Image Description: A screenshot from Google from when the words * Art Monthly Quantaince [sic] Sutcliffe* are entered into the search box.
A text below the found photograph informs us, “ Patricia Bickers discusses Okwui Enwezor’s Venice Biennale with host Chris McCormack, Morgan Quaintance argues that we are at the end of post-internet art and Jamie Sutcliffe reports on Katrina Palmer’s Artangel commission End Matteron [sic] the Isle of Portland in Dorset.”
Chris McCormack seems to have missed the group hug, although when the image is blown-up we can see him reflected in Patricia Bickers’ Olive Rudge-like glasses, camera at the ready, mouthing the word ‘cheese’, hand held in readiness for a ‘high-five’.

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The purpose of the artist producing writing in response to their output, artworks etc. - as constituting part of maintaining an art practice (as opposed to a ‘career’) - seems to make sense particularly when it is done within the relations of production distinct from the relations of distribution. Artists’ justification for a recourse to writing and possibly the validation of any subsequent text may range from blunt descriptions or reflections aimed at privately ‘trying to work out what to do next’, to a necessarily public exposition of ‘dissatisfaction with the conditions in which their work is produced, coupled with an aspiration to encourage others to adopt new relations of production with the intention of having their work engage in situations more conducive to their priorities’. The reasons for the latter public type of text - to put the results of a recourse to writing in a public context - must inevitably involve the individual’s ego and a subsequent exertion of authority. {0:53}

On the other hand, separate from the interests of the artist, justification for and thus validation of the critic’s recourse to writing is difficult to identify. Is the decision to write in response to someone else’s output purely institutionally determined, purely egoistic or a foul cocktail of the both? What is the purpose of writing produced in response to someone else’s output? Is it that the critic can help the producer or viewer to appreciate the work they are themselves unable to access or appreciate without the guidance of a professional, self-appointed specialist? But being asked to write something for Frieze, Art Review, Mousse etc., doesn't necessarily cohere with having anything useful or meaningful to say. Although it does clearly cohere with egoism and an exertion of authority and the reproduction and distribution of the institution's relations. {01:42}

There is more descriptive writing than critical writing evident in art magazines, we suspect the reason is not merely in order to take a dilatory audience on a textual tour of ended  exhibitions. It seems more likely that a lack of critical writing is due to an improbability of criticism in a self-describing system. For criticism to function it needs to be sustained outside the parameters of the system the object of the criticism functions within. Any criticism directed within (or towards) a self-describing system, such as art - its reproduction being autotelic, autopoietic - is immediately subsumed as material and carries on functioning homogeneously alongside the art system’s other content. Any meaning is considered to be relative to the individual recipient and surrounding content. {02:26}

The critic writes for a public context for the same reasons the artist produces for a public context. It comes down to either of two reasons, or a combination of both: (1) reproducing the relations of their own production, or (2) maintaining their ego. Whatever the reason, both constitute an exertion of the institution’s authority. Critics’ subservience to the institution adds up to the institution’s dominance. The critic’s authority replicates the conditions for artists’ subservience and the dissolution of the artist’s ego; the critic positions themselves above the artist and reproduces the institution’s dominance. Is this authority justified whether it is exerted deliberately, or airily replicated? {03:06}

We don’t want to appear overtly down on the egoist as distinct from the ‘egotist’. The egoist is synonymous with the individual. The ego constitutes what the individual is defined by, what essentially makes them individual and distinct from the institution and prevents the individual from becoming a mere administered functionary within the institution. The individual freely associating within a community retains their individuality, is free to come and go without incurring punitive sanctions; the individual subsumed and subjugated into the institution forgoes their ego and is duly rewarded by the institution for their subservience. As far as Stirner is concerned the ego is what the state seeks to nullify because the ego in relation to association offers an opportunity to preclude the state. As the critic is forever situated somewhere between the artist and the institution they most conspicuously walk this precarious line and so wear their hypocrisy like a comically enlarged birthday badge. {04:01}

