw – Zachęta and the Contemporary Art Center – have some clear similarities.

    Both exhibitions are witty, explicit dialogues with art history. They both play on the distance that separates contemporary art conventions from what has been somewhat recklessly left behind. Radziszewski exhibits works hidden in the depths of the national gallery’s archives. Some are excruciating to look at, others are curious discoveries or brilliant works. Grospierre goes back to the format of the Kunstkammer and does what he does best – plays with it.

    They both focus on the structure of an exhibition, and make it an essential aspect, a sort of a meta-work which goes far beyond the classical idea of curator and uses the ambiguity of this function to the utmost. It is impossible to say where the curator’s role stops and the artist’s begins. This goes far beyond the inclusion of the curator’s own works in the exhibition, or his manipulation of the showing. We never know when the appreciation of the shown works is genuine, and when it is ironic. And because of the artists’ works being part of the selection, the self-irony is, as always, disarming.

    However, each artist enacts the role of contemporary art trickster in a different way. Beyond questions of scale, budget and context of production, the two exhibitions are at two opposite sides of an old aesthetic debate. They present two different approaches to the question of value in aesthetics. But first, let me give you a brief description of each of the exhibitions.

    Karol Radziszewski’s exhibition To Pee in a Bun, is grandiose. It is a personal take on the collection of Poland’s most renowned and respected public gallery of Modern Art (charmingly called The Encouragement for Fine Art).
    In it, he acts “merely” as curator, and also as one of the numerous exhibited artists. Here is what the curator had to say in a conversation with himself as artist :
    C: Curators are the ones who make the artists conscious of
    ‘what’ they have created and ‘why’; often, they also manipulate the
    works being displayed, creating their own narratives from pre-existing
    works, at the same time disregarding their previous context.
    A: Like you did in this exhibition?
    C: Yes. (laughs)
    A: Why?
    C: I treat other artists’ works as elements of a larger whole, like
    tubes of paint, from which I have to squeeze out colours in order
    to paint one complex painting.
    A: That’s a very colourful metaphor . . .
    C: Thank you.

    We could say that Nicolas Grospierre creates a similar procedure of remixing curator and artist when in the Kunstkamera installation, (which is the size of one of the smaller rooms in Radziszewski’s exhibition), he hangs mainly pictures of objects and photos created by other people, and signs the whole as his piece.
    Yet the vectors, here, point elsewhere. Instead of spreading the works and opening, if not exploding, them, he seems to move inwards, closing the space and folding it yet again. Upon entering the "room", we discover a game of images reproducing images reproducing the same space with other images. The game goes on, like a play with mirrors, ad infinitum. The "meaning" is still ambiguous - yet it concentrates, thickens, moves toward inhabiting the space instead of abandoning it.


    So what does all of this have to do with philosophical debates?

    In an article published in 1936, Stanisław Ossowski, one of Poland’s most notable thinkers from the famous Lvov-Warsaw school of thought, argued against aesthetics understood as the “construction of value systems”. The generalizing of arbitrary aesthetic feelings and opinions to the level of theory should, in his opinion, give way to a sociological perspective on art and the aesthetic, one which would embrace the richness of opinions and points of view instead of imposing them.
    This bold proposal was answered the same year by another great mind, Henryk Elzenberg, who argued that no matter how weak and prone to error, our aesthetic judgments remain anchored in value systems that can and should be discussed – as we cannot speak of aesthetics without referring to value, and values are open to discussion.

    To put it bluntly: in Radziszewski’s exhibition I see Ossowski’s distancing from aesthetics as a system of values, while Grospierre’s installation follows Elzenberg’s ideals.

    These are really two different ways of approaching the world.

    Ossowski claims that any discussion about aesthetic values comes down to a power struggle. And this overpowering does not go through a sharing of enthusiasm or disgust, but goes through the attribution of value. Why? Elzenberg explains:
    Apparently [the value-based aestheticist] lacks qualifications: he does not have the authority, or the suggestive strength, or the capacity to contaminate others with his feeling. And he is overfilled with the will to rule. Thus, he tries to convince the victim that if this victim feels the same things he does, the victim will be right, he will be somehow objectively correct; and he will be wrong if he dares otherwise.

    Hence the need for distance.
    It seems Radziszewski claims it on every single step. On one hand, his collection is a moving away from an engaged position, it is rather a questioning of our aesthetic values, of their ever-astounding relativity and apparent insignificance. Who are we to say that this is pretty, and this isn’t? How are we to judge the works that a mere 30 years ago were judged outstanding, while today they’re hidden away in a museum cellar?

