John Hurrell, 7:31 a.m. 9 October, 2010 #

EyeContact congratulates Dan Arps for his winning of the 2010 Walters Prize. We also congratulate the other three finalists for making the event so tight, for as the judge Vicente Todoli said in a brilliant speech at the dinner, picking a winner was not easy.

Here is what Vicente said about the Arps exhibition: “I have awarded this prize to Dan Arps because he has created a total work of art in the Wagnerian sense of ‘Gesamkunstwerk’. His work is a development of a concept first created by James Joyce in Ulysses, which is the epiphany of everyday life. This idea was highly influential on Duchamp, when he developed the concept of the ‘Readymade’, and was transmitted into the present through movements like Fluxus and Pop. In this case, it would be the epiphany of the humble and the rejected. The artist has transformed these found materials through his own editing and his process of amelioration and has taken them into another, higher realm. Through this process, Dan Arps has turned his installation into an alchemical chamber. He incorporates such a diversity of art disciplines in the treatment of such dissimilar elements, which results in the creation of a conglomerate where the whole is bigger than the sum of its parts. Each of them radiates into the empty spaces between them, turning Explaining Things into a revelatory multi-layered experience.”

Roger Boyce, 11:33 p.m. 9 October, 2010 #

John, with all due respect -

As much as I'm always pleased to see a young fella take home the cash I must say that the Todoldi paragraph you've selected to illustrate the 'brilliance' of his award oration leaves me slack jawed and scratching my nether regions.

Todoldi is at one with Clayton Szalpinski(the adenoidally antagonistic Wisconsin mechanic in Herzog's Stroszeck) as he (Clayton) declares (in a convulsive fit of hillbilly sexual-braggadocio) "Hit the penny, hit the nickel, HIT the dime!"

Uh...Wagner, Joyce, Duchamp? Hit the penny, hit the nickel, HIT the dime. Hit the cultural-trifecta, now why dontcha.

Alchemical chamber, Gesamkunstwerk, higher realms, amelioration, revelatory multi-layered experience? And I thought I'd laid some ripe segmented cable (in my time) when pinching out misty art critical bull-pucky.

I'd suspect Gewürztraminer over the heady effects of Arps'conglomerate Gesamkunstwerk for Todoldi's case of the conglomerate vapors. P.U.

John Hurrell, 12:25 a.m. 10 October, 2010 #

Ever been to a Dan Arps exhibition at all, Roger? Have you been to this one? If not, how do you know the experience doesn't match the descriptive analysis by Todoli? And besides, it is not as if Todoli is claiming to be definitive. It's his take and readers can examine my views on Arps' practice, or Jon Bywater's, or Sarah Hopkinson's or Hanna Scott's as well if so inclined. Nobody is claiming Holy Writ.

Roger Boyce, 10:33 a.m. 10 October, 2010 #

You've got me there John. I haven't seen this latest Dan Arps spatial assemblage....but I've attended his efforts at Gambia and Lett.

However debatable Arps'merits - I had no intention of conflating the artist's successful practice & Todoldi's speech. I'd thought my conversantly gassy swipe at Todoldi's laughably caricatural hyperbole tightly targeted.

Even by typically bombastic artworld standards Mr. Toldoldi reaches new extremes of Rococo exaggeration.

Vincente's over-spiced mulligan-stew of artworld shibboleths seem an attempt - by the former Tate-ista - to throw up an unpenetrable thicket of culturally-sacrosanct names and terms as a means to guard the work against any possible threat of retroactive analysis and evaluation.

Would 'The Little Guy' dare argue against the, comparatively employed, genius of giants such as Wagner, Duchamp or Joyce? Or speak against Pop or Fluxus as major contributors to 20th and 21st century art making?

Rhetorically deploying such unassailably monumental cultural figures in a defensive ring around Arps'practice is a more-than-bald attempt by Todoldi to spook away any possible nay-saying around the artist's selection for the Walters.

Let me repeat, for the record, that I take no issue with Arps' selection. However, I can't imagine the ghosts of Wagner, Joyce or even (with some generosity) Duchamp would haunt my imagination during or after any kind of Arps viewing.

A case might be made for Arps' relationship to Arte Povera or Movimento Spaziale...or even, say, the informal bohemian assemblages of Bruce Connor or (a de-nucleated)George Herms.

But, the scale-disparate Olympian giants - rhetorically roped in,and trotted out, by Vincente, for comparison - seem, to me, to be a source of embarrassment for bloviating curator and artists alike.

At the end of the day, John, I do enjoy a nice little intellectual set-to. So I guess my thanks should go out to Vincente ('The Chin') Todoldi for providing the manure from which this exchange grows. Here lies my fresh deposit.

