RE: <nettime> Documenta XI but not really

["Borcila, Rozalinda" <borcila@arts.usf.edu>]

it is very rare that i respond to any messages posted, being happy to read
and follow discussions as they unfold.  but there is something here in
calin's message, or perhaps not even in his message but beyond it,
something that i recognise and which troubles me greatly. i, too, am a
romanian and an artist. i realise i am in a sad minority as a romanian and
an artist when i stubbornly hold on to the idea that art has no relevance
once it defines itself as an insular , or autonomous, practice -- but
rather, by its very definition, it is a cultural practice, and therefore,
in relation to other aspects of culture: from literature to politics to
history. where exactly these boundaries are to "art", that we can find,
trace and then remain within them -- and how to maintain them so
well-behaved? but most of all, why? what is there to gain from the
rigidity of souch discoursive formations? i am deeply suspicious of the
principle of autonomy.

someone once used the term "specificity" in a discussion -- i think, a
more useful term for me to use here. there are types of art/ if one wants
to talk about media, or methods, types of praxis, methodology, style,
whatever, that have specific ways of approaching or dealing with content,
process, form. perhaps, if our debates about these works are limited and
never arrive also at these specificities, we miss something important,
something fundamental to what -- for instance, performance art can do that
fundamentally no other type of cultural production offers, because it is
postulated on the notion of dissappearance (its presence is due to the
fact that it will dissappear, or something of that sort). i wonder if this
is what calin means?

rozalinda

> ----------
> From: 	Calin
> Reply To: 	Calin
> Sent: 	Friday, August 16, 2002 6:09 AM
> To: 	nettime-l@bbs.thing.net
> Subject: 	<nettime> Documenta XI but not really
> 
> Maybe it is time to notice that tere is not very much space left for
> debating art as an autonomous discipline, with its territory and its
> rules.

[....]




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