I want to know what I want to know

I was reading The Daily Me Today by NY Times Op-Ed Columnist Nicholas D. Kristof and figured I would post it because I myself have a few words and concerns. I am not completely certain yet as to what exactly is at stake, however I do know that the flood of articles about struggling newspapers and magazines is an issue worth taking note.

...we generally don’t truly want good information — but rather information that confirms our prejudices. We may believe intellectually in the clash of opinions, but in practice we like to embed ourselves in the reassuring womb of an echo chamber.

As our culture continues to move inward as a me-centripetal force (if you will), the current online distribution and exchange of information and news has become a virtual strip malll. Instead of listening, reading and watching the world move and change through a relatively objective perspective (e.g. US World News, CNN, BBC, NPR etc..), we are scavenging the internet for the news we want to hear, and closing ourselves off to the resources that we either (a) disagree with, (b) aren't familiar with or (c) lie outside of our circle of communication.

Neither of which are legitimate excuses to sever ourselves from knowing the full specturm of the issues that confront us-- That is whether we want to know them or not.

The difficulty we are facing today, and what Nicholas D. Kristof points out breifly in the article above is that our knowledge is bundling into communities, collectives, and political and or agenda driven circles leaving it no room for opposing or alternative viewpoints. This cunundrum only facilitates the me-centripital force which drives the task (or non task rather) of the post-modern age which is hypothetically under the guise of tolerance and depolarization. Interestingly though, we ended up on the other end of the spectrum.

He goes on to explain...

The effect of The Daily Me would be to insulate us further in our own hermetically sealed political chambers. One of last year’s more fascinating books was Bill Bishop’s “The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart.” He argues that Americans increasingly are segregating themselves into communities, clubs and churches where they are surrounded by people who think the way they do.

Almost half of Americans now live in counties that vote in landslides either for Democrats or for Republicans, he said. In the 1960s and 1970s, in similarly competitive national elections, only about one-third lived in landslide counties.

“The nation grows more politically segregated — and the benefit that ought to come with having a variety of opinions is lost to the righteousness that is the special entitlement of homogeneous groups,” Mr. Bishop writes.

One 12-nation study found Americans the least likely to discuss politics with people of different views, and this was particularly true of the well educated. High school dropouts had the most diverse group of discussion-mates, while college graduates managed to shelter themselves from uncomfortable perspectives.

The result is polarization and intolerance.

I am curious to hear what you think.

A Response to Doubt

The following text is a response to Edward Winkleman's post A Constant Crisis of Faith

First of all, certainty and doubt are fundamental catalysts to an enormity of social and political threads that are woven into our cultural makeup. As too much of anything can be potentially dangerous, certainty and doubt dwell precariously on both ends of the spectrum. The extremes of certainty and flirting with ideology can lead to what Adorno calls the “potentially fascist individual” (Adorno, The Authoritarian Personality). On the other hand, too much doubt without any pursuit of truth also becomes an ideology of sorts. Both extremes of certainty and doubt place us in the arena of an apathetic culture industry where compromise seems to be our only option.

It is fruitful to question all things, but tasteless to question without pursuing an answer. Questioning for the sake of questioning seems to be the popular way a post-modern society runs. And as it might seem to have a good utilitarian ideal in mind, that is the greatest good for the greatest number, it deploys our collective understanding of Truth into a vacuum and leaves us without a foundation upon which Truth was once built (God). This does not keep us from building onto what we already know about our history-- but where we find ourselves is a strange place of longing for some abstract original state of being (perhaps in the Garden with me and God), while combating our material tendencies (perhaps in the penthouse with me and myself). How did we get to a point in history where all things may (or may not be) considered as Truth? By using philosophy (modernism), politics (democracy), economics (capitalism), and religion (Protestantism) as benchmarks, The Self is arguably becoming more and more central to contemporary thought and is the very foundation of post-modernism.

"The modern artist suffers even more than society as a whole from the lack of any vital religious impulse. Like the individual who has been forced to find his own salvation, our painters tend to fall back upon exaltation of individuality as the way out....This state of affairs has produced and found an audience for most of the fashionable but transient movements of our day and since all else has failed, Freud has become the God of those nations which have not fallen under dictatorships...."

I personally do not trust in boundaries put between the world and the “art world.” As separate entities, like any other economy, these two positions are much more homogenous than we make them out to be. Therefore to say one is suffering more than the other is a violent misunderstanding of Arts’ relationship to the world. And true as it might be that Freud has become the God of our time is a way for us to point fingers and evade social responsibility to our own shortcomings. “All else failed” is a gesture to our fallibility. We point in whatever direction we can, but until we realize that we have been fallen from the beginning and we are a world in need of redemption, there is little we can do to “find our own salvation.”

