MEETING 28.5.97/18.6.97  

the power of hesitation

any comunication is never flush with reality

when ever something comes from my body

i am interested in the hesitiation

you type then send then bang you get hesitation

it goes out into the ether

assemblage

in the hesitation is there time to think

objective rationale logic

it is not

There is no obscene in itself says Klossowski; that is, the obscene in not the intrusion of bodies into language, but rather their mutual reflection and the act of language which fabricates a body for the mind. how do you put hesitation in to technology. 2

but pornography as a code half of it is hidden you think you see every

thing but you actually see nothing

you cant have one system for things to operate you need two

the coding and the decoding

the gossip voyeur

the experience is fabricated on

it is not the mechanism it is not always the language of the metaphor

Marx explians that in order to grasp the nature of the commodity, in which, 'a definite social relation between men, ... assumes, in their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between things', he must take his analogy - fetishism - from, 'the mist-enveloped regions of the religious world'. 3

it is mainly in the society in which we live that the words have the power.

leap of faith

more than just a structure

This is why one does not name something without also denouncing it to a spirit, which serves as a strange mirror. 4

the copy is also seen as in relation to the original

mimicry as opposed to copy

duplication

the ultimate boundary is death with mimicry you become part of the background

obsessively geared to knowing

the mind seems to be nowhere but you are somewhere

the process of putting it into place

letting go of the theory it come back

to link those two things is having time to have space and time

differential speeds

variations of intensity

times of the year are tied in with cultural events

one of things that they argue against where everything is routinised

system and what we are looking for is a way out.

you become part of a routinised system

new ways of making meaning:

making new ways of making meaning

pushing through the boundary of self

These are pre-individual and impersonal singularities - the splendour of the indefinite pronoun-mobile, communicating, penetrating one another across an infinity of degrees and an infinity of modifications. Fascination world where the identity of the self is lost, not to the benefit of the identity of the One or the unity of the Whole, but to the advantage of an intense multiplicity and a power of metamorphosis , where relations of force play within one another. 5

in hysteria the body makes its own code

its the bottom line

the bottom line is pain

i f you are traumatised by things you are shocked

pain is before all that

Susan Sontag, 'Against Interpretation' supports the abstract expressionists idea that their work delves into the subconscious and therefore cannot be reduced to language.

but Lacan of course suggests that the unconscious is structured like a language.

how does that then relate to the idea of fabricating a glorious body for the mind

the question of intelligibility: if inextricably linked, then all imagery and language are enmeshed

version of the 'truth' -

most people are unable to locate themselves

need to position something

whenever you take a stand, you get shat upon.

trying to find a location, in terms of an art practice

David Smith calls for a "return to origins, before purities were befouled by words". David Smith's stuff does work .6

it doesn't necessarily follow that an artist has to explain their work...

is it important to talk about the consequences of an artist's work rather than them talking about the work itself.

the impact of the linguistic turn on art practice a. art education b. art grants

what does talking about the work do to it?

the Abstract Expressionist's refused to talk about the work at all.

they didn't need to say anything as they had the unequivocal support of Clement Greenberg.

contemporary practice much more conceptual, more implicated with language.

if visual and language systems are inextricably meshed what does this mean.

we have to come to terms with what they see - is that then the role of language?

knowledge and power and the role of validation.

the double problem of turning art into language and then using the language to validate the art.

what do we make of it in terms of the imagery we produce

how the body is made into text via language in the technoworld.

screen based experience needs to be articulated

what are the particular qualities of a medium

computer has become part of our language structure, part of our subjectivity.

we are being constructed and affected by the technology.

what of technologies that you can't see, but it just appears.

we're not looking it just appears.

the reactions by artists are often reactionary, rather than being proactive.

if we are turning things into binary codes, if we are putting it on the internet it is global.

art is not about saying it then but the materials speaking

"all paintings of quality ask to be looked at rather than read".7

what lives in our mind we need language to talk about.

what is the hit we get

conceptual art gives a different hit - a hit related to the intellect.

what is the trigger - emotional hit or preconception....or can it be withheld, delayed, hit later.

do we scan or track an image as we read a text.

or do we take it in as a totality?

and what cultural elements and subjective elements kick in

sight and survival.

