Postproduction Q's

1) In the first chapter, "Use of Objects," B. mentions Michel de Certeau's views on the meaning of the consumer. "To use an object is necessarily to interpret it." This seems like a central idea to most of what this essay is about - how we are shifting our ideas about meaning, where meaning comes from. My impression on first reading this passage was a negative one, like what de Certeau was saying was that by touching or receiving a work the consumer corrupts it and alters it forever. After a while I realized this wasn't meant in a negative way, that this is an idea of change, actually of perpetual change and evolution that people are finding new meaning in. And I further examined why I would think of it as a negative, and perhaps it's a very Modernist way of looking at it - like the created work has the higher value and meaning, it's originality makes it purer, etc. Oh well, I guess part of me clings to the past. [image: Jason Rhoades, Tijuanatanjierchandelier]

2) I especially agreed with page 32, a general assessment (and an unusually very clear one) of Art and what it's doing right not. He says, "art tends to give shape and weight to the most

invisible processes." The one he's talking about now is that people are in a shifting of reality - it's now the Information Age and reality is becoming increasingly intangible, and Art is giving shape to how people are dealing with this new way of living the intangible. But it can't be done by simply making objects, as Art has traditionally done, but now it's the creation of experiences. He goes on to describe the open market as a model for current artistic practice. It's been boiled down to a coming together of things with history attached to them already, not the striving for constantly new things. It's become about exchanges, convergence of many separate things - relational. [Image: Rirkrit Tiravanija, Untitled, 1992 (Free)]

3) It took me a second and third read to figure out what "detournement" was supposed to be. What is detournement? It is free access to all literary and artistic heritage (culture) for purposes of "propaganda." I also question if that's the right word, propaganda. Propaganda for what?

Anyway, any and all elements are open to not only correction and integration but also reinterpretation from their original meanings.

Then he gave the example of the DJs and I watched the RiP movie and understood all this.

[Image: Girltalk]

4) It basically all comes down to where we place value. Where is the value in the Art Object - in the Maker, in the Object itself, can it stand on its own, what makes that object successful, is it pretty, is it functional, is it making you think.................. blah blah blah. For me personally, I think about the word "talent." Where does this concept fit in to all of Bourriaud's talk? It's a skill that cannot be duplicated, both technically and perhaps intellectually as well, because some people can just think up some crazy stuff that's utterly amazing. This is, I suppose, the same thing as the artist's authenticity again, and people are asking what's going to happen with all this appropriation, is it going to spiral into meaninglessness and nothing will be good anymore? I would say that there is an innate sense of what's good, we all know what that is - it's all we talk about, we just give it complicated words - but basically we all know what is good and what isn't, what's cheap and what's handmade and which is better.

[Image: Haim Steinbach, Global Proportions, 2007]

5) Page 23 where he brings up Pierr Huyghe, says that the goal of this guy's work is to give the people back the control in the writing of "scenarios," the scripts that have been written for us to live our lives by. "Citizens would gain autonomy and freedom if they could participate in the construction of the 'bible' of the social sitcom instead of deciphering its lines." Um, isn't this the theory of DEMOCRACY in general? What our country was founded on? The people make the rules, not some supreme authority with no accountability making us follow blindly or else we'll be killed.... Is this not technically what our society is? People made up these scenarios, not the government. The people are the government - it does what we want to to, right?? People have rights, they have rights not to watch sticoms on TV! I don't want to get into a big debate, it just struck me as sort of ironic, that statement.

[Image: Pierre Hyughe, This is not a Time for Dreaming, 2004]