Mitch Speed states that it is “impossible to imagine reading, in art magazine pages, a voice whose line-by-line texture articulates the reality of a body and mind that does not meet the hyper-optimized standards of neolibral life and industry”. We defer to this on the basis that he’s presumably opened the pages of more art magazines than we have; as well as for the reason that the individual’s ego is immediately crushed the instant it formulates a thought, let alone writes it down, that fits the shape and type-setting of some predestined, cocksure art-mag publication. {04:34}

Although the problem with art criticism seems less to do with Speed’s identification of the homogeneous, monotony of the critical voice but rather - whether its calling for the expropriation of all cultural institutions or waxing lyrical about the latest bunch of objects wheeled out by Larry Gagosian - to do with locating this erstwhile, long sequestered “critical meaning” in the first place. Is it something the critic (institution) ameliorates the object with or is it something preordained within the object? {05:03}

For whatever reason the critic writes, they place themselves above the artist. The content of their words is not relevant. Blowing smoke up an artist’s arse, constitutes the same exertion of authority, by the critic, as a negative (even abusive) diatribe. The only significant result is consistent - to situate the critic above the artist. The art school crit is the embryo of the hierarchical structure perpetrated by the critic. The participants responding to the work in question are exerting authority, the structure of which is subsequently reproduced beyond the educational environment.² {05:37}

There is something productive in Leavis and the Scrutiny tradition in the superficial sense of adhering to the approach of judging the quality of output by analysing a sample which is taken as representative of the practitioner’s entire output. Comparably, for us, in considering, and producing, a judgement in response to an example of an artwork by, say, Gormley, Grayson or Gander (or any other of the assorted arch-capitalists) we assume the sample to be representative, and not easily or obviously distinguishable from the entirety of the Gormley-Grayson-Gander sludge. We acknowledge that the entire sludge of output of arthood constitutes the property of the institution, which includes homogeneous objects as apparently distinct as Louise Bourgeois’ big spiders and Eddie Peake’s latest pair of Reeboks; and that any textual or verbal responses to the sludge similarly constitutes more sludge - as property of the institution distributed in whatever ailing publication, website or blogosphere. {06:33}

Subsequently regarding the institution’s exertion of power of ownership we find ourselves in a paradox: this property, as it is maintained by the bureaucrats and administrative functionaries of the institution, is theft; but it is theft of things we don’t want. What we do actually want is a system where the opportunity is fostered for artists to improve and to dispose of the system when it becomes necessary, before it is stolen or expropriated by the institution. The critic’s role within the current conditions of the art system, as it manifests itself as )arthood(, is to imbue this theft with value; to increase the proliferation of this stolen capital; essentially to reprodroduce the institution. {07:11}

The reason for the currently operative role of the critic is that art functions as an autotelic system. In contradistinction criticism requires something external to its own internal system in order to function. The instances of criticism within arthood are none. When, due to some rare fleeting, fluke opportunity, they do intermittently occur they are rapidly suppressed and subsumed into the system of arthood. Objects within an autotelic, self-describing system such as arthood are entirely interchangeable. If an instance of criticism of an example of Gander’s work is valid it is only as valid as the instant of work. A review, a curator’s statement etc all constitute the same sludge as the work. The only shift of emphasis and significance lies in the fact that whereas the work does not require the criticism to exist, the criticism does require the work; yet the work is on the receiving end of the institution’s exertion of authority. {08:03}

The purpose of criticism in the environment to the right and left of our parentheses )arthood(... is to be reactive against any claim to, or attempt to exert, authority, wherever it operates in our own output and that of others. So-called criticism within the art system is arthood. When arthood’s practitioners discuss their own or other’s output, authority emerges, both explicitly or generally - such as the recourse to relativism as validity - by perpetuating the means in which the institution distributes its authority - the drip-feed of the institution’s contingent opportunity structures. Criticism is synonymous with the maintenance of the critic’s own individual meagre slice of authority as it is conferred on them by the institution. {08:45}