    On the other hand though, Radziszewski’s approach differs from Ossowski’s philosophy in one respect: being an artist, and not a social scientist, he does not feel the need to eradicate the position of power. To the contrary, he exposes it by exploring it to the fullest. Why bring a porn film into the gallery? Because it’s shocking, and attracts audiences. The aestheticist’s position allows him to create values arbitrarily:
    A: You’re a curator — does that mean power?
    C: Absolute power! (laughs)
    A: Most people believe curators are unfulfilled artists.
    C: I think that does hold true for me. Besides, to quote Krasiński
    yet again, ‘Art is too serious a business to be left in artists’ hands.’

    Grospierre is at a very different point. He does not feel the necessity to question everything – art history has done it sufficiently. Instead, he looks for ways of exploring the place of art today while not undoing it all yet again. Romantic? Certainly. It is a self-ironic romanticism, one that takes great effort in presenting itself as distanced and eye-winking. No wonder Grospierre cites Italo Calvino and Borges: this is the romantic universe that leads the battle for saving beauty. It is not, however, an intuitive aesthetic experience kind of beauty. The Kunstkamera is all about unending layers of initiation. It is a dive into the possibility of image, the possibility of the reflection of things, of some sort of hidden and evolving harmony between the object and the subject.

    It reminds one of Heidegger’s conception of art as a window to some other realm we can in no other way describe. Here, this realm always crosses first an image of the reality we know – and so, we never know if this is the level of work-of-art, or it is only a description thereof. Fittingly, the exhibition flyer (a photocopy with clear photocopy marks) explains it all, and more. It seems to impose its vision of the work before we even get to see it.
    Take, for instance, the “Trophies” section.
    Trophies represent four dog muzzles, belonging to the commonest of mongrels. Bolek, Majka, Eryk and Gucio are four doggies among thousands. In the old Wunderkammer we would find extraordinary or unique natural objects: the horn of a unicorn, huge crystals, stuffed reptiles and other monstrosities. The idea was to show nature in the most surprising forms. Today the world seems devoid of the mysteries and much simpler than in the sixteenth century: the monsters disappeared from biology books. Might it be that the world is less poetic, more prosaic? I don’t think so. Even if science discovered many of nature’s secrets, for me poetry and mystery are still present in nature – we can find them in the most common species, such as house dogs.
    The two positions can be called “metaphisical” and “positivist”. Elzenberg’s metaphisicist is
    quite aware that there are hundreds of traps on his way; that his individual chances of error are bigger than his chances of winning; he feels that his results are to the highest degree uncertain, endangered by others’ critique and by his own. He feels the constant risk. Yet this risk is also his joy, since, as a psychological type, he has in him – and indeed needs to have – a little bit of a man of adventure and his attitude towards the “positivist” is somewhat like the attitude of a sailor that knows he can drown, towards the landlubber, who has no such fiercely unpleasant risk awaiting. It gives him a sort of satisfaction, but that is not what decides about his behavior in terms of acquiring knowledge; the decisive factor is that he does not want to drown. And that is why he is first and foremost careful. The “Metaphisicist” – or rather, to put it in more serious terms, the valuing aestheticist – knows well that his subject is unclear and unattainable and that what he discovers in it flees any adequate descriptions. Thus, although he is a sui generis racionalist to start off, it is nonetheless easy to discover a trait in him that is the contrary of a strict rationalism: the tendency to treat concepts and judgments as merely a type of highly uncertain symbols of a reality that resists human thought. Thus, he will not suggest that the chiaroscuro in which he sees the thing is full light, nor will he bond himself till death due him part with this or that linguistic formula or even this or that discursive elaboration of his intuition. He – yes he! - has something in him of the spirit of empiricism, as he understands his moving into the subject as a multiplicity of attempts and returns, as the entering in contact, as a progressive bonding with reality. Hence, he has the quality of being critical towards his own achievements, he consciously softens the edges of his statements, and is ready for changes and corrections, and, generally speaking, is moderate and more moderate even.
    So do you believe in magic? In the aesthetic wonder of art, that keeps evolving beyond all expectations, that is in some strange way always related to beauty, and maintains some sort of objective common ground, some platform of shared values?
    Or did the whole building of aesthetics collapse, leaving us in a void where any new creation of value is so easily ridiculed, art may at best be looked from a great distance, with an ironic, witty, sensitive yet unaffirming stance?