Simon Esling, 11:37 a.m. 10 October, 2010 #

Wow! Food for thought... I almost gagged on my Latte when I read 'Ulysses' in reference to Dan's work. Bring in the Greek Chorus.

Lets face it. This is an industry award. Like other awards, like all awards. It's no better or deeper or more profound than the Qantas Media Awards or a Design Award or the music awards. The difference is we artists and art aficionados like to think this is some kind of important leap forward in culture and that it really is as significant as Todoli would have us believe... but it's really just another artworld reach-around. A self-congratulatory grope-fest. There is no real problem with this. It's insular, that's all. That's what I'm trying to grapple with myself. How little our art gets out beyond the nepotistic bounds of who is helping who's career. Art is just another industry that is swayed by fashion and trends, not a cultural catalyst (the only 'ism' left is professional-ism, as illustrated by "The artist's talk" and various other art institution requirements to move ahead in this world of meeting and greeting). Dan's art really does nothing for anyone outside the art world and the coded art references that we, as learned artists and art commentators, already know. The average person doesn't care for the pathos of their pathetic lives reflected back to them by a smug artist. However, I personally really like the cabbage pail kids stickers and other stickers on the chest of drawers... the regrets of youth when trying to peel them off the wood unsuccessfully, forced to discard the whole thing and one's youthful naivety along with it. Another favourite of mine was Dan's work at the first Gambia Castle: with pet bowl, pet food, newspaper and straw... sentimental for me in that moment, but Epic? Profound on a time scale as described by Todoli? I don't know, let's not get crazy. But honestly, Dan is a good artist and good on him for knowing the right people and having an institutional/industry approved career. As 'rebellious' as his work would have us believe it to be it is, in fact, very conservative in its comfortable position as public-goading 'antagonistic art' nestled in the bosomy minds of curators and commentators alike.

Roger Boyce, 12:36 p.m. 10 October, 2010 #

Well, Simon,"That's the ticket!"

As commends replicant, Roy Batty - portrayed by (ham & rye) Rutger Hauer - to Decker (Harrison Ford)as Ford's character gamely steps up and asymmetrically engages'skin-job'Batty.

Roy has been described as - "Fast, and skilled at combat, and yet still learning how to deal with developing emotions."

"There is no future for Roy -" but, Simon, I think you're going to be just fine...in the short run.

Besos
RWB

Simon Esling, 7:02 p.m. 10 October, 2010 #

Well, I never did fit in, but I do have to concede it is unfair to single out one artist for commentary. So in the big scheme of things, beyond our art enclave and our own movers and shakers, there has been a bombastic description by a renowned curator about a form of found art with a rich tradition. Is his statement all smoke and mirrors to keep this type of artwork relevant in today's world? Does it matter? My existentialist dilemma as an artist is to wonder how important it is to communicate to the outside world some kind of philosophy or idea that may serve a purpose greater than "Is this art?" (with this question really only occurring outside the art world because those of us on the inside, who have read the books and gone to the shows, know that it's wicked-good art). You know what? There is no satisfying answer. It's all in the game.

Roger Boyce, 10:43 p.m. 10 October, 2010 #

I won't hear a word against Art. He's all wool and a yard wide.

Roger Boyce, 9:54 a.m. 11 October, 2010 #

"the show must first be bodily experienced - on a prelanguage/prethought level, for we are not entirely trapped within words. Later comes the attempted analysis and the layering which must never be considered as replacements for the experience."

I'm with you there, John.

But I think I've seen enough of Arps' (and fellow-travelers') work to suspect that cultural monuments (like Joyce, Wagner, Duchamp) placed heedlessly (by Todoldi) on the shoulders of a patented kind of slouching, informal bohemian practice (like Arps) seems like a potentially crushing weight that threatens to smother the work and any possible debate around it.

For example, here we are debating Todoldi's cloud of bombast rather than the comparatively slight and unassuming work by Arps.

Simon Esling, 9:57 a.m. 11 October, 2010 #

I think your response John is measured and to the point. I walked around and felt a positive response on a personal level (well, it was more that I felt a little melancholic with an occasional jolt of smart-arsed humour, often a sense of being mocked). However, on an aesthetic level (spatially, as an installation) my response was disappointment. I was there when a high school class came in and yes, the teacher spoke up: "and this is the kind of art that asks the question: what is art? Is this art?" So the students were wandering around with this question firmly in their heads. Would Todoli's comments have helped them understand it more, or feel it? I don't think so. It's role as art in an institution seems reduced to a) Is it art? or b) It's a work of genius. So the political game of art raises its head to scare off the punters or immobilise them. The hope may be, for some I guess, that institutions of the future will be strewn with detritus (finally accepted as art after years of silly questions and loud hailing) and some quirky oil painting will be hung on its own in a small room and people will ask that age-old question: Is this art? It will of course be "Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2" by Marcel Duchamp.

