Totally forgot I wrote this. From Column 6, late 2010.
Nuts. Almonds to be precise. Almonds in a spa bath. Quoting Andy Kaufman. As you do.
Wilkins Hill have always frustrated potential interpreters, even angered a few, with the wilful opacity of their work, its determination to evade those systems of exegesis that have become heuristic habit. What do the almonds/Kaufman say exactly? ‘Whatever is unknown is magnified.’ The spa bath picks the reference and concurs with the epistemological dictum. And why not? After all, a viewer — let’s say they’re an art critic, always the first audience, at least insofar as the generally accepted topography of the art world is concerned — stands before the object, attempting to render its unknown operation known, only to find that the object refuses to be understood. The garbled, machine-translated, speak’n’spell artist statements are no use; they’re as bad as the work, part of the work. It's an obstinacy that presents itself as unknowability, knowledge that cannot be internalised, or worse: no knowledge to be internalised, nothing to know, pure exteriority of being. It just gets bigger and bigger. Meanwhile Heidegger looks on from his hut, gazing through a distorting field of glass bricks, through whose material opacity he recognises the age-old spinning of the hermeneutic circle, and thinks about getting back to work.
In this sense — perhaps the only sense that might be made of it short of sampling an almond or two — Wilkins Hill’s Windows impersonating other windows, presented at Artspace in March and April of 2010, epitomised the problematics of writing about, around and through art. Thus the necessary partiality, the at times fragmentary nature, of the accounts contained in Column 6. Credit to Andrew McNamara for attempting to tackle Wilkins Hill’s installation for us, but their work only magnifies a condition inherent in every form of creation that exceeds linguistic expression. As with the speech-act, then, perhaps it would be better to follow the voice, a factor that forms an uncanny thread in the works and texts platformed in this issue, which draws on Artspace’s artistic program of January to September 2010. Criticism begins with the act of listening, or, more provocatively, in becoming the voice itself, or of joining it, in discord or harmony, as in Bec Dean’s sensitive and quietly agonistic treatment of Tony Birch and Tom Nicholson’s extraordinary Camp Pell Lectures. Perhaps writing, like speech, is itself a performative act, and necessarily incomplete.
Listening and performing have been crucial to Artspace’s program in the period covered by Column 6, and to point out that they have eluded the issue would be make a dramatic understatement. Though Artspace’s galleries, studios and discursive spaces have played host to elements of the Biennale of Sydney since 1996, David Elliott’s 2010 edition of the event represented the first time that the organisation had been directly involved in programming the relevant content. Artspace, Elliott and the team behind Tokyo’s vibrant experimental art venue SuperDeluxe, particularly its curator Mike Kubeck, put together SuperDeluxe@Artspace, transforming the galleries into a bar cum nightclub that played host to a veritable catalogue of live performers from Australia, Japan, New Zealand and beyond for the entire run of the biennale. In lieu of this publication’s capacity to accurately document the event in all its maverick spirit, conviviality and sonic radicality, we have opted to follow Column’s speculative agenda and commission Sean Lowry’s observations on music in contemporary art that begin this issue.
In recognising further the format’s limitations, the issue also sees greater priority given to artist pageworks as a means of expanding the possible uses of the publication. Simon Denny, Sean Rafferty and Justene Williams have each contributed significant projects to the pages of Column 6, which accompany its textual interventions as reminders of the centrality that artist’s practices have to the publication’s remit, and as exemplary propositions in themselves. Thanks is due to Melanie Oliver for her excellent work in commissioning these pages, and for collaboratively editing this issue from its inception to its realisation. Melanie has worked as Artspace’s Assistant Curator, joining its hard working and committed staff for an intense period within the organisation, to lend a steadying hand while we have been engaged in numerous activities both in Australia and abroad. Her contribution has reinforced the idea that institutions large or small operate most effectively when collectivity is embraced and ideas flow smoothly but rigorously — such is the structure necessary to a base from which a polyphony of voices might emerge.
Wilkins Hill have always frustrated potential interpreters, even angered a few, with the wilful opacity of their work, its determination to evade those systems of exegesis that have become heuristic habit. What do the almonds/Kaufman say exactly? ‘Whatever is unknown is magnified.’ The spa bath picks the reference and concurs with the epistemological dictum. And why not? After all, a viewer — let’s say they’re an art critic, always the first audience, at least insofar as the generally accepted topography of the art world is concerned — stands before the object, attempting to render its unknown operation known, only to find that the object refuses to be understood. The garbled, machine-translated, speak’n’spell artist statements are no use; they’re as bad as the work, part of the work. It's an obstinacy that presents itself as unknowability, knowledge that cannot be internalised, or worse: no knowledge to be internalised, nothing to know, pure exteriority of being. It just gets bigger and bigger. Meanwhile Heidegger looks on from his hut, gazing through a distorting field of glass bricks, through whose material opacity he recognises the age-old spinning of the hermeneutic circle, and thinks about getting back to work.
In this sense — perhaps the only sense that might be made of it short of sampling an almond or two — Wilkins Hill’s Windows impersonating other windows, presented at Artspace in March and April of 2010, epitomised the problematics of writing about, around and through art. Thus the necessary partiality, the at times fragmentary nature, of the accounts contained in Column 6. Credit to Andrew McNamara for attempting to tackle Wilkins Hill’s installation for us, but their work only magnifies a condition inherent in every form of creation that exceeds linguistic expression. As with the speech-act, then, perhaps it would be better to follow the voice, a factor that forms an uncanny thread in the works and texts platformed in this issue, which draws on Artspace’s artistic program of January to September 2010. Criticism begins with the act of listening, or, more provocatively, in becoming the voice itself, or of joining it, in discord or harmony, as in Bec Dean’s sensitive and quietly agonistic treatment of Tony Birch and Tom Nicholson’s extraordinary Camp Pell Lectures. Perhaps writing, like speech, is itself a performative act, and necessarily incomplete.
Listening and performing have been crucial to Artspace’s program in the period covered by Column 6, and to point out that they have eluded the issue would be make a dramatic understatement. Though Artspace’s galleries, studios and discursive spaces have played host to elements of the Biennale of Sydney since 1996, David Elliott’s 2010 edition of the event represented the first time that the organisation had been directly involved in programming the relevant content. Artspace, Elliott and the team behind Tokyo’s vibrant experimental art venue SuperDeluxe, particularly its curator Mike Kubeck, put together SuperDeluxe@Artspace, transforming the galleries into a bar cum nightclub that played host to a veritable catalogue of live performers from Australia, Japan, New Zealand and beyond for the entire run of the biennale. In lieu of this publication’s capacity to accurately document the event in all its maverick spirit, conviviality and sonic radicality, we have opted to follow Column’s speculative agenda and commission Sean Lowry’s observations on music in contemporary art that begin this issue.
In recognising further the format’s limitations, the issue also sees greater priority given to artist pageworks as a means of expanding the possible uses of the publication. Simon Denny, Sean Rafferty and Justene Williams have each contributed significant projects to the pages of Column 6, which accompany its textual interventions as reminders of the centrality that artist’s practices have to the publication’s remit, and as exemplary propositions in themselves. Thanks is due to Melanie Oliver for her excellent work in commissioning these pages, and for collaboratively editing this issue from its inception to its realisation. Melanie has worked as Artspace’s Assistant Curator, joining its hard working and committed staff for an intense period within the organisation, to lend a steadying hand while we have been engaged in numerous activities both in Australia and abroad. Her contribution has reinforced the idea that institutions large or small operate most effectively when collectivity is embraced and ideas flow smoothly but rigorously — such is the structure necessary to a base from which a polyphony of voices might emerge.
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