We Find Wildness

Let’s put it this way: I have little interest in the position of autonomous authorship that I obviously inhabit, and I have absolutely no interest in making it the subject matter of my writing or even present it as something special. So when I’ve written something that, in the process of writing, I believe I’ve never read anywhere else before, I tend to try and find a section that says the same thing before I did. Then I replace my so-called “own” with the so-called “other”. To me it is more important to place myself within a network of thinking and thought-paths rather than trail after the old-fashioned chimaera called ‘artist’ that propounds one has produced something unique and new. Which means that I prefer the quoted text to “my own” but I make a bow towards the sources by stating more than once where they do come from. The quoted idea may come up again about 40 pages later, this time without any hint towards the source, but that’s because I rely on the readers to notice “Ah, here we’ve got someone like Hubert Fichte or Jack Smith again. But they were introduced some time before.” I do not really use quotation marks. Simply because I do not believe in the enclosed autonomy of the Other. I regard that as open as anything else. That’s why I follow a form of writing that was propagated by feminists such as Hélène Cixous, who describes feminine text as openly accessible from the top and the bottom, from both sides, from the front and the back. – Direction Artiste – Appendix – A Conversation with Thomas Meinecke, David Lieske at Lovaas Munich, November 16, 2017 – December 16, 2017

19 November 2017 - exhibition, hyperlink, text - Comments Off on Let’s put it this way: I have little interest in the position of autonomous authorship that I obviously inhabit, and I have absolutely no interest in making it the subject matter of my writing or even present it as something special. So when I’ve written something that, in the process of writing, I believe I’ve never read anywhere else before, I tend to try and find a section that says the same thing before I did. Then I replace my so-called “own” with the so-called “other”. To me it is more important to place myself within a network of thinking and thought-paths rather than trail after the old-fashioned chimaera called ‘artist’ that propounds one has produced something unique and new. Which means that I prefer the quoted text to “my own” but I make a bow towards the sources by stating more than once where they do come from. The quoted idea may come up again about 40 pages later, this time without any hint towards the source, but that’s because I rely on the readers to notice “Ah, here we’ve got someone like Hubert Fichte or Jack Smith again. But they were introduced some time before.” I do not really use quotation marks. Simply because I do not believe in the enclosed autonomy of the Other. I regard that as open as anything else. That’s why I follow a form of writing that was propagated by feminists such as Hélène Cixous, who describes feminine text as openly accessible from the top and the bottom, from both sides, from the front and the back. – Direction Artiste – Appendix – A Conversation with Thomas Meinecke, David Lieske at Lovaas Munich, November 16, 2017 – December 16, 2017

Michael E. Smith at KOW, Berlin, September 16 – November 12, 2017 via Contemporary Art Daily

11 November 2017 - exhibition, hyperlink - Comments Off on Michael E. Smith at KOW, Berlin, September 16 – November 12, 2017 via Contemporary Art Daily

Art & Politics: Alfredo Jaar, Frieze Talks, October 8, 2017

3 November 2017 - art, hyperlink, web - Comments Off on Art & Politics: Alfredo Jaar, Frieze Talks, October 8, 2017

For 10000 gestes, I envision a choreographic forest in which no dancer ever repeats any of the gestures, each of which will be shown only once and will vanish as soon as it has been executed, like an ode to the impermanence of the art of dance. This shower of movements, which could have been a data project generated by lists of digital parameters, will be instead generated in an artisanal way, using the very bodies of the performers, in an absolutely subjective way. (…) 10000 gestes constitutes a choreographic anti-museum aiming to explore the means of escaping the instinct and the strategies of preservation at work in the activity of a dancer… It will be matter of exploring the possibility that one gesture is never completed by another, and that, if 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, or 25 dancers come in contact, each still executes a gesture distinguished from those of others through the exclusion of any symmetrical movement: in this piece, it is impossible to shake someone’s hand. The collection thus constituted is also an anti-collection, since no choreographer worthy of the name would risk incorporating 10000 gestes in his or her score, and this totality cannot be comprehended other than by the idea that generated it. – Boris Charmatz about his work ’10 000 gestes’ (2017)

23 October 2017 - hyperlink, web - Comments Off on For 10000 gestes, I envision a choreographic forest in which no dancer ever repeats any of the gestures, each of which will be shown only once and will vanish as soon as it has been executed, like an ode to the impermanence of the art of dance. This shower of movements, which could have been a data project generated by lists of digital parameters, will be instead generated in an artisanal way, using the very bodies of the performers, in an absolutely subjective way. (…) 10000 gestes constitutes a choreographic anti-museum aiming to explore the means of escaping the instinct and the strategies of preservation at work in the activity of a dancer… It will be matter of exploring the possibility that one gesture is never completed by another, and that, if 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, or 25 dancers come in contact, each still executes a gesture distinguished from those of others through the exclusion of any symmetrical movement: in this piece, it is impossible to shake someone’s hand. The collection thus constituted is also an anti-collection, since no choreographer worthy of the name would risk incorporating 10000 gestes in his or her score, and this totality cannot be comprehended other than by the idea that generated it. – Boris Charmatz about his work ’10 000 gestes’ (2017)