Our own intention in taking a recourse to writing in response to our own practice is to produce a kind of writing that aims to convey something about the world to the reader; tries to persuade the reader to alter some designated thing by acting on it; and attempts to affect the reader by inducing them to reassess themselves in the process of reassessing and changing the world around them. We envisage a form of writing that is ‘uncomfortable with the world as it is, and eager to see things transformed’ through a form of writing that does not ‘accept the legitimacy of the given.’ and ‘whose basic intention is to change the world.’³ Gross sets out seven criteria, that we refer to directly and offer, here, in relation to our text in order to establish whether the intention of our crits, described above, is achieved. If we cannot achieve these criteria in their entirety, the attempt is for now failed and it follows that our work can be declared, and clearly substantiated as being less than good - poor. {09:40}

1. the text must help the reader to see reality more clearly {09:44}
   
   
2. it must help the reader to determine synchronically its implications {09:49}
   
   
3. it must help the reader determine diachronically why it is what it is and not other⁴ {09:58}
   
   
4. it must help the reader understand what their own relation to the text is, how they are involved in what the text responds to outside of it {10:04}
   
   
5. it must encourage the reader to explore their own attitudes towards social reality, what is outside the text {10:12}
   
   
6. it must suggest possibilities for overcoming any aspects of social reality which are identified as wanting {10:19}
   
   
7. it must encourage others to engage in the world in such a way as to realise their individual and collective needs {10:26}
   

We are self-aware enough to know that all forms of criticism constitute claims to authority. Does this hold water?: The critic positions themself as having obtained the requisite special skills to be able to understand and appreciate, and accordingly share that appreciation and understanding, in a way that is commensurate with, and coheres with the sludge of arthood’s output, which is perceived within the art system as being distinctly ‘special’. These requisite skills the critic lauds around town apparently have something to with ‘learned’ or ‘cultivated taste’: of a form of social and cultural development of response, to the point of representing standards of, or a criterion of judgement. This otiose and at best esoteric criterion is dependent on the confidence of the middle-class-middle-life-middle-level engager as a ‘professional’. This confidence, which functions as portraying some form of learned sensibility has been tested from time to time by attempts at alternative approaches, for example by ‘objective’ methods such as those of I.A. Richards. But what is rarely, if ever, tested in arthood is the ‘authority’ itself of the critic’s judgement. The role of art reviewer-commentator-critic acquires an evermore ambiguous sense. The issue here is not between terms such as ‘reviewer’ or ‘critic’ but rather the coherence between ‘reviewer-commentator-critic’; and ‘authority’. Authority as naturally imbued in the figure of the critic. {11:46}

As a term for generalised professionalism, of the processes of reception, criticism is ideological, not only when it assumes the position of the consumer but when it obfuscates this position in the form of terms like: rigour, theory, judgement, disinterested, qualified and so on. All this while perceiving the wholesale absence of criticism within the art system. As stated before, the critic, operative within arthood, is a mere functionary of the institution whose role is to add value to the institution’s pilfered property. {12:16}

It is reflective of the current conditions of art to hold the individual work as representative of the autotelic system in which it operates. The system that all participants perpetuate, replicate and reproduce. The domineering persuasiveness of exhibitionism is not likely to be reduced by us apprehending the object in some illogical and ineffectual isolation; the peremptory subjugation asserted by exhibitionism and the institution is not going to be obviated by ignoring the context the work arbitrarily sits in. {12:45}