    I must say I prefer Grospierre's installation: it's discursive and communicative, inquiring and playful, desperately searching for beauty, or maybe: aiming at beauty. This is a work of a believer. And although I'm not exactly a believer, I can repeat after one of my favorite characters, Samuel Hamilton: I don't really believe in it save that it works.

    *It took me some time to write this... and tomorrow is the last day of Kunstkamera! Hurry if you want to see it.Source URL: https://tattoosnyong.blogspot.com/search/label/theory
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Thursday, September 24, 2009

Lightness is Difficult



    As a wise man once said, life is serious, art is lighthearted. And this very description is what I find the most difficult about creating art. There is a tremendous distance between the seriousness of living a life (yes, even an artist's life...), and the light that the art requires.
    Or is it the heart?

    Both works are by Collier Schorr.Source URL: https://tattoosnyong.blogspot.com/search/label/theory
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Lightness is Difficult



    As a wise man once said, life is serious, art is lighthearted. And this very description is what I find the most difficult about creating art. There is a tremendous distance between the seriousness of living a life (yes, even an artist's life...), and the light that the art requires.
    Or is it the heart?

    Both works are by Collier Schorr.Source URL: https://tattoosnyong.blogspot.com/search/label/theory
    Visit tattoos nyong for Daily Updated Hairstyles Collection
Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Sensing discourse



    "- What is the role of the artist?
    - To not get tired of running all his life."

    The Critical Run initiative, by Thierry Geoffroy, at first glance, appears exciting. Lighthearted and simple, yet livening. Take a group of people and make them discuss serious issues - while jogging.
    Let's run and talk. Let's have fun and share. Let's move. See what happens - to us, to the surroundings, to the topic.
    It reminds me of some of the Lone Twin works, and of other, more discursive, initatives.
    But then you see the videos.



    - and you realize why this is a copyrighted format. Actually, it's not about the conversation at all. It's about the hilarious situation of displacing discourse into a territory that is not its own. It's about creating a mess with a mass. And hoping (?) for a miracle of super-discourse through a discourse-smashing environment. As we all know from films, the most profound ideas arise on boxing rings.
    But wait! It gets better!




    Oh, Canada!
    Think! Exchange! Travel far! As long as you can fit it on a headband...

    But let's be honest. Discourse is a problem for the work of art, if it stays within the aesthetic experience. It either gets chewn up by the experience or we move out (last movement?) of the aesthetic experience and into the realm of plays-on-ideas. Which is also a tough blow.
    Then we have to face the perspective of functioning as anyone else who thinks. And running with them. And quite possibly getting completely lost, syncopated, out-of-breathed, shafted, as my teenage years would put it (notice the momentum of the word). No wonder one can feel the need to go back and, well, try to, well, do, well, something about the loss. Someone like John Baldessari*, witty enough to both play the artsy world and keep his eyes on the ball:



    And, to get a fuller picture, how else, a remix of the remix:





    Is the relief you feel when being able to read accompanied by a feeling of the loss of Baldessari's purity? Could it be there is not enough movement? But then again, isn't it nice to feel that a words translates into a thought?
    One of the videos of the Critical Runs is entitled "Does the artist has any impact on society?" (sic!)
    There is one comment underneath: "Not in bad English you don't. Does anyone have..."


    * For a succint intro to John Baldessari, see the stylishly designed FLYP magazine.
    Source URL: https://tattoosnyong.blogspot.com/search/label/theory
    Visit tattoos nyong for Daily Updated Hairstyles Collection

Sensing discourse



    "- What is the role of the artist?
    - To not get tired of running all his life."

    The Critical Run initiative, by Thierry Geoffroy, at first glance, appears exciting. Lighthearted and simple, yet livening. Take a group of people and make them discuss serious issues - while jogging.
    Let's run and talk. Let's have fun and share. Let's move. See what happens - to us, to the surroundings, to the topic.
    It reminds me of some of the Lone Twin works, and of other, more discursive, initatives.
    But then you see the videos.



    - and you realize why this is a copyrighted format. Actually, it's not about the conversation at all. It's about the hilarious situation of displacing discourse into a territory that is not its own. It's about creating a mess with a mass. And hoping (?) for a miracle of super-discourse through a discourse-smashing environment. As we all know from films, the most profound ideas arise on boxing rings.
    But wait! It gets better!




    Oh, Canada!
    Think! Exchange! Travel far! As long as you can fit it on a headband...

