A  programme of events asking the question, can something happen in public again?

In collaboration with GradCAM, the Graduate School of Creative Arts & Media in Dublin, and guest curator Daniel Jewesbury, the gallery at TBG&S became a forum where the public can meet with a range of artists and thinkers to reconsider the troubled relationship between art and society. The project aims to look again at preconceptions concerning ‘publicness’, and to debate whether there is even anything left that we can call a ‘public sphere’. After the fiasco of the property crash, participants have been invited to look again at the role played by architecture and urban planning in the construction of physical public space. In a world controlled by globalised markets that are loyal to no nation can we still talk of meaningful democratic participation in the political public sphere? And if so, is there any room, or any need, for the involvement of artists?

106.5 Fm  ran for 2 days as part of re:public in Templebar Gallery, Dublin. With the aid of multiple microphones and an extendable antenna, all the sounds of the gallery’s activities were broadcast live on FM radio throughout the duration of the project.

The full schedule of re:public events and participating artists can be found here

Relational Art Practice and it’s Discontents: Towards Creating Waves                           Sinead Conlon, 2010

For the purposes of this text I will concentrate exclusively on principles of philosophical and cultural change at a time of global environmental and economic uncertainty. Throughout my practice in the MA Art in Public course I have been examining the increasing temporal appearance/disappearance or extensions of our contemporary built environment, society’s inflated mobility and these resulting effects on the aesthetics of cities forever in flux. In response to research into (mobile) architecture, urban planning, theory: relations between politics, architecture and urban planning, I have built temporary structures that re-appropriate public space for a time, I, with others, have moved mountains and as part of my masters project and I will again explore permeating public space, this time using radio waves. Below I will examine situations where artistic interventions, acting as agents, have the ability to give commentary and often provoke social change, looking at what (if any) legacies can remain as a result. I will look at particular case studies which give rise to these concerns, which create minor revolutions under public contexts, in turn allowing me to discuss elements of my own practice. I will discuss issues of documenting, translating and evaluating such a practice; contextualising it within an art discourse. At this time I am less interested in drawing conclusions and so I write this as an ongoing, open process of critical enquiry into the field of making relational art in a public context. 

Theory and related references to my practice 

We are in a transitional time according to Nicolas Bourriaud when he coined the term the Altermodern era, suggesting a shift from post-modernism towards an interconnected future. The Altermodern as a theoretical framework could be defined as a branding strategy, a tool used to group works of art which are made with the globalised context of the world in mind, that are against – or more of a reaction to – the commercialisation/commodification of the world today. In his essay in the Tate Triennial book, Bourriaud states that Altermodern is a … 

“positive experience of disorientation through an art-form exploring all dimensions of the present, tracing lines in all directions of time and space. In this sense, the artist turns ’cultural nomad’ to generate creativeness and deriving knowledge for artwork”¹ 

This shift from the end of postmodernism in a time of cultural hybridisation is characterised by artists working in multidisciplinary roles, cross-cultural negotiations, with new and virtual mobility embedded in their practice. The global networked context, that artists operate within is forever in flux and the status of art created under these conditions must hence be readdressed.  

It is worth mentioning here Bourriaud’s own history, as co-founder and co-curator of The Palais de Toyo in Paris and editor of Documents sur l’art², his reputation has largely been based on his grand theory Relational Aesthetics. His book of the same name, first published in French in 1997, and then translated into English in 2002, suggested that relational art of the 1990’s worked within; 

“the realm of human interactions and its social context, rather than the assertion of an independent and private symbolic space.”  

The “microtopians” Bourriaud alludes to within this text tend to attribute a sense of democracy, openness and dialogue; outlining an art practice heavily dependent on context and audience participation, leading me to question its true democratic³ nature. It can be said that this framework re-establishes another set of dictated unequal relations; setting the viewer, observer, or audience as separate but elemental components for the work. This is well summed up by Dave Beech,⁴ suggesting that, often the nature of the participation offered is merely ‘convivial’: projects fronting a friendly appeal, but creating rather banal social discourse. The participant here is generally powerless to question or critique the art or the art-concept, nor are they, in any real sense, a meaningful or true collaborator within the work. I the question the motivations around art that acts as an alleviator in this way, for what purpose do we need to coexist and be interconnected and for whom?  

As a curator and polemic provocateur, Bourriaud approaches The Altermodern and Relational Aesthetics from a social rather than historical point of view; so that the art itself, created under these conditions is only vaguely dealt with, rather the framework in which it operates appears more crucial. Hal Foster in 1996 writes that 

“…the institution may overshadow the work that it otherwise highlights: it becomes the spectacle, it collects the cultural capital and the director-curator becomes the star.” 

Foster writes similarly of the shifting role of the artist, a self-fashioning of artists as ethnographers⁵, here he argues that the quasi-anthropological role of the artist can often result in a questioning of anthropological authority. For both Bourriaud and Foster the multidisciplinary position of the artist and ethnographer coexists and their modus operandi are comparable, however one can argue that Bourriaud’s reliance on the mediation of the institution in creating these relationships becomes neutralised as a result. Paralleling Foster’s concerns regarding Relational Aesthetics, Claire Bishop speaks about socially engaged art or relational practices in 2006, having sacrificed aesthetic concerns to accommodate the collaborative possibilities of working in a social context⁶. Here Bishop wishes to point to cases where artists adopt other guises or disciplines, asking are there alternative models of criticism or a history to which artists can reflect upon? In terms of language used to discuss this type of work, Jacques Ranciere’s exploration of this notion has been extremely influential – he talks about art’s capacity to re-frame what he calls the distribution of the sensible and its role in making visible processes of all kinds, social and otherwise⁷. 

Bourriauds Altermodern manifesto⁸ describes a privileged, middle-class, largely western, mobile position; essentially a cosmopolitan ideal that has affinity with few artists today. Paralleling the concerns of Relational Aesthetic to his latest Altermodern framework, I make observations that the status of the contemporary artist, however predominantly Bourriaud aligns it to the Eurocentric practising creative, is an unashamed direct construct of an academic view not plausible as a universal observation; but rather a conjecture born out of an elite perspective. Despite its inadequate coverage in many art-market orientated publications, the debates and discussions⁹ provoked by the defining Relational Aesthetics theory have provided great insight into the limitations and potentials of art discourse itself. Nonetheless it has influenced a growing trend amongst artists to pursue the utilitarian ideal of art being a useful, omnipresent element; existing within society, relational art that can take many forms and directly challenge the status quo. I will furthermore identify it’s worthiness of experimentation during this moment of change; the Altermodern. Below I will outline case studies that supersede the representational and symbolic, towards having a real-world function and importance, entering society at an everyday level in response to real-world scenarios, while retaining critical, aesthetic and conceptual concerns, discussable within a fine art discourse. 

