stay-in-g, choos-in-g 2 s(t)ay

-

wry

tout

toff

-

right out of IT

r-I-ght outs-id-e of it

Ides (of March) of it

soft march

chuffed it's come to this

by choice

Peitsch oyse

not being in the -

grOUp

-

ou? non 

-

no group

-

grew purrrrr

-

on grrrrr

-

oops

-

[   ]

-

away

be

g-one

leave 

all

all-own

"Hegel said that true thinking is thinking that looks death straight in the face.  We could add that true thinking is thinking that looks disorder and uncertainty straight in the face. " Edgar Morin

An Aside

http://web.mac.com/chrisphelon/iWeb/blurt

video and audio from Blurt + Moosbrugger + Gary Goodman 29.02.08

My Presentation to the Curating Group - Tom Trevatt

Nothing Will Have Taken Place But The Place

In light of the project that I will present here today, I want to begin to find a way to re-think what we call presentation, display, or, if you like, by a stretch of the imagination, by a leap of faith, curation. What I am presenting has previously been named Manque Manque, has come to be named The And/Or Project and will be named something other at some point in the future. For now I am happy to let The And/Or Project title the activity I am engaged in. As always, more on naming later. In truth, we might like to think we never leave the process of naming, that what we actually do is always involved somehow in an act of nomination or, indeed, denomination, that a curatorial practice is a practice of coining, of an apprehension of currency. Curation acts doubly to bring into being the display, to name display as such, and to lend the display currency. To nominate and denominate.

The question would be where to begin? Where to begin with some thing that has already begun? In this sense this presentation is always already a re-presentation and just a representation, but also only a presentation. It is a re-presentation and representation of the project but a presentation of itself. This will only ever have been a presentation of the presentation; nothing will have taken place but the place.

Last year Rob and I were approached by Claire Scanlon, an artist and tutor at Northbrook College. She had this idea for a show called Manque Manque. Broadly this was a show that took its subject matter as lack, or failure. We adopted the show, the title and the group she had assembled prior to our involvement. In this sense we gave up certain ‘rights’ claimable as part of curation. This has extended to the working group. We have decided that it should not be just us who choose the members of the group, but let a diffuse activity of word of mouth invitations to occur, so anyone already in the group can invite anyone else. In this way, we are taking a passive role in the formulation of the group. We are not concerned with choosing artwork that fits into a theme or idea, the social group is formed first and we work, through a series of collaborations, around this idea of displaying something. So, at some point to come some things will be visible and among other things we will produce something we would recognise as a group show. We shall also produce these other ‘things’. Other objects.

Talks

Demonstrations

Discussions

Events

Walks

Meetings

Drawings

Writing

Sculptures

Maps

Documents

Exhibitions

Residencies

&c.

In this presentation I want to tentatively put forward certain propositions. Ways to embark on a re-think of, or to pull out perhaps what is un-thought in curation. This debate has, in some form been started elsewhere, however, I don’t think it has been truly played out.

In an essay for Art Monthly in 2005 Paul O’Neill tells us:

Self-reflexivity […] is fast becoming the buzz-word.

Exhibition curating has become self-reflexive about self-reflexivity itself. We are becoming so self-reflexive that exhibitions often end up as nothing more or less than art exhibitions curated by curators curating curators, curating artists, curating artworks, curating exhibitions.

Which sounds like we need less curating not more. What this boils down to, for O’Neill is a rather turgid account of what could be seen as the endgame of curatorial practice played out by the likes of Jens Hoffman with his ‘London in Six Easy Steps’ show or ‘Artists Favourites: Act I and II’. In the latter, which pretty much does as the title suggests, collects a selection of artwork based on artists favourites, Art & Language mounted a text panel on a plinth reading:

In appearing to make a real distinction between artist and curator the organisers have proposed a single negation: “artists are not curators” In fact, the curatorial presence in the exhibition has been doubled. The result is a double negative: the artist is simply not not a curator. And that’s in fact how it is. A different type of work is needed if we are to reshape the distinction and reintroduce a critical negation.

At a recent discussion at the ICA titled ‘The Artist-curator: curators as artists and artists as curators’, where Mark Sladen, Jeremy Millar, Gavin Wade, Siobhan Wootton and Cameron Cartiere proposed a discussion around the potentially interesting question of the discursive limits of curating, not much reasoned discussion of these limits actually took place. Instead each of them discussed their practice suggesting that, perhaps, and lets not get carried away, they were acting a little like artists, or that artists sometimes acted like curators.

