[-empyre-] "queer tactics" and naming as "un-queer": think about several responses today

[Robert Summers]

Virginia, you wrote "ambivalence and contradiction are imporant
positions [within queer work]." I think we can begin to articulate
what "queer tactics" may be, and I do not mean to imply that these
"tactics" are set in stone -- only ever temporary and situational,
which reminds me of Foucault's "aesthetics of existence" -- which are
not a set of rules and regulations.  Again, I am called back to
Deleuze (what's up with me and dead white, French philosophers?) who
stated we need to find "new weapons" (and I completely agree with the
problematics of terms like "weapons" and "war machines").  I am also
reminded of what Guattari stated in an interview (I think): "It isn't
to find out what is gay [read: queer] IN William Burroughs's writing,
but to think how William Burroughs's writing can be read gay [read
queer]."  I think this shows a (possible) "queer tactic" -- and I
think Barthes's reading practice (as in _Camera Lucida_) is another
"queer tactic" -- it refuses to find "queer" IN something, but to show
how something can be situated in a way that activates "queer": am I
making _any_ sense?

On another line of flight, I asked a body artist about "queer," and
she said that it should penetrate (I am paraphrasing her, of course),
and I thought it was a rather masculinist term.  I suggested lick or
glide, and then said why not "bite."  Brilliant, I thought, of course
-- an erotics and a violence, a marking.

Now, I am back to our good ol' boy Nicolas Bourriaud.  I think that
Bourriaud (in the art-historical/curatorial drive to sell, commodify,
classify -- in which the latter is never in a Sedgwickean way of a
"nonce-taxonomy") takes the BITE out of one gay (maybe one could say
"queer") artist: Felix Gonzalez-Torres.  Bourriaud takes the BITE out
of the candy: those ruthless pieces of candy, which ravish me.

On the last line of flight for today (or 1:00 AM PST on Wednesday) I
agree with Christina that there is much going on (perhaps on an
unconscious level?  perhaps not? and historically, indeed) with
Bourriaud and his "creation" of a "movement," but is this not part and
parcel to all art-historical/curatorial practices (all of art
history's institutions)?  So, is art queer then?  So, is relational
aesthetics queer then?  So, is realtionality queer then?  So, is queer
queer then?  What "makes" something "queer" -- is that even possible
to do?  Perhaps we are asking the "wrong" questions, but I DO NOT know
what the "right" questions are.  Perhaps an overhaul of art
history/criticism/curatorial practices is in order, but this is a lot
to get into ...

Just some thoughts from the various emails today ...

Thank you for your time, Robert

Robert Summers, PhD/ABD
Lecturer
Art History and Visual Culture
Otis College of Art and Design
e: rsummers at otis.edu
w: http://ospace.otis.edu/robtsum/Welcome