Ralph Paine, 10:04 a.m. 11 October, 2010 #

Yet this pool of conversation has already given birth to the bodily experience...

Ralph Paine, 4:28 p.m. 11 October, 2010 #

Meanwhile...

It's a case here of ordering; of what comes first and what is derived, or whether everything happens at once. If the primordial ground of art is posited as bodily experience (as John has above) then the discursive subject is transcendental to this embodiment i.e. derived from it. This is related to Kantian logic.

If on the other hand the primordial ground of art is posited as a coincidence of the discursive subject and bodily experience (as I have above) then an immanent feedback loop is the result. This is related to Husserl's phenomenology.

But there is another option, and that is to posit that the primordial ground of art is the work of art itself; that the artwork is an ontological category independent of what we as viewers, readers, or hearers may say or feel; and, using the basis of the self-positing of the created, independent too of the creator/artist.

This third option is the Deleuzio-Guattarian one, as laid out in "Percept, Affect, and Concept", Chapter 7 of their 'What is Philosophy'.

Given the nature of the marketing machine and the critical commentaries I would hazard a guess that Mr Arps might quite fancy this option

Kate Linzey, 5:05 p.m. 21 October, 2010 #

Nothing kills a conversation more effectively than dragging D&G out of the closet?!

Doesn't the humour of Todoli's statement come from his strange conjunction of Wagner and Joyce? I read it as an attempt to explain how the argument rolls up with "the whole is bigger than the sum of its parts."

Surely Joyce/Duchamp/Flux/Pop critiqued the bombastic 'high' culture of Wagner (Romanticism and alchemy).

We don't need to ask whether Arps' work is art - of course it is. Rather I end up questioning whether it isn't an intentionally nostalgic repetition of the 'is it art' discourse of the 20thC. And thus, to confuse myself and agree with Todoli, Arps has cleverly revived 19thC eclecticism: rather than being radical or confrontational, the siting of 'everyday' and profane objects in a white gallery is used as a 'style.' And contrary to the original intention of the 'life to art' polemic, as a style the everyday has been contrived to reflect something spiritual/meaningful... even if such meaningfulness maintains (post-modern) reflexive irony... what could be more profound than screwed up paper (channeling Dane Mitchell)?

John Hurrell, 2:39 p.m. 22 October, 2010 #

What is it about D&G acolytes, Kate? Are they they the new (?)religious zealots of our time?
And why do you think Todoli was being humorous - for there is no evidence to indicate that he was.

I like your suggestion that Arps is a 19C. eclecticism revivalist and that Dane Mitchell has not heard of Martin Creed.

Ralph Paine, 5:46 p.m. 22 October, 2010 #

Dragger of texts outta closets...

Killer of conversation...

D&G acolyte...

Religious zealot...

Cool!

John Hurrell, 6:07 p.m. 22 October, 2010 #

Cool,Ralph? You mean in the Wildean sense... better to be talked about than NOT talked about?

Kate Linzey, 5:59 p.m. 23 October, 2010 #

I reckon D&G liked closets, and the things kept in them... Not to be too cryptic. But there aren't that many people who have read them, let alone worked out what they were up too.

In a more Foucauldian sense, seeing as we're talking about institutions, it seems that D&G get most often used to mark those who can, from those who should not, speak.

As Ranciere has said recently, the radical program of the '68 crowd hasn't worked, and it is interesting to see how they (D&G) can be used against their own intentions.

... Not that I would want to encourage a dumbing down of art, or a punters through the door policy for art galleries. But I would prefer complex art to avoid mysticism as much as possible - being the opiate of the masses.

Ralph Paine, 3:02 p.m. 24 October, 2010 #

If by things in closets you mean dirty little Freudian secrets then I can only suggest that perhaps you’ve never read a word of D&G??? Even though written by Deleuze, the essay “What Children Say” is a good intro to their critique of psychoanalysis but also contains a fascinating digression into art and cartography. If on the other hand you mean that D&G write about houses and frames and doorways and holely space etc., then yeah.

As for the so called failure of ’68, here’s what D&G say about revolution: “[...] the success of a revolution resides only in itself, precisely in the vibrations, clinches, and openings it gave to men and women at the moment of its making and that composes in itself a monument that is always in the process of becoming, like those tumuli to which each new traveller adds a stone. The victory of a revolution is immanent and consists in the new bonds it installs between people, even if these bonds last no longer than the revolution’s fused material and quickly give way to division and betrayal.” Now why would we want to use that against the way it was intended?