What seems to be under discussion in these examples is not the discursive limits of curatorial practice but the ability of a curator or artist to nominate themselves one thing or another. It is, in fact, a discussion about subjectivity and social roles and not about what is proper to curating. It is whether artists can be curators or curators artists. It is a question of transdisciplinarity and agency. This isn’t an interesting enough proposition. As we are aware the strength of art is in its ability to think outside itself. Its ability to constantly form and reform its limits to accommodate the its exteriority. Because of art’s ability to reconstitute itself the proposition that a curator could be an artist or an artist a curator has no cultural value, this isn’t even in play. What, however, I would suggest, is in play, is the question of the limits of curation. What my proposition, come the end of this presentation, will amount to, is a re-think of those limits, what can be claimed for curation and what is outside it. What I’d like to suggest, ever so quietly so no-one quite hears me, is that curation has the same ability as art to re-constitute itself, has the same ability to think outside its discursive limits, the ability to think what is not proper to it. That instead of discourse around transdisciplinarity of artists or curators, I am suggesting that a curator remains in their specific discipline and thinks outside it from within.

What, ultimately I want to suggest is a curatorial practice that has no recourse to art. And we should think here of recourse as a retreat, a return, a run from, a back to, a looking for assistance from. So, what I am proposing is a curating that does not rely on art to do its work for it.

From the press release of Andrew Renton’s show last year, Stay Forever and Ever and Ever, we read the following:

this vibrant group exhibition will bring together works by 11 international

contemporary artists, whose practices involve assembling objects that connote feelings of nostalgia. At the heart of the exhibition is a discussion around the idea that memories and objects are inexplicably linked; that our memories are stored within objects and objects arouse our memories

And from a press report in Artforum:

It was barely under way when Renton himself swept in with the panache of an Italian playboy—Savile Row jacket and good, no, great, shoulder-length curly hair. Striding over to a huge vase of flowers atop a plinth at the center of the room, he tweaked the blossoms. (This turned out to be the show’s central work, de Rijke/de Rooij’s Bouquet II, 2003.) “I’m always telling my MA students that curating is not flower arranging,” he deadpanned. At best, curating a good group show is tricky; at worst, it is summertime program filler. Occasionally, though, a curator has a vision so focused and thought-through that the artworks come together in one glorious, lyric aria.

(http://artforum.com/diary/archive=200705)

Or, say from the press release of Laughing in a Foreign Language:

Laughing in a Foreign Language explores the role of laughter and humour in contemporary art […] it investigates the whole spectrum of humour, from jokes, gags and slapstick to irony and satire

The approach we find in common amongst these and other diverse exhibitions is the curator as some kind of auteur, picking artworks to support or challenge their vision, thesis or theme. In Inconsequential Bayonets Mark Hutchinson and David Beech discuss various descriptions of the curator. One example they pull out regarding the reliance of the curator on artworks is of an email exchange with a young curator:

His curatorial strategy - which is not uncommon - seems to involve coming up with a vague framework and hoping that the artists will save his blushes. When confronted by this he said, “I trust the capability of critical/engaged/political cultural producers to express any thoughts, concerns and solutions regarding the ‘theme’ with their work”.

This recourse or retreat to art is common. In the shows I mentioned briefly above and many others the curator may develop an idea they want to explore, say laughter in different cultures or nostalgia, then select and organise artworks that they see as working with these ideas. This model, however puts the artwork in an anterior position, foregrounding it’s dominance in the cultural field. What this model doesn’t think, though, is the possibility of curating whereby artwork and curating may work collaboratively with no greater value placed on one or the other. Because, no matter how strong a curatorial idea may be, at the final reckoning the artwork takes primacy. This is of course for many number of cultural or economic reasons, the artwork maintains some commodity or exchange value or has become or will become a historically or culturally valuable object. This fetishism, in Marxist terms, of the art object, however, in my formulation must be rejected.

The exhibition Klutterkammer, curated by John Bock at the ICA in November 2004 can provide an interesting discussion here. Within an architecturally cluttered space, replete with crawl spaces, corridors, hay bales, badly built concrete rooms, trap doors, ladder, steps and the like Bock has curated a show of artworks that have influenced him. By, amongst others Matthew Barney, Vito Acconci, Sarah Lucas, Martin Kippenberger, Rasputin, Dr. Jane Rendell, John Maynard Keynes, Raymond Roussel, etc etc. Apprehending work in this frenzied space becomes like encountering a barely remembered acquaintance whilst drunk. One is pushed into such close proximity to the work, and other people, that there is no room given to quiet contemplation. Instead, you are forced into a too rapid dialogue. A review on e-flux website has it thus:

Avoiding a single position that attempts to rationalize contemporary art or thinking, Bock has created an unrestricted installation full of intentional inconsistencies that never aims at reaching any form of conclusion but rather resembles the often confusing realities of contemporary society

However, and this for me is where Bock fell short of what could have been made of the opportunity, the artworks were still given space within which to be displayed. The museum’s responsibility to the work was maintained, one wasn’t allowed to sit on Lucas’ chair, guards were in attendance to prevent an over excited audience repeating the ‘hazardous’ mistakes of Robert Morris’ 1971 Tate show. But, I think the key is that there was obvious spatial distinction between the architecture and the work. The work maintained a certain agency that the other stuff in the gallery didn’t, it was given space. The corridors, crawl spaces, hay bales etc were just support for the work. Just an extended frame. They never became truly work, always acting institutionally as gallery paraphernalia gone mad as it were. One could, but we don’t have space for it here, mount a discussion of the supportive, supplementary nature of this curatorial work in terms of the Derridean figure of the parergon. Indeed we could put this argument to very productive work elsewhere.

