[-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 62, Issue 4

[Christina McPhee]

John has touched on something really  interesting that resonates with  
my experience in the last nine years or so.  I kept thinking in a  
feminist , post-structuralist way
about how not to represent but rather to provoke, irritate, and  
emulate.  Verbs moved my practice not the shibboleths of what must be  
shown/not shown.  Ironic result:
an impure abstraction!  Should be kitsch, but is it? isn't it?  WTF is  
it?  A provocation. Because the work kept keeps 'slipping out from its  
apparent or closed structures' my practice
indulges visual styles not ideologically 'pure' , but in fact that's  
where it works best, when its just at the edge of 'wrong'.

http://pharmakonlibrary.blogspot.com/2009/12/manik-art-macht- 
frei-5.html  (thank you MANIK)  and...
http://version.org/videos/show/1  (thank you Caleb and Jordan...)


Christina McPhee
http://christinamcphee.net


On Jan 6, 2010, at 6:00 AM, John Haber wrote:

> n the abstract at least, and in museums, I'm left deeply pessimistic  
> in
> a way that much of this thread is, I think, not handling.  I just  
> happen
> to be at Duke University this week, where the Nasher Museum is a  
> largely
> empty tribute to family money. In galleries, though, I often come away
> elated.  There is still a break with "purity" that opens possibilities
> without pandering.  One can see it in a revival of abstract painting
> that is not all that abstract, as well as wonderful multimedia and
> photography projects.  Still, it's not as if these efforts disrupt the
> system, fail to reflect it, or miss being absorbed by it.
>
> All that's why I felt it helpful to introduce the slippery  
> approaches of
> post-structuralism.  I'm not wedded to them.  I'm more political and
> formal myself.  For me, irony is still a term with the meanings it had
> in New Criticism!  However, these approaches, like indeed good old
> irony, describe how art by its nature slips out from its apparent or
> intended closed structures.  That describes what went wrong, but also
> offers grounds for admiration and hope.
>
> Thanks for bearing with such a long, spontaneous draft.  I was  
> composing
> it in my head in the middle of the night.