Friday, August 15, 2008

Beth's Crit

Problem-position

Everyone needs a problem position. Outlines, parameters, these things give a measure to value. My problem-position?

I think it’s a question of where I place value not interest. I’ve often thought interest is too tame a word, it implies choice, which implies the option of detachment. Value on the other hand suggests worth, merit. Words which are not choices but treasures. Like heirlooms-except not nearly so forgotten.

So it’s best if I talk to my work in terms of value, not interest.

My position is that I place value in makeshift practices. In materials and gestures, which improvise, make-do, collapse after a time. There’s a value in the shoddy, the gawkish, a charm and a language in lousy assemblage. I see improvising as essentially a political act. There is power mixed with fragility in making-do, a worth in prizing the low tech. I take such practices to be one: full of hope, and two: emblematic of signs of life. These I think are the tools of innovation and the opposite of a drone.

I'd like to discuss these issues with the group. Get feedback on how these ideas sit with the work and with the reading "What's a conversation for" by Deleuze and Parnet.

Deleuze, Gilles,Dialogues 2, Columbia University Press, 1977.


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