A Conversation
Ed Suman
The following is based on a conversation that took place one afternoon last summer in Los Angeles. Striking Distance and the internet are being discussed.
Mitchell Syrop: What is desirable?
Ed Suman: I think what's desirable is to make this project a successful commercial enterprise.
MS: Because...
So that it continues. A lot of things start up in the art world and then disappear. For something like this to continue it has to be commercially successful without being commercially determined.
Michael Mc Curry: So how do you feel about those forums that already exist in the art world that are ostensibly those venues in which a sophisticated interchange of ideas takes place? I'm thinking of October magazine and the articles and essays in ArtForum, and other journals and publications that are at least perceived to be sites of high minded thinking?
Sometimes those journals publish good writing. But much of the time the writing is unnecessarily subjective and esoteric. I would hope that it is possible to find serious writing about art that isn't as academic as that found in those publications. I guess I would hope that there can be discussion that isn't as theoretical. Although there's nothing wrong with theory it tends to be taken a little too seriously. If you take theory far enough you can find a way to rationalize almost anything. Theory, at it's worst, is just rationalization. That's something that shows up in a lot of critical writing. A good enough writer can "interpret" an art work in almost any way. I think of some of Lane Relyea's writing. Lane is really smart and a great writer but I sometimes get the feeling that he could make a convincing case from almost any point of view having to do with an artwork. And in that way, at least with regard to the artwork, what he says becomes almost irrelevant because he could be saying just about anything.
MM: So it's less about what he's writing about than it is about his writing...
His interpretive skills, his ability to bring to bear extensive education, his knowledge and writing talent and analytical capabilities. It almost seems to be more a demonstration of his abilities in those areas than an actual interpretation of the artwork, or the interpretation is a secondary issue. The end result is that you have a piece of writing by Lane Relyea that stands on its own, it becomes an autonomous work and it's pretty disconnected from the artwork that it's ostensibly about. The artwork is just a point of origin.
MM: That's where I would agree with your idea about the diminishing returns of theory. If you think of theory as something that can potentially explain things to us...
Or offer a model, at least.
MM: Yes, help us through something, answer a question or two about why things are, or how we are, or how things function. What I see increasingly is a working backwards. Instead of theory being inclusive and encompassing, it is narrow and very particular, very specific, and ultimately, very parochial and closed minded. That's a failure of theory.
It becomes an end in itself. I really think theory should function as a model, a point of reference, and it should be something against which practice can be gauged. When it becomes an end in itself, it becomes irrelevant to practice, really.
Publications such as the ones you mentioned are journals where theory seems to be primary. But it also seems that culture in general has become more academic. It's as if the academic world has permeated pop culture and the mainstream. The baby boom generation went through universities as students in the sixties and seventies, and now it seems that there's a surplus of baby boomer faculty at colleges and universities, and the academic careers of these people have become a big part of the culture industry. I can't help but wonder to what extent it's propped up by subordinate industries like the art industry. Although in some ways, I think academic activity feeds primarily on itself and has little relevance to anything else. It's like an organism eating it's own shit.
MM: One criticism leveled against October is that it continues speaking to the same audience in language only that audience can understand, thereby granting itself some exclusivity, which somehow becomes equated with brilliance, sophistication or leadership. "This is a publication that is at the forefront of art criticism." I think that could be considered a myth.
I don't think the art world is as sophisticated as it pretends. One example of what I mean is the political work that was being made in the late eighties and early nineties and which the artworld took pretty seriously. You can pick up any news magazine and read a much more insightful political analysis or find a much more sophisticated point of view being expressed than you would likely see in an art gallery. I can't help but wonder if artists are really that unaware of other areas of culture.
Though I think the artworld sometimes relies upon that distance from general culture. One possible reason is that when you stack the artworld up against culture at large, it can look pretty phony and ridiculous. It may be in the interest of those participating not to measure themselves against more general standards, those of journalism for instance in the case of political art. A publication like October serves to reinforce exclusivity and at the same time reassure subscribers that they are smarter, more discerning, and more intellectual than most people. I can't help but wonder to what extent is the work of the art critic really about control?
MS: Before, when you reached the conclusion that with Lane Relyea, his writing is ultimately about the work of Lane Relyea, I was tempted to interject, 'Well, of course, that's what he thinks too.' I think he would state that overtly, that that is the point. Because ultimately there's no idea that he's going to elucidate something. In other words, critics don't want to be in a service relationship. Which I guess we could say is legitimate. Then on the other hand, why are they using art...someone has to be in a service relationship.
Well, it's a little like an artist appropriating source material and riffing on it. It's a creative enterprise.
MS: Well, isn't that itself a by-product of academic behavior?
Absolutely. There was something on the cover of the L.A. Weekly recently that struck me as a good example of pop academicism. An article written by someone named John Payne was featured on the cover as "Doing a Derrida: John Payne on Kiss and the Sex Pistols." It seems to be hip to do deconstructionist or other critical analyses of pop culture. And the more fringe the element of pop culture, the better, as long as it can still be considered pop culture.
I mean, it wouldn't be enough to just like their make-up.
MM: People can't seem to enjoy things for what they are. I'm thinking of Christopher Williams and his art work, which is surrounded by a theoretical discourse that is tenuously related to the imagery of the photographs themselves.
Well, that may have to do with a type of insecurity that exists in the art world. If you strip his photographs of that discourse, you're not left with a lot.
MS: But isn't that the gambit of the work?
Of his work in general?
MS: The art/non art thing...there's so little there and that's the strength of it. Less is more. The more precarious, the better.
But where will that line of development take us eventually?
MS: I don't think it's a new line. Even when there's a sensual experience or a communication of something of a sensory nature, there's still a confirmation through language, and in that sense I think there is a certain legitimacy to what he is doing.
It seems that he and Prina are actually exploiting the tenuousness of that connection, between what is actually there and the discourse surrounding it. Which can probably be traced back and seen as a variant on the ready-mades of Duchamp.
I would say that it is as old as the Avant-Garde. In fact it's probably one of the central tenets of Modernism. Then there's another transgressive or radical position, exemplified by someone like Warhol, which works against our expectation of seeing things "worthy" of being represented in artmaking. That position is, "Well, here is an image of something that is beneath serious consideration, or banal, or even repulsive." With that line of development, you get images of things that don't fit historical models of what is deemed worthy of representation. And in that case it's not the tenuousness of the discourse but rather the perceived inappropriateness of the discourse that makes it interesting.
I wonder where that line of development is going to take us eventually? Does it have something to do with artists being afraid to take themselves seriously and be compared with precedents in art history? I think it has something to do with undercutting art at the very outset and presenting it as a pathetic form, thereby creating diminished expectations. If you adopt non-standards, no one can expect you to meet higher standards.
Within mainstream culture, you've got people setting up worldwide information distribution systems, people making it possible to visit distant planets, and people traveling the world risking their lives to get close to historical events to photograph and write about them. Even in the world of sports there are people doing things that are impressive and interesting. Given these activities, what does it mean to stack up some Tupperware and pencil erasers and present it as an accomplishment? It's hard not to see something like that as coming from an incredibly privileged individual.
Is the artworld a forum for impressive rationalization abilities? It seems that in the line of development that we're talking about, having to do with discourse and theory, there certainly is a type of achievement there. But what kind? Is it a poetic alchemy in which you take the mundane and transform it into something exalted?
back to C3I table of Contents