Neil Beloufa, Sans titre, 2010, 15 min https://www.beauxarts.com/videos/larchitecture-des-souvenirs-avec-neil-beloufa/

21 October 2017 - art, hyperlink, video - Comments Off on Neil Beloufa, Sans titre, 2010, 15 min https://www.beauxarts.com/videos/larchitecture-des-souvenirs-avec-neil-beloufa/

If I close my eyes at any point during the day, under any circumstance, I can clearly visualise images that have been etched into my memory. Sometimes they are important ones that bring comfort, that are capable of transporting us to a moment in our lives that makes us feel safe. I like to think of them as a sort of vital pedestal; a base to lean on for support in order to carry on walking. – Juan Canela, Walking with Images, August 2017

18 October 2017 - art, hyperlink, text - Comments Off on If I close my eyes at any point during the day, under any circumstance, I can clearly visualise images that have been etched into my memory. Sometimes they are important ones that bring comfort, that are capable of transporting us to a moment in our lives that makes us feel safe. I like to think of them as a sort of vital pedestal; a base to lean on for support in order to carry on walking. – Juan Canela, Walking with Images, August 2017

wfw weekend #430

14 October 2017 - hyperlink, music, web - Comments Off on wfw weekend #430

V.S.O.P, Pentti Monkkonen at High Art, Paris, September 9 – October 12, 2017 via Contemporary Art Daily

10 October 2017 - exhibition, hyperlink, web - Comments Off on V.S.O.P, Pentti Monkkonen at High Art, Paris, September 9 – October 12, 2017 via Contemporary Art Daily

Options open to painting have in the recent past appeared to be extremely limited. It was not that everything had been done, it was rather that the impulses to create which had functioned in the past were no longer urgent or even the one-to-one relationship experienced in representing a scene or figure in paint – none of these acts was credible in the way it once had been. Abstraction appeared to have been used up; expression through shape and color was very familiar and had become meaningless. The process of flattening out the canvas had reached an end; Formalist painting has soaked color into the canvas and moved shape to the edge presenting an almost but not quite unbroken field. We no longer believed in the transcendency of paint and saw little reason to use the form of painting for making art. In the middle sixties surprise had been expressed that I was still using a brush. – Marcia Hafif, Beginning Again, Artforum, 1978

4 October 2017 - art, hyperlink - Comments Off on Options open to painting have in the recent past appeared to be extremely limited. It was not that everything had been done, it was rather that the impulses to create which had functioned in the past were no longer urgent or even the one-to-one relationship experienced in representing a scene or figure in paint – none of these acts was credible in the way it once had been. Abstraction appeared to have been used up; expression through shape and color was very familiar and had become meaningless. The process of flattening out the canvas had reached an end; Formalist painting has soaked color into the canvas and moved shape to the edge presenting an almost but not quite unbroken field. We no longer believed in the transcendency of paint and saw little reason to use the form of painting for making art. In the middle sixties surprise had been expressed that I was still using a brush. – Marcia Hafif, Beginning Again, Artforum, 1978

Agnes Martin, Writings / Schriften (English and German Edition), Kunstmuseum Winterthur and Edition Cantz, 1991

29 September 2017 - art, hyperlink, publication - Comments Off on Agnes Martin, Writings / Schriften (English and German Edition), Kunstmuseum Winterthur and Edition Cantz, 1991

Thomas Julier at Tithe Hall Ernen and Youth Club Ernen, July 9 – September 24, 2017 via contemporary art daily

17 September 2017 - exhibition, hyperlink, web - Comments Off on Thomas Julier at Tithe Hall Ernen and Youth Club Ernen, July 9 – September 24, 2017 via contemporary art daily

The author must give up on aping genius. Rather show the author as ape, the author as idiot. Don’t have the hubris of being the comedian. You are the straight man in this farce; the universe is the funny man. So don’t be silly, cute, crack jokes, or play coy, but allow hilarity, a cleansing painful laughter that splits your sides and your heart. Follow your own foolishness like tracks upon the sand. – Lars Iyer, Nude in your hot tub, facing the abyss (a literary manifesto after the end of literature and manifestos), The White Review , November 2011

11 September 2017 - hyperlink, text, web - Comments Off on The author must give up on aping genius. Rather show the author as ape, the author as idiot. Don’t have the hubris of being the comedian. You are the straight man in this farce; the universe is the funny man. So don’t be silly, cute, crack jokes, or play coy, but allow hilarity, a cleansing painful laughter that splits your sides and your heart. Follow your own foolishness like tracks upon the sand. – Lars Iyer, Nude in your hot tub, facing the abyss (a literary manifesto after the end of literature and manifestos), The White Review , November 2011