How could this be institutionalised? In describing, putting the words to entities, in finding vocabularies and knowing where to look, we are trapped already. How couldn’t we be? Should I write such that you never understand; should I make work that never needs to be seen; should anything other than question marks arise?
Is this a work? Would we rather toss it all off to a little game, scoff at those who take themselves too seriously, never be so ridiculous as to consider the nests of “art” and “life”? Are the words one is using as important as the to whom one is speaking? “What is the work of man?” And why not say it, invest oneself with intention, make the attempt? Flail? This is not an institution, as could it ever be, with time, with the fulfillment of certain criteria of Work. We are tied to a production as always, since before we were aware of it, since we were animals. And the guillotined bumblebee, as Agamben asks, is he as busy as ever, do we continue amidst work, does time fly when…?
Should anything other than question marks arise?
What-is-the-work?
Should the work be defined by a trade, a certain amount of craftsmanship, the ergon of man, a list of projects and venues to which one must be flown? Does work define our activities or does activity define work? Why should vita contemplativa be placed above vita activa in a society with no God? Is this the captivation of the bumblebee, are we productive enough, should we make particular dialogues in work-group fashion? Because if I play, or if i dangerously mix words like “art” and “life”, like you know, when
Every afternoon he goes there to see a big painting for two hours, and he says, ‘I’m doing the work to see the work’. That’s ok, I think it’s no problem. He did another work where he pays for three months of traditional Chinese music lessons, on the erhu. – 马永峰 MA Yongfeng, Forget Art
Can a situation be Work? Our particular arrangement to one another, did you try that out, were you networking? Is the amount of control in any given situation a Work? Is control a result of the fact that there is no one around to help us, or that we are ‘mere’ fascists? Is the controlled situation a place of God or science or politics? Why do you question, why go beyond captivation? What did you question, what did you create, where did you control the situation and where was spontaneity a lie? 艾未未 AI Weiwei calls it the “vocabulary” that “can also be the total meaning of the concept”; Pierre Huyghe says a one:to:one ratio of idea:to:form. These are control experiments, perhaps, but not without the certain seepages that blur the distances between the Work and our ethics, our politics——our everyday. We take ourselves too seriously. In the fullness of the situation, yes. And yes, he is right, we could not presume it to be so before its occurrence, where there is thus the very small moment when the lack of control has perchance to touch upon the work’s going beyond itself. An eventfullness…
Have we said too much already? Really, should anything other than question marks arise?
Are these thinly veiled treatises, and what have you really got to say?
Stopping oneself… (slow, slow loading, please be patient)
Lying on your bunk, looking up at what would be the person’s back above, you say to yourself letting the the day’s events turn over in the surf of your consciousness this is not a problem––maybe question marks toy on this dreamless field like spooning snails, but here where you lie a question is a private and silent puff of joy. It won’t be asked. Your experiences are strictly for yourself, and will not be translated, even as the shared idea. The performance that was never watched. The performance for yourself.
Or then again, you might not be spending the night in the Conceptual Youth Hostel while dreaming that you are, and would then “wake up” and point your finger at the loud eco-journeyer who spends half his time in his underpants at the communal PC and writing postcards on the beery formica breakfast counter. You knew with such hateful clarity that he only practiced the guitar in public to lure the tourist-girls out to an Irish pub to tell his stories. He’s a god-damn sunbather. A fink. But successful in his pursuits. You would grab your rucksack, hot tears rolling down your cheeks, and scream with an embarrassed feeling in your loins, Why don’t you all just go out and feel something!
But at that moment you would wake up in your normal bed. You were never in the hostel. It was a dream.
And you can’t tell anyone about it, because it’s mixed with such awfully dark diaphragm feelings that you just know in your guts it will come true if you utter a word about it to anybody.
Agree wholeheartedly with the spirit of the first paragraph. Put another way, a tentative answer might be: by someone writing an interview with the subject; and almost certainly by an article being written about her and other people that the writer thinks may be loosely connected. I’m fully aware of my role in the institutionalisation of whatever I turn my attention to. As futile as it might be, I stress in conversation with the interviewee that I try not to impose some kind of structure on my subject-matter, but leave it as open as possible to be an expression of their own interpretations. But I am also an editor, it’s my job to impose structure. As I say, futile, but futility is great, and a source of much production! If you’ve read the blog before, you’ll know I pick up on Agamben and find the ‘gesture’ to be quite a [useful] concept, which I think would have some relation with ‘flail’?
Oh great, here comes the guitar!
@escdotdot, thank you… i wouldn’t have considered your work as an editor exactly an imposition of structure, sounds too fascistic! your current project (and the struggles therein) seem to be about the attempt to make links between disparate entities, trying to find some sort of cohesive larger picture which may not be so easy or insightful in the end, beyond any initial condition of ‘alterity’ (but that would be your task, of course!). through these linkages, there can always be the risk of the kind of solidification that leads us toward institutionalisation, but i suppose this is where the question of the Work, the futility of the work, or its own un-Working become important…
have not read Agamben’s take on the ‘gesture’ yet, but thank you for pointing me to it~
@friend, what we could take and be perplexed or angered by, all the time, you’s and pronoun displacements amuck, oh kin or oh dearest, games and games and detective gaming (may i borrow a hammer, please?).
like words nearer to meaning, we get closer all the time without ever really getting there.
well, IMO fascistic pretty much defines what an editor is (no offence meant to any of the editors out there)! As I tried to say, the article links by default, so I’m kind of working against myself here, but trying to rationalise these forces is all part of the struggle of writing and thinking – and I’ll only really know what my “task” was after the fact. lalala
(I’ll lend you the Agamben)