"... suggests that the work of art can also serve as a site of alterity; it can derail intentionality, cause it to get lost in sensation itself, and it is this wandering about in sensation that produces the aesthetic effect. the work of art lends the..."
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By ro / lu in misc Published: Friday, 09 March 12 - 08:00 AM (GMT -06:00) Last Updated: Friday, 09 March 12 - 11:44 PM (GMT -06:00) |
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still, 1 from yves klein: la revolution bleue
hello brothers and sister, it's claudette the intern.
today's post is a tangential rant related to art meets science and spirituality, the series of video documentaries about the 1990 symposium i have been working my way through these last¹ few² weeks³. it feels right to stop and think about the difference between the word 'spirituality', which is fairly problematic, and the concept of spirituality as we understand it in relation to the symposium and the ideas being discussed around it.
after several discussions in the studio about the discomfort we have with the word, we ultimately kept using it with each other. it felt like we'd all agreed on a definition of what it means to us within our practice. then matt came across dear painter piece in the new issue of frieze, which is five short interviews with tauba auerbach, matt connors, tomma abts, charline von heyl and bernd ribbeck, about the role of abstraction in contemporary non-figurative painting. these conversations touch on what the interviewer calls 'metaphysical concerns' that are historically part of the process and practice of abstract painting and something tauba said made us want to pause and ponder again:
“The word ‘spiritual’ is not only unfashionable, it’s contaminated by a host of unsavoury associations, but worst of all it’s just too dang general. and when something is hard to describe, like the ‘thing’ we’re talking about, it’s a mistake to assume that it lacks specificity."
still, 2 from yves klein: la revolution bleue
i think the difference between the word and the concept of spirituality is not unlike the difference between language and meaning, a dualism that is a constant point of exploration here at rolu. part of language is to try to simplify non-linear concepts in a linear, rational manner into digestible words of knowledge. when language does this, it seems to suggest meaning but is it the actual full meaning? i wonder. there seems to be an incomplete transaction, but i don't know … maybe that's the difference between the word and the concept. the word and the way it is traditionally used is perhaps an incomplete meaning of what the concept may mean (or: is perhaps an abstraction itself.) for the most part so far, art meets science and spirituality concerns itself with the "open vastness" of the concept of spirituality, which still lacks specificity but somehow loses some of the baggage history has saddled the word with.
these are very tough things to articulate, and there are no words that really seem accurate, which is unfortunante as this is such an important thing... a thing we spend so much energy pursuing and exploring. so i'll most likely be back next week with the third post from the symposium but, i've also been given an assignment for the interim to look into some words... alterity, indeterminism, hauntology...eek.... and a ilya prigogine quote to think about: "time is the bridge between spirituality and matter"
please enjoy the limitations of language today.
posted by claudette gacuti
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