A Conversation
Jack Brindley – We can understand the ‘conversational’ as a device to explore
the relationship between things, a curated contingency whereby each
comment remains specific to itself, yet interacts with a larger dialogue.
For example, a symposium is an open forum for information transfer
as much as it is an area for the development of that information. This
can take place anywhere and in any format, I guess it’s interesting for
us to think about this relationship of how the social sphere of art now
takes place online as much as it does in galleries.
Tim Dixon – Within each of these contexts there are structures, traditions and
rules that are obeyed or broken. The symposium is a highly constructed
space where myriad ideas and concepts are brought to bear upon one
another under a specified, given context; the exhibition or the art
event are similar in this respect. Each element within it affects how
the others can be read.
We talked before about the idea of creating a context within a
context; about temporary and temporal spaces. This reminds me of
the notion of parataxis; the grammatical act of placing things side by
side. Parataxis in poetry can be utilised to create stark contrasts that
disrupt the readers’ flow in order to bring new illumination to the
given images or terms.
Jack Brindley – Exactly, and I think that this is explored beautifully by
Zizek in ‘Parallax View’, where he describes critical understanding as
being when there is a faulty connection in a network; a disruption of
its smooth functioning or a ‘short-circuiting’ gives us a criticality. A lot
of this seems to revolve around ideas of contingencies and morphing
contexts, and it is how these things connect with each other which
provides a dialogue.
