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
as a small or large unity, can be cited, put between quotation marks;
thereby it can break with every given context, and engender infinitely
new contexts in an absolutely nonsaturable fashion. This does not
suppose that the mark is valid outside its context, but on the contrary
that there are only contexts without any center of absolute anchoring.
This citationality, duplication, or duplicity, this iterability of the mark
is not an accident or anomaly, but is that without which a mark could
no longer even have a so-called ‘normal’ functioning.
Stan Douglas – I hope to be surprised by the meanings that these works
can generate, so that by putting the right materials together, they can
do more or result differently from what I expected. This process is opposed
to metaphorical constructions, where artists expect to control
to metaphorical constructions, where artists expect to control
the meaning of a work by defining how it is to be read symbolically. I
want to work with what an image means in a public world. So when
people bring their understanding of how images work, and how things
are in the world, they can do something completely different from what
I anticipated when I put them together.
Jack Brindley – It feels that a lot of what we are talking about is of networks,
how concepts, objects and events become interrelated ideas that fill
out an endless space of enquiry piece by piece.
Tim Dixon – Curating, like working with ‘readymades’ or found material,
always involves a process of extraction from one network and placement
into another.
Nicolas Bourriaud – The artistic question is no longer ‘What can we make
that is new?’ but, ‘How can we make do with what we have?’ Artists
today program forms more than they compose them.
Jack Brindley – Sure, its not a linear dialogue, and art’s dissemination—because
it takes place in the social sphere—relies on a reflexive framework for
ideas to be handled and passed around. However with this idea of the
network there is also a dissociation that takes place. There is so much
content being passed around through an unconditional online presence
the ebb and flow of aesthetics has sped up dramatically. I can’t help
but feel that there is something lost or altered in translation when the
space for communication becomes so physically removed.
Kazys Varnelis – With connection there is also disconnection, and networks
can consolidate power in the very act of dispersing it.
We gather at the communal watering hole as we always did; only
now we don’t reach out to those around us. Instead, we communicate
with far-flung souls.
Seth Price – Distributed media can be defined as social information circulating
in theoretically unlimited quantities in the common market, stored
or accessed via portable devices such as books and magazines, records
and compact discs, videotapes and DVDs, personal computers and
data diskettes. Duchamp’s question—‘Can one make works which are
not “of art”’?—has new life in this space, which has greatly expanded
during the last few decades of global corporate sprawl. It’s space into
which the work of art must project itself lest it be out-distanced entirely
by these corporate interests. New strategies are needed to keep up with
commercial distribution, decentralisation, and dispersion. You must
fight something in order to understand it.
Jack Brindley – Thats very interesting, there has always been a battle between
art and the institutions that house it, however with the mass proliferation
of material via the internet it has become very difficult to be subversive
of it as a platform. In a way, I suppose artists need to be aware of the
system before they can operate within it, once you’ve opted into it,
how do you approach a criticality? The internet has promoted freedom
of speech but there is a fundamental aspect of diplomacy which goes
along with this.
John Kelsey – Parrhesia is where speech becomes free by assuming the risk of
telling the truth from below and daring to offend power, its unauthorised,
uninvited discourse. Parrhesia is not only the paradoxical authority of
speaking without authority, it is the idea that language is not separate
from life and production.
Jack Brindley – Absolutely but in today’s networked, ‘rhizomatic’ culture
where there are a multitude of different answers, is truth really still
what were searching for?
John Kelsey – Well, Foucault’s return to this concept was of course compelled
by his interest in the fact that power today requires freedom of expression
on the part of its subjects in order for it to function. He was questioning
the possibility of practicing truth in an age of exacerbated, enjoined
discursivity.
Jack Brindley – So, all forms of communication are in some ways political?
John Kelsey – We suspect that branded, funded, sponsored worlds may still
somehow cling to the possibility of dismantling or evading the discursive
situation they have been called upon to produce. How can we make
speech free again in a context where critique and freedom of expression
are always already in the process of being recuperated by Capital?
Tim Dixon – Hito Steyerl has tied the neoliberal restructuring of media
output together with the marginalisation of radical and experimental
cinema. Works of great cultural import became obscure almost to the
point of disappearance with the rise of the multiplex cinema. Works
then end up circulating as what she has called ‘poor images’—low res
copies of copies that are passed from individual to individual first as
VHS copies and now online. We have to question what is enabled by
this loss of preciousness about quality? Sites like UBUweb and Youtube,
or torrent files and peer-to-peer networks have given new life to material
that was scarcely available before.
Hakim Bey – We’ve spoken of the Net, which can be defined as the totality of
all information and communication transfer. Some of these transfers are
privileged and limited to various elites, which gives the Net a hierarchic
privileged and limited to various elites, which gives the Net a hierarchic
aspect. Other transactions are open to all—so the Net has a horizontal
non-hierarchic aspect as well.
Jack Brindley – Culture is a complex system, like an ecological chain, both
feeding on and into itself. The traditional modes of dispersing art have
drastically altered and the way we access art and has had a fundamental
impact on its relationship with capital and where it sits in relation to
society. The increase of low-cost authoring tools such as blogging sites
on the internet have allowed many to produce, publish and disseminate
knowledge and culture. As a result there is a blurring of the boundaries
between the producer and consumer and the public and private.
Kazys Varnelis – The public, formally seen as audience is now integral to the
process of production and distribution, regardless of the extent to which
their power to shape the process has been accepted and integrated by
existing authorities.
Tim Dixon – This is true in the gallery as well; increasingly the spectator is
invited or obliged to participate. Works are not complete until activated,
openness of interpretation has given way to an openness of use—even
an openness of form.
Artists do not see their work as an end point, but the start of a
dialogue, where the work completed by the curator’s decision or the
discourse that exists around it. Philosophy finds itself in a similar
position, the book becomes the locus of a website. Discourse and
feedback are instantaneous.
A Conversation, Open File, 2012