"How much time is it going to take to wade through this?"
May 5, 2023 2:23 AM Subscribe
"The richest possibilities for research-based installation emerge when preexisting information is not simply cut and pasted, aggregated, and dropped in a vitrine but metabolized by an idiosyncratic thinker who feels their way through the world. Such artists show that interpretative syntheses need not be incompatible with a decentered subject and that an unforgettable story-image can also be a subversive counterhistory, packing all the more punch because imaginatively and artfully delivered." from Information Overload by Claire Bishop [ArtForum; ungated]
By and large, I hate this shit. I use the word “shit” advisedly, as this stuff is the piling up of modern media excreta. If this is the future of contemporary art, the museums and galleries should be closed. We swim in media constantly, and this ego-stroking move toward incoherence as aesthetic is fundamentally anti-human. It is as terrible as the ergodic dreck created in other media, whether primarily or secondarily, in order to make people suffer.
The article was fascinating, tho, so thanks for posting, chavenet. I particularly appreciated the way the author dove into the artists motives and practices, in ways I haven’t when I’ve encountered this sort of work in art spaces. Professionally I’m a research librarian, and while I engage in some things that resemble my work outside of “working hours,” I have zero interest in this as art and hope it vanishes from the artistic landscape as soon as possible.
posted by cupcakeninja at 5:04 AM on May 5, 2023 [3 favorites]
The article was fascinating, tho, so thanks for posting, chavenet. I particularly appreciated the way the author dove into the artists motives and practices, in ways I haven’t when I’ve encountered this sort of work in art spaces. Professionally I’m a research librarian, and while I engage in some things that resemble my work outside of “working hours,” I have zero interest in this as art and hope it vanishes from the artistic landscape as soon as possible.
posted by cupcakeninja at 5:04 AM on May 5, 2023 [3 favorites]
I skimmed the article because the art visible was so boring I had no interest in letting it have any more art space in my brain. Plus the article basically opens by saying how tedious this kind of art is. It's the exact kind of thing I never enjoy seeing at a gallery, the kinds of things that make people snort and say "huh, I would never make that," since they could, but why would anyone want to have had made that and make someone else have to see it? This article is one of those deals where the author has more to say and is better equipped to say it than the artists and art they're writing about.
posted by GoblinHoney at 7:59 AM on May 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by GoblinHoney at 7:59 AM on May 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
Organizing your bookshelves by color has a more profound artistic statement and edginess than these efforts. I expect the first one was kinda cool in a ok-wtf way. lol.
posted by sammyo at 8:10 AM on May 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by sammyo at 8:10 AM on May 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
Claire Bishop is a fantastic art critic/historian. Their work on participatory art has been super illuminating for me, especially as an urban planner who thinks about public engagement.
Thanks for posting this! Excited for the forthcoming book Disordered Attention: How We Look at Art and Performance Today.
posted by spamandkimchi at 9:48 AM on May 5, 2023 [2 favorites]
Thanks for posting this! Excited for the forthcoming book Disordered Attention: How We Look at Art and Performance Today.
posted by spamandkimchi at 9:48 AM on May 5, 2023 [2 favorites]
hmmm? Artforum ...
"The richest possibilities for research-based installation emerge when preexisting information is not simply cut and pasted, aggregated, and dropped in a vitrine but metabolized by an idiosyncratic thinker who feels their way through the world.
okay, first sentence almost makes easy sense without one needing to grab for a dictionary or whatever, though I am kinda wondering what "preexisting" is accomplishing, and ummm ... what's a vitrine? I mean, I just looked it up (it's a display case) ... but why not just say display case? Which is not intuitive because I've never in my life seen anyone drop something into a display case. Placed yes. Also positioned, arranged, located, situated, installed.
Such artists show that interpretative syntheses need not be incompatible with a decentered subject and that an unforgettable story-image can also be a subversive counterhistory, packing all the more punch because imaginatively and artfully delivered."
second sentence quickly completes the death-due-to-artspeak. "interpretative syntheses"? "decentred"? "story image"? Not that all of this is meaningless. It's worse really. It's making a point but doing so via a sluggishness that, if it isn't deliberate (ie: satirical), then ... well, I don't know. But it's pretty loaded to be so fabulously bland (obtuse?) while wanting art to have more punch and imagination in its delivery.
All of which gets more annoying when one suspects that the essay in question really has something valid (essential even) to say. At least that's what the three bolded pull quotes seem to be indicating:
Many of these pieces convey a sense of being immersed—even lost—in data.
For fabulation to have critical currency, it matters which histories are being retrieved and why.
The stakes have changed. Some formal strategies might need to be rethought.
posted by philip-random at 9:53 AM on May 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
"The richest possibilities for research-based installation emerge when preexisting information is not simply cut and pasted, aggregated, and dropped in a vitrine but metabolized by an idiosyncratic thinker who feels their way through the world.
okay, first sentence almost makes easy sense without one needing to grab for a dictionary or whatever, though I am kinda wondering what "preexisting" is accomplishing, and ummm ... what's a vitrine? I mean, I just looked it up (it's a display case) ... but why not just say display case? Which is not intuitive because I've never in my life seen anyone drop something into a display case. Placed yes. Also positioned, arranged, located, situated, installed.
Such artists show that interpretative syntheses need not be incompatible with a decentered subject and that an unforgettable story-image can also be a subversive counterhistory, packing all the more punch because imaginatively and artfully delivered."
second sentence quickly completes the death-due-to-artspeak. "interpretative syntheses"? "decentred"? "story image"? Not that all of this is meaningless. It's worse really. It's making a point but doing so via a sluggishness that, if it isn't deliberate (ie: satirical), then ... well, I don't know. But it's pretty loaded to be so fabulously bland (obtuse?) while wanting art to have more punch and imagination in its delivery.
