comma, 2010

context question mark

over the last few years, i feel that i’ve become somewhat of an anarchist. this seems like a dangerous thing to say, considering all the hooligan and black pasted onto the term, at least in my naïve understandings of it. but i have less and less tolerance for bureaucracies, more and more scepticism for governing bodies, jadedness in the networks, ambivalence for the people. But this is less anarchy as a total nihilism, perhaps more a Nietszchean kind of optimism. i don’t know where this is going.

today i had a conversation with a friend of mine about the ‘artfulness’ of the works of a few friends of ours versus those of more established artists whom we admire. there is a certain disappointment in not being moved or interested in the artworks of your friends (the pleasurable alternative of all the most stimulating artists in the world being your friends?), whom you love and appreciate in all the other instances but can’t seem to feel close to when their art is “trying to be art”. does trying make it less so, because we ‘unsuccessful’ ones have to establish certain contexts without the aid of the gallery, trendy art audiences and/or great financial backing from private sponsors and foundations? What forms of presentations are involved in being an artist in contemporary art production, and why did i feel a certain out-of-placedness to want to propose a “traditional” video work for my contribution to Also Space? The contexts implied by our discussions try to move the consciousness of art around itself, we should try our un-arty-ness in the face of our desire to be (as) artists, our positioning in a gallery space.

A video about my father’s Chinese restaurant and my friend’s father’s Chinese restaurant. It’s an arty social study perhaps, but one that specifies its own context in the same way as the white walls of the gallery, hence it’s traditional-ness. This perhaps has no correlation to anarchy, but i think about the complex forms of participation and passivity that come about in our last months’ attempts to create Also Space, and I think an optimistic anarchy is not too far off. There are threads to understand, not necessarily positions relative to the system but a consciousness of them that tries to be something.

anyhow, I am now officially of dual citizenship. “Back to the Countryside” still pending, but so much for the question marks of bureacracy.

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