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