The artist’s word is sacrosanct - as is the critic’s. {12:50}

Within the institution of art the artist’s word is considered to be sacrosanct, no matter how inane its individual utterances (for innumerable examples see Crit 3). The critic's word is equally held to be sacrosanct, no matter how inane its content. If the artist’s word is held to be sacrosanct, the critic’s word also must be held to be sacrosanct - as it is the critic that publicly holds and validates the artist’s word from above, to be sacrosanct. The critic that decides to function freely and actively refrain from replicating the institution’s implied directive - to hold the artist’s word as sacrosanct - will soon see their already thin, meagre authority and workload dry up. The artist operating as critic; the critic operating as artist - no matter the guise, the posturing or the particular hat worn - their word is also sacrosanct. There is no distinction, in terms of merit, between the artist’s or the critic’s utterances; neither is necessarily, operationally more meaningful than the other - as, and when, they operate within the boundaries of the self-same-describing system. If the critic undermines the word of the artist with an inconvenient truth they equally undermine the substantive possibility of their own word. It is in this way, within this sphere )arthood( that the critic, in terms of producing criticism is redundant; the critic is reduced to description, visions of grandeur, crackerjack referentials, platitudes and the like. The critic is, within arthood, not interested in criticism but only in functioning as a purveyor of authority. Much of what passes for criticism currently constitutes an amalgam of factors including principly: the critic liking the sound of their own inner voice and wanting to see it in the form of published text; and the inability to write anything beyond descriptions and identifications of various things, such as traits. And all conspicuously curtailed within the shackles of the career trajectory. The critic merely replicates the authority of the institution. In terms of criticism they are entirely hamstrung; attempts at criticism become assertions of authority - like the institution’s authority they are unjustified and illegitimate. Further, and significantly, criticism and authority are mutually exclusive - they cannot coexist. The logical consequence of both leads irrevocably to the preclusion of the other. The rudiment of authority is to neutralise criticism; the rudiment of criticism, genuine criticism, is to neutralise authority. {15:26}

Authority is exerted constantly within arthood. Generally the artist is on the receiving end of it, sometimes at the hands of other artists further up the food chain but those artists in turn are only ascending in the direction of the domination of their own expropriators. For example in the context of art education the artist-cum-tutor is afforded some brief authority. Anyone that has taught in an art department, no matter how briefly, will have overheard - due to the temporary chipboard structures used to divide studio spaces, with open space left between the top of the eight foot boards and the room’s ceiling - assorted, asserted idiotic and banal utterances metered out by some visiting artist bathing in their brief authority; or when the artist operates as ‘critic’ - using the word inexactly and fallaciously. But generally, relatively speaking the artist is in fact on the receiving end of authority and subsequently best placed to produce criticism. The potential of criticism is inversely variable to the respective level of status within the hierarchy of the art system. There is more potential for criticism to emerge in the institution’s lower-level, within the equivalent of the lumpenproletariat than within the proletariat or bourgeois spheres. Criticism will not form itself within the middle-level because of its proximity to the source of authority - of the higher-level institution. {16:46}

Only the lower-level producers themselves are fitted for this task, since they are the only conceivable value-creating element within the system of art, in that they generally have yet to become expropriated and subsumed by the institution; they are, relatively free of the shackles of the institution’s authority and procedures of power. It is the surplus reserve of failed artists who have the potential to create “not only the ideas but also the facts of the future itself.” (Bakunin) The wealth of failure embodies within itself the structure of the future emancipated system of art. {17:21}

It is in this sense that the critic is to be criticised - on the basis that they only (can only) replicate, perpetuate the middle-level institution and contribute to the preclusion of a freely chosen production.  All critics should now, quietly and contritely retract their labour. Would this contribute to relieving the burden of the middle-level artist’s ego - similarly to follow their example? The failing practitioner is best placed to produce criticism. The failing lower-level artist is better placed than the academic, for instance to produce criticism, whose claim to validity is being in receipt of some spurious qualification, sanctified (supervised) by some middle-level institution in the individual figure of some equally spurious academic-cum-artist-cum-critic; also the autodidact, non-conventionally educated artist, whose claim to validity is the assumed insight of some vaguely ‘different point of view’. Generally the artist is on the receiving end of authority metered out by the entire institution of the system of art that they are both products of and producers of. It is only the failing artist, prior to becoming formulated as an institution within (critic, writer etc.), ego intact, unencumbered and unfettered by the institution's notions of success that is best placed to produce criticism. {18:40}

¹
PART ONE:
[The Protracted Footnote: JCHP’s inner voice, found recently upon aching knees (genoux), indicating a blockage between the ‘I’ (je) and others (nous). ]