As counterpoint to Bock’s exhibition is Christoph Buchel’s Simply Botiful at the Hauser & Wirth Coppermill site in 2006. This enormous narrative-like installation looks like a post-nuclear holocaust construction. Many differing and confusing stories are played out in the plenitude of waste, decay, home furnishings, car parts, factory goods, lorries, tunnels, corridors, etc. As the press release describes it:

Cramped tunnels, claustrophobic chambers and frequent dead-ends induce feelings of panic and paranoia. [Buchel] explores the unstable relationship between security and internment, placing visitors in the brutally contradictory roles of victim and voyeur

Buchel’s total artwork, and we may think of the reference to total war that this brings up, is, of course, not an act of curating, he makes large scale installations in the style of Kabakov or Mike Nelson. Recall Kabakov’s coining of the term total installation:

[One] is simultaneously both a ‘victim’ and a viewer, who on the one hand

surveys and evaluates the installation, and on the other, follows those associations, recollections which arise in him[;] he is overcome by the intense atmosphere of the total illusion

But, Buchel could be used as an interesting model. Within his installation certain objects and artifacts take on mythical status, displayed at times in glass cases, or in cabinets, on tables like Steve Claydon’s objects in his ‘Strange Events…’. They operate for Buchel as signifiers, taking part in his twisted compendium of dislocating narratives. Could they be seen to operate as individual artworks, Buchel both the curator and sole artist of a maniacal group show? I think I just want to leave that question hanging. But the implication of that is that we might just start to think that curation and artwork can operate together in some way.

For the last four or so years I have been developing a questioning of the exhibition through a reading of Levinasian ethics. The idea I kept coming back to was the face-to-face relation, whereby, in this relationship, Levinas posits our absolute responsibility to the other. In Levinas the other is other only if he expresses the absolute other, the divine other. A relation to the other, then, is a relation to infinity, God, the absolute other, ethics is a transcendental relation. Our responsibility to this other then is a matter of ‘unconditional obedience’, ‘trauma’, ‘obsession’ and ‘persecution’. In this relation the other is absolved of the responsibility we are held to by its partially transcendent position. This thought allows us to think curating as a form of responsibility to the artwork as other. That within our relation to the artwork we have absolute responsibility, unconditional obedience, trauma, obsession and persecution; within the artwork is the face of the infinite. There can be no restitution. Which is why, in the final analysis, we allow the artwork the privileged position it craves.

However, maybe the thought of Alain Badiou, can let us think curating a different way. Badiou’s central claim against what he calls the ‘ethical ideology’ of Levinas, Derrida, Spivak and the like is that this type of thought, that posits us as ultimately culpable in front of the other leads to a universalising claim of the absolute respect for otherness. He suggests that “no one can enter the public realm without the declarations of others on their lips”. This Kantian imperative implies, as Badiou suggests, that we agree to organise philosophy and ethics around the prevention of suffering and death. Which becomes ethics as the management of human rights; whereby the other is seen as always in need of protection from injustice. We are ultimately obliged to avoid the suffering of the other at all costs. This negative conception of ethics is a position Badiou cannot accept:

The status of victim, of suffering beast, of emaciated dying individual, reduces man to his animal substructure, to his pure and simple identity as dying …Neither mortality nor cruelty can define the singularity of the Human within the world of the living.

Badiou refuses to accept the position that violence is somehow outside thought, that it is unproblematically conceived as elsewhere. Violence and risk of disaster is instead inherent within genuine thought. And must be conceived as such if we are to understand interpersonal relations. Within the ethical ideology violence comes from outside and we must protect the other from it, within Badiou’s position, the relation to another always already implies a violence of representation. But to exclude the rule of violence from the social and posit it as outside thought, or, as Adorno and Lyotard suggest, that Auschwitz was an “interruption to thought”, we are in danger of radically misunderstanding it. Badiou asserts, for example, that Auschwitz was an expression of political thought and must be confronted as such.

This position is supported by Pierre Saint-Armand in his book Laws of Hostility where he asserts that enlightenment thought, where humanity was involved in an absolute reconfiguration of the social through an understanding of man as infinitely perfectible, towards rationality and reason and away from baser animalistic violence, does not allow a thinking of violence within it. Saint-Armand’s claim is that the enlightenment, and by extension contemporary democracy which is founded on similar principles, refuses to accept the antagonism inherent in human reciprocity and as such misunderstands exchange.

Although Enlightenment philosophers have an idealized view of reciprocity as a transparent act of communication between one subject and another, their writings illustrate its negative possibilities for transformation and complexity. Reciprocity thus mutates into rivalrous strategies; it evolves into competition; it feeds on violence.

