#honeyrococo

“Recent philosophical tendencies of “Actor-Network Theory,” “Thing Theory,” “Object-Oriented Ontology,” “Speculative Realism,”and “Vibrant Materialism,” have profoundly challenged the centrality of subjectivity in the humanities and, arguably, the perspectives that theories of the subject from the psychoanalytic to the Foucauldian have afforded (on the operations of power, the production of difference, and the constitution of the social, for instance). At least four moves characterize these discourses:

• Attempting to think the reality of objects beyond human meanings and uses. This other reality is often rooted in “thingness” or an animate materiality. • Asserting that humans and objects form networks or assemblages across which agency and even consciousness are distributed. • Shifting from epistemology, in all of its relation to critique, to ontology, where the being of things is valued alongside that of persons. • Situating modernity in geological time with the concept of the “Anthropocene,” an era defined by the destructive ecological effects of human industry.

Many artists and curators, particularly in the UK, Germany, and the United States, appear deeply influenced by this shift. Is it possible, or desirable, to decenter the human in discourse on art in particular? What is gained in the attempt, and what—or who—disappears from view? Is human difference—gender, race, power of all kinds—elided? What are the risks in assigning agency to objects; does it absolve us of responsibility, or offer a new platform for politics?” (from the introduction)

Responses by Emily Apter, Ed Atkins, Armen Avanessian, Bill Brown, Giuliana Bruno, Julia Bryan-Wilson, D. Graham Burnett, Mel Y. Chen, Andrew Cole, Christoph Cox, Suhail Malik, T. J. Demos, Jeff Dolven, David T. Doris, Helmut Draxler, Patricia Falguières, Peter Galison, Alexander R. Galloway, Rachel Haidu, Graham Harman, Camille Henrot, Brooke Holmes, Tim Ingold, Caroline A. Jones, Alex Kitnick, Sam Lewitt, Helen Molesworth, Alexander Nemerov, Michael Newman, Spyros Papapetros, Susanne Pfeffer, Gregor Quack, Charles Ray, Matthew Ritchie, André Rottmann, Amie Siegel, Kerstin Stakemeier, Artie Vierkant, McKenzie Wark, Eyal Weizman, Christopher S. Wood, and Zhang Ga.

Edited by David Joselit, Carrie Lambert-Beatty, and Hal Foster Publisher MIT Press, Winter 2016 ISSN 0162-2870 108 pages

“The problem of Art’s possession of a place’s protective spirit is an old quandary, maybe one that contemporary art has generally worked hard to avoid, it’s somewhat laughable when someone talks of genius these days. Landscape painters, commissioned by landowners to show off their classically manicured properties, initially worked to enslave the particular genius loci of such feudal land banks… to make it conform to the geometries of the classical state that it was supposed to inspire. And when artists started to wander romantically about, they maintained a desire to hunt such genius down, chasing it into wilder and wilder places, aiming to render its now fugitive nature in watercolour washes, in sketches and oils. Some tried to become it. If each place did once have an enchanting protective spirit, some particular genie security guard, it is one that has long been muzzled and locked, hapless, into art. Now, after years of habitual property speculation, unable to protect anywhere anymore, these pale inhibited spirits have no spirit left, they can no longer even trigger defensive superstitions… except perhaps in fantasy computer games. Art bound genii are regularly regurgitated at auctions, stashed ignored in museums, they gather dust on walls and in attics… coordinated perspectives and prospects lock any unique imagines in, ship them away in golden frames, organise them in iPhoto or worse. Artists squint hard whenever they sense any sign of genii in the vicinity… they sharpen their pencils, focus their cameras, reduce any magic to a mere impression of themselves for god like collectors to collect, keeping warning barks kennelled far away from the lost places of the world. Without genius, everybody and everything becomes a Stoke… unprotected and everywhere … Little, Bradley or Gifford - Bristol and its nibbled green belt has more than its fair share of Stokes. Everything and everybody now has to know its place.

Stoke brings together aspects of the work of three, quite different, post-art artists in one place so as to look at and fuel this problem without being defined by it.

Pascal-Michel Dubois sees his work as an idle observation of life like a doodle… therefore, it is always in the making, constantly re-interpreting the fabric of reality. For his METEOR series he tries to see the seasonal transformation of trees from a different angle, putting us under the tree looking upwards… in an impossible space.

Charley Peters’ investigations are concerned with the spatial potential of the painted surface, explored through the construction of geometric configurations that map the pictorial relationship between two and three dimensions … her paintings use subtle variations in colour, tone and scale to construct illusionary light and structural depth. They often exhibit properties that present as disorientating or other-worldly, but are perhaps also familiar through our experiences of the 3D environments of computer games or digitally-generated terrains.