An example of such a project that aims to affirm relations between art and the public is Gareth Kennedy’s custom-made Inflatable Bandstand (10 Year Crescendo), which toured the counties of Leitrim and Roscommon in the Republic of Ireland in 2008. 

 Figure 1: Gareth Kennedy, Inflatable Bandstand (10 Year Crescendo), 2008 on location in Manorhamilton, Co. Leitrim.  

The yellow bandstand played host to a specially commissioned musical composition by Ian Wilson, performed by saxophonist Cathal Roche, the composition of which reflected the developments of the Irish economy over the last ten years. A performative element embedded in this work included inflating and deflating the structure on site, on mostly barren, disused plots of land or car parks in these counties. The bandstand’s lemon-yellow colour reflected the overuse of this shade of paint on new housing estates that sprung up in rural locations during Ireland’s economic boom, which now largely stand uninhabited. The bandstand offered a frame to house the artist’s social concerns regarding the lack of civic amenities or gathering places for people in these areas, in light of the disappearance of such bandstands in order to accommodate new property developments. These 20 minute, one-off events proved a modest resistance against the commodifcation of the rural landscape, by existing as a marker to highlight the possibility of mobility and the impermanence of architecture during a time of economic uncertainty. In offering a temporal intervention throughout an Irish rural landscape, Kennedy succeeds in creating both aesthetic and conceptual contributions to a more socially engaged art discourse. However it is difficult to asses the effectiveness of this project as we now examine it through mediated documentation. Understanding if the fleeting presence of the yellow bandstand really did leave an impression on the places and people who witnessed it or if its real legacy is now bound to such academic analysis and discussion as this?  

September 2009 saw Hideous Beast¹, some helpers and I build a simple four-walled structure with a chimney on a community garden, the Eglantine Anarchist Plot, in Belfast as part of the Live Art Biennial, FIX ’09.  

Figure 2: Sinead Conlon, Ty Unnos, Eglantine Anarchist Plot, Belfast, September 2009, courtesy of the artist. 

This idea was based on what is known as Ty or Caban Unnos in Wales or Gecekondu in Turkey. It literally translates as a “house in a night”, a term that exploits a legal loophole that states that if you can build a four walled structure with a smoking chimney between the hours of sunset and sunrise on common land, then the structure can legally remain and you can claim that land as your own. At the time and in doing this project I was quoted as saying:  

‘The gesture of building one of these shelters here, I think is appropriate for how the Eglantine Community Garden acquired it’s plot, existing without permission, between the lines of the law, having turned a space into communal private/public land¹’.  

In a modest attempt to profile this phenomenon that takes place everyday in Turkey and in former regions of the Ottoman Empire, this work chose to articulate an ingenuity that exists within people driven by social deprivation and economic circumstance, who are ultimately forced to operate outside of modern law to attain a basic human right – shelter. As with Gareth Kennedy’s Inflatable Bandstand, it could be said, the success of this work balances on the evaluation it underwent and by whom. In order to be able to answer if the objectives it laid out were achieved, appreciated, communicated and understood by its audience some sense of appraisal must be made. However without any form of peer or audience assessment this is difficult to ascertain. “Knowledge and reason are not enough to affect change²”, hence the need to open up dialogical avenues in order to accommodate some level and time for post-project critique. Ultimately, what remains of either of the above projects is sub-sequential, yet elemental to the works. For an artwork to survive or translate into the history of a discourse some aspect or trace of it has to exist, despite initial conceptual intentions. Paradoxically, however, documentation can never actually reinstate or fully represent the original work to us. Rhetorically I wonder if documentation then becomes another work of art, separate from the original event or if objects that served a function in happenings/actions should be represented as object-based artworks in other contexts? Nevertheless, highlighting these problems is easier than prescribing solutions but perhaps it is something as creative practitioners we need to find creative solutions to.  A courageous example of blending an acute social awareness with aesthetic concerns is Hans Haacke’s work entitled Sapolsky et al. Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, A Real Time Social System, 1971 which gives commentary on a questionable situation that deals with the property market, urban planning and New York in the 1970′s. This work comprises of 146 photographs of New York apartments, 8 of which documented financial transactions undertaken by Harry Shapolsky between 1951 and 1971. Each building image is accompanied by a text that describes it’s location, referencing and describing the dubious financial transactions involving in the purchase of these.  

Figure : Hans Haacke, “Sapolsky et al. Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, A Real Time Social System, 1971”, exhibition view (fragment) at the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art, 2009.  

Haacke’s solo show at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 1971 was to include this work, however it doubly proved to disclose personal and business information about some of the museum’s patrons. The show was cancelled by the directors of the museum, six weeks before it’s date of opening. Despite this set back, Haacke’s singular clarity and challenging stance remained resolute, proving to expose the Manhattan real estate tycoon, Harry Shapolsky’s morally questionable dealings. Haacke evidenced that without any public engagement with his art, without the show having taken place, the work itself had the power for radical change. The hidden power structures of the museum and the limitations of what can be achieved within the context of this politically-charged environment were revealed precisely by crossing these borders. Haacke’s effort to crack open these truths about Manhattan real estate was done using a brave and innovative methodology, using art to articulate a difficult subject, using it as a device to provoke a form of resistance; using it in a utilitarian way. In conversation with Pierre Bourdieu, Hans Haacke discusses patronage and the insensitivity artists and writers attribute to this relationship between institution and artist.

