I made an attempt (half-hearted I admit) at reading ‘One Thousand Plateaus’, (which I recall as one of the trendy ones in the early naughties) trying to get a handle on Deleuze and Guattari’s rhizome and multiplicity theories.
I’m intrigued by postmodern-texts, really - but find reading them frustrating, it’s a reminder - I'm not academic... What if I did understand it all anyway? Would I have any more freedom to make my own interpretation? The authority of the ‘author’ can be so compelling – and at times can stifle ones own gestures. I think I’m better off understanding patches, like Tom Philips ‘A Humument’ - I’ll just take snatches and make my own constellations.
I’ve always been interested in making pieces, which have several components, at one point it evolved into a critical mass of an identical object. Although I’m not interested in going down that mass-produced route again, I’m still interested in making many - but in variation. In my head multiplicity works on both macro and micro levels. I especially like to think about this in relation to the individual, the variety of things (often conflicting), which make people who they are. I suppose this is how I approach the idea making unique artworks again.
This variation has much to do with conditions, and so context has always been an aspect of the enquiry. Even though I seem to have settled into a more conventional studio/gallery practice, my relationship with these spaces is unsettled. I’m finally coming to terms with the antagonism that exists between the gallery infrastructure and I. It might always be there, but things have moved on - I’ve stopped moving around it...
‘An artwork is not a unified whole, but rather an open-ended site of contestation where various cultural practices from different classes and ethnic groups are temporarily combined…’
Discrepant Abstraction Kobena Mercer MIT press
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