You need to engage with the apple! A conversation about art criticism

Yes, doubting. I'm so very immersed in doubt right now. I think nowadays art, at least the art that I personally appreciate, is not trying to answer anything but rather is raising questions. I think art criticism should be alive with this kind of questioning; a relational practice in the sense that it should engage not with the final product of an artwork, but as a humble approach that relates to the work, the artist, and the context. So yes, I am in doubt right now…

I think that art criticism should decentralize the established system that evaluates art in a market-oriented way. Of course artists and artwork are in the focus, but not in the sense that the artist and the artwork are the center and everything else is on the margins or revolves around them. It’s an ecosystem. In order to operate in it and grow in a healthy way, it should be relational, and a place where we can address disagreement in a safe way.

It’s important for me to think of the context, as Arnau mentioned. I ask myself, Why is this work important? How does this resonate with the current reality, with the human condition? To whom is this important, if this is not important for me, if I cannot directly relate? When I reflect on a lived cultural experience, I have to always find a landing point for this experience in our larger current reality. And through writing or opinions or sharing, I hope to offer a few entry points to others to be able to access the experience.

Regarding objectivity, both aesthetics and critique are products of the enlightenment. Right? And I think we're done with that, a bit? Or at least we urgently need to figure out something different. If objectivity is somehow the product of reflexivity, of reflective activity, I think we should go for a more diffractive, in the sense of Donna Haraway, kind of critique. Another way to put it is if we understand criticism as a sort of resonate box – I like this idea of making art criticism a space of resonance – then objectivity is pretty much nonsense. This doesn't mean that everything is valid. You really need to make your point. But there is no place for objectivity. So again, in Haraway’s terms, critique needs to be diffractive and situated. Art is always changing, and so art criticism needs to change with it. I really don't think objectivity is a goal.

Yes, I totally agree. The enlightenment created a segmentation of disciplines and knowledge that perhaps no longer serves us. I think we should think of the language and metrics that we use, the systems that we want to challenge with our practices. I want our policies to be challenged, our institutions to be challenged, our practices to be challenged. We need this discourse, and we need to be accountable. We are allies and we need each other.

Now that you mention allies, I want to say something. I think in a way artists and critics are allies of sorts in precarity. This is something that we share. In this sense, both artists and critics, we are in profound doubt. This is something we are going to be sharing for a while I think. So in this yes, we are allies and partners in doubting and in this quest of interrogating the material conditions, the affects, that somehow stream out of the artistic practice. So objectivity… How does this even play a role in this understanding?

I really enjoyed the article. I don't know though, I think midwifery is maybe too much? I understand the point, but to be honest that's very serious.

I agree. Then it's not relational. It establishes a hierarchy and it gives the art critic a responsibility that, to be honest, I think is too much.

The term midwife is very graphic and deals with the body. It's significant to contextualize this piece: It starts with a reference to the horrors in Gaza and the state of crisis we are currently in. This grounding is really central to this text. How do we consume and access this information? It also has to do with the way we consume the different types of things we consume, imagery but also any kind of experience.

The writer also talks about the weaponizing of content. I think we are so used to this idea of “content”. It is used kind of like a missile or a projectile to reach as many people as possible and make them like as much as possible. So I think this article is proposing the anti-weaponizing of criticism. Or maybe we should change the word….? So in this sense yes, there must be some sort of care involved.

A way around the cultural numbness that she describes.

I'm not proposing that we replace the word, but I think art criticism could learn a lot of good mediation practices. There is a lot being done in that field – so why not? Mediation doesn't have to stay in the institution.

You mentioned the body. I do think that one of the things that art criticism should do urgently is engage with the body and with all of our senses. For instance, what Foteini does is exactly that. You’re sounding writing – you're involving a sense that phenomenologically is not first in the hierarchy. I think we should be sense-oriented and go beyond written knowledge and theory and sight. Right? This is so difficult to do. We need to invent a form of sensing art criticism.

I do poetic responses to things and experiences. I begin by thinking about a work or a cultural experience, and then create connections between things and with myself and personal experiences, and then it becomes something new. Most of the time, at least in Greece where I am based, it would not be acceptable as art criticism. I share the writing with peers on social media or email. And then I receive responses that are personal and emotional that create a chain of these responses to something. It often ends up having very little to do with the work itself. I think this is a success of the work, that it creates these connections beyond itself. Sharing something open and vulnerable creates a more intimate discourse.

Critique is just another name. It's either writing or reciting but just to go back to your work, you said it ends up having nothing to do with the work, but I think it has a lot to do with the work. Is that critique? I don't need to call this critique. It works. It does the important work in relation to all those elements that you're talking about.

Yes, yes, so going back to the enlightenment, Diderot, who is the interesting guy in the game, would say what critique is lacking is autocritique. That's what we should be doing all the time. It is simply something that you internalize and you do in relation to the question of, how am I understanding this? So yes, critique is thinking, but thinking unless you do it autocritically, practically, is going to be very boring and probably useless.

Personally, criticism is a space for me to experiment. There are different roles that art critique can play: CAS plays a specific and important role within this local ecosystem. That is very different from me writing my points and sending them out. Or it could be the role of translator between an artist’s practice and a larger public. It could be a platform for people to share, experiment, reflect, contribute. It could be many things for many people.

Sorry for the philosophy again. But Derrida would say that translating is writing again. I think the art critic can be a translator but first of all he needs to fully engage with trying to understand profoundly and effectively what the artist is trying to say. And it is for sure going to be a translation because it is his or her writing. Translation is never neutral. It is always adding something.

Yes, you really need to engage with the apple!

Precarity means lack of resources and vulnerability, and not knowing, again, doubting. What am I going to do when I finish this project? What's next? Is there going to be another opportunity for work? This uncertainty makes it very difficult to think sometimes. It would be crazy if, knowing that this is a condition for both artists and art critics, we did not work together on this. This is what artists and critics and curators do. We are partners in this aspect.