What Badiou allows me to think in relation to a curatorial project such as this is a move away from an ‘ethical ideology’, towards an understanding of Badiouian ethics that thinks the violence inherent in social relations. This is not to say that one becomes violent, or does violence to the other, but more that one does not leave these elements of relationality unthought. As Saint-Armand suggests the enlightenment project and by extension a liberal democracy that posits terror, violence, torture outside of the rationality of contemporary exchange, does not allow for the very thing that constitutes social exchange; the violence of the face. Badiou asserts:

The whole ethical predication based upon recognition of the other must purely and simply be abandoned.

So, where does that leave practice? Well, what it allows me to think is a curatorial practice that has no recourse to art. No retreat as such, the artwork no longer occupies the position of absolute other that needs my unconditional obedience. Where curating could act something like a gesture, alongside art. With art. The relation between art and curating, the ethical, as Badiou puts it, is thought as an ethics of situation. Each ethical situation comes to be judged not by some categorical imperative but in the absolutely unreducible singularity of situations.

In this system art is allowed to freely change position with support or frame, the space is subject to radical fragmentation, the artwork will get caught up in these fragmentations. It allows us to think in terms of what we have named, an interruptive curatorial practice, whereby curating comes to interrupt the field. Within this rupture perhaps something other is produced that operates dialectically to allow a rethinking of the discursive limits of curatorial practice. What this type of practice could look like though is still up for grabs.

Torpid Tales: Chapter 11 The Gravy Train 2

The white room with greying floor was odd. Brutal. The ledge aggressively highlighted unbelonging. Puppy eyes adored then flipped and dissolved. Teeth clacked off with parsley to chitter and glitter elsewhere. The way home. At East Croydon a drunk but not drunk was hostile accusing a shopper of banging her bunny and smashing its chocolate head. The carriage emptied. A mile or so from the last station it stopped. A loud hiss behind and a fumble and stench. A bottle half filled. Then. I will cut off the cunt's head. Shouted aloud. To an empty but not empty carriage. We sat. Still. I silent. I waited. Waited for something to happen. Waited for nothing to happen. I got off. I am off the train I said into my phone.

The Fish Needs A Bike

First residency of sorts... themes of
loss, gap, regret, absence, failure, indigestion, bankruptcy... let's get beleaguered... the fish needs a bike...
definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result... Only Five Pounds! Doors At 8pm! Bring A Friend/Colleague/Enemy/Complete Stranger...

Little Cannon, Large Ball

kicking this around as an idea for editing project... following on from the Brighton university meeting and talk of oppositional figures/ideas/sides of a flyer... disruption of conventional forms, rendering them meaningless/malfunctioned... straight man straight man no jokes.... funny man funny man no pathos... where's the punchline? Q: why did the chicken cross the road? A: pull yourself together man

CP

Sentimental Punk

Fiftieth post! unless someone beat me to it... Some stuff of mine AND MR PAUL GRIVELL'S from an exhibition in Brighton last year ... currently a still only but video to follow....
sentimentalpunk:exhibitions
see you tomorrow...
CP

Circuitous Speech

"In her article “Wearing proverbs , ” Susan Domowitz recounts an incident of equivocal communication from the Anyi (Côte d’Ivoire ) :
After divorcing his first wife, this man began seeing another woman. He noticed that she often wore a cloth in which the wild spider figured in the design [. . .], and suspected that she was trying to say something to him. Then he remembered a proverb that says, ‘What one does to cendaa (a small harmless spider), one does not do to bokohulu (a large spider considered dangerous).’ The man interpreted this to mean that he should not mistreat this woman as she supposed he had mistreated his first wife. At this point in his story I asked him if he knew there was a cloth with this specific proverb name. He replied, “No . . . but I knew that pagnes [cloths] have their names.’ His familiarity with this popular proverb prompted him to ask the woman what she was trying to say, and she confirmed that the message of that very proverb was indeed intended for him. "
KT

The Notebook Project

So, I bought a set of notebooks, I know we are all particular about our stationary, but I think I did pretty well with this one, it is neat and plain pages so we can write, stick, draw, scribble etc. TT

Active Art

Pathetic really
http://collect.myspace.com/reloc.cfm?c=18&fuseaction=viewImage&imageID=24069245&friendID=89052909&id=
S

Active Art

The day of our meeting in Brighton I went that afternoon to the beach in Ferring. We were starting a new project and in an inept attempt to intrigue the students I failed. The high tide concealed a cement platform. I walked in fully clothed and the idea was a thin layer of water coating the platform would create the illusion of my walking on water. Sadly the tide was fierce, the platform slippy and the students should have stayed on the beach but instead started to join me in the water. Fearing for my career (having forgotten til this point to do a risk assessment) I had to abandon the demonstration watched by my new Head of Department. Our 'artist in residence' recorded the event thus and I sadly do appear to be paddling and not at all messianic.
S

Active Art

Chris & I became political; it felt good; it is blatant theft but heck am sure CS won't mind
S

Active Art

I am trying to be an active artist
http://www.westsussextoday.co.uk/ws/Someone-will-die-if-nothing.3792287.jp
S

Work

Also, remember our decision to start making and posting?