Reading Morgan Quaintance’s two-part essay and follow up exchanges in the letters section of Art Monthly (issue 442 and 443) was a particularly dismal experience. (Incidentally, we are not overly obsessed with Art Monthly, but it comes through Dave’s door for free and so constitutes a regular if not necessarily sought-after resource. Two copies used to come through Dave’s door and one copy used to come through Thom’s door. We did a series of fold out posters that we distributed through Art Monthly’s subscriptions list and we were duly added onto the complimentary copy list for contributors, advertisers etc. Some administrative error must have occurred resulting in Dave receiving two copies of ten yearly issues. One imagines this was caused by some form of conversational interruption during a protracted ‘cut and paste’ operation, perhaps wholesale move from Excel doc to Google doc. Conversation Richard Birkett… A year or so later we began a subsequent series of posters that included a textual response to some pieces of criticism from Art Monthly itself - from the exhibition reviews. These were intended to criticise pieces of work by professional critics, as an attempt to proliferate a critical exchange. These posters were also being distributed through Art Monthly’s subscription list, again as fold out posters. Art Monthly stopped distributing these because of the critical content and refunded Thom’s money [?]. At the same time Thom’s address, and one of Dave’s duplicated addresses were removed from the complimentary copy list for contributors, advertisers etc. but the clerical error of Dave's duplicated address was not. Presumably, whoever was tasked to delete Thom and Dave’s addresses from the list did not spot Dave’s duplicate entry. Might it have something to do with the ubiquity of the surname Smith or an intern worried in deleting long dead David Smith, sculptor [1906-63] from the freebie list? So a free copy continued to arrive through Dave’s door. Sometimes it has been read, before ending up in the recycling bin or cat-litter tray, sometimes not, depending on work/life balance, priorities in reading matter etc. Part I of Morgan Quaintance’s essay in issue … was read by Dave, as was the subsequent part II and the exchange of letters. Dave also digitally scanned these (after a brief ZOOM conversation with Thom, with half a mind to using them for a future CRIT centred around the figure of the critic and the object of criticism, this text no less) and emailed them to Thom to read independently - Thom not having his own copies for the reasons clearly explained above.) The reason for this drab affair was that any significance the text represents is initiated in it conspicuously constituting the best that criticism can achieve in the current conditions of artistic production: essentially that of pointing some things out that are not particularly impressive or edifying. On the upside its ‘identifying’ procedures did delimit its potential scope of ‘descriptive’ procedures so initially it seemed to be interesting. Unfortunately, its faux-radical wrappings were quickly shed; something like a gift, wrapped in expensive paper that the sellotape won’t properly adhere to. The gift isn’t so much unwrapped as falls from its wrappings bathetically onto the lap. It is Morgan Quaintance’s text’s attempt to be critical that exposes the [un]likelihood of criticism operating anywhere within the current conditions of artistic production that precipitated the darkening of what were already dark clouds.

