The ambiguity of space leads to the representation of that which remains unseen. It is not confined to the idea of liminality, or the space in between. The interzone could be a way of describing through a concept the space of thought, but is it enough?. Ambiguity is the layered accumulation of multiplicity, signification ; is it here, there, this, that, or simply everywhere, everything?. The space of art is in primitive religion the dream of the absolute other, pure religious mysticism, a vision. The external object (originally animals, god-animals?) turning subject (image), that which remains ungraspable becoming a thing seen from a fictional perspective: representation, (to represent, or to make present again). This perspective is potentially all perspectives, the space of the ambiguous, total vertigo. It is in essence the following: all metaphor, all unreal, all visible: it turns, by its own nature, into a thing that must stand on your face. Art is that rude thing demanding all attention by virtue of including the absolute other, by claiming the status of reality, total experience. Distortion, incongruous signification (not only through narration but colour, material, application), abstraction within a figuration, or the other way around; all imposition must be thrown overboard. All that is outside, event, gets layered simultaneously within an artifice to become a signifier. And it does this by necessity of all that is perceived, all thought, in a process of discrimination, not by reason (whatever that means in this context), but instinct, violence, by potentially stealing from everything that is, in order to signify. However this signifier does remain elusive. In art conclusions must remain unfulfilled, all common sense defied. One could attempt to say that art, at least in its making, is somewhat uncommodified ambiguity, not yet an object to be used, neither a complete useless object. In this it shares the qualities of its true object-other (away from the religious other): everything that takes place, all perceived events. By resisting commodification, art creates the illusion of standing outside of cultural production. This is possibly the fundamental paradox in art, its original sin, that in order to become what it is, it should stand outside of that which makes it possible. The ‘miracle’ of making the unseen visible in such conditions is what gives art its value, away from the production value of the object, all value in the work of art rests in its capacity for revelation.
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where, when, what?
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In the same way we interpret the world, we interpret works of art. The artist becomes the interpreter of its own subjectivity and of the external flow of events, and so it becomes an expert of this lenguage-artifact. The work must carry to the face of the audience the event of what is, making the one looking at the work a forced-in interpreter. It is something that it is pushed upon the eyes of the beholder-audience and that it takes place in the presence of the object of art. This is indeed a problem when the reproduction of art work derivates into further copies and translations (photography, digital language, online content). Like in the game Chinese Whispers, the art object’s presence becomes another in its potential infinite reproduction. Its meaning changes with the medium, and in environments where the accumulation of images becomes ubiquitous, such in social media, the original work that cannot be presented as object otherwise, only retains value as a distortion of its original qualities. This makes for a ‘false’ economy where the original properties of objects might indeed be in complete opposition to their digital or printed counterparts. Furthermore it leads to a mediated collective idea touching on the production of art itself, where the object of art becomes its own digital reproduction a priory, its own demise as event, a marketing campaign from the outset. Shall we prepare for a funeral? It is perhaps true that art has become its own fiction and that in effect art itself has become impossible by negating its own original drive. Or is it that the original object of art, the absolute other, is not longer it (the world), but our contemporary version of the religious other, the universe of data, information flows, algorithms, financial systems, etc. Art that originates in this context, that is within the medium, is indeed speaking of the absolute other within the language of this system. It is so to speak, the official representation of contemporary events in what is increasingly becoming so-called reality: the universe of data, the avatar and online social interaction. Are we to expect this new big brother to totalise our sense of the world and submit to the all powerful gods of corporations?. I think not. I am not willing for a regression into cyber-feudal yokes, futuristic landlords, and ‘Downtown Abbey’ social organisations where the conditions for art making are in essence absolutely conditioned by their own ideological (ised) structure. Art must stand outside. What is this position?. Possibly a precarious margin. Again not liminality, but ambiguity. Most importantly a perspective where negation of that which becomes totalitarian and compulsory is still a possibility.