“Patronage is a subtle form of domination that acts thanks to the fact that it is not perceived as such. All forms of symbolic domination operate on the basis of misrecognition, that is, with the complicity of those who are subjected to them.¹”

Reflections on a working project re:REM

Haacke’s solo show at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 1971 was to include this work, however it doubly proved to disclose personal and business information about some of the museum’s patrons. The show was cancelled by the directors of the museum, six weeks before it’s date of opening. Despite this set back, Haacke’s singular clarity and challenging stance remained resolute, proving to expose the Manhattan real estate tycoon, Harry Shapolsky’s morally questionable dealings. Haacke evidenced that without any public engagement with his art, without the show having taken place, the work itself had the power for radical change. The hidden power structures of the museum and the limitations of what can be achieved within the context of this politically-charged environment were revealed precisely by crossing these borders. Haacke’s effort to crack open these truths about Manhattan real estate was done using a brave and innovative methodology, using art to articulate a difficult subject, using it as a device to provoke a form of resistance; using it in a utilitarian way. In conversation with Pierre Bourdieu, Hans Haacke discusses patronage and the insensitivity artists and writers attribute to this relationship between institution and artist.

“Patronage is a subtle form of domination that acts thanks to the fact that it is not perceived as such. All forms of symbolic domination operate on the basis of misrecognition, that is, with the complicity of those who are subjected to them.¹”

Reflections on a working project re:REM

The need to look for flexible and temporary alternatives to spatial planning and architecture, is evermore important at this time. Baudrillard’s The Painter of Modern Life² captures the rise and spectacle of modernity,

describing the figure of the flaneur during an increasingly homogeneous society. The idea that you could have it all was rife during the writing of this essay. Today, in late post-modernity, there is no single homogeneous spectacle, instead we are becoming fragmented due a rise in the disillusionment with the modern state. At a time when global economic, environmental and financial stability is seriously under threat, we must find new ways of dealing with the flux, disjointed, transient nature we find ourselves in. One way to address this is to look at modes of art practice that allows us to enter into society at an everyday level in order to explore contemporary social issues – one such way is radio.

“In 1916, the Irish Volunteers carried a transmitter on an up-turned table into the General Post Office to attempt to inform the outside world of their Rising in Dublin. It has been suggested that this represented one of the world’s first radio broadcasts.³”

In this epic (if not mythic) retelling of one of the most significant events in Irish history, radio transmission proved successful in combating the occupation of the airwaves by British forces. Having proclaimed the Irish Republic in Dublin, the Irish Volunteers persisted in transmitting their news via Morse code eventually reaching America with their message. As a metaphor for the potential power radio holds, it helps illustrate radio as form of resistance.

REM Island was a platform built in the Republic of Ireland, which was then towed to six miles off the Dutch coast in 1964 and here was established as the pirate broadcasting home of Radio and TV Noordzee. Unlike many other pirate radio stations of the 1960′s and 1970′s which existed onboard boats, this platform was cemented to the seabed, taking an obtuse, non-place⁴ position in the North Sea. Inspired by this narrative, I

 wish to honour REM Island for it’s sense of resistance aginst commodicfication and the methodologies it employed in finding an alternative space and means of producing culture.

For the purposes of the exhibition entitled re:REM, I will appropriate the original platform structure in order to reproduce it, lending new attributes to it’s design and installing it on the interstice of the flat roofed gallery. Throughout the 3 week exhibition, broadcasts of the ambient sounds of the gallery will be transmitted via a low powered 50mW FM transmitter at a range of approximately 500m. It is important here to point out that radio waves operate as a physical medium; as electromagnetic waves they have a height and width, taking their space on a frequency. They carry information from one place to another, occupying that airspace in the process; as opposed to sound waves which require a medium to travel through and reliant on vibration. At this time in my practice, it is this gesture of occupying this ethereal space that I am interested in pursuing and in doing so paralleling the situation of the structure. Contesting the public sphere in this way could be seen as a form of activism, testing dominant social constructs and constructing new communities; instigating an active listening populace.

As part of re:REM I am attempting to extend the utilitarian ideal that is elemental to this work, by making public all processes undertaken throughout this project; technical, conceptual and otherwise, in a way that seeks to demystify the artist. As a means of making this project transparent, it also allows the work transferable possibilities into other contexts. Bertold Brecht wrote of the biased use of radio as a medium, transmitting from one centred individualist position and hence inextricably creating a dominant force and an “other”¹. Brecht suggests that a movement towards adopting capabilities that allow the listener to receive as well as transmit, should be applied, creating audience participation. Nowadays it can be said that the internet, as a communicative tool has bridged that gap, as the rise in social networking sites and blogging has created a two-way system of communication. As an art practitioner, a methodology I wish to employ in my work is a system of evaluation, which I’ve identified above is often lacking in many relational artworks, although credit must be paid here to one such artist who adopts a similar approach, Thomas Hirschhorn². My approach, throughout the duration of re:REM, will offer 5-8 questions related to this project that invite written response, questions I feel could benefit discussion or reaction. In this way a limited two-way communication scheme may be achieved and in doing so I wish to be able to make improvements to my work and in turn develop a stronger practice as a result.

Reflecting on my research throughout this course of study, I have identified many avenues that warrant further exploration and consideration. The use of radio for artistic endeavour stands out as a medium and an element of this project that holds vast possibilities. Under different circumstances, i.e. a long-term residency that would afford me the opportunity to develop relationships with a community, the potential of creating broadcast content that is meaningful and sincere to a location and it’s people is an exciting consideration. In identifying it’s resourcefulness and capabilities I am aware of the technological knowledge required to develop this art-form and intend to gain education in this area in the near future. However I remain resolute as an artist to exploring methodologies, modes of practice and conditions under which I can contribute towards altering, penetrating and shaping the public sphere. In doing so I must acknowledge that I do not exist as an island in my endeavours, many, many people in various capacities contribute everyday to my practice, without whom much of my work would not be possible. Therefore it is a relational practice, that requires relationships to sustain it.

Bibliography:

Baudrillard, Charles, The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays, translated and edited by Jonathon Mayne, Phaidon, 1978.

Bourdieu, Pierre and Haacke, Hans, Free Exchange, Cambridge: Polity Press in association with Blackwell, 1995

Bourdieu, Pierre, Outline of a Theory of Practice, Cambridge University Press, 1977.

Bourriaud, Nicolas, Altermodern: Tate Triennial 2009, London: Tate Publishing, 2009.

 Bourriaud, Niccolas, Relational Aesthetics, Dijon: Les Presses du Réel, 2002.

Brecht, Bertold, The Radio as an Appartatus of Communication, (1932), Anton Kaes, Martín Jay, Edward Dimendberg , The Weimar Republic Source Book, University of California Press, 1994.

