Borderlands/Parallel Texts : Artist and Archivist

Parellel Texts : Interviews and Interventions about Art.

Victor Burgin.

Working Notes

Art for me is a way of thinking.

Precisely its difference.

'a sympathetic resonance'

Sociological definition of the artist.

Art can be politically dangerous and subversive.

'artists' who play the kind of roles that make them attractive to the media – their work takes the form of similarly media-friendly 'provocations'.

Suspicious of the definitions of the artist, and of political art.

Encountering the world, to bring 'things' into representations (failed attempts that become the impetus for the next work).

That kind of pandering to money and Sunday-supplement sensibilities has almost entirely sucked the meaning out of art displayed in museums, where all art is now expected to provide a crowd-pulling spectacle.

Contemporary manifestations (zeitgeist/biennial), cultural formations of late money-market capitalism.

'Fashioning' conceptual art : The 'idea' is the alibi for the high price.

The confluence of the art world with the worlds of fashion and popular music: worlds of money, youth, beauty, celebrity, a 'zeitgeist' that changes as the wind blows.

The creative use of a neurosis.

Introducing semiotic concepts as analytical tools so that we could talk about the meaning of the work outside of a purely aesthetic framework.

Wild Analysis/Deflecting Transference

Object Relations Theory

Whatever makes one depressed also makes one work.

17 : 2005

From Sarah Thornton, 'Zeitgeitst and Transmission; Interview with Victor Burgin' (26 April 2005)

previously unpublished.

What is an artist?

One can answer that question in an essentialist or a materialist way.

I prefer a materialist answer : an artist is somebody who is recognized as such in the society in which he or she lives. 'Art' is their occupation. It may not be their only occupation, bit it is the occupation which is taken as defining them. They produce certain kinds of objects - written , performed, painted, sculpted, film or photographic - within recognized 'art' institutions. These can be literally 'concrete' institutions - such as museums, galleries and art schools – but more fundamentally they are discursive institutions: art criticism, art history, art theory and so on.

And what is the essentialist definition of the artist?

It is someone of a particular heightened sensibility, who sees the world with a clarity – or in terms of a vision – that is denied to lesser mortals, and generously gives the benefit of their vision to others, generally in exchange for money.

It seems to me important not to take oneself for an 'artist', as this invites alienation in an image given from outside, and can lead to the worst kinds of compliant bad faith.

What kind of artist are you?

I'm a 'realist', but not in the nineteenth-century sense. I'm more a 'phenomenological' realist. There is some 'thing' in my encounter with the world, something that seems to have no place in the field of representations. I try to bring that 'thing' into representation. The history of my work is a series of failed attempts, with each failure the impetus for the next work.

Art for me is a way of thinking – a way of thinking about one's experience, a way of thinking about the world – and therefore unavoidably discursive.

But the other kinds of art you mention – the soundbite, market-friendly, not-too-far-from-popular-culture-that-you-have-to-make-a-great-effort-to-understand-it . . that kind of work – is no less embedded in language; it is dependent on the language of art criticism, publicity and promotion, salerooms and auction houses. It is embedded in those variously interdependent discursive formations, but it doesn't critically engage with them. It surfs on those discourses.

What is the opposite of surfing?

Boat-building?

Should art be part of the entertainment industry?

What do you expect of art that makes it different from entertainment?

Precisely its difference. The art I value is often judged 'difficult'. But the supposed difficulty of the work comes merely from the fact that it cannot be understood in terms of the established categories and conventions on which entertainment relies.

With, art there is more work to do, it takes time, but you are prepared to give the time because there is something that touches you in some way – a sympathetic resonance between yourself and the work.

Most of my generation of 'conceptual' artists rejected the material object commodity form of art. So the fact that this object, having returned with a vengeance, now wears a sash printed with the word 'conceptual' is poignantly ironic. A concept is not something in a wrapper, like a cheese on a supermarket shelf; it is part of an intellectual system. Ideas belong to contexts of ideas, to processes of thinking. What we have now are gestures masquerading as ideas, and ideas for stunts.

Do you think that your success as a writer and critical thinker has, in anyway, undermined your success as an artist?

My writing is a reflection upon issues arising in my work, an articulation of those issues otherwise. I suppose most artists find that they work in a coming and going between intuition and critical reflection. All I'm doing is making that process explicit. One of the main reasons for doing this is that I long ago decided, on political grounds, that teaching was an integral part of my practice. I wanted to produce texts that would be useful to my students. So I wrote essays that arise out of interests I have in my visual work, but which reflect on issues that are sufficiently general to apply not only to my own work but to be of use to other people.

I think there is increasing intolerance of role transgression, and a higher expectation that you should observe your role. The idea of a Renaissance man, the fact you could be an artist/writer/photographer/theorist/teacher, is not credible for many people.

I am in the art world but not of the art world. An increased distance from the art world has not made me feel more distant from my work as an artist; on the contrary, I feel closer.

I agree with Theodore Reich, who said: 'Every artist should be analyzed, but not too much.' I also agree with Winnicott's notion of the 'creative use of a neurosis'. He did not see the problem as being one of 'curing' a neurosis, but rather one of making it positively productive.

I was concerned to get students to think about their class position as artists, and about the place of their art activity within a broader socio-political setting. For example, I would ask them if they knew who cleaned the room they were sitting in, and when, and how much the cleaner was paid. Then when we came to the work itself, I insisted on what might then be called a 'scientific' criticism – that's to say, a way of discussing work that doesn't rely upon individual response and personal opinion, but rather draws on a shared and testable interpretive language.

In a pluri-discursive and multi-subcultural context the 'one to one' is probably the only way of engaging with an individual student's particular preoccupations.

Why are value judgements inappropriate?

Because they say less about the artwork than they say about my personal sensibilities or taste. I have to allow for the fact that I may be completely blind to the merits of the work. My job is to try to enlarge the scope of their critical thinking about the work – whatever my opinion of its merits.