Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Thursday, January 18, 2007
Thursday, November 23, 2006
R.S.V.P. to Siún from Deborah and Phil as „
Thank you for the invitation to converse
„ would like to accept.
The gift is received in its place „ leave a pause
An intake of breath before the exchange begins
silence is creative, scripted and punctuated ...
„ would like to accept.
The gift is received in its place „ leave a pause
An intake of breath before the exchange begins
silence is creative, scripted and punctuated ...
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
An Invitation to Phil and Deborah from Siún
Phil, Deborah – within Triptych you engaged in a process that is of interest to me because of what I like to talk about… but have not explicitly done. ‘Conversation’ is a key metaphor within my work at the moment and relates to my interest in what is shared in meaning-making.
My starting point was and is that we are responsible for the meanings that we make. And yet this misses something. Meaning is not a private affair. It emerges and is contested in the space between – between people, between viewer(s) and artwork, between reader(s) and text.
This interest draws on lots of lovely ideas, including those of Mikhail Bakhtin and a sense that to speak at all is to be in conversation because there is a contest for meaning within language itself. And yet a tension emerges between this sense of always being in conversation and the difficulty of listening (let alone being heard); between being ‘always in conversation’ and mostly engaged in exchanges that are ‘not quite a conversation’.
Collaboration, then, offers an opportunity to be in conversation… to challenge my ideas through practice.
But what conversation?
...Well, I will be glad to hear of what you were thinking when you expressed an interest in collaborating with me Phil… so tell me more.
...A caveat – a hindrance or a help? – I am interested in knowledge practices but mine is not a drawing practice… (I am remembering our remit, ‘the knowledge practices of drawing’)
...Out of the blue? At a talk last week I noted the phrase ‘the gift economy of contemporary practices’… and wondered: in relation to collaboration with Phil (and Deborah if she is interested)? A number of years ago I expressed anxiety about the place of my work in the artworld and a man in the audience offered an intriguing remembrance: an idea from ancient Greece (?) whereby if you made something there was a particular spot at which you could leave it and if someone else valued it, they could take it and leave something else in its place; a gift economy.
‘the Gift’
…abundance, generosity and love; giving and receiving without debt. A vital concept. There is the dream of an original plenitude – whether Eden or the womb – and there is the promise of a world made good, of generosity beyond reciprocity.
Yet the question of debt remains. Not simply because we are not yet good, but because debt abides as saviour at the heart of both dreams. There was, or we imagine, a plenitude of which we are now bereft. But to be in receipt without the possibility of giving in turn is deathly, a forfeit of being. There will be, or we hope for, a world in which love prevails. But love, a giving with no question of debt, installs non-equivalence as a principle, and non-equivalence includes the unfair.
Debt, the concept of consequences that installs the figure and promise of equivalence, is an important context for love. And love is what saves equivalence from boiling down to the barrenness of ‘I give so that you will’.
It is the gift – a giving without expectation, a receiving without debt – that illuminates humanity, and debt that holds us to a true course.
Either side of a table,
with the sandwiches our mothers’ gave us.
Each was shared, the sandwich
passed over and back ’til it was gone.
Both reluctant
to consume the final morsel.
Revelling in communion.
(Extract from A Tale of Bread, 2005)
My starting point was and is that we are responsible for the meanings that we make. And yet this misses something. Meaning is not a private affair. It emerges and is contested in the space between – between people, between viewer(s) and artwork, between reader(s) and text.
This interest draws on lots of lovely ideas, including those of Mikhail Bakhtin and a sense that to speak at all is to be in conversation because there is a contest for meaning within language itself. And yet a tension emerges between this sense of always being in conversation and the difficulty of listening (let alone being heard); between being ‘always in conversation’ and mostly engaged in exchanges that are ‘not quite a conversation’.
Collaboration, then, offers an opportunity to be in conversation… to challenge my ideas through practice.
But what conversation?
...Well, I will be glad to hear of what you were thinking when you expressed an interest in collaborating with me Phil… so tell me more.
...A caveat – a hindrance or a help? – I am interested in knowledge practices but mine is not a drawing practice… (I am remembering our remit, ‘the knowledge practices of drawing’)
...Out of the blue? At a talk last week I noted the phrase ‘the gift economy of contemporary practices’… and wondered: in relation to collaboration with Phil (and Deborah if she is interested)? A number of years ago I expressed anxiety about the place of my work in the artworld and a man in the audience offered an intriguing remembrance: an idea from ancient Greece (?) whereby if you made something there was a particular spot at which you could leave it and if someone else valued it, they could take it and leave something else in its place; a gift economy.
‘the Gift’
…abundance, generosity and love; giving and receiving without debt. A vital concept. There is the dream of an original plenitude – whether Eden or the womb – and there is the promise of a world made good, of generosity beyond reciprocity.
Yet the question of debt remains. Not simply because we are not yet good, but because debt abides as saviour at the heart of both dreams. There was, or we imagine, a plenitude of which we are now bereft. But to be in receipt without the possibility of giving in turn is deathly, a forfeit of being. There will be, or we hope for, a world in which love prevails. But love, a giving with no question of debt, installs non-equivalence as a principle, and non-equivalence includes the unfair.
Debt, the concept of consequences that installs the figure and promise of equivalence, is an important context for love. And love is what saves equivalence from boiling down to the barrenness of ‘I give so that you will’.
It is the gift – a giving without expectation, a receiving without debt – that illuminates humanity, and debt that holds us to a true course.
Either side of a table,
with the sandwiches our mothers’ gave us.
Each was shared, the sandwich
passed over and back ’til it was gone.
Both reluctant
to consume the final morsel.
Revelling in communion.
(Extract from A Tale of Bread, 2005)
Monday, November 13, 2006
Welcome
The process sub-theme is proposed as a meeting point – one way of making contact with triptych people who share your interests so that you can begin to figure out a form of exchange and ‘output’ that will serve your interests (as individuals and as a group of people with a common focus).
To get things started you might make a posting that captures the nature of your interest in process.
To get things started you might make a posting that captures the nature of your interest in process.
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