I appreciate Kristin’s reference to Ecclesiastes that there is in fact nothing new under the sun. Point being that it is not God’s position that has changed, but our own position by our own doing.

All things are wearisome;
Man is not able to tell it.
The eye is not satisfied with seeing,
Nor is the ear filled with hearing.
That which has been is that which will be,
And that which has been done is that which will be done.
So there is nothing new under the sun.

(Ecclesiastes 1:8-9)

Uncertainty is not new to artists, let alone the rest of the world. The degree to which certainty has slipped from our grasp is due in part to our own mishandling of Truth as well as our ambition to rid it from those who have abused it. Uncertainty is our own doing and as it is our responsibility to combat cultural apathetic tendencies, it is our obligation to seek certainty, seek answers and work against the currents of popular culture so that we can gain a deeper understanding of the world. It is for this reason that artists tend to find themselves in the margins of society, pushing against the grain- but these are old paradigms which are beginning to tarnish as terms such as ‘artist,’ ‘curator,’ and ‘platformist’ begin to blur into one another.

This religious impulse is something that we desire to plug into but refuse to hold on to. We are built in skeptics who find no comfort in being certain of anything with the exception of that which is uncertain. Certainty is an impossible circuit to tap into if we continue to hold onto our doubts. This is why the notion of Faith is such a large fish to swallow. It requires of us a certain letting go of uncertainty in order that we might understand that which is certain (God). And this is why scripture continually refers to the notion of “dying to self” in order to gain life.

I do not intend to evangelize or impose any sort of belief system onto those who choose to read this post, I am merely referring to that religious impulse that we desire so much to have but are too selfish to attain. And if we were to attain it, chances are we would transform it into an ideology which would in turn make us into Pharisee. Understand here that when something requires a certain amount of uncertainty, we make it into something we can be certain of and make it something that it never was. That is the desperate condition of the religious impulse that we ourselves are unable to attain by our own doing.

between dialogue

Thirty spokes meet in the hub,
but the empty space between them
is the essence of the wheel.

Pots are formed from clay,
but the empty space between it
is the essence of the pot.

Walls with windows and doors form the house,
but the empty space within it
is the essence of the house

This empty space within is where my curatorial practice begins.

For me, the space between you and the person sitting next to you is the architecture.

It is both a space of finite and infinite character that hinges on pure potentiality.

Through curation, I activate this space and make it into material.

I am a “platformist”

I make platforms for people to engage in the profound act of listening.

I propose to curate the space of listening. That is the space that exists in the in-between—The space between things. I aim to curate this space which is suspended in pure potentiality; knowing only itself as a means unto other means rooted within a complex system of rhizomatic relationships. In order to attempt such a seemingly abstract practice, first let us start with unpacking the notion of listening.

Foremost, it is important to understand the two forms of dialogue that need distinction in order to understand what it means to listen. The first form of dialogue is dialogue disguised as monologue.[1] Man, gifted with the ability to think, abuses dialogue as if it were a sport, speaking at each other without ceasing until one has overcome the other. This does not necessarily qualify itself as an active argument, but simply out-thinking, and out-speaking the other, as if to prove ones capacity for knowledge. The transaction lacks a receiver and fades away as it fails to reach the ears of the other. This dialogue, tainted by ego is hardly any dialogue at all. Rather, such a transaction might better be understood as mere monologue, disguised as such.

The second form of dialogue is a bit more complicated to unpack, however Martin Buber seemed to have put it best when he described it as process of “becoming aware.[2]” This genuine form of dialogue is much more than simply exchanging ideas and forms. Rather it is the understanding and acknowledgement of the relationship in itself as a whole. It is a specific care towards the other, which is neither withdrawing from ones’ own self nor is it an objectification of the other. It is an act of taking into account the nature between you and the other. In a person-to-person exchange, dialogue—in its most essential form, is an organic reciprocal participation in the between nature of things.[3] Dialogue can also be understood here as a reciprocal act of listening.

Inspired by the Guatarri’s notion of the partial object, I wish to transform the galleries into a partial space.[4] The partial object is a term that Guatarri refers to in Chaosmosis signifying an art form that refuses such categories as painting, sculpture and installation. The term is understood rather, as surfaces, volumes and devices, which “dovetail within strategies of existence.” The partial object is a segment that lies upon a plane of infinite potentiality. Through transforming the ‘architecture’ of the gallery into a partial space, the mode of viewing transforms into a mode of participating within a space that fosters dialogue through—group discussions, panel events, interviews, readings, workshops, installations, film screenings and performances. These events, however are not the ends of the dialogue space, rather they are the very platforms upon which greater social collaborations might evolve.

The dialogue space has three essential distinguishing characteristics that allow it to take shape. First of all, to begin with the obvious, there needs to be a dialogue. That is, a necessary ongoing exchange of ideas and a drawing awareness of relational values.