Calvino, Italo, Invisible Cities, Harvest Books, a later printing edition,1978.

Farrell, David, M., Public broadcasting in a new state: the debate over the foundation of Irish radio, 1922-1926, Manchester: Department of Government, Victoria University of Manchester, 1991.

Foster, Hal, The Artist as Ethnographer, in The Return of the Real: The Avant-Garde at the End of the Century, Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996.

Gablik, Suzi, The Reenchantment of Art, Thames and Hudson, 1992.

Hickey, Dave, Air Guitar – Essays on Art and Democracy, Art Issues Press, 1997.

Kaes, Anton, Jay, Martin Dimendberg, Edward, The Weimar Republic Source Book, University of California Press, 1994.

Miwon, Kwon, One Place After Another: Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity, MIT Press, 2004.

B. Jones, D. Petrescu, Jeremy Till, (eds), Architecture and Participation, London: Routledge, 2005.

Ranciere, Jacques, The Politics of Aesthetics, trans. by Gabriel Rockhill, London: Continuum, 2004.

Stavrakakis, The Lacanian Left – Psychoanalysis, Theory, Politis, New York: State University of New York Press, 2000, p.165.

Catalogue:

Hirschhorn, Thomas, Material: Public Works – The Bridge 2000, London, co-published by Book Works and the Whitechapel Art Gallery, 2001.

Articles:

Beech, Dave Include Me Out, Art Monthly, April 2008.

Bishop, Claire, Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics, October (magazine), 2004.

Bishop, Claire, The Social Turn: Collaboration and its Discontents, Artforum, February, 2006.

Television Program:

Meades, Jonathan, Off Kilter, BBC Production, as shown on BBC 3 September 26^th 2009.

Electronic Sources:

http://www.artinamericamagazine.com/news-opinion/conversations/2009-03-17/altermodern-a-conversation-with-nicolas-bourriaud/ accessed, 12.11.09

http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/altermodern/manifesto.shtm

http://www.hideousbeast.com/about

http://transform.eipcp.net/correspondence/1196340894#redir

Illustration references:

Fig. 1. http://www.gkennedy.info/indexhibitv070e/index.php?/project/inflatable-bandstand/ accessed 24.11.09

Fig. 2. Courtesy of the artist.

Fig. 3. http://artnews.org/files/0000040000/0000039093.jpg/Hans_Haacke.jpg accessed 02.12.09

Fig. 4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rem_eiland.jpg accessed 08.11.09

1Brecht, Bertold, The Radio as an Appartatus of Communication, (1932), Anton Kaes, Martín Jay, Edward Dimendberg , The Weimar Republic Source Book, University of California Press, 1994, pg. 615.

2Hirschhorn, Thomas, Material: Public Works – The Bridge 2000, London, co-published by Book Works and the Whitechapel Art Gallery, 2001.

1 Bourdieu, Pierre and Haacke, Hans, Free Exchange, Cambridge, Polity Press in association with Blackwell, 1995, p.54

2Baudrillard, Charles, The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays, translated and edited by Jonathon Mayne, Phaidon, 1978.

3Farrell, David M., Public broadcasting in a new state: the debate over the foundation of Irish radio, 1922-1926, Manchester: Department of Government, Victoria University of Manchester, 1991, pg3.

4The term “non-place” ere, acts to reference the seminal text by Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, as he describes

1Bourdieu, Pierre and Haacke, Hans, Free Exchange, Cambridge, Polity Press in association with Blackwell, 1995, p.54

2Baudrillard, Charles, The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays, translated and edited by Jonathon Mayne, Phaidon, 1978.

3Farrell, David M., Public broadcasting in a new state: the debate over the foundation of Irish radio, 1922-1926, Manchester: Department of Government, Victoria University of Manchester, 1991, pg3.

4The term “non-place” ere, acts to reference the seminal text by Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, as he describes

1Conlon, Sinead, Ty Unnos, September 2009, promotional material that accompanied the work  

2Stavrakakis, The Lacanian Left – Psychoanalysis, Theory, Politis, State University of New York Press, New York, 2000, p.165.   

1“Hideous Beast is a collaborative effort between two artists, Josh Ippel and Charles Roderick. “Through organising structured participatory events we attempt to encourage cultural activity outside the bounds of mainstream entertainment and fabricated desire.” http://www.hideousbeast.com/about  

1Bourriaud, Nicolas, Altermodern: Tate Triennial 2009, London: Tate Publishing, 2009, pg. 8.  

2Founded in 1992 by Nicolas Bourriaud, Eric Troncy, Philippe Parreno and Liam Gillick, this art magazine (1992-2000) offers critical analysis on post-modernist art practice. 

3The use of the term “democratic” here aspires to the most engaging, qualitative and equal understanding of the word, rather than a political strategy.  

4Beech, Dave “Include Me Out”, Art Monthly, April 2008. 

5Foster, Hal, “The Artist as Ethnographer”, in “The Return of the Real: The Avant-Garde at the End of the Century “, Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996 

6Bishop, Claire, “The Social Turn: Collaboration and its Discontents”, Artforum, February, 2006.  

7Jacques Ranciere. “The Politics of Aesthetics”, translated by Gabriel Rockhill, London: Continuum, 2004, pg. 116  

8http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/altermodern/manifesto.shtm  

9Bishop, Claire, Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics, October (magazine), 2004, pg. 52. 

© Sinead Conlon 2009

Conlon’s installation recontextualises a version of the REM Island broadcasting platform, built in Ireland in 1964 and then towed to 6 miles off the Dutch coast. re:REM develops the artist’s recent particular concerns regarding mobile, temporary architecture and the occupation of territory by means of legal loopholes. 

50 mW FM transmitter - broadcasting the ambient sounds of the gallery throughout the duration of the exhibition

The re:REM sketchbook that accompanied the show can be seen here

“Making Waves”, 6.04 mins duration, DVD looped

Angela Halliday’s review of re:REM featured in Paper Visual Art Journal, March 2010 can be seen here

http://www.adhocbelfast.co.uk/ 

FIX ’09 Press Release

 …. smoking chimney at dawn

http://fixcatalyst.wordpress.com 

http://www.hideousbeast.com/

http://eglantine-community-garden.blogspot.com

Many millions of thanks to all who helped in every way with this project - Josh and Charlie, Liam, John, Linda, Jan, Bee, Susanne, Jemma, Ceclia, Miriam, Christine, all at Catalyst, Blick Studios and the Eglantine Gardeners – thanks!

