TEXTBIOBIBLIO

Marquard Smith
Project for an Unknown Future, or having your cake and eating it too



1. We must refuse to be party to articulating the "as yet unknown".

2. Visions are for Romantics, Madmen and Madwomen, Visionaries, the Deluded, the Fanciful, Dreamers, Prophets. And Artists. And so forth.

3. Context continues to remain key. History demands it. At the same time, the demands of history hinder certain possibilities. An adherence to context is to blame for this.

4. This means we're never not contemporary. Yet always out of joint.

5. The future of art education knows this, relies on this, needs this to be so.

6. Because we're all practitioners now.

7. Having said this, be wary of art historians bearing gifts. (Like this, even.)

8. Incidentally, where do curators fit in?

9. What kind of responsibility, if any, does the art press - and arts publishing - have to art?

10. Never under-estimate editing. Or the value of over-interpretation.

11. Stating the obvious should be a crime. As should forgetting to do so.

12. The avant-garde has always been bourgeois.

13. Sometimes art is for art's sake. Sometimes art must be forsaken.

14. Surely questions of identity in their present form are tired. I'm no longer stirred by talk of hybridity. What new patterns of struggle will emerge? What art will provoke them, if any, and to what art will they lead?

15. Applauding (the) fluidity (of identity) fails to acknowledge that, more often than not, fluids find the path of least resistance.

16. Celebrating (Western) nomadism is farcical. Who can afford to be nomadic? Who's paying (for your travels) when you can't?

17. Somehow, and with a critical eye, art must continue to mark and re-mark the labyrinthine boundaries between dirt, soil, ground, dwelling, residence, locality, the public, neighbourhoods, the national, the transcultural, the global, and Empire. Where is the cosmopolitanism we were promised?

18. And yet how can we continue to speak to one another when we know that the time for dialogue has passed? Not all questions are rhetorical.

19. Against Ethics: Even more so since September 11, 2002, we have to be on our guard against the rhetoric of ethics. And ethics. From whatever direction it comes at us.

20. There must be a backlash against worthiness.

21. What kind of precedent is set by memorialising as a problem of Nachträglichkeit?

22. Too late.

23. How can aesthetic practices of non-art excite and disturb?

24. Be wary of and guard against indifference. And prescription.

25. "In danger": When we have just gotten out of the way of a vehicle, we are most in danger of being run over (Friedrich Nietzsche, "Human, All too Human", 564).

26. Time, duration, and speed continue to gather pace.

27. The shape of the future of the visual arts is a bastardised coupling of an interactivity between digital technology, software studies, animation, video, installation, much else, and a sensitivity to the materiality of things. Lens-based, time-based, and base-d media dovetail. With no end of interference. (Interference because they cannot shrug off their past, or see their future clearly.)

28. Some will carry on painting, it's inevitable.

29. Sarcasm will get you nowhere. Witty repartee will get you only so far. Agility and fabrication further still.

30. A continued attention towards these fascinating things must be encouraged: weight; water; waste; temperament; tears; sympathy; sonicity; skin; showboating; shadows; scale; practice; phenomenology; missing bits; lying; luminosity; living biotechnology, ingestion; indecision; hyperbolic; hapticity; hair; glass; foam; fatness; exchange; erring; elasticity; echoes; dust; dermographism; complexity; comfort; bubbles; bruising; banality; anonymity; air; aequorea victoria; action; accidents.

31. As the contours of our visual culture continue to become more complex and its surfaces enfold upon themselves relentlessly, metonymy is the only feasible way to follow such rhythm.

32. Tropologies are to knowledge what morphologies are to consciousness.

33. In praise of uncertainty.

34. Noticing awkwardness.

35. Advocating awkwardness: Art must always be awkward.

36. Advocating awkwardness: Never trust anyone who makes "art theory" seem effortless. Or who does "art theory" and forgets to mention art in the process.

37. Advocating awkwardness: It's meant to be a struggle.

38. There are reasons why "awkwardness" is onomatopoetic.

39. Fragments, aphorism, pithy sayings, and clichés always have potential.

40. Avoid clichés like the plague.

41. A Warning: Like the proverbial chain letter, the "Anthology of Art" will be broken. It must. It will not comprise 312 different contributions (156 images and 156 texts) in 26 generations. To refuse to break the "Anthology" is to be held hostage to (aesthetic) fortune. Much like a chain letter, there will be no fatal consequences. As far as we can tell.

42. We have no option but to articulate the "as yet unknown".

43. Falter. Opinion is always suspect.

Marquard Smith
London