At some point after us both reading Part 1 of Morgan Quaintance’s text and us starting to put this current text (CRIT 4) together, we distributed the first of this series of texts (CRIT 1) titled Install Quinn by Cockcrow [https://crit.org.uk/CRIT1]. The distribution from our point of view consists of the text going online and us posting something indicating the updated website on Facebook and Instagram, as well as sending an email through a Mailchimp account to a mailing list of around 500 recipients. The bulk of the email mailing list has organically accumulated over the years of our practice. The majority of names would have been added in the hope that the recipient would find our practice of interest. We add to it sporadically, on meeting new people, or coming across somebody's work that seems interesting; very rarely people ask to be included. Morgan Quaintance was on the list, we guess after having read some earlier text in Art Monthly and thinking there might be some sense, from our point of view only, of solidarity and putting to the wind that that solidarity might, one day, be mutually reciprocated. Each time we mailout through Mailchimp, advertising some engagement of our output with public distribution, a number of email recipients ‘unsubscribe’ from the list. It’s hard to give an indication of numbers. We could probably find out. We have a sense that the list has remained levelled off at around 500 for some time, so very roughly as many people unsubscribe as are added, more or less. But more relevantly after sending out an email regarding the distribution of CRIT 1, Morgan Quaintance was one of three recipients that swiftly unsubscribed from the mailing list. (one of them, not Morgan Quaintance, stated at the point of their unsubscription that they were already receiving our emails via another email address, so that doesn’t count. Although thinking about it we haven’t checked if that’s true so they could have simply been wanting to soften the blow. No such sympathetic consideration from Morgan Quaintance. His unsubscription resonated enough for the two of us (JCHP) to chat about it on a longer ZOOM meeting we had to discuss an unrelated project we were working on. Why did it resonate? Probably because of the aforementioned sense of unfounded mutual solidarity, based loosely on what we’d read. We say ‘resonated.’ Hopefully the word expresses more or less accurately what we mean. It would be wrong to say either of us were that bothered. At least one of us can recollect at least one of us saying something along the lines of “we can live with that” but it piqued our collective consciousness (if such a thing actually possible?) enough to form the content of, probably half-a-dozen back and forth utterances, before moving on. The only other time someone’s request to be taken off our mailing list has similarly resonated was the late Charles Harrison. The subsequent emotional response was, for at least one of us, perhaps for comparable reasons with that of Morgan Quaintance’s departure. Although it is true to state that we would rather have been appreciated by Charles Harrison than Morgan Quaintance, purely on the evidence of the former’s work, not least his work with A&L, who we don’t know personally but read and discuss with regard to our practice relatively regularly.

We were actually already toying with the idea of indirectly responding to the Morgan Quaintance essay for this CRIT (4) before the seismic event of his unsubscription. Which possibly explains the described ‘resonance’ or aftershock caused by it more logically than the foregoing. It doesn’t particularly have a bearing on the current CRIT, other than quantitatively in terms of the word count of this protracted footnote. The half-defined, half-hoped for sense of a mutual solidarity, from our point of view, initiated by his essay exerts a more significant determination upon our practice than does his, probably casual (he’s probably never heard of us - we wrote self-deprecatingly) unsubscription.
We do not know and do not wish to suggest, or particularly even speculate if Morgan Quaintance’s unsubscription from our mailing list was initiated because of anything to do with Art Monthly’s being upset with us for the critical content of our series of posters, and their subsequent cancellation of the agreement to distribute them through their subscriptions. (Why write it down then? Well, this is JCHP’s newly registered inner voice, we can’t control its thinking quite that easily.) As far as we know Morgan Quaintance doesn’t know anything about us, or about our posters.

With one exception, we don’t know if the ‘critics’ whose work we attempted to criticise in our posters were bothered, or engaged, or interested, or angry or what. In that sense alone, the work erred. We do know that Jamie Sutcliffe was at least irritated by our work, as he messaged us to express his opinions. They were less than constructive. Although one part of his message was, in a counterintuitive way, useful. He mentioned that the few bits of writing he’d read of ours, specifically the text responding to one of his Art Monthly reviews, was badly written: “...you’ve chosen to level a poorly written diatribe against the only (in my view) adequate left-leaning publication left on the shelves.” Putting to one side whether Art Monthly constitutes the only left-leaning publication left on the shelves or if it even constitutes a left-leaning publication, the notion that because something is left-leaning (whatever that means) it should be cosseted from criticism, seems to be supercilious and erroneous. It seems obvious and entirely rational that in terms offering genuine support exactly the opposite is true. Things improve through criticism. But regarding the professional quality of our writing he’s probably right. It is also true that the truism Jamie Sutcliffe states is more significant to us than it was probably intended to be by its author.
We make no claim to be ‘good’ writers - by Jamie Sutcliffe’s expert criterion for judging what constitutes good or poor writing or anyone else's, and don’t care if we are or not. In the sense that writing well, doesn’t bear significantly on our reason for writing in the first place, his truism functions a little like that of an officious council official's rejection of a claimant’s housing benefit application on the basis that the grasp of English grammar is below par. Either the point we’re trying to make gets across or it doesn’t. If it does, so what?; if it doesn’t, so what? This might irk Jamie Sutcliffe (and his ilk) in his role as self-appointed artworld-arbiter of standards of writing but we’re working on the general assumption that the majority of what we write errs, meaning ‘erring’ pointedly in terms of what we’re trying to understand ourselves, as opposed to erring in any Sutcliffian sense of technical standards. That is really the purpose of the attempt to write out - the attempt to maintain an art practice in cultural conditions that are far more conducive to not doing so. It is really the point of the attempt to write critically too. We would personally rather be in receipt, from the point of our own output, of what might technically constitute a poor standard of ‘actual’ criticism, than a well polished technically faultless bit of descriptive verbiage, with all the impressive references situated in the right places. It is presumably possible to produce an example of well written criticism but not by us, and not in the pages of art monthly, although we’re guessing its content is well written. Morgan Quaintance’s essay is the closest we’ve spotted but it's quite possible more have, for us, fallen prematurely foul of the cat’s litter tray.