And why is it to be assumed that today religion is somehow off the artistic agenda? Marx’s critique of the critique of religion is really an amazing tool for tracking down just where certain religious formations go to and of how they transform themselves along the way. The state as analysed by Marx is a religious formation, just as the commodity is. So if today much art presents itself as a (potential) commodity, then religion is in the room.

Ralph Paine, 3:10 p.m. 24 October, 2010 #

But let’s return to D&G’s concept of art. For them art is not an argument and artworks are not propositions. So when one walks into a Dan Arps installation, for example, it is not possible to form an opinion about the work; to decide this or that about it. The artwork is what it is and it takes us to where it will: It is a gift. D&G say that the artist is a seer, a becomer, a cosmic artisan. This is to say that Dan has been somewhere and seen something and that he’s come back with bloodshot eyes and a strange smile on his face because it was all too much. But his artworks are not ‘accounts’ of where he’s been and what he’s seen, because that somewhere and that vision is the same thing as the artwork itself.

And where has he been and what has he seen (& thus where does the artwork take us)? To suburbia, to junk-space and D.I.Y garages, to self-help seminars and sci-fi movies, to Smells Like Teen Spirit, to Prozac and splif, to Late Capitalism and net-porn... Which is another way of saying that with his comments the judge got it way, way wrong. There’s no Wagner or Joyce here, no 19th century eclecticism, no Duchamp or whatever else it was that he overlaid onto Dan’s work, and to say so is pure Emperor’s new clothes .

But rather than determining who can or cannot speak, D&G would caution us not to speak ON BEHALF OF either the artwork or the artist. This is a subtle affair and if taken seriously would demand of those who write about artworks great descriptive skills and a poetics akin to the artworks themselves.

John Hurrell, 6:31 p.m. 24 October, 2010 #

Don't you think, Ralph, that you are being foolishly dogmatic suggesting that Todoli got Arps' work way wrong? Just because he sees things you don't? (Or perhaps the artist doesn't either?) You are not claiming there is an objective checklist he must reference to speak sensibly about Arps, are you?

Surely the beauty of bringing overseas judges in is that they look at our art with fresh eyes? That they introduce new areas of debate into our conversation. And that is what has happened.

Ralph Paine, 10:12 p.m. 24 October, 2010 #

Not sure whether "objective check list" is quite right. Let's just stick with convention and call it the artwork.

John Hurrell, 11:17 a.m. 26 October, 2010 #

So you think you have a relationship with 'the artwork' and Todoli didn't? Crikey Ralph, you are implying only insiders can 'get it', and outsiders...well, don't bother trying.

Ralph Paine, 12:01 p.m. 26 October, 2010 #

No, I am not implying any such thing. What I am saying is that rather than giving us a skilled and nuanced description of the work, what the judge chose to give us was a little art history lesson about it, an opinionated overlay, a twit’s provenance. And what this little art history lesson was designed to do was tame Dan’s work, to control it; and all the while condescendingly flatter him as an artist. This is the insiders’ club.

Ralph Paine, 3:42 p.m. 27 October, 2010 #

Yeah, canonization. But with Eyecontact there’s more of a tendency toward instrumentalization. The site is an in-former, and thus operates using industrial (creative industry) models. It transforms artworks/art work into information. Of course today there are many artists who present their artworks as if already transformed into information, so the situation has become criss-crossed with contradictions.

Ralph Paine, 11:08 a.m. 28 October, 2010 #

“Digital technologies have opened up new spaces of communication, socialization and cooperation that are only ‘virtually’ free. The surplus extraction is channelled generously through the material infrastructure needed to sustain an immaterial ‘Second Life’. Technological rent is the fee applied on the ICT infrastructures when they establish a monopoly on media, bandwidth, protocols, standards, software or virtual spaces (including recent social networks like MySpace and Facebook, for instance). Technological rent is, therefore, composed of many different layers: from the materiality of the hardware and electricity to the immateriality of the software running a server, a blog, or an online community. Technological rent is fed by general consumption and social communication, by P2P networks and ‘free’ reproducibility, along with the activism of Free Culture. Technological rent is different from cognitive rent, as it is based on the exploitation of (material and immaterial) spaces and not only knowledge. Similarly, the attention economy can be described as a rent on attention applied to the limited resource of the consumer time-space. In the society of pervasive media and the spectacle, the attention economy is responsible for commodity valorization to a significant degree. The attention time of consumers is like a limited piece of land that is constantly under dispute. Technological rent is, finally, the central element of the energetic metabolism sustaining the techno-macroparasite.”

Matteo Pasquinelli, Animal Spirits: A Bestiary of the Commons, Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, 2008, 99–100.

NOTE TO SELF: Must stop going online!