Lets do it.

TT

Pockets

Re: Steph's suggestion we buy a pocket book and pass it around.

I'm in.

In fact I'll go get one this weekend and see what happens.


TT

Bunny

What I am really trying to say is
sb

Bunny

I really like you all but
sb

Bunny

I feel I need some space
sb

i should be doing elsewhere but have a need to communicate here. Mulling over last meeting and suspect i am not alone in thinking that in order for there to be anything to interrupt curatorially we should convene in practice and properly introduce ourselves. (residency agenda?)

speaking for myself one of the potentially interesting 'things' about this project is the collaborative dimension and how this might extend ideas of individualised/atomised models of artist producers into a kind of networked practice with people coming together to make and play with ideas. some of us are better placed than others in our existing relationships but it would be interesting to extend the possibilities for this (if others are interested) outside of established structures. Isn't that the point of 'reassembling the social'?

C. x

Torpid Tales: Chapter 10 The Gravy Train

It stank of stale beer. The gaze was casual, disinclined on the way up the hill but in the carriage it was frontal. It bobbed. I rolled up and read. A globular noise stirred. I focused on the not too clean refreshment shelf in front. As the smell rose and mutterings began I looked at the small white sachet of salt. SALT it said and below the type a rather beautiful drawing of a salt cellar. SALT. Well now I know.

Saint-Armand the violent saint

Whoever suggested we read Pierre Saint-Armand's Laws of Hostility, thankyou. I managed to get hold of a copy through amazon, from the States, and am finding it excellent reading. Would have been useful three years ago when i was reading Simon Critchley's Very Little...Almost Nothing, which is also great on this.

TT

Titles

Further to our discussion in Brighton two weeks ago Rob and I have come up with two titles with which to title the show. They will work concurrently and separately, so, for example, they will appear on obverse sides of the same flyer, or in the press release be separated by a "and/or".

They are by no means finalised as yet, merely working titles, we would like your feedback as to how you think they operate. They are:

For Those Killed In Ambush

and/or

Wrath Of Being Rejected: Being Shut Out Makes One Lash Out

thoughts please

TT

A is for arrested. E is for envelope.

A stationary stationery order sits on our shared office table. Responsibility for its future progress in the institutional system of procurement is presently undetermined. An inert and passive Bartleby, the half completed order form prefers to stay right where it is - amongst us and between us as a talisman of passive resistance. At some point in the not very distant future we will run out of ink for the printer, and paper for the letters we print on that machine, and envelopes for those letters we are required to send to students telling them they’ve missed another deadline and are off the course.

Prior to that future point of systemic breakdown someone in the office will have to act, or not, to maintain the system.

Human agency is required. The success of the institutional system is dependent on someone deciding to act. Ultimately the potential and real consequences of inactivity will compel someone to grasp the nettle. Feeling the sting of that compulsion someone will justify their actions in everyday terms: ‘just doing my/your/somebody’s job’. Collapse will be averted. There will be no sense of success though. Failure will be felt: the failure to not see something through to its unknown end.



Aims Outcomes

To give up no holder
To put off no folder
To let go no string
To walk out no binder
To sit back no envelope
To stay off no glue stick
To ignore no bands
To deny no rulers
To defer no staples
To back down no tippex
To withdraw no marker
To await no files
To not do no pens
To not not no punch
To let the phone ring no 5 star telephone sachetwipes
Off the hook no job

Attempt (2.1) How to represent? - Robert Dingle

Attempt (2.1) How to Represent? - Robert Dingle

This follows on from matters discussed in the last meeting (18^th Jan 08) regarding how to present the project at Tuesday Meeting, Goldsmiths. Resulting from the discussion we decided not to present anything, but to use the curating studio as a site for a project meeting.

The Ding or Thing has for many centuries meant the issues that brings people together because it divides them…We don’t assemble because we agree, look alike, feel good, are socially compatible or wish to fuse together but because we are brought by divisive matters of concern into some neutral, isolated place in order to come to some provisional makeshift (dis) agreement. If the Ding can be both those who assemble because they are concerned as well as what causes their concerns and divisions, it should become the centre of our attentions: Back to Things!
Bruno Latour, Making Things Public, 2005

The Ding can be thought to designate both, a place for those to assemble who are concerned and what causes their concerns and divisions. It is a relevant place of assembly where issues are represented by those who they affect. If we can assume that an object (or issue) generates a discourse based upon agreements, disagreements, disruptions and disturbances then we should also be able to assume that it is these issues that should be addressed in assemblies, meetings, gatherings, councils etc.

http://www.bruno-latour.fr/expositions/96-MTP-DING.pdf

Ding or (Ding politics) offers a model for representation that allows for a devicive approach towards the presentation and re-presentation of issues.