The purpose of writing is to be critical and, for us the purpose of being critical is to test theories and see if they sustain enough to be improved. If not they fail. Our use of writing is, to apply a simile, like prodding boggy ground with a stick before stepping onto it, reducing as best we can the risk of mud coming over the top of our boots. Anything beyond this is more conducive to the activities of the bureaucratic functionary whose purpose is to add value to the institution’s property.


PART TWO:
The bifurcation, of which is barely discernible… who said what where when - JJ Charlesworth is a more general problem… choosing a camp, of which the difference is barely discernible... the following will attempt to...

The art system as a self-describing system was put together without artists’ consent. It was preordained to be against the individual. Against the individual’s ego. Against the artist.

The inner voice fading...

Artists, writers, critics - practitioners (those that change the system by producing its content) are brought up within the system. It takes them under its protective wing. They are obligated to the system and function according to its authority. The notion of the system’s free independence is the embryo of the practitioner’s lack of free independence. The growth of the system requires the individual to be curtailed and confined. The opportunities such as education and exhibition - distributed by the drip-feed of the institution’s contingent opportunity structures are designed to suit the institution and not the individual. practitioners are indoctrinated to function within the rules, not to trespass on the institution’s property armed with criticism, but to function as useful, compliant tools.

...still not there

Within the art system the practitioner’s free independence is constantly eroded, by all those more successful, even by each participant’s immediate contemporaries. Essentially all those occupying the same or higher-levels of the wider institution of art. The practitioner’s individuality is suppressed by the art system because when the practitioner’s individuality is curtailed, subjugated the institution remains dominant.

Hold tight

If the practitioner attempts to form alliances and associations that are distinct from the authority of the institution they still operate within the system of art and will subsequently relinquish some of their freedoms, but in their pursuit of an alternative community, what Morgan Quaintance calls the ‘parallel sector’ for an alternative means of production their individuality remains intact. It is the authority wielded by the institution from the top down that curtails the individual. The practitioner working in collaboration with others relinquishes certain freedoms (collaboration is of course a form of authority but exerted mutually, consensually) in exchange for advantages initiated by working productively with others to accomplish more than the individual might in isolation, but the practitioner retains their individuality.

There is a distinction between an association that curtails a practitioner’s freedom to some extent, which the practitioner can subject to their own ongoing criticism; and an association that has become an institution within the institution, which curtails the practitioner’s individuality. The first constitutes a beneficial union, and compromise of partial freedom; the second an abdication of complete freedom. Practitioners’ submissiveness adds up to the institution’s dominance, which dispossesses the practitioner of their ego. The individual ego is only maintained in associations distinct from the authority of the institution. Authority exists throughout the system from the ‘failed’ lower-level to the ‘successful’ higher-level institution. The question is, as ever, can it be justified by those who exert it?

What does the institution do to win over individuals? It makes the practitioner a gift of its education and its means of distribution. It throws open to the practitioner the doors of its educational and editorial establishments, affords them the means of acquiring property, experience, opportunities of public exposure through the practitioner’s industry. This may be done on behalf of benign administrative functionaries who, in their subjugation, can only understand and comprehend their own roles, lives, priorities from the perspective of those below them and not from those above or immediately on their level. 'our cause is altogether little and contemptible; therefore we must "serve a higher cause."' All it asks of the practitioner in return is their eternal gratitude in the form of their freedom. The institution exploits the practitioner who is indebted to the institution for all that they have, and are obligated to it. The practitioner is laden down with obligations to the institution the more they receive its success. The institution is sacrosanct; it makes use of the practitioner.

