 |
 |
Hey, grant him all that he says here, & for a reader, the thing 'made' is still boring as all get out, except perhaps AS A CONCEPT! BTW, one might call Bök's work somewhat derivative, but it's certainly not boring the way KG's deliberate copies are; Eunoia is a stimulating, brilliant, & engaging work, because the riffs played on Oulipo therein are so delightful.... Doug On 2-Oct-09, at 5:12 AM, Jeffrey Side wrote: > Kent asked me to post his response to someone on the Digital > Emunction blog: > > "OK, Bren nen, but if it isn’t, then what is it I might have > “plagiarized”? > I’m not saying I haven’t, I’m just curi ous what you mean. > > I see that you are think ing about this at your blog in terms of > recent art > his tory and theory, quot ing Danto, and I think that’s great (Kenny > should think it’s great, too, since he’s sup pos edly all about > reflec tion > and dis cus sion). > > In their writ ings on the Duchampian ready made and its neo-avant- > garde > recy clings, I find crit ics like Buchloh and Foster more inter est > ing than > Danto. Though they take strong excep tion to Burger’s whole sale dis > missal of the neo-avant-garde, they’re also very crit i cal of ways > the > great, orig i nal ready made move has been cut and pasted ad infini > tum > into the art market since, say, Nou veau real isme– recy cled ges > tures > with this or that generic tweak or nov elty, that is, emp tied of > any rad i > cal, anti-​institutional charge– ready-​made, as it > were, for rapid cap ture > and incor po ra tion by the net works of “Museum Culture.” > > This recy cling, I’d say, is trans par ently the case with the work > of Kenny > Gold smith (Gold smith and Bok, to be sure, who despite their polemics > for the ben e fits of ego-​less “uncreativity” seem to have > been drunk for > the past few years on some kind of secret Author Func tion Ego Juice, > are quite exu ber antly open about their desire for the Museum). KG’s > work is “uncreative” and “boring” not just as affec tive exten sion > of its > pro claimed poetic and “ontological” premises; it’s uncre ative and > boring > because it’s so damn old hat: an attempted impor ta tion of decades- > ​old > ges tures into a Po-​Biz scene that, as Gold smith him self > puts it, “is forty > years behind art,” and thus likely (at least part of its crowd) to > take > his “conceptual” banal i ties as excit ing and new. In some cir > cles, they > call it snake oil. > > But it’s MY Day, Bren nen, that is truly new, you see. The Authen tic > Item. Because no one has ever done it quite like this before. I’ve > taken > his whole bookum and made it mine, in single deci sive act. And doing > so, I’ve put his pla gia rized bookum into the dust bin of sub- > ​poetic sub-​ > history. I am being both funny and seri ous, in saying that. Dou > bled in > my intent, so to speak, like the red-​hot “Doubled K” poker > that K. > dream ily men tions in his blurb to my Day, where he acknowl edges me, > his mir rored K, as his master. And it’s why he’s going to put my > book up > on UbuWeb. > > And one more thing, though here I’m not kid ding around: What they > call “Conceptual poetry”? It’s forty years behind Broodthaers and > Insti tu > tional Cri tique. > > Kent" > Douglas Barbour [log in to unmask] http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/ Latest books: Continuations (with Sheila E Murphy) http://www.uap.ualberta.ca/UAP.asp?LID=41&bookID=664 Wednesdays' http://abovegroundpress.blogspot.com/2008/03/new-from-aboveground-press_10.html Take away my wisdom and my categories! Phyllis Webb