    But let's be honest. Discourse is a problem for the work of art, if it stays within the aesthetic experience. It either gets chewn up by the experience or we move out (last movement?) of the aesthetic experience and into the realm of plays-on-ideas. Which is also a tough blow.
    Then we have to face the perspective of functioning as anyone else who thinks. And running with them. And quite possibly getting completely lost, syncopated, out-of-breathed, shafted, as my teenage years would put it (notice the momentum of the word). No wonder one can feel the need to go back and, well, try to, well, do, well, something about the loss. Someone like John Baldessari*, witty enough to both play the artsy world and keep his eyes on the ball:



    And, to get a fuller picture, how else, a remix of the remix:





    Is the relief you feel when being able to read accompanied by a feeling of the loss of Baldessari's purity? Could it be there is not enough movement? But then again, isn't it nice to feel that a words translates into a thought?
    One of the videos of the Critical Runs is entitled "Does the artist has any impact on society?" (sic!)
    There is one comment underneath: "Not in bad English you don't. Does anyone have..."


    * For a succint intro to John Baldessari, see the stylishly designed FLYP magazine.
    Source URL: https://tattoosnyong.blogspot.com/search/label/theory
    Visit tattoos nyong for Daily Updated Hairstyles Collection
Friday, June 5, 2009

FC Barcelona and the shift of aesthetic paradigms


    Apparently the manager of FC Barelona, the young Josep Guardiola, prepared this film for his players before the finale against Manchester United. And before the game, instead of making the classic motivational speech, he showed them the film. And said nothing afterwards.
    If I'm posting this on the New Art blog, it's because this shows a very powerful turn in the way we see film/media. Although the advent of the "TV era" has been prophetized for a long time, and many declared its beginning many decades ago. However, this event, for me, is a very important sign of a shift of paradigms. And it is not as simple as moving from a deep human experience to a superficial "screen" experience. The presence of the manager, of the person, is still crucial (it would be difficult to imagine - for the moment - that he weren't there), but his action is not. Hence, translating it into performative terms, we can say it is not about the actor-audience connection, as some sort of a mystic communion. And a possible reason so many thinkers complain is because they thought the aesthetic experience of a live event had some "added value" because of it being inter-subjective. Suddenly, it appears the inter-subjectivity is just one possible aspect. One that can be done away with - while maintaining, and that is my argument, the value of the experience. Yes, now it seems more about the show-spectacle, but this is not to say the "spectacle" is, as such, of lesser value (based on what?). For one, it appears as a surprizingly intimate event. And if the film will presumably seem kitsch to most of us, that is clearly because it was tailored for a specific audience, with specific references, under very special circumstances. Could it be that this type of intimate media spectacle is what's in the air?Source URL: https://tattoosnyong.blogspot.com/search/label/theory
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FC Barcelona and the shift of aesthetic paradigms


    Apparently the manager of FC Barelona, the young Josep Guardiola, prepared this film for his players before the finale against Manchester United. And before the game, instead of making the classic motivational speech, he showed them the film. And said nothing afterwards.
    If I'm posting this on the New Art blog, it's because this shows a very powerful turn in the way we see film/media. Although the advent of the "TV era" has been prophetized for a long time, and many declared its beginning many decades ago. However, this event, for me, is a very important sign of a shift of paradigms. And it is not as simple as moving from a deep human experience to a superficial "screen" experience. The presence of the manager, of the person, is still crucial (it would be difficult to imagine - for the moment - that he weren't there), but his action is not. Hence, translating it into performative terms, we can say it is not about the actor-audience connection, as some sort of a mystic communion. And a possible reason so many thinkers complain is because they thought the aesthetic experience of a live event had some "added value" because of it being inter-subjective. Suddenly, it appears the inter-subjectivity is just one possible aspect. One that can be done away with - while maintaining, and that is my argument, the value of the experience. Yes, now it seems more about the show-spectacle, but this is not to say the "spectacle" is, as such, of lesser value (based on what?). For one, it appears as a surprizingly intimate event. And if the film will presumably seem kitsch to most of us, that is clearly because it was tailored for a specific audience, with specific references, under very special circumstances. Could it be that this type of intimate media spectacle is what's in the air?Source URL: https://tattoosnyong.blogspot.com/search/label/theory
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Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Of the daemon