As part of Art@Work ’09 Sinead Conlon was awarded a residency running for 2 months at Roscommon County Library. It is a residential programme organised by Roscommon County Council Arts Office where artists, financed by Roscommon County Arts Office and the Arts Council of Ireland, spend three weeks in a company in County Roscommon making artwork motivated by the environment, staff, materials and working practices of the company.

Some resulting works:

Some blank spaces inserted in over 1,000 books throughout the library’s public collection in Roscommon County Library

5 specially designed bookmarks offered freely to library users

The subsequent art@work publication with contributions from CREATE Director Sarah Tuck and writer Jessica Foley may be found by clicking here 

Hal Foster’s The Return of the Real (1996), traces important models at work in art practice and art theory since 1960, and reconstitutes the relations pre-war and post-war avant-gardes. A particularly pioneering text The Artist as Ethnographer exists as a chapter within this book and when published provoked much heated debate amongst cultural theorists and art critics alike. Foster’s allegation that community art serves at the interests of neoconservatives, by filling the void of the welfare state , is counteracted by author Kwon Miwon in One Place After Another: Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity , where she appeals for a “collective artistic praxis” . Sharing Foster’s concerns Grant Kester, on community art, writes in Aesthetic Evangelists:
“What concerns me is the extent to which those of us committed to a progressive cultural practice might inadvertently corroborate certain
structural features to the conservative position.”
Foster’s employed methodology of chapter divisions within this book, act to outline art practices over incongruent periods of time, hence directing the reader to formulate inter-related suppositions on his theories. Much of his writings demand argument and debate, Zoya Kocur and Simon Leung criticised Foster’s institutional motives and biased agenda for his publication of The Anti-Aesthetic . In response to Foster’s aforementioned text, Kocur and Leung were compelled to publish Theory in Contemporary Art Since 1985 , to combat what they believed to be a tainted perspective on the “overview and reassessment of contemporary theory as it is applied to art practice ”.

In the ground breaking The Artist as Ethnographer Foster wishes to identify the self-fashioning of artists as ethnographers, he looks at the vanguard shift of adopting this new position in relation to a postmodernist society. The preface to an earlier text, introduced and edited by Foster, Postmodern Culture, he outlines the problematic pluralist/modernist approaches of the late 1950’s and early 1960’s and delineates hence that:
“postmodernism is best conceived as a conflict of old and new modes –
cultural and economic, the one not entirely autonomous, the other not
all determinative” .
The new genre public art movement of the postmodernist age, as first described by Suzi Gablik in The Reenchantment of Art, 1991 , is one of grave complexities, whereby the artist looks at art in terms of social function rather than visual style or aesthetics. Paying homage to Walter Benjamin’s essay of 1934 The Author as Producer, Foster’s The Artist as Ethnographer essay examines the contemporary artist occupying a left of centre position in contrast to the traditional individualist centred modernist modes of practice. Benjamin’s essay discusses requiring the author to act as an active agent, to intervene in the production process, centrally it questions social engagement and art practice. It is this abstract role of the new genre public artist which Foster directly aligns to that of anthropology and ethnography.

The relationship between artist and ethnographer can be seen to be based on a mutual envy of sorts – common concerns of alterity, encounter, ethnocentricity, interdisciplinary techniques and self-reflection shared by both parties. Susan Hiller writes:
“By definition art is an anthropological practice and anthropology is by definition an art – the role of the artists is to unveil codes not
yet articulated within a culture…to look for new forms known but
as yet not understood.”
However as this may be, Foster argues that the quasi-anthropological role of the artist can often result in a questioning of anthropological authority. He acknowledges that art and ethnography will inextricably coexist and their modus operandi will be comparative but, unlike Hiller, he claims there will remain a projected ambivalence between both groups. He recognises that art expanded its field of enquiry into culture, the object which anthropology was thought to have assumed as its area of expertise (i.e. principally overthrown through and by the rise of feminist culture). Foster cites James Clifford, an anthropologist responsible for developing the concept of “ethnographic self-fashioning ”. It is a paradoxical notion at the least, but obvious in scenarios of collaborative site-specific practices between artist and public – whereby only partial engagement with the community (the other in this case) is achieved. Traditional social and scientific techniques of engagement, primarily participant-observer, remain unobserved , according to Foster. Organically attentions are shifted from reciprocal investigations to artistic centred ethnographic self-fashioning; a narcissistic artist self-portrait in disguise at the site, if you like. Clifford, a neo-surrealist, asks “Is not every ethnographer something of a surrealist, a reinventor and reshuffler of realities? ” Foster’s whimsical description of the realist assumption:
“that the other, here postcolonial, there proletarian, is in the real not in the ideological, because he or she is both socially oppressed, politically transformative, and or materially productive”.
He continues to say this assumption essentially boils down to a subversive primitivist fantasy:
“that the other has access to primal psychic and social processes from which the white (petit) bourgeois subject is blocked.”
We see here a further marginalisation, the politics of culture aiding in the identity of difference.

Throughout the text Hal Foster highlights the methods by which the contemporary artist has engaged with anthropological ideals, unhinging the “collaborative” relationship between artist and community through provisions of ethnography. The desire of the contemporary artist to operate in an interdisciplinary, contextual, decentred mode, to work without an otherness however only furthers their paradoxical aspirations to self-consider the artist self. Nevertheless acknowledging the artist as a self entity recreates a notion of otherness in what Foster describes as a growing trend of artists self-othering . For Foster, to be represented or studied in it’s self creates marginalisation and otherness and in this way he argues community-based artists may support a colonisation of difference. In other words, it seems that the author is adamant that the artist or intellectual are bound by the eternal Marxian class structures regardless of otherwise altruistic intentions. Surely in a near-global economy the work of an artist must be exemplified to exaggerate a heterogenic status and combat the cultural erosion of globalisation.