The second important characteristic of the dialogue space is modularity. The space needs to move. It has to be willing to be transformed without giving up its transformative qualities

The third aspect of the dialogue space that is intertwined with the previous two has both to do with critical and practical output. The previous two would only prove ambivalent without this third trait. To utilize dialogue and its modular capacity to provoke and expound upon the between nature of things is in its simplest form, what the dialogue space is about.

In dealing with architecture of potential and spaces that are structured as non-structures, I have begun to think about dialogue in motion. Why designate a single space to all sorts of dialogue…wouldn’t that simply place your “non-structure” into a structural paradigm? What if you would continue to shed the skin of the gallery by curating spaces under bridges, at stop-lights, in restaurants, windows and inside other structures (such as museums)? What about curating in schools, theatres, churches and businesses? I want to pursue a curatorial practice that continually pushes against the objectified intentions of particular spaces to reveal the unrealized potentiality with them. If the dialogue space were to become a modular space that could be transported and transformed by different areas, different cities, different countries, it would require much more than a mere location scouting. Each location must allow its surrounding environment; its people, its culture and traditions to influence how that space goes about forming a dialogue with the community. What works in one city might not work in the other, just as what works with one person probably will not work with the other. It is a colliding of ideas, backgrounds and human beings that necessitates healthy reciprocal communication. Each side has to offer itself to the other by grace as well as understanding in values, which requires from both parties dare I say, the act of listening.

Space might be constructed, refurbished, torn down and or abandoned. It can be created, imagined and forgotten. Unlike these spaces however, the dialogue space will be specifically turned inward on itself in order to investigate these dynamic relationships that ebb and flow through it. Rather than fully defining space, the dialogue space will be a process of becoming, open to change and possibility. It will escape definition in order to allow its history, its culture and its inhabitants to take part in its overall creation. More importantly, the space will maintain an inward self-criticality that molds and shapes it. This molding will take place through varying forms of creative processes that respond to the overall dialogue taking place within it.

Currently, I am a member of the artist collective Stone Soup. Stone Soup is a dinner-based art collective that considers the condition of listening and the process of intercultural dialogue as a vital conduit for valuable social collaboration. We host dinner parties every Friday night in conjunction with specific art related topics to be discussed. These discussions move us towards a variety of creative collaborations.

This semester we have taken on the topic of sacred and secular within contemporary art. Drawing much from James Elkin’s text On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art we have covered notions of unconscious religion, sacred decay and the contextualization of sacredness by a secular culture. By inviting specific guests into our dialogue we have been able to form a critical framework in which to talk about slippery subject matters such as these. Furthermore, we have been able to initiate ongoing discussions pertaining to food and ritual, art and ethics, pornography, collaboration, new collectivism, and relational aesthetics. Our newest topic for this summer will be a project initiative to learn and teach year round gardening techniques so that we can begin growing our own food to serve during our dinner events.

I believe the rest of the group would agree that we are still in our infant stages, learning and interacting on a level where mistakes happen more often than not and cracks continue to be sealed. We are a group that is malleable, permeable and open to the new.

As a group that is in itself both transformative and transforming, it is essential that each participant understands the invaluable act of care towards the other. Martin Buber refers to this as the “I-Thou” relationship in which one’s willingness to connect across his or her differences to the other is bound to one’s understanding of the self----intrinsically tied to all things the self includes one’s relationship to Man, Nature and God- who is the essential “Thou.”

In Dostoevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov, a wealthy woman asks an elderly monk how she can know if God exists. He tells her no explanation or argument can achieve this, only the practice of “active love.” She then confesses that sometimes she dreams about a life of loving service to others. At such times she thinks perhaps she will become a sister of Mercy, live in holy poverty, and serve the poor in the humblest way. But then it crosses her mind how ungrateful some of the people she would serve are likely to be. They would probably complain that the soup she served wasn’t hot enough or that the bread wasn’t fresh enough or the bed was too hard. She confesses that she couldn’t bear such ingratitude—and so her dreams about serving others vanish, and once again she finds herself wondering if there is a God.

To this the wise monk responds, “Love in practice is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.”

I did not intend here to end on the note of love, and learning how to love well, but here I am and here I admit to you that I myself in accord to all that I have been speaking of, know little about what it means to listen, and what it means to love. I can continue to prose to you about my great aspirations for creating a dialogue space, and a curatorial practice of between natures- but the truth is—I’m getting married soon and I have never been more confident that the remaining decades that this life offers me will only enhance my perspective on what all of these words that I haphazardly dispense to you truly mean.

---

[1] Buber, Martin. Between Man and Man
[2] Ibid.
[3] I am referring to things here not as an arbitrary relationship. Rather, I am referring to the three essential categories of our relationship to things: that is Man, Nature and God.
[4] Guitarri. Chaosmosis