Manque Manque meeting, Goldsmiths Curating Studio, Tuesday 26th Feb, Time: tba

Unfortunately we were unable to reschedule Tuesday Meeting at Goldsmiths from the 26^th Feb to the 19^th Feb. We were able to have the entire session to ourselves.

Attempt (3.1) Information - Robert Dingle

Failure Magazine

January 23, 1964, Dr. James Hardy and 11 other doctors transplant the heart of a chimpanzee into the body of a 64-year-old man. It's the first time a human organ is replaced with an animal equivalent. The patient dies 90 minutes after the procedure, but the lessons learned from the operation prove invaluable in refining the transplant process.

http://www.failuremag.com/

Attempt (3.0) Information - Robert Dingle

ON FAILURES: Evasive Gestures and Utopian Potentialities

Please find a link for the Serpentine website regarding the talk brought up in our last meeting (Friday 18th Jan, 08).

www.serpentinegallery.org/2007/11/serpentine_gallery_sweatshopth.html

Torpid Tales: Chapter 9 Signifiers

He walked towards me. He drew alongside me. 'Hello Sonny'. I made the wrong decision. I had already decided to ignore him. He knew. He passed. 'Snob'.

Torpid Tales: Chapter 8 Ruminant

Saturday was squandered. There was no point to the horizon. A grey scale hung over a blocked up mantlepiece. Dirty traces of pictures hung too long becoming smokers' patterns on flock wall paper. The only point of light that of a fire effect gas fire in the local pub. The carrier bag however was exciting. It lay in the gutter. The mystery. The preoccupation. I pressed against the bag reluctantly. It was nearly over. A letter headed sheet of paper gave everything away. Now we all could tut and point at number 10A. Sordid really. I hated myself and then ran and called the police.

Torpid Tales: Chapter 7 Cillit

It seemed so eminently simple. A clipping had been saved. A utilitarian wet room was proposed. Basic materials. Simple attention to detail. Minimal. The architect immediately started to throw up choices: of surface of porosity and of finish. Internal walls to be wrapped first with chicken wire. The plasterers arrived. Liverpool fans the Monday after a match. They spent an age smoothing the mix over the floor making an invisible slope. Four weeks later becoming over familiar with a plastic camping toilet that flopped its contents into the local loo, the shower was turned on. Water gathered on the top of the cement. It continued to gather. The plasterers returned muttering and began again raising the height of the floor another inch or so. Four weeks on. This time the water seemed to know where to go but it still gathered in a small unobliging pool. Furious. The simple lines of the space began to irritate and the walls crack. What to do? The architect ever resourceful suggested masonry paint in a cement colour. The man at the paint shop to his credit laughed. Cement colour paint to paint cement. A sheet of toughened glass was positioned to stop the water and direct it. Apart from the irritation of stubborn limescale traces it seemed to work. The room began to function. The wet room was damp. The simple lines of the space patterned with the marks of stubborn mould. What to do? Cillit?

After Laclau - Tom

In Emancipation(s) Ernesto Laclau asserts:

The Universal is absolutely essential for any kind of political interaction, for if the latter took place without universal reference, there would be no political interaction at all: we would only have either a complementarity of differences which would be totally non-antagonistic, or a totally antagonistic one, one where differences entirely lack any commensurability, and whose only possible resolution is the mutual destruction of the adversaries.

Re: Uzi - Tom Trevatt

Legislated antagonism (who legislates? would be the question here) aside, is hypothetical murder legislated for by anonymity?

Discuss

Balls in Courts

A wishy-washy liberal Vulgar Marxist writes:

Laws of Hostility sound dandy, though laws tend to be legislated in the interests of those in power, albeit under the rubric of alleged consensus. Conflict models r us.

And politics aside (or at least in abatement), when I read the phrase ‘mission statement’ (especially in ‘ironic’ quotation marks) I reach for my gun. I know that’s just the Deleuzian fascist in me, and thankfully this isn’t America so I don’t have a firearms licence and only own an Uzi replica air pistol for shooting the cats when they shit in my garden - yet, there but for the grace of hard earned and precariously maintained parliamentary democracy, go all of us.

And to maintain the shoot ‘em up theme I ask that we consider the ‘Der Kunstlump’ polemic from Grosz and Heartfield. primarily because it’s a very fine word to say.

Interested to see if MM develops mostly in order to exploit the merits of failure in pursuit of success via marketable biographies (as proposed in Howard Singerman’s ‘Art Subjects’). Or can it come to embrace/celebrate/relish/endorse failure at a more profound level concomitant with Beckett’s demand to ‘fail, fail again, fail better’?

Answers on a CV/post-it.