I something is threatening, it grabs our attention

the work of Richard Serres and Damion Hurst's shark in a tank and fly insectocutor.

the question of life and death and representation

is it the initial hit, or can works like that maintain their intensity?

come face to face with some awesome experience - a relation to the sublime.

compared say with Stellarc's Hanging Works

e.g. the essay on Damion Hurst and the Sublime

does make one reflect on one's own mortality.

images that touch the collective unconscious

but advertising has subverted the role of art as shocking. renewing, disturbing to engage the viewer in the world

so we come back...what is the role of the artist and the role of contemporary art practice?

Damion Hurst's work is not an image or representation it is the thing 'itself'.

but does advertising exist outside the magazine - given that in Australia we tend to rely on art reproductions is there any difference in the impact?

cross over of high art and popular culture - Damion Hurst's work actually crossed over - written about in the tabloids

read my lips (Fremantle Arts Centre)

the show wasn't about text,

it was actually about books.

a thousand different ways to look about a book

language is a simulacra of what it 'is'

it can never be the same

"the study of art remains an afterthought to the spontaneous experience of viewing a work of art". 8

we make distinctions because of the context (magazine or art gallery), because of the sayso of experts and commentators.

context is not new

20's, 50's, context is critical in the construction and understanding of work the showing of takes away

i don't talk about the work

the work speaks for itself.

place it into a specific work to

the statement comes more important than the work

the art object has lost its agency because of language

because of the proliferation of

we can no longer see

we are polluted

when we commodify something it is too large for us to grasp

so hard for us to distinguish art

can't be seen anymore

why bother

art collapses into life; not a lot

art is only life because its different from life

about attitude

attitude is life.

is part of everything

is part of the general

totally flattened out - splat

but for alex it still is an experience.

Important to talk about the consequences of artwork.

arts WA Grants application

when you apply for a grant have to take into

small business model

why should the work exist?

who defines what is and has value?

for whom does the work have consequences?

a lack of responsibility

racism

not the thing itself,

but rather what are the consequences

i think every artist has to stand up for their work,

but then the action can become the work

rather than the work itself

in the Moet and Chandon,

the Winning work has become much less important and powerful than

the construction of the work as 'untouchable'....the context has changed.

the work is far more exciting because of the labelling than itself.

important show - whether you like it or not, these people have been selected and promoted

but it is as much about the galleries who are supporties

the stamp of authenticity of the gallery that promotes the artist.

it isn't the art

its the institutional buffer, ivory tower concept.

where do we go from here?

can one encourage practice that has effects and is creditable without any further debate

can you create an environment in which such work is encouraged

is a complete mind shift created

need a proactive base

started off regional, but obviously not regional....though we are specifically located.

who is your audience.

how do you reach your audience

what about the website?

art and language and the historisation of text and how language creates history and how they took that language back into practice.

re substantiates practice

new ideas it takes a long time to ingest through

Tied to it I think is the prioritising of something the art milieu widely calls 'feeling' over something it calls 'thinking'. This is a classical dualism. The hegemony of the visual is also intricately linked into this dualism. The still-dominant model of the artist is a 'feeler' rather than a 'thinker' us exemplified in thousands of art school conversations every day. Such a model is a kind of subjective lock out, prioritising introspection over public exchange, a classic cartesian device.9

moving from conceptualisation to figuration in thatcherism

Sometime in the earliest work of Art and Language, practice was constituted of moves which were non-visual and converged upon the anti-visual sometimes it was a kind of polemic against 'the visual'.10

if art and language were able to put there work up in the net would it

change the way there work is realised historically

given that we are projecting our selves it is almost realtime is our faith in history

is suspect is not truth

I want the record to state that this fiction is part of the story,

just as perths history is fictionalised for the individuals agenda there is no real time accounts for want happens here this record attempts to put this into order.

