Critcal practice

October 1st

Something we’ll work on together to produce some traction in this conversation
Start with the notion that you are all making art

Why make art question is important if it’s already being asked in the practice.

If you’re not making art already – what are you making
If it’s not necessary to ask set it aside

If it is necessary – IT IS NECESSARY
That necessity speaks to that notion of what we want to get into

What is the difference between that which is critical to the practice and a critical practice

Why make art is not a first principle but rather a question in play

Moving away from criticism because there is something generative about critical as crisis, urgency, etc…
This implies a position which is not stable or secure – and this is different than a position which is so stable and outside that it can offer criticism.
This is the problem
Instability that is generative of the necessity to make art.

Is there a relationship between making art and crisis.
That crisis could be generative of art or it could not be
But it is a worthwhile thing to explore

Critical thinking is winded at the top of a hill and as we pass it, it is wheezing and telling us to push on.

Developing critical thinking faculties isn’t our primary means of engaging our question.

A lot of critical thinking was about the unfixedness
But the language of the theorists or interpreters became fixed
Lacan, derridda, barthes,

Inadequacy of critical language does address something that has a heartbeat.
We are thinking throught he language we have and the practices we have available and trying to find a valuable, productive “alliance(?)” between them.

We have a dislocation between the modes of discussion and the need to work.

When artists can no longer be in dialog with their work and around their work – it fundamentally disrupts the circuit around which contemporary art has been built.
Artists have been asked to be in dialog with a market – market not a good conversationalist – answers back with only one answer.

Is there something like a Pavlovian discourse in the art market.

peter
A disappointment with what art can be
I can barely tell the difference between artforum and vogue

Kathrin
Sometimes you can’t differentiate between the ad and the art

Peter
I was totally befuddled

In art school you – john knight said the purpose of art is to engage the world critically

That mode itself can become ossified

This is as “mediumistic” as being a painter

Searching for a place to have a conversation
Warhol, koons, engage the market

Cletus
What we’re doing here
Art does something
Does art do anything –can you say art does art
One other questions is art a parallel discourse,

Greenberg made a very strong and industrial case for artists to specialize
His argument for modernist painting could have been given to any car part maker in Detroit in 1951
Get known for one thing in modern culture – it’s how you survive
Kosuth said – art should just do art

Barry
What’s the point in engageing in a conversation where the participants are etched in stone

Peter
Art is a space which is different than any other space you can occupy
It isn’t business or social science- it engages in parts of these but it moves differently and uniquely

Barry
Inherently within the rules of art – is the rule that it can never be fixed
As soon as art is assigned a fixed meaning it ceases to function as art

What is the means by which meaning is fixed
(if it’s ever actually fixed)

peter
does anything ever get fixed?
I was interviewing sociologists
When the catholic church in Europe started to spread catholocisim – paeganism was alive and well so what we have now is an amalgam of Catholicism and paegaanism

Barry I would agree that maybe there are voices who say that things aren’t fixed

Cletus
Art is made in the unfixing of meaning
Art is occupying this space which is distinct from other fields because it is enagaged as an agent of unfixing

Kathrin
I think we have to shift the position
I think it’s not so much an authoritative voice
How the art object functions – the art object functions as an authoratitive voice or tries to fix meaning




This leads back to criticism

The modes of production in contemporary photography
Criticism literally fixes meaning


Work that works

This actually depends on a misrecognition
I know what that is and then it’s not

Early greek thought on art

Episteme - knowledge - law
Techne -craft of the making, degraded because it wasn’t making law
Poesis means transformation – where poetry comes from- used in medicine transformation

Episteme is most noble
Law – criticism

You can never remake the ready made

If you think of the ready made – the mode of the ready made is choice
I choose to put this here – the difference between choice and making – doesn’t matter if you made it - you chose it

The written piece that accompanies “fountain” explains it – Duchamp's apologia perhaps

is there a repetoire of meanings or techniques which enable artists to unfix meaning

The lesson from kosuth is that the artist’s choice gives meaning
That’s not duchamp

Choosing vs. making

Not choosing not making

Antagonism between choosing and making
The power of that statement – of that work
Is that duchamp establishes a relationship between making and choosing

That’s why klein groups – looking at krauss and jameson is helpful
What’s important for us is that there is nothing important or necessary or rational about the initial binary relationship
On our part there is a necessary relationship of two terms
In the case of krauss
Landscape ------- architecture
Work ----------play
Unpredictability------------crime
Non crime--------------predictablitity

Dilemma – problem between two parties
Trial between three
Quarrel implies four

Nothing necessary about relating choosing to making but that’s where duchamp went

Choosing← →making
Not choosing ← → not making

How do we work out of the notion of crisis