A Note on Gapping - Tom Trevatt

For Consideration in regards to the presentation on 26th Feb

Indeed a certain requirement is that we present a body of research/information that is as communicable as possible to an audience/public. What, of course, is inherent in communication is the very communication of communication's lack of absolute communication. The gapping always already produced by communication is, I believe, the interesting part of what we are dealing with, not necessarily producing a performance piece that represents non-communication or lack of communication. Of course the presentation becomes performative, in JL Austin's sense, in that its saying performs the presentation of it. The question is, how do we present, pass on, speak, whilst also speaking of the lack inherent in the very act itself? I think this is how the performance of the presentation should go. If however, there is a move towards a 'highjack' of this form with a performance element, as suggested in a previous comment, then i'm all for it... In the name of difference. The highjack, or whatever it comes to be known, the antagonism, whatever, needs to be fully theoretically realized too, otherwise it could just look bad, theatrical etc.

Also, its 2.50 in the morning and i need to sleep now.

taking positions

the birthing of MM is proving an event so far..with everyone bristling with brio, rabbiting on, tome thumping and generally jostling for position ....so far the dynamics do not disappoint only the number of contenders...i'm having conversations regarding MM with people which seem to demonstrate something about the 'Laws of Hostility' (Pierre Saint-Amand) being theoretically proposed as key but which appear to be unfolding in any case as people react /or not.

If we are not attempting to achieve consensus (ironically agreed) and as the plan is to have no plan but rather mutate within a field of difference then the constitution of that field (participants) will be determined not only by the laws of hostility, predicated and arguably implied by the terms of reciprocity, but also by natural (de)selection....that said it is still early days and the ways and means of participation are not yet fully established....

The next face to face meeting (friday 18th Jan) may prove to be an interesting one.

Attempt (2.0) How to Present? - Robert Dingle

Attempt (2.0) How to Present?

The work this attempt proposes, is to initiate and encourage a discourse that addresses an invitation we have received to present the project: Manqué Manqué at Goldsmiths College, curating studio* (26^th Feb 08).

The premise for the invitation to participate in Tuesday Meeting (a weekly meeting organised by MFA Curating students at Goldsmiths), is centred around the opportunity to present current projects engaging critically with those on the course, while concurrently providing an instance to cultivate the project further.

So, how to present?

Based upon Henry Petroski’s comparison of the PowerPoint presentation to a modern Plato’s cave, in his book entitled Success through Failure, I wanted to propose a beginning:

The allegory of the cave updated to modern times might be set as follows. A group of people seated in a cavernous room, restrained by a prevailing paradigm. The chairs in which they sit are rigidly attached to the floor and to each other, the images on the screen before them rivet the group’s eyes to it. They are watching things that are being projected from a booth in the back of the room, which they sometimes forget they are in. The images on the screen are accompanied by commentary coming from a disembodied voice issuing from speakers around the room. The images and words are sharp and bright and are the reality of the moment. They fade in and fade out like shadows on a night of patchy clouds.

^ * The curating studio is a room measuring approx: W-13ft x L-18ft x H-10ft. Within there are three tables, each measuring approx: W-3.5ft x L-5ft x H-3ft and around 18 chairs. The room is separated by a step running across the space horizontally. The tables and chairs take up one half the space within the room. There are windows opposite the entrance and immediately to the left (thought these do not receive much light). We are able to hire equipment for the media centre, should we request to.



Keven 1

The emasculated inspector
A strange tear welled and an impending sense of vermicelli. Who is this con of whom I have heard oft? In such rudite company I fear a part. A stand in. Elevated maybe to that of extra. If I should be so bold as to flatus quietly, discretely, will my companions note the nakedness of my indiscretion or ignore it. Can I say? I have vertigo.

Attempt (1) - Robert Dingle

Attempt (1)

Having worked collaboratively with Tom Trevatt over the past two years, we have produced, to date, three consecutive projects: would silence the apology, lighting projects and untitled (equivalence). Manque Manque is to be the first exhibition we have collaboratively curated that has originated from an invitation, as opposed to arrived at under our own initiation.

Although our working relationship has been the result of a similarity, a comparison of interests, we have, as often as possible sought to avoid what results in Hegelian dialectics i.e. a consensus. Working to avoid a total synthesis, a complete reduction of the gap between individual difference, we have attempted to establish our personal interests within this project.

This means instating an imperative that maintains a sense of antagonism, in a comparative sense described by Laclau and Mouffe in their understanding of a fully functional democracy.

A democratic society is one in which relations of conflict are sustained, not erased. Without antagonism there is only the imposed consensus of authoritarian order – a total suppression of debate and discussion, which is inimical to democracy.

Claire Bishop, Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics, October Magazine, Oct 2004

It is through reinstating a sense of antagonism that I see the idea of an ‘interruptive curatorial practice’ being developed and maintained. As Tom would come to view this practice as ‘a practice that comes to perform the gap, comes to fragment temporally or physically the experience of viewing art’, which is something that we have developed together throughout our projects, I would also extend this further and suggest that an ‘interruptive curatorial practice’ is dependant, for its success, upon the work and the context in which it is shown.

What is at stake should this gap close? Reading from Levinas it is the idea of difference and, in particular, his understanding of ‘the other’ itself, which is at stake. Contending that Western metaphysics and indeed Western civilization, ‘exhibits an often horrific propensity to reduce everything fortuitous, foreign and enigmatic to conditions of intelligibility.’ the West makes constant attempts to understand what remains outside of cognition in attempting to bring the subject under control.

