Janice Cheddie
As an academic and some time critic, I would not seek to restrict or prescribe the form art not made is to be. Thus, I take the question to be addressed as: what relationship might criticism and a notion of criticality have to art that has not been made? In the light of increasing commodification of critical theory and debate, criticism must seek to address the current intricate and unresolved relationship between criticism, writing, debate and the economies of art. Within this relationship, criticism is often mobilised to translate works of art across contexts, institutions, and practices into standardised commodity formats, understood within the language and context of an art world dominated by the West. Thus, it is important to begin to untangle the ways in which criticism circulates both as a commodity and as a critique within specific contexts and institutions, and the ways in which such criticism and works of art translate themselves across and through national and local borders and frameworks. Rather than seeking to produce critical writing which fixes, locates and commodifies the meaning of the work, I seek a criticism which would seek to enter into a dialogue with both its own focus of criticality and ways in which criticality can engage in a dialogue with a work of art. This criticism engages with the ways in which a work of art functions within the spaces it seeks to occupy, transform and address. A criticism which seeks to engage with the emerging and changing languages, landscapes and media of contemporary art. A criticism which, at the same time, embraces the challenge contemporary art presents to critical theory; a challenge which invites critical theory to push against the boundaries of the prevailing orthodoxies, to break with and disrupt the narratives of western modernity and modernism. A criticism which is not afraid to develop and challenge both existing spaces and functions of criticism itself whilst also seeking to explore new forms, modulations and spaces of writing. A criticism which embraces and articulates a dialogue which engages, within its own expression, the non-linearity, inter-textuality and multi-modality of contemporary art. A criticism which is both seductive and intelligent. A criticism which is not afraid to be experimental whilst seeking to be radical. A criticism which embraces, within its poly-vocality, a range of articulations and world-views. Janice Cheddie London |
