Thinking about Krauss' essay in relation to my work

An image that hits you with its meaning instantly has an effect and power that lasts. This can be contrasted with an experience that is engineered to be transitory and ephemeral but potentially sets in motion a series of connections to be made in the brain. One is an interactive process where ideas are planted and can either grow or perish and the other is a gifting process were something is learned and either filed away or trashed. With the interactive process the idea is learned and can grow and develop or it will not be retained, with the instant image it is either retained in its complete state or not at all. The instant image doesn't give room for the development of an idea it can only communicate a fully formed idea that you either agree or disagree with, were-as the experience allows the audience to be an individual and add to the idea in a more neutral way. The image of the fire place at the flat is an instant metaphor, it arouses ideas about destruction, domestic comfort, abandonment, renovation, it also contains a certain violence, but once the image is seen it is then put away in the brain somewhere. You might think about the image longer if confronted with it on the wall of a gallery were a level of contemplation is expected but in itself it is autonomous and doesn't demand anything from the audience. The process of pulling the cardboard down from the wall contains all the same ideas as the image of the fireplace but they are given to the audience in a way that allows for much more dialogue and as Kruass argues, a realisation of the relationship between the object and the context. Rather than seeing the fireplace as another reification of inanimate object into abstract emotion, you can experience the gestalt of the cardboard in relation to the building, what is the reality of a material in relation to a space.

Who Comes After The Subject by Rosalind Krauss

(my translation of the essay)

Roland Barthes idea of the death of the author suggests that a text only becomes significant as an original thing when it is read by the reader, it is through reading that all the ideas, appropriated and assembled by the author, become unified. Barthes develops this idea in 'From Work to Text' (1971) were he discusses the author as being present in his own personal 'charms' rather than as the great originator or 'centred subject'. The author can be appreciated and found in the small details that are personal and specific. Michel Foucault argues in 'What is an Author' that only recently has authorship been institutionalised as a means of classification. Foucault discusses a relationship between the sharing of 'knowledge (discourse)' and 'the imposition of power (discipline)' he argues that the author is needed not as a 'real person outside' of the writing but as a way of defining and separating one text and its ideas from another, Krauss describes this as 'a function of disciplinary order'. Heidegger also challenged 'the post-enlightenment idea of the centred subject.' Heidegger defines subject as a 'relational centre' and stipulates that man sees himself as such. With a view of man as a centre then his representations become objectified as 'phenomena' on a 'structured image'. In 'the question concerning technology' Heidegger describes 'technology as a way of revealing' he defines technology 'as a kind of challenging-forth that is also a storing-up' he calls storing up 'standing reserve' Nature becomes orderable and substitutable and objects lose their autonomy, reality becomes a picture, a concept rather than a living entity of its own. Heidegger distinguishes between Gestell - classifying things and grouping them together which is seen as negative, it 'insults objects' and the opposite Gestalt - a poetic revealing of connections between objects and their background. Krauss argues against Micheal Fried's critique of Minimalism by questioning his idea that a good object should be instantly convincing, by moving around a minimalist object the context is revealed and this allows for 'communal perception'. Fried favours seeing everything at once wereas minimalism favours a longer unravelling of experience. Krauss concludes by making a comparison with the trend in biographical interest in trauma towards an interest in split personalities and comes to say that after the subject comes the de-centred multiple personality.



nexus (plural nexuses or nexus or nexûs)
1. a form of connection
2. a connected group
3. the centre of something

contrapuntal (comparative more contrapuntal, superlative most contrapuntal)
1. (music) Of or relating to counterpoint.

vicissitude (plural vicissitudes)
1. Regular change or succession from one thing to another, or one part of a cycle to the next; alternation; mutual succession; interchange.
2. (often plural) a change, especially in one's life or fortunes.

promulgation (plural promulgations)
1. the act of promulgating or announcing something, especially a proclamation announcing a new law.

purview (plural purviews)
1. Range of understanding.

reification (plural reifications)
1. The consideration of an abstract thing as if it were concrete, or of an inanimate object as if it were living.
2. The consideration of a human being as an impersonal object.

poiesis (plural poieses)
1. An act or process of creation

socius m (feminine socia, neuter socium); first/second declension
1. sharing, joining in, partaking, associated
2. kindred, related, akin
3. leagued, allied, united, confederate

Images are loosing their value?

With the bombardment of images available on websites like Facebook tumblr and google image search it has become so easy to disengage with a multitude of images on the search for something specific. Therefore rather than being perceptive and open to the possibility of interpreting and thinking about what an image might be communicating we end up on a very narrow minded path towards discovering more of the same, this happens in many forms of collecting, the specificity of the search for an aesthetic that is particularly pleasing becomes an insatiable desire that cannot be interrupted by critical thought. We become desensitised of course, but more than that we become rarified and closed minded, by being overwhelmed we are forced to either get specific or care about nothing. But the search for one type of trainers or one ideal of feminine beauty disengages any critical enquiry and because we are not thinking about the conceptual value of images we cannot learn from them. This culture of images unaccompanied by words or explanations leaves a vapid simulacrum where textured and varied experience becomes replaced by the impulsive hunt for pleasurable imagery.

Just sayin