As a regular contributor to the New Left Review , Foster’s well-articulated position of “a postmodernism of resistance and a postmodernism of reaction ” on deconstructing modernism, draws upon his recurring identification and reference to Marxian meta-theory. His class-structure realisation and mention of productivist models unashamedly aligns his critique as being Marxist-existentialist. It is also true to say that the only actual definition we have for existentialism is in the very use of common phrases and labels such as the self, the other, the subject, the object, otherness and immanence , which he uses widely throughout the chapter, The Artist as Ethnographer. Uncharacteristically, Foster does not outline a utopian structure that favours the autonomy of the community and artist symbiotically as is often the preferred solution for many neo-Marxists. Foster rather, states the obvious and to some extent outlines the inextricable inequality and interdependent reliance that all modern cultural acts are bound to.

Chapter five, The Return of the Real, sees Foster considers society to abject the artist as alien . Foster further analyses the artist, reducing he/she to an institutionally endorsed authority, empowered with the given supremacy to engage a community in the creation of a self-fashioned representation. The artist as authoritarian goes undisputed, often unrecognised according to the author. However in this critique Foster displays of a lack understanding with the artist whose practice can all too often become subject to the prescriptive agendas of institutional bodies, as collaboration between artist and community can never go entirely unmediated . Foster questions whether perhaps the museum as patron may inoculate itself by incorporating potential criticism of its role into the institution; although at the same time:
“…in order to remap the museum or to reconfigure its audience, [site-specific work] must operate within it .” Partnerships/collaborations in Fosters eyes are forever tainted due to their economic reliance on each other, i.e. the commissioning bodies act as previous patrons, dictating to a certain degree the direction, effect and outcome of artwork either overtly or in abstract.

Foster admirably lobbies for a structuralist re-reading of cultural theory and art practice, wishing to fracture ‘our conceptions of meaning ’ of the role of the contemporary artist. The revisiting of our antiquity throughout this text is integral to the author’s argument, whereby examining where we have come from – our historical avant-garde, we may then project innovative tactics on our future practices. Hal Foster brings with him to this excerpt, The Artist as Ethnographer, a reputation of trepidation and outstanding credentials, quantifying substantial reason to study his work further. This critique of modern machineries of collaborative practices is of contemporary relevance in the attempts of a discursive and dialogical approach, breaking the shackles of oppression, otherness and marginalisation used in today’s new genre public art movement. The Artist as Ethnographer reactivated the debate surrounding the role of the contemporary artist, if only to stimulate dialogue about our past, it has left a mark on the manner in which we discuss cultural practice.

Bibliograpy:
David, Edward, Existentialism: A Reconstruction, Blackwell Publishing, 1999.
Clifford, James, The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-century Ethnography, Literature, and Art, Harvard University Press, 1988.
Foster, Hal, Postmodern Culture, London: Pluto Press, 1983.
Foster, Hal, The Artist as Ethnographer, in The Return of the Real: The Avant-Garde at the End of the Century Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996

Foster, Hal, The Anti-Aesthetic, University of Michigan, Bay Press, 1983.

Gablik, Suzi, The Reenchantment of Art, London: Thames and Hudson, 1991.

Gablik, Suzi, Has Modernism Failed? London: Thames and Hudson, 1984.

Green, Charles, The Third Hand: Collaboration in Art from Conceptualism to Postmodernism, UNSW Press, 2001.
Green, Renee, Culture in Action, Chicago, 1992.
Hiller, Susan, Thinking about Art, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996.

Honohan, Iseult, Civic Republicanism, Routledge Press, London, 2002.
Kester, Grant, Aesthetic Evangelists: Conversion and Empowerment in Contemporary Community Art, Afterimage, 1997.
Kocur, Zoya, Leung, Simon, Theory in Contemporary Art Since 1985: From 1985 to the Present, Blackwell Publishing, 2005.
Lacy, Suzanne, Mapping the Terrain New Genre Public Art, Seattle, Washington: Bay Press, 1995.

Lippard, Lucy, Get The Message? A Decade of Art for Social Change, New York: E.P. Dutton Inc, 1984.

Miles, Dr. Malcolm, Art, Space & the City: Public Art and Urban Future, London: Routledge, 1997.

Ed. Miles, Dr. Malcolm, Art for Public Places Critical Essays, London: Routledge, 1999.
Minh-ha, Trinh T, Difference: A Special Third World Women Issue, Woman, Native, Other, Minh-ha, Trinh T., Bloomington and Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 1989.
Mitchell, W. J. Thomas, Art and the Public Sphere, Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1992.

Miwon, Kwon, One Place After Another: Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity, MIT Press, 2004.

Miwon, Kwon/ Hal Foster, The Return of the Real, an interview with Hal Foster, Flash Art, Vol. XXIV, No. 187, March- April, 1996, p.63.

Ed. Soanes, Catherine & Stevenson, Angus, Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 11th Edition, Oxford University Press, 2004.

Spretnak, Charlene, States of Grace, New York: Harper Collins, 1993.

Winders, James A., European Culture since 1848; From Modern to Post-modern and Beyond, New York: Palgrave Press, 2001.
Vidler, Anthony, Warped Space: Art, Architecture, and Anxiety in Modern Culture, Boston: MIT Press, 2000.
http://www.anthropologymatters.com/journal/2000/whiles_2000_curious.htm (accessed 28.11.08)
http://www.variant.randomstate.org/1texts/Peter_Suchin.html (accessed 30.11.08)

© Sinead Conlon 2009

 Donna Haraway’s Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of the Partial Perspective (1988), reveals her anticipation for an improved and further developed feminist science. As a leading contemporary and postmodernist feminist theorist, Haraway has written many texts concerning the relationship between scientific human nature and machinery. This essay originated as a reflective response on Sandra Harding’s The Science Question in Feminism (1987) and is a response to Harding’s notion of “successor science[1]”. Her  essay A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century[2] (1985), first published in the Socialist Review, highlights the masculine predjudice in scientific culture.  Haraway within Situated Knowledges offers a more developed account of the feminist involvement in the masculinised customs of scientific discourse and the multiple theories of “objectivity”. This essay outlines the allegory characterising the traditional feminist critique as a mere polarisation of the sexes. Those who would assert that science is a rhetorical practice, sit on one axis citing thus all “science is a contestable text and a power field[3]”. At the other end are those concerned with a feminist version of objectivity, a position Haraway describes as a “feminist empiricism[4]”. She points out that while the constructivist position, informed by Post-Structuralist theorists (i.e. Derrida, Foucault, Barthes) provided a strong device for dismantling the scientific discourse’s claims on their version of truth through science, presenting the radical historical specificity, and so challenging “every layer of onion of scientific and technological constructions[5]”. This also consequently resulted in a deconstructing of any equipment that could be used to effectively talk about the “real” world, through their rejection of the codification of definitions, that claim to have discovered absolute ‘truths’ or facts about the world. Capitalising on the history of feminist-position theories, Haraway proposes that there may be a way to reconcile what has been achieved by the radical Contructivist critique of the historical, social implications of the rhetoric of science, with a particularly feminist standpoint, regarding scientific methodologies. In doing so, Haraway discounts her earlier polarising allegory and investigates the possibility of a metaphor of vision. Instead, her theory proposes it could help us steer clear of an agnostic methodology and towards a deeper understanding of the objectivity of scientific practice.

