[-empyre-] Re: empyre Digest, Vol 23, Issue 22

blakkbyrd <blakkbyrd@yahoo.com.au> · Tue, 31 Oct 2006 09:11:46 +0100

hi ryan
we are out of time.  If you would like to continue this discussion  
I'm happy to do so. Perhaps elsewhere?

On 31/10/2006, at 2:00 AM, empyre-request@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au wrote:
And i certainly wouldn't try to challenge the "right" to question,
but in a discursive space like empyre, the responsibility that comes
from producing scrutinizable "objects" is on all of us, not just the
"artist" of the month. we can all question the "motives" "intentions"
and "effectiveness" of a project described here, demanding
"evidence," but those questions are likewise open to challenge - as
to their relevance and the ideological position that they stake out
in their rhetoric.

I have been careful not to state an ideological position. The work  
was offered for critique, so I critiqued it.  I found it offensive  
for a number of reasons, which I have stated.  There are innumerable  
shops in amsterdam that retail pornographic or misogynistic material,  
t-shirts, postcards etc, I am trying to identify how this work is any  
different, and most importantly, whether the audience can depict the  
difference..
i'm still unsure of why you began with an assumption about the work
in question's politics that you merely sought to confirm for the rest
of us through rhetoric.
the author is not only dead, s/he took the audience out as well. last
time i checked, there still wasn't a survey impartial enough to gauge
"audience" reception.

The first month that I was in Europe, I saw a contemporary art  
exhibition in Copenhagen. There was a text based conceptual work on  
the wall. In Danish, no English translation.  The only access I had  
to the work was to assess its calligraphic form. It raised a lot of  
issues for me about the gap  between the artist's intent and the  
reception of the work and has revised the way I look at {assess} an  
artwork.  There was a major retrospective of conceptual art in  
Belgium, same problem.
 You can't assume that the audience is informed about the artist,  
the theory or how the piece fits in to the rest of their work.   That  
is a good reason to examine any art 'object' in isolation. If you  
have to read a fifty page artist's statement to access a work, you  
are not looking at a work of art, you are reading a book. I saw a  
show at de appel on the weekend that illustrates this beautifully.   
There are some instances where this is appropriate.
i don't question the relevance of the questions nor their political
importance of the questions. i do question whether these questions
are productively engaged in this instance. especially when that
assumption is based on a theory that the project is a marketing
exercise. is that analysis sustained by looking at the rest of
deGeuzen's work?

All art is a marketable commodity.  This point tends to be overlooked  
in an atmosphere of adequate funding. If you apply commercial methods  
of assessment, it soon becomes apparent why some artists are more  
'successful' than others irrespective of artistic talent.
I'm sorry that you find my questions non productive, I have a  
commercial background and find these methods of analysis a useful  
augmentation to critical analysis of art. I'm surprised that you dont  
consider them as a matter of course.
i would maintain that the political question is one of affect, not
effect. and i don't know that the quantifications you're looking for
get us to that matter. i thought i addressed this earlier, but know
that these discussions can be pretty circuitous.

you challenge the
appearance of marketing in the project by taking on the role of a
administrator (a grant administrator at that), asking for "factual
evidence" of the project's efficacy?

How is retailing a product and selling site advertising not  
marketing?   I think an analysis of the site's traffic would be  
fascinating.
Would it's effectiveness as a
marketing exercise validate or invalidate it for our purposes here?
perhaps this gets me to the questions i initially began with... we've
been arguing over "facts" but what is our "concern"?

To ensure that we take responsibility for the consequences of our  
actions? ie

the responsibility that comes
from producing scrutinizable "objects" is on all of us

I dont claim to have the answers to these questions, I just raise  
them to provoke thought, if not discussion.

blakkbyrd

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