All of which gets more annoying when one suspects that the essay in question really has something valid (essential even) to say. At least that's what the three bolded pull quotes seem to be indicating:
Many of these pieces convey a sense of being immersed—even lost—in data.
For fabulation to have critical currency, it matters which histories are being retrieved and why.
The stakes have changed. Some formal strategies might need to be rethought.
posted by philip-random at 9:53 AM on May 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
I mean it's Artforum, not Buzzfeed. Those sentences are dry, and they're using the specialized language of academic art criticism, but they're not obscure.
"Interpretative syntheses" just means synthesizing the material to produce an interpretation -- that is, the material is "metabolized" by the artist, rather than just being jumbled together and left for the audience to interpret, which according to the author is pretty much what some other research-based artists have been doing lately (for valid but problematic reasons). She's saying you can have a subjective authorial voice that has actually processed the research material and can guide you toward an interpretation, without thereby implying that the author has fully mastered the material and is speaking as a privileged authority on the subject. That's important because art theory and social theory generally have spent the past fifty years critiquing the whole idea of the author as a privileged authority whose subjective viewpoint is at the center of things. If you've read the article and are familiar with the language, "interpretative syntheses need not be incompatible with a decentered subject" packs all of that into a single clause. (I agree "story-image" is pretty waffly, though.)
posted by Gerald Bostock at 11:07 AM on May 5, 2023 [3 favorites]
"Interpretative syntheses" just means synthesizing the material to produce an interpretation -- that is, the material is "metabolized" by the artist, rather than just being jumbled together and left for the audience to interpret, which according to the author is pretty much what some other research-based artists have been doing lately (for valid but problematic reasons). She's saying you can have a subjective authorial voice that has actually processed the research material and can guide you toward an interpretation, without thereby implying that the author has fully mastered the material and is speaking as a privileged authority on the subject. That's important because art theory and social theory generally have spent the past fifty years critiquing the whole idea of the author as a privileged authority whose subjective viewpoint is at the center of things. If you've read the article and are familiar with the language, "interpretative syntheses need not be incompatible with a decentered subject" packs all of that into a single clause. (I agree "story-image" is pretty waffly, though.)
posted by Gerald Bostock at 11:07 AM on May 5, 2023 [3 favorites]
Is the art world money laundering, vacuous status seeking, or an abusive labour practice? Why not all three? It's predatory capitalism cloaking itself in claims to be the highest human endeavor
"Research-based installation art", like all contemporary art, shouldn't be understood in isolation from art as a business, as a market, and as a financial tool for speculation and money laundering.
Art is a productive activity, in the mechanical sense that in go resources and out comes something of value. But the use value of the output is so abstract as to not exist. What are you supposed to do with this art, aside from wander around it stroking your chin and thinking that you're terrrible smart and perceptive and au courant.
What exists is the art business. This depends upon intellectualised justification of the output that stands, somehow, for status. It's tedious exclusive bollocks. I have enough of an academic education to be able to put the fancy words into the right order to create this kind of art criticism but I'd rather punch myself in the dick. Yet enough people seem to fall for it enough of the time to create saleable objects for those who want to make their consumption more conspicuous.
Those saleable objects enable the art market. Like any market with subjective pricing and opaque transactions, it's ideal for insider trading and money laundering. Some dealer makes money when art works reach insane valuations. Are there taxes on those capital gains? Theoretically maybe, in practice ha ha no. And if you have a hundred million dirty dollars in your pocket, it's a simple wash to buy an art work at Geneva Free Port then sell it back to yourself. Bingo. You now have a hundred million clean dollars.
And at the end of the day, the actual artists end up with what? A PhD and poverty.
posted by happyinmotion at 2:07 PM on May 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
"Research-based installation art", like all contemporary art, shouldn't be understood in isolation from art as a business, as a market, and as a financial tool for speculation and money laundering.
Art is a productive activity, in the mechanical sense that in go resources and out comes something of value. But the use value of the output is so abstract as to not exist. What are you supposed to do with this art, aside from wander around it stroking your chin and thinking that you're terrrible smart and perceptive and au courant.
What exists is the art business. This depends upon intellectualised justification of the output that stands, somehow, for status. It's tedious exclusive bollocks. I have enough of an academic education to be able to put the fancy words into the right order to create this kind of art criticism but I'd rather punch myself in the dick. Yet enough people seem to fall for it enough of the time to create saleable objects for those who want to make their consumption more conspicuous.
Those saleable objects enable the art market. Like any market with subjective pricing and opaque transactions, it's ideal for insider trading and money laundering. Some dealer makes money when art works reach insane valuations. Are there taxes on those capital gains? Theoretically maybe, in practice ha ha no. And if you have a hundred million dirty dollars in your pocket, it's a simple wash to buy an art work at Geneva Free Port then sell it back to yourself. Bingo. You now have a hundred million clean dollars.
And at the end of the day, the actual artists end up with what? A PhD and poverty.
posted by happyinmotion at 2:07 PM on May 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
I appreciate that even now, in 2023, Gerald Bostock is helping me understand the world, much like he did beginning some 50-odd years ago.
posted by hippybear at 2:14 PM on May 5, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by hippybear at 2:14 PM on May 5, 2023 [2 favorites]
Love it. Like somebody instantiated a kliuless megapost into real life!
posted by Rhaomi at 8:34 PM on May 5, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by Rhaomi at 8:34 PM on May 5, 2023 [3 favorites]
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