“Winnipeg is not a city, it is a form of irony”

The Feminine

What might “feminine” art-writing look like?

The straw man fallacy as a problem of art criticism

A “straw man” argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent’s position. To “attack a straw man” is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by substituting a superficially similar proposition (the “straw man”), and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original position. (—Wikipedia, for lack of a more concise definition)

It is an all-too-common strategy found in art criticism: the subversion of an art historical “telos” by (mis)representing then disrupting the linear model that has thereby been established in order to move the discourse in another direction. While the outcome can be positive, the method is suspect. There are numerous examples of the seemingly willful misinterpretation of works of art or the blatantly reductive explication of an (already reductive) art historical narrative intended to propel an argument in the other direction or substantiate claims one might be tempted to make about certain (other) artists’ works.

I want to catalogue some of these fallacies here because they are a common aspect of a certain type of critical discourse, with which I am engaged and with which I am often frustrated for its inability to reconcile itself to the lived reality of artists’ practices. These fallacies are perhaps a by-product of the academic imperative to create categories and movements, and to articulate periods of history (which, I dare say, can come to resemble a kind of free-floating “brand identity.”) One might just as easily acknowledge these enterprises to be fraught from the get-go, belonging to a self-replicating system that is on some level profoundly ill-equipped to honestly and directly address works of art. If not, why has the discipline of art history changed so little during a period (say…the twentieth century) when art itself has changed so dramatically.

Some common fallacies—which have been transformed into “received ideas”—that I see regularly in the art press:

- The idea that Conceptual Art was somehow anti-material because of its critique of the object/art as commodity (see: the profoundly materially based practice of Lawrence Weiner, so called “founder of Conceptual Art”)

- The idea that artists associated with Abstract Expressionism intentionally reinforced a certain heroic, patriarchal, and transcendent individualism (moreso than other art movements before or after? look at the art market today!)

- The idea that the “theatrical” critique of Minimal Art (à la Michael Fried) and any discussion of the notion of its “presence” or “immanence” are mutually exclusive (why must so many essays on Minimal Art begin with a refutation of Michael Fried?)

More and more, I am feeling that the entire enterprise of writing about art needs to be reinterrogated. In the 70s, and 80s, coinciding with the translation into English of many key texts, much art-writing was taken up with the emerging literary and linguistic fields of structuralism and semiotics and, later, deconstructivism. Perhaps we could envision a new moment where the discourse surrounding art looks to the writings of artists themselves for new forms and a way out of the current critical impasse. (See Paul McCarthy on Dan Graham elsewhere on this blog or Dan Graham on anything.) Just a thought.

Glenn Gould records Scriabin

Glenn Gould records Scriabin Désir (Op 57 No. 1): Part 1

Here Gould is experimenting with recording technologies by miking the stage and piano in various places as he plays Scriabin’s Desire. As was often the case, his manner is agitated and slightly manic but his playing is graceful and ecstatic. I am intrigued by the ways he insists on acknowledging the experience of music in a mediated form. (Can’t recall what year he stopped performing in public but I know he was engaged with recording technologies for much of his career.)

This gets me thinking about publishing as a way that writing and art are mediated in order to reach a reader. While it is obvious in most cases that a reproduction of a work is not the work (save for certain conceptual works), one has the sense upon reading the words that one has experienced “the work” and yet the reception is affected by the physical form — the qualities of the book or manuscript, the typography, the paper, or even the different ways a text can look on computers with different monitors.

Even in live performance, music makes room for variation; one does not often expect a song to sound exactly like the/a recording when it is performed live. And many musicians can play a given composition or “cover” a song. Does thinking about this yield anything meaningful in the realm of writing and/or art? I suppose Fluxus scores would be an example of something similar (see Alison Knowles Newspaper Music in an earlier post) but they reference a form of musical notation in order to accomplish this.

Another thought comes to mind: what would it be like to choreograph a dance based on his gestures as he plays? They are exquisite.

If you click and watch it on youtube you can see Part 2, where he “engineers” the recording. And here is a great article from the LA Times on Gould’s prescient experiments with technology and music.

Rodney Graham, Halcion Sleep (1994)

Rodney Graham, Halcion Sleep, 1994, 26 minute video, variable dimensions.

Went to a talk featuring the wonderful artist William Leavitt, who referred to himself as a “narrator.” Came home thinking about narrative and Gérard Genette, which led me to…Rodney Graham.

Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us

This clever little animation seems relevant in thinking about how a concern for language and materiality might fit within this particular paradigm?

N. E. Thing Company

This is so great: a hockey team sponsored by N. E. Thing Company. Though I’m a longtime fan, I did not know about “the team” before seeing it as part of Lucy Lippard’s archives.

Language and materiality

I have always been interested in the materiality of language and the possibility for addressing that in different forms of writing—poetry (the obvious one) but also various kinds of critical and theoretical writing. It consistently surprises me that some who make a living writing care very little for the look and feel and sound of the words they use (not to mention the socio-cultural framework through which they signifiy), as if the words are just an expedient and convenient mode of transport for their ideas to lodge themselves in the minds of readers. While such writers may insist on looking at other things as material constructs—like art, for example—they may have a blind spot when it comes to their own writing.

I haven’t come to any crashing insights regarding this issue but I do enjoy thinking about what new forms of writing a full consideration of its materiality might yield, especially in light of digital media. And I enjoy thinking about the words I’m using to write right now.

Paola Pivi, installation view

Italian artist Paola Pivi, who won the top prize at the Venice Biennale contemporary art show in 1999, has opened her first major solo exhibition in her hometown of Milan, Italy. The exhibit, shown in this picture taken on Friday, Nov. 17, 2006, which is running through Dec. 10 at the Old Warehouse of Porta Genova Station, comprises three works: her Biennale-winning piece “Untitled,” an airplane flipped upside down meant to evoke an animal lying on its back, and two works conceived specially for the Milan show: a living sculpture of 46 white animals and 2,000 coupled objects, ranging from test-tubes to tractors. Pivi, who lives in Anchorage, Alaska, was born in 1971 and is considered one of the leading figures in Italian contemporary art. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni)

courtesy daylife

This is one of those instances where I don’t necessarily find myself in agreement with the artist’s own explanation of the work (for instance, I don’t think seeing an airplane upside down would make me think of an animal lying on its back). But Paola Pivi’s gestures are compelling enough on their own that they don’t need verbal justification, just as a poem does not need language around it in order to exist. It simply needs to act on the reader.

Something else I appreciate is that, using a literary analogy once again, the works do not clearly belong on the side of metaphor (objects representing something else) or metonymy (objects being what they are). They seem to agitate uncomfortably between those two realms.

Thoughts about Alison Knowles, Newspaper Music

I realize that I so often post works of one kind or another that captivate me but I seldom say why, as if it should be obvious, when of course it is not. And the whole purpose of this space is to articulate things in a way that one would in a notebook, whose archival function takes place on many levels — i.e., remember the work but also remember the thoughts you had about the work. And later: revisit the work and then revisit your own thoughts about it. They are two different systems.

The reason for posting Alison Knowles’ Newspaper Music is that it combines, in a single elegant gesture, so many incredible things. On first glance, there is the classic strategy of elevating what is at best ephemeral and at worst soon-to-be-garbage to the (“permanent,” revered, historicized) status of art. But I feel that has been done so often and that is not what it really interesting about this work.

First is the sound of the newspapers fluttering. Framing or incorporating that sound as part of what we understand to be the performance opens up the possibility that all newspapers fluttering may in a way be music. It’s a very Cagean idea but I also see it as related to Glenn Gould. Sounds and music are where you find them — and the act of listening plays a very important part in creating them. The real question is one of attention. If you dedicate yourself to listening and accepting this as” musical,” it can be. And with dedicated listening, you may even find structure there, where you might have otherwise perceived only randomness. (Leading one to the obvious question: Is randomness a kind of structure? If so, how does it differ from the absence of structure.)

Second is the vocalization of the news…a form of prose, if ever there was, that is surely not intended to be read aloud. An odd disjunction results. How clumsy the words sound, in any language, making us aware of the qualities of each individual voice, as much as the content of what is being read.

Third is the performance of what exists — is happening — in the so-called “real world.” What happens when newspapers are lifted from their informative function to become a de facto libretto. Where does that position the actions and events they communicate?

I could go on and on, and someday may. But for now I felt some explanation was in order. Of course, the wonderful ambiguity of this whole blogging enterprise is that I have no idea if anyone else will ever read this. (I like to think no-one will, but that’s me.) But I needed to put it in words for myself, as much as anything. I find it hard to hold on to those kinds of thoughts — I need to commit them to language so I can extend or deepen my thinking. I want to move on but not to forget.