    I am not a person particularly given to metaphysical beliefs.
    I tend to be cautious in the way I describe the world, and the parts where I allow myself to travel further are, in my perspective, mere mental experiments, or even tricks of the (artistic) trade.
    Yet I wish I could simply apply Elizabeth Gilbert's advice and speak out to whatever is out there, negociating with me what comes to my mind.
    It's not an easy task. The skepticism rushes in, and I am reminded by myself that, after all, it all remains a metaphor, and although I might be producing things I myself do not expect (that seems to be the rule), I do not know how my heart functions, either, or why I start to sweat or how I fall asleep. The more carefuly I look at myself, the less of what I do can be divided into conscious and unconscious activity. Ergo, I can assume creativity is also somewhere within that quasi-conscious reign that to me should appear no more familiar, or "mine", than yawning.
    But, deep down inside, I am also a dreamer. I love to think I'm lucky. I like pretty formulas, and feel very precisely how sometimes things go right. There you have it: here is an opening for metaphysics. If I am so easily tempted to create all these invisible structures, strings and forces, why can't I accept the simple idea that there is someone, something, a daemon, that negociates with me everything I do? Why, for heaven's sake, not accept something that makes your life easier? For the sake of truth? In art?Source URL: https://tattoosnyong.blogspot.com/search/label/theory
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Of the daemon


    I am not a person particularly given to metaphysical beliefs.
    I tend to be cautious in the way I describe the world, and the parts where I allow myself to travel further are, in my perspective, mere mental experiments, or even tricks of the (artistic) trade.
    Yet I wish I could simply apply Elizabeth Gilbert's advice and speak out to whatever is out there, negociating with me what comes to my mind.
    It's not an easy task. The skepticism rushes in, and I am reminded by myself that, after all, it all remains a metaphor, and although I might be producing things I myself do not expect (that seems to be the rule), I do not know how my heart functions, either, or why I start to sweat or how I fall asleep. The more carefuly I look at myself, the less of what I do can be divided into conscious and unconscious activity. Ergo, I can assume creativity is also somewhere within that quasi-conscious reign that to me should appear no more familiar, or "mine", than yawning.
    But, deep down inside, I am also a dreamer. I love to think I'm lucky. I like pretty formulas, and feel very precisely how sometimes things go right. There you have it: here is an opening for metaphysics. If I am so easily tempted to create all these invisible structures, strings and forces, why can't I accept the simple idea that there is someone, something, a daemon, that negociates with me everything I do? Why, for heaven's sake, not accept something that makes your life easier? For the sake of truth? In art?Source URL: https://tattoosnyong.blogspot.com/search/label/theory
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Tuesday, January 15, 2008

A few amazing finds, and a very subjective text

    Magnus von Plessen, Felicity

    It is hard for me to imagine a live performance that would have (that I would find to have) the density of some visual art. Yes, I distinguish those quite clearly, mainly by the dilating of senses I experience when watching most performance, as if there was no way of just getting to the point, or points, or of just hitting me with whatever they have. "Just". There is justice in this just, a sense of the right measure, like an object where the proportions feel right. I simply cannot recall a single performance I have seen where the proportions just felt right. It seems time and a live body introduce elements that are somehow completely out of the scope of my spectator experience.
    Compare the best you've seen on stage to this:






    The above images, by the astonishing Tim Hawkinson, are more than powerful: they range from publicity-like to classical sculpture to highly conceptual (the last one is a self-portrait mapping of all the area the artist sees on his own body, the picture before is a Balloon Self-Portrait, a blown-up mold of the artist), and yet each of them seems complete.
    Or see these, by Huma Bhabha:


    How are we to compete with the perfection of something that is? Another language, you will say. Another state of presence. And yet, the choice of what to lay my eyes on remains. And diversity is no argument, when time after time what is live seems to be disappointing, less thrilling, less surprising, exciting, fresh and bold than what remains there not waiting for the sight. But then again, it is also less exciting than film, which seems only to live when seen!
    Indeed, it is perfectly useless to speak of the spectator's responsibility in all this, when the spectator admits he is not up to it and instead choses something less desperate, even as it may be darker and, at least on the surface, less active.
    (Both poor quality reproductions are by Magnus von Plessen)
    And yet, after having written all this, I still feel that live art somehow retains an incredible potential. Not because it is live, at least in the sense of having live people in front of you, but rather, in the sense of it being an event, and so, something that remains unexpected, but also unfinished, incomplete, and fragile in its egomaniacal form ("look at me!"). I'm still not sure where this is heading, it remains confused, but it might have something to do with the amazing phenomenon of enjoying something while it is bad, enjoying it because you appreciate it as an event, enjoying the fact that you are in the privileged position of



    PS: Here is a picture dedicated to the effort of some colleagues from a theater project that has been on these days:
    (The picture is by Amy Stein. I believe the title is Domesticated.)
    Source URL: https://tattoosnyong.blogspot.com/search/label/theory
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