Although I believe in the sense of radical democracy that Laclau and Mouffe discuss and that Tom proposes we adopt, what happens if we all agree or consent upon communicating in this fashion? We would have to agree, not by a process of consensus because after all, would an agreement to not form consensuses fall back in upon itself?

If you agree/disagree then write/don’t a response/nothing here/somewhere else.

It is from this beginning that my concerns lie. It is not my intention to provide an unmitigated list of interests or prerogatives for this project, but rather to treat this as a space between dialogue, others and my own, which I can inform concomitantly as the project develops. Working through the idea of lack, failure, gapping and attempts I am proposing a series of undertakings to come to terms with Manqué Manqué.

Robert Dingle

Short Proposal for Manque Manque - Tom Trevatt

The work this proposes will come to be known as (not just) Manque Manque. The project is derived from an invitation from a group of artists to curate an exhibition and from my pre-existing interest in the idea of ‘the gap’. This project is in collaboration with Robert Dingle, but we are keen to maintain our individual and separated trajectory through it, therefore we shall not be working together to write these ‘mission statements’. It is also to be noted that due to space restrictions certain arguments have needed to be unavoidably condensed.

Manqué: Fr. having failed, missed, or fallen short, esp. because of circumstances or a defect of character; unsuccessful; unfulfilled or frustrated (usually used postpositively): a poet manqué who never produced a single book of verse.

[Origin: 1770–80; <>

Manqué Manqué is/not an exhibition.

Considered as the (not-quite) beginning or initiation of a continued series of work (projects, exhibitions, events, talks, presentations, performances, acts and conversations), Manqué Manqué will come to mark, not a teleologically defined, goal orientated, project, but a laboratory of sorts. The laboratory proposes an amorphous, changeable, unreliable, unresolved, imprecise, array of experiments in contemporary art practice.

The project will be informed by a parallel series of discussions and conversations led by those involved and supported by a selection of texts, resource material etc. We envisage accumulating an expanded group of interested parties around the ideas we are exploring, the output of which will be made available for everyone to access and add to, a forum providing a plurivocal discursive space. So far approximately ten artists are involved, but we are keen not to limit it to just artists, but to include people from many disciplines.

My interest in the idea of gapping, spacing, lack or failure, or synonyms thereof, can be worked through from a number of angles. Lacanian subjectivity (the split or castrated subject), Derridean différance, Deleuzian notions of the fold (specifically through a reading of Leibniz and Foucault), Žižek’s parallax gap, the fold in Mallarmé (an infinite abyss), Simon Critchley’s ‘clôtural reading’ (through his reading of Derrida and Levinas), Nancy’s being singular plural and his idea of an inoperative community, Laclau and Mouffe’s radical democracy that relies on antagonism and Ranciere’s ignorant school master that must constantly reinstate the gap in knowledge..

As I am working in collaboration with Robert Dingle it is also important to problematize that relationship. To engage in a rethinking of collaboration I am developing a concept of ‘minimal collaboration’, which is not to suggest that I minimally collaborate or that I collaborate minimally, but that I am interested in a collaboration that maintains difference, that does not result in Hegelianism, but maintains through a motion similar to Adorno’s negative dialectic, the tension between the collaborating parties. The gap that operates between collaborators must be constantly reinstated to allow for difference to operate as such, an eradication, or shortening of this gap can result in what Levinas calls an ethical violence. It is through a process of maintaining the gap, through embarking on what I would name an ‘interruptive curatorial practice’ (a practice that comes to perform the gap, comes to fragment temporally or physically the experience of viewing art), that I would be able to rethink the collaboration inherent in curation.

It is important that the processes by which we communicate and operate as a group work as a radical democracy, in Laclau and Mouffe’s terms, not by a process of consensus, which would follow a Hegelian model, but whereby antagonism is allowed to stand. Therefore, I am suggesting a radical re-think of the possibility of group identity thought through Deleuzian models of becoming, the rhizome and assemblages.

We have approached one gallery, the Wallis Gallery in Hackney Wick, for a space to work in. This site is particularly interesting as it is due for demolition in 2009 for the Olympic development. The project, then, comes to operate as a critique of the claims to success and achievement that the Olympics make.

Torpid Tales: Chapter 7 Endings

Today a leaflet drop was abandoned half way. Freezing north wind and an odd sensation caused by wrestling with one too many pvc doors. The ones with the pert built in letter box lined with impenetrable brush. Started to think of anatomical studies and ping pong balls. Concerned and bruised retreated. Thought instead of getting an allotment and growing rocket.

Torpid Tales: Chapter 6 The Omega Man

Mid afternoon. Out of interest and keen to explore the area enter Mortimers’. The small dining room has a low ceiling and dark wood panelling. The menu mainly mains and puddings. The room is near full with three of four tables occupied. Everyone inside is asleep.