For the purposes of this assignment I will further explore the subtitle contained within Haraway’s essay, entitled The Persistence of Vision[6], closely examining her concept that there can be a “view from nowhere” and the privilege of the partial perspective. Herein she strives to open up the potential possibility of a feminist historiography of geography, rather than focusing on the redundant centres of the production of science, Haraway looks at what characterises its attentions. She provides a body of writing that suggests replacing the idea of an authoritative, single and central perspective on science; acknowledging the wide range of narratives to be told in science, technology, and other areas. She parallels and lists the current technological advances in postmodernist culture with the historical and previously supposed disembodied eye, stating that

Vision in this technological feast becomes unregulated gluttony;

all perspectives give way to infinitely mobile vision…[7]

She refutes this new perspective of seemingly boundless vision, coining the term the god-trick (seeing everything from nowhere[8]) and deeming it be a mere illusion, claiming it is irrefutably impossible to have an truly objective point of view, without recognising the impact such technological advances have had on our most basic sense: vision. Hence to recognise ones position within a situation is to give rise to her notion of the partial perspective, then and only then according to Haraway may an objective vision be accomplished. Thomas Kuhn argues similarly in The Structure of Scientific Revolution (1962), giving philosophical objections to the claims of the possibility of scientific understanding being truly objective. However, Kuhn does not throw blame on technology, rather he examine the construction of social hierarchy within paradigms[9] (a gathering of scientists from different disciplines i.e. an institution), whereby only thoroughly intellectually immersed scientists in their paradigm can attain status and reputation to then quantify their position of authority. Therefore Kuhn believes that scientists’ subjective experience in turn makes science a relativistic discipline.

Science is considered to be empirical in its nature, the emphasis of scientific knowledge being closely related to evidence, especially as discovered through experimentation, hypothesis and theories. It is difficult to discuss the philosophy of science without referencing the seminal works of the Karl Popper. In Logik der Forschung (Logic of Scientific Discovery) (1959), Popper overtly distinguishes himself as an exponent of objectivist knowledge, striving to rid the pursuits of scientific discovery from subjectivist interference. He highlights the perceived dangers of deeply embedded subjectivist methodologies endemic in scientific practice by demarcating the sciences[10]. Demarcation, for Popper, is a process that identifies the criteria for what is science and what he deems a pseudo-science. This method is bound to the principles of falsifiability and testability, whereby a hypothesis is proposed on the premise that it can improve on an existing theory and can be tested in order to fulfill any empiricist qualms. The falsifiability of a conjecture is hereby paramount, if a theory cannot be disproved or improved upon; it is therefore, in Popper’s view, not a scientific theory. Through his investigations, Popper demarcates the empirical, non-metaphysical, social sciences, psychology and Marxism as not exhibiting such criteria[11]. He thereby infers that the only truly scientific methodology can be found in the physical sciences, his prime example being the transformation from Newtonian to Einsteinian theory[12].

Key to understanding Popper is in understanding his notion of this rationality principle; an objectivist foundation of progressive scientific methodology that transcends all relativists approaches. In turn, this rationale is fundamental to the critical debate that surrounds the goals of achieving an objective perspective in science, without which one may not quantify a cohesive impression on this subject. Haraway throughout her text fails to acknowledge or reference this rationale, giving rise to her lack of appreciation of previous philosophical and theoretical perspectives. Paradoxically she locates herself firmly within the feminist objective, which she classifies simply as situated knowledges[13], citing such contemporary (of the 1980’s) feminist philosophers as Nancy Hartsock, Annette Kuhn, Hilary Rose, Chandra Talpode Mohanty, to name but a few. This can measurably present the contradictions in her appeal for an objective perspective, because as such she aligns to Thomas Kuhn’s notion of a de-facto paradigm.  She therefore and instinctively does not allow for a scientific rationalisation of her own conjecture, instead she declares self-appointed authoritative capacity to claim supposedly new methodologies, as a  solution to the scientific quandary she has proposed.

Haraway suggests ways and means for the progression of science and for the production of new research methodologies. By adopting the feminist, empirical, partial, perspective delineated throughout the text, she suggests one may then assume the universal knowledge or understanding of a situation, as a valuable equally important. Through her examination of the relationship between the researcher and object, she recommends a rebuke of the normative “divorce” of subjects and object. Haraway stresses that distancing oneself from the area of research is, in some ways, contrary to human nature and therefore anathema to the altruist premise behind scientific progression.

The standpoint of the subjugated are not ‘innocent’ positions. On

the contrary, they are preferred because in principle they are least

likely to allow denial of the critical and interpretative core of all

knowledge’[14]

Hal Foster in The Artist as Ethnographer, (1996) recognises that art expanded its field of enquiry into culture, the object which anthropology was thought to have assumed as its area of expertise (i.e. principally overthrown through and by the rise of feminist culture)[15]. Haraway’s virtuous affirmation for the “practice of objectivity that privileges contestation, deconstruction, passionate construction, webbed connections[16]” is easily reflected throughout Hal Foster’s text as he describes the desire of the contemporary artist to operate in an interdisciplinary, contextual, decentred mode, to work without an otherness, from a position of objectivity[17]. One could argue hence that science and art, as self-entities, could simultaneously allow for situations to arise where similar methodologies are employed by both faculties. The virtues of methods of scientific progression, the aforementioned “paradigms” and schools of thought and the feminist situated knowledge perspective, proposed by Haraway, can both be heard vociferously throughout this essay. The Death of the Author (1968), by Roland Barthes illustrates a metaphorical event; the “death” of the author as the sole true/authentic source of meaning of a given text. Barthes asserts that The Death of the Author gave rise to The Birth of the Reader[18], opening up to the potential for a proliferation of further interpretations of a text and multiple meanings:

            The object is but one of the terms of the newer esthetic … One is

            more aware than before that he himself is establishing relationships

            as he apprehends the object from the various positions and

under varying conditions of the light and spatial context[19].

