Dissymmetry, for Fiduccia, seems to reference the disorganization and all together messiness of reality. Fiduccia talks about dissymmetry1 on a theoretical level and references pieces of work that are, on the visual scale, quite clean and organized. Theoretically I understand what she means, and I understand how the works she is talking about complete the hermaphroditic state she references. However, this understanding would be totally inaccessible to me without her explanation and in representation of the dissymmetry of reality I prefer the works that come out of the conversation that the Materiality collection appears to be having.

         I appreciate the context that Dietmar Rubel provides in “Plasticity: An Art History of the Mutable (2012). Rubel explains that, “The artistic use of unstable things and materials that are ephemeral and formless represents the attempt to react to the fast pace of industrial societies. These are societies for whom external forms and durable materials are no longer important, preferring flexible materials and formations whose mutability and mobility constitutes not weakness but precisely the condition of their transitory definition” (97). This tells me why dissymmetry suddenly matters. The cultural context of the artistic obsession with the messiness of reality stems from a reality that is no longer concerned with careful maintenance of object existence and order for posterity.

          Within this conversation about dissymmetry, plasticity, and messiness I personally was drawn to the ways that Mary Douglass and Simon Taylor explain why artist might choose this path. Douglass describes filthiness as being dependent on boundaries and context. Whether something is abject depends on its boundary disruption (Douglass qtd. Mike Kelley 106-7). In this way the artist can manipulate the viewers’ sense of discomfort through how they choose to cross boundaries. The dissymmetry of the artwork in this way exist on a scale of how intensely boundaries are crossed. Taylor remarks upon, “The increasing tendency among artists to ‘recuperate’ the body metonymically via  fragments, fetishes, traces and part-objects must be viewed historically at a time when the body is being replaced and eclipsed by technology and prosthesis” (128). For him the dissymmetry is being produced by specifically presenting or referencing the human body in a plastic changeable messy manner.