the colonisation and the gang mentality of Art and language is the same as the way Americans can say they invented abstract expressionism

was there any place to go beyond conceptualism

there is always an pendulum swing between the dualism's but there is always connections

In other words, it could be thought that Conceptual Arts project was not to make a new art of ideas, but rather to restore modern art's broken connections with the critical intellectual politics of all or any previous art and culture.11

pent up item

atkinsons departure managerial representation of the visual is no different form the way Melbourne artists suddenly become part of the national direction of the art

it has been no different for performance artists who stopped doing there thing and have know become painters .

mike parr suddenly stopped doing installations because they don't earn money .

artist are programmed to make art market forces reduces everything to the lowest common denominator, group shows should not be funded,

corporate sponsorship is perhaps the future it is hard to generate a market

in what kind of ways could we make it more attractive to corporations its got to have returns the benefits they want must be concrete

if we talk about work it should be the broader context

it is a huge responsibility

local issues to be put into a context

theoretical issues should be located

you voices that are nameless saying things

how ever types in there is the total collapse of the individual in to the collective

this is what happens what does it mean

quite contradictory coming in

stating identities

recongfiguring the author

there is no identity there is no place

out of things we pick certain things

otherwise

echo

on the physical level of what we are doing and the ramification of what the group is doing

i am interested philosophically

where things become set concretersised

digital has ability to moved around

is it healthy to give something a life of its own that can burst out

you make up the rules as you go along

is the website formal creating continuity

it is like a nightmare

its not embellished it is not refined

what is happening is a reconfiguring of author

what are the implications of the site

people have respect for people who are speaking

electronic

What is 'real' is not the image of the artist but our relationship with the painting. Once the object is seen and grasped in that first glance it is reflected in our imagination, like a shadow cast before us. The image exists in our mind independently from the object itself, but our presence before the painting gives it meaning. 12

cult of the curator

curator wanting to create a poetic point of view

Deaken trys to create a uniqueness

card that was dealt to wipe out any criticism of the work of art

art is about communication art is a sign

its cautionary in how we have been caught up with theory

It is the spectator who can bring unity to an exhibition by seeing with imagination and memory, and who can discover within him or herself a series of equivalents for what has been seen. It is the viewer who changes the objective reality of the work ofart into a mental image. 13

like bob hopes film 'Son of Paleface'

that something else is the unknown

when you say things it comes from somewhere

Nietzsche, that history being the rational and dispassionate account of the past, is a sign of the death culture. Culture is rooted in sacred sites, sanctuaries built out of myth.

reconcile contradiction

reconcile opposites

placed the work like her grandmothers attic

making the work ereverant

the work became part of a figmant of the curators imagination

loss of self because of the search

editing the surf

there are those people who work from a centred position

looking back and making connection

isolation not solitude

they presume that the work comes to life through context

there is an assumption that the viewer stupid

take away the relationship between cause and effect

minimalist exhibitions worked

1 Gilles Deleuze. The Logic of Sense trans Mark Lester The ALthone Press London (1990) p187 2. Ibid p 201 3. Victor Burgin The death of Theory p176 4. Gilles Deleuze. The Logic of Sense trans Mark Lester The ALthone Press London (1990) p184 5 Ibid p197 6. Gibson, A.(1990) 'Abstract Expressionism's Evasion of Language' in Shapiro, D. and Shapiro, C. Abstract Expressionism: A Critical Record,Cambridge University Press. 7. Ibid 8.Ibid 9.Terry Atkinson The Siren Song of Dulaism Art Monthly Nov 1996 p8 10. Ibid p9 11.Ibid p 13 12.Barry Barker, Looking into the Shadow.