The decentring of the position of the producer/author/artist can be obviously aligned with Haraway’s porposed doctrine; to acknowledge the position of situated knowledges.

An argument uncharted by Haraway is the notion of a hierarchy of sciences or even a realisation that some faculties and areas of investigation supplement; regurgitate and re-analyse the same information for different purposes and often antagonistic ontological raison d’etres. Haraway seems to neglect to make the reader aware of the vast plethora of scientific schools of doctrines that simultaneously offer largely differing meta-theories, but all the while never negate their commitment to objective, rational and progressive reasoning. The role of subjectivist, emotive and partial science is, as she points out, not compatible with these areas of enquiry, as they are in effect born from a different foundation of method and language. As previously mentioned this demarcation of the sciences is necessary in order to rigorously (Haraway may say callously) dismiss assumptions that lack testable, falsifiable grounding.

This is not to say that what is not considered to be the Popperian conception of good or normal science (social science,  Freudian/Adlerian psychiatry)[20] is not advantageous to epistemology as a whole, rather its remit is to identify that certain schools of thought cannot alter their methodologies accordingly. According to Haraway this is the fault of the “masculinist” structures, stating however it could also be construed that the blame lies with the misfit faculties of thought.

Since Donna Haraway writes this essay in the midst of the post-modernist era (1988), I feel it appropriate to quote Hal Foster, as he outlines the problematic pluralist/modernist approaches of the late 1950’s and early 1960’s and delineates hence that:

  postmodernism is best conceived as a conflict of old and new

 modes – cultural and economic, the one not entirely autonomous,

 the other not all determinative [21].

Haraway is looking for the potential of perspective mobility within this pluralist society, essentially drawing on a combination of previous traditions of scientific methodologies and recent, inherently, Western feminist-position perspectives. She commendably offers solutions towards a new progressive, objectified scientific methodology; however she is reluctant to examine her predecessors (Popper, Kuhn, Barthes, etc.) who have written extensively about much of this subject, some over 50 years earlier to the writing of Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of the Partial Perspective.  In the quest to find a truly objective perspective, whether it be partial or impartial, embodied or disembodied, relative or absolute, objectification of the sciences remains open for debate.

 Bibliography:

Barthes Roland, The Death of the Author, 1968, Finkelstein, David, McCleery, Alistair, The Book History Reader, edition: illustrated, reprint, Routledge, 2002.

Foster, Hal, The Artist as Ethnographer, Ed. George E. Marcus, Fred R. Myers, The Traffic in Culture: Refiguring Art and Anthropology University of California Press, California, 1995.

Foster, Hal, The Return of the Real, in The Return of the Real: The Avant-Garde at the End of the Century, Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996.

Foster, Hal, Postmodern Culture, London: Pluto Press, 1983.

Harding, Sandra, The Instability of the Analytical Categories of Feminist Theory, Signs, Vol. 11, No. 4, Summer, 1986.

Harding, Sandra, The Science Question in Feminism, 5^th edition, Cornell University Press, 1986.

Haraway, Donna, Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of the Partial Perspective, Agnew, John A., Livingstone, David N., Rogers, Alisdair, Human Geography: An Essential Anthology, Wiley-Blackwell, 1996.

Haraway, Donna, A Cyborg Manifesto: science, technology and Socialst-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century, in Simian, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, Routledge, 1991

Kuhn, Thomas S., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 1st. edition, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1962.

Nakamura, Lisa, Prospects for a Materialist Informatics: An Interview with Donna Haraway

http://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/technocapitalism/interview (accessed 30.04.09)

Popper, Karl R., Logik der Forschung (The Logic of Scientific Discovery), 2^nd edition, Routledge, 1959.

[2] Haraway, Donna, A Cyborg Manifesto: science, technology and Socialst-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century, in Simian, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, Routledge, 1991, pp 149-181. First published in the Socialist Review, 1985.

[3] Ibid, pp. 110

[4] Ibid, pp. 112

[5] Ibid

[6] Ibid, pp.114

[7] Ibid, pp. 115

[8] Ibid

[9] Kuhn, Thomas S., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 1st. edition, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1962, pp. 168

[10] Popper, Karl R., Logik der Forschung  (The Logic of Scientific Discovery), 2^nd edition, Routledge,    1959, pp. 21

[11] Ibid, pp. 11

[12] Ibid, pp. xxiii

[13] Haraway, Donna, Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of the Partial Perspective, Agnew, John A., Livingstone, David N., Rogers, Alisdair, Human Geography: An Essential Anthology, Wiley-Blackwell, 1996, pp. 115

[14] Ibid, pp. 117

[15] Conlon, Sinead, Literature Review: Foster, Hal, The Artist as Ethnographer, chapter in The Return of the Real: The Avant-Garde at the End of the Century, MIT Press, 1996.

[16] Haraway, Donna, Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of the Partial Perspective, Agnew, John A., Livingstone, David N., Rogers, Alisdair, Human Geography: An Essential Anthology, Wiley-Blackwell, 1996, pp. 117

[17] To work without an otherness however only furthers the artist’s paradoxical aspirations to self-consider the artist self, however for the purposes of making this point within the essay I will neglect such critical observations.

[18] Barthes Roland, The Death of the Author, 1968, Finkelstein, David, McCleery, Alistair, The Book History Reader, edition: illustrated, reprint, Routledge, 2002, pp.224

[19] Barthes, Roland, The Death of the Author, 1968, in Foster, Hal, The Return of the Real, in The Return of the Real: The Avant-Garde at the End of the Century, Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996, pp. 50

[20]Popper, Karl R., Logik der Forschung  (The Logic of Scientific Discovery), 2^nd edition, Routledge, 1959, pp. 416

[21] Foster, Hal, Postmodern Culture, London: Pluto Press, 1983, p.ix.

© Sinead Conlon 2009