Seth Price’s ‘Dispersion’ belongs to a discourse that comes out of American artistic activity of the 1970’s. A text that I think is interesting to bring into this discussion in relation to Price’s work is 'Open Systems: Rethinking Art c.1970', specifically Boris Groys’ discussion of Minimalism.
As was mentioned in last week’s reading group, the meandering form that ‘Dispersion’ takes with its exclamations - “Agreement!”, lamentations - “This is the lumber of life”, and numerous clip-artesque images all must be taken into consideration to appreciate this work. Price himself can’t help but draw attention to the style of his own writing, he tells us - “this essay is written in a provisional and exploratory spirit” and so it is clear the relationship between form, content and delivery is important to Price. In the text he suggests that “one must use not simply the delivery mechanisms of popular culture, but also its generic forms” if art is to utilise the channels of mass distribution. This idea can be seen as a value in his own practice, which extends to the production of cds, magazines and posters. It is also interesting to think about in relation to Boris Groys’ article ‘The Mimesis of Thinking’.
What I gained from ‘The Mimesis of Thinking’ (which I urge you to peruse) is an interest in the idea that following the decline of the mimesis of nature in art, there can be seen the practice of a mimesis of thinking. Groys uses Minimalism as an example in which he sees a mimesis of thinking. This occurs when the combination of a number of Minimalist artworks together suggest the possibility of “an infinite row of new objects” (Groys, 55). In other words, the attention shifts away from the art-object and toward the space in-between the objects, a space which is characterised by the “infinite ‘et cetera’” of thinking and decision-making (Groys, 56).1
I was first interested in this idea because the style of Price’s text relies so much on his drifting thought process. Groys describes the space between minimalist objects as the space of the flaneur, as opposed to the frontality of ‘theatrical’ space that Michael Fried (57) suggests. The space of the flaneur is one of wandering within confines - one place to another, one idea to another. But what I am starting to think about now is whether another shift may have occurred (from mimesis of nature to mimesis of thinking to ?) to reach the context of Price’s practice. Is the notion of ‘the mimesis of thinking’ still appropriate/relevant when the domain of art activity shifts into the space of information distribution?
1. For an interesting discussion relating to the ability of an art-object that is fixed and finished to refer to a space of possibility and change see - 'Turner Prize Artist Talk: Tomma Abts' 7 Nov 2006, which can be accessed online http://www.tate.org.uk/online events/webcasts/turner_prize_2006/tomma_abts
Works Cited:
Groys, Boris. "The Mimesis of Thinking" in "Open Systems: Rethinking Art c.1970". London: Tate Publishing, 2005. 50-63.
6 comments:
I think it is interesting that both of us were drawn to the idea of the limitless that overhangs 'Dispersion' though through different veins– Blanchot's void and Groys' 'The Mimesis of Thinking'. I have not read Groys but I will now!
Beautifully written and as eradite as usual Millie! However I would debate that the memesis of nature has declined in art and that minimalism is the memesis of thinking. Surely the minimalists were concerned with the "dumbness" of the object and serialisation was meant to emphasis this. 30 years later its easy to put an "art history" spin on it.
I found it quite interesting how you seemed to pay quite special to the way in which dispersion was written, Price's stylistic decisions did seem to stick out at me too.
I'm not sure that 'dumbness' is neccesarily the best word to use in relation to the minimalist's concerns. One of the the important things about minimalism for me, is that even though it was concerned with space, the fact that it's practitioners were dealing with 'objects' was still very important. Thier objects may have been slightly 'cruder,' perhaps, than what had come before, but they still seemed to approach their making with a very particular preciousness.
I was interested in how Veronica described his writing style and I really enjoyed your comparison of his writing style to that of the flaneur. The French poet and art critic Charles Baudelaire talks about the flaneur as the observer of street life but the space of distribution which Seth Price talks about does seem to complicate things...
The reader can certainly play a flaneuresque role with this piece - something that had been nagging at me while reading although didn't know how to articulate it, couldn't put my finger on it.
I think - and it's back to style again - that this comes from the lack of references/credits: in reading, one wanders from text to image, paragraph to photograph, and is allowed to 'browse' the in-between space and have access to Price's own unspoken examples and train of thought.
Nice spotting! Really has opened the text up for me even further.
Price says that one must utilize the generic forms of popular culture, so the shift has been from mimesis of nature, to mimesis of thinking, to mimesis of culture. What is interesting is that culture is rapidly overrunning nature, from an anthropological view-point some say there is no nature, there is only culture, so it has almost gone full circle.
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