A Situation.

Once upon a time, in some out of the way corner of that universe which is dispersed into numberless twinkling solar systems, there was a star upon which a number of clever beasts invented the intellect. Since they had been denied the chance to wage the battle for existence with horns or the sharp teeth of the beasts of prey, these delicate, unfortunate, ephemeral beings were instead preserved by this alternative device of flattery. Perceptions dropped dead at every turn as conception rose up as a means of man proudly maintaining himself against man. By way of a careless forgetfulness countless individuals reached a point of fancying that they possessed a weapon of truth. And so began the project of interpretation, infecting every corner of many minds of those beasts on that star in some way out corner of that universe which is dispersed into numberless twinkling solar systems. The curious notion of content arose and it became likely that these beasts would never retrieve the innocence of a time when no thing in life had the need to justify itself, or be justified. Interpretation was assumed as an absolute value, a liberating act, a means of revising, transvaluing, escaping a dead past. A radical strategy was born, a conscious act of the mind saturated with the promise of actual, rational truth. Without interpretation there was no meaning; to interpret was to understand. The whole of life became an occasion for interpretation as the manifest content of existence was pushed, probed and torn apart so that the true meaning beneath, above and beyond that which was actually there could be revealed and presented to the world. The clever beasts found themselves in a time where interpretation became largely reactionary, ultimately stifling. The effusion of interpretations poisoned their sensibilities in the same way in which the fumes of automobiles and heavy industry befouled the urban atmosphere. In a culture whose already classical dilemma was the hypotrophy of the intellect at the expense of sensual capability, interpretation became a means of impoverishing and depleting the world in order to set up a shadow world of meanings. Interpretation was the revenge of the intellect upon the world and as such, it became the revenge of the intellect upon art. Discourses around art, as indeed most accounts of meaning in general were premised on a binary meaning versus object; content versus form. The clever beasts repeatedly asked the question: What is the meaning of this work of art?, and in doing so activated a conceptual opposition which set up a promise that art would mean anything at all. They found themselves drowning in a world of representation, an over signifying register that drove them to find the maximum amount of content of a work of art; to squeeze desperately more content out of the work than was there in the first place. Art was stifled and disrespected, violated. Every beast refused to leave it alone, furiously undermining its aesthetic qualities; flitting over them as quickly as possible and refusing to acknowledge them fully, insisting that they contained some hidden meaning. The poor beasts fear of arts ability to make him nervous, to remove him momentarily from his habitual subjectivity, led

him to attack art, interpreting it to the point that it was tamed and his intellect no longer felt powerless over it. The clever beasts had finally overcome their dissatisfaction with art, they had managed to conquer it and turn it into an article for their own use; an article to be arranged into countless, dubious intellectual categories. A shambles. A filthy shambles.

Kirsty Boutle December 2012