It has been one hell of a week. Here’s what I’ve learnt.
- Philosophical problems do not guide aesthetic problems – and neither does it work the other way round. But neither do they presuppose each other. Rather philosophical problems that stem from ontology have a direct impact, in so far as they are aesthetic problems which also stem from ontology. Thus artworks pose philosophy problems with as much conviction as philosophical texts. Badiou can go take a running jump – merging aesthetics with philosophy is not a disaster but a necessity.
- Do not have a debate with Iain Hamilton Grant unless you have an extensive knowledge of German Philosophy – he will swallow your argument whole and spit it out like a pleasant car wash. He will cut your argument down to ribbons and yet somehow, he manages to not make you feel dejected afterwards.
- If you are visiting Nottingham – make sure you have a taxi number handy. Especially if you happen to find yourself anywhere outside the main city centre.
- From what Paul Ennis has told me, the merciless Professors of Analytic Philosophers who train their students to be equally as cynical and vacuous as they are, should be THOROUGHLY ASHAMED OF THEMSELVES.
- Tim Morton is probably the most embracing, loveable academic out there. He makes me feel guilty for being cynical.
- Off-peak British trains are not only the most expensive trains in Europe, but also the worst.
- After watching one of David Reid’s videos of someone torturing a distorted guitar (can’t remember the name, sorry), he has made me want to revisit making noise aesthetics.
- Artists interested in speculative realism, seem to be generally interested in how we ‘name’ things, and not moving past cultural critique.
- The next generation of young philosophers will wear converse and have long hair, or at best hair.
- Academics always, always order too much food at a conference evening dinners, because they inevitably do too much talking and not enough eating.
- Paul Ennis has the best tattoos I’ve ever seen.
- Deciding not to live in London, was – personally speaking – one of the best decisions I ever made.
- Aesthetics is not the wrist band of Analytic and Continental Philosophy. It is not some sort of unnecessary icing on top of a vast logical cake – it’s a real problem of philosophy, perhaps the sole problem.
- As a result of 13.) I believe that the majority of artists will also need to step up their game and have some sort of grasp in contemporary philosophy, if they haven’t done so already. (Fairs fair). I don’t wholeheartedly believe in that actually, but it would be nice.
- Watching Tim Morton going up to Iain Hamilton Grant and asking him to sign his copy of Philosophies of Nature After Schelling is one of the funniest things I’ve seen for ages.
- After meeting the Nottingham Trent academics who know their photography theory – I’ve realised I didn’t know quite as much photography theory as I thought.
- Michael Fried is almost universally hated; well, formalism in general is universally hated.
- Iain Hamilton Grant can get away with phrases like ‘humans are just proteins who drink coffee‘, and then laugh hysterically afterwards.
- When someone is considering an artwork as a ‘work’, it should not be wholly defined as a political type of ‘work’ – although they are clearly related.
- Advocates of OOO need to stop laying on the thick rhetoric of ‘seeing the light’, me included. It makes it look like we’re criticising other people for ‘not getting it’ even though we are not insinuating that whatsoever.
- I need to speak to Amanda Beech again.
2 Comments
I’m really trying to keep up with the OOO/art development but it’s hard. Things move fast, I’m not aware of what so many people are doing.
Could you say more about how artists interested in OOO are only interested in naming?
I also feel like I need to move fast and write up my own thoughts about OOO and art in some kind of formal essay before the ship leaves without me.
Hey Thomas,
I wouldn’t hold out for much at the moment Thomas, this ship is chugging, but chugging slowly enough. I would love to hear what you would write for a formal essay.
As far as I know the reins are being held by Me, Ennis, Tim Morton, possibly Paul Caplan, (not sure on the art front – certainty on the media/journalist front) Martin Westwood, the Eco-Tone collective in Nottingham and Francis Halsall (part of the Dublin collective interested in OOO/Art). That’s it from an art theory point of view.
As for artists themselves, there are probably dozens if not more. I would point that because one of the basic remits of OOO is the equality of relations between objects, I’d guess making art is considered one of many studies into objects, along with psychoanalysis, science studies and technology. The role of aesthetics in general however is pivotal for understanding object to object relationships, particularly Harman, Morton and myself.
As for the ‘interesting in naming’ quip, I kind of pointed it out when I watched Tim’s recordings of the RCA event again. It just seemed to me that Westwood and Timoney were trying to grasp how the name of the artwork emerges as it drips in and out of context. For Westwood seems to be interested solely in exchange value, bartering and the nature of the work in context; for Timoney its naming something from the infinite permutations of context and form inherent within the diversity of objects. Both different types of naming of course, but naming nonetheless.
Whereas for me, I’m more interested in the ontological foundations of what composes an artwork, different from a ‘mundane object’. The fact that OOO considers all objects as anti-mundane, must re-establish how an artwork is composed objectively (and this is precisely because – but not a result of – OOO removing any notion of a human, discursive subject).
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