Above we said that practitioners can only understand and comprehend their own roles, lives, priorities from the perspective of those below them and not from those above or immediately on their level. Regarding Morgan Quaintance’s drab exposé this seems to us, still functioning in the aftershock of his unsubscription from our Mailchimp account email list (when we continue to read him (remember (we might be confusing the chronology) the event of the unsubscription came prior to having read part II of his essay and the subsequent, equally useful text in the form of his response to two practitioner’s letters), we honestly want to stand in ‘his’ camp all the more. [something amusing about standing-up during an aftershock...]), an example of how the cognitive dissonance Morgan Quaintance mentions, manifests itself within the art system: how can an individual hold two seemingly opposing positions and continue to perpetrate the dissonance in the form of a career? The example of ‘continuing to smoke whilst knowing it can kill you’ is an example commonly given to explain Festinger’s pretty trite theory. The addictive nature of nicotine may cohere illustratively, regarding the practitioner, with engaging in some form of public context within their relations of distribution. Like the correspondence between levels of nicotine to levels of addiction in smokers - the size, visibility, of the public distribution practitioners engage in corresponds with the addiction to engage in that form of public context. The subject simply finds ways to justify and explain away its choices: “I’ll smoke less a day, starting from tomorrow”, “nice people will see my work even though it's displayed in a gallery run by a wanker” etc.

There it is...

Morgan Quaintance completes the second of his two-part text with a question regarding engaging within the art system that is reduced to two options. One defined by ‘duplicities and performed progressivism’ and the other, cast as a superior alternative, as engagement in a ‘parallel sector’, which is defined by “more voices (individuals, collectives, platforms or groups) from a wider pool of ages, sociocultural, economic, ethnic and educational backgrounds making, curating, administering and defining the terms of contemporary arts production, dissemination and interpretation”: “in which camp will you choose to stand.”

Of course the answer to the question is clear and we would conject it to be the same for all practitioners of the art system. They will all be standing along with Morgan Quaintance, The White Pube, Roger Hiorns et al., with one foot planted squarely in each camp. Standing solely (both feet) in the ‘antidiscrimination and cosmetic diversity - activism recast as a structurally indifferent push for inclusivity - bourgeois marginal moral agents’ camp (bad), would be possible but clearly bathetically and drearily provocative. Maybe this Luke Willis Thompson bloke would be the type to give it a go just for shits ‘n’ kicks. With regard to having our own feet firmly planted in both of Morgan Quaintance’s camps, which they undoubtedly will be... with regard to having both of our respective feet planted firmly in both of Morgan Quaintance’s camps… with regard to both of us having one of our respective feet in one of Morgan Quaintance’s camps (say ‘good’) and both of us having the other respective feet in the other camp (bad), say Dave’s left foot in one camp (doesn’t matter which camp) along with Thom’s right foot; and Dave’s right foot in the other camp along with Thom’s left - so to clarify - either facing each other or back to back [ joke about Twister], not only is it the case that the answer to the aforementioned question posed by MQ which completes his text, is that the stance everybody will take will be the same. There really isn’t an alternative position to take. It’s completely impossible to stand in this kind of projected utopian good camp and still function within the system of art. Knocking that on the head and just doing activism might possibly do the job, possibly, but it wouldn’t and shouldn’t have anything to do with art. Such as with the three examples Morgan Quaintance lists. Listing them in an ailing art mag doesn’t make them have anything to do with art, thankfully for them, in the same way that referencing a psychologist’s work doesn’t make art have anything substantive to do with that field. In addition to that, artists won’t only be stood straddling both camps, with a foot in both good and bad camps, their feet are going to be very close together, to the point where these two camps are going to be intersecting like a venn diagram with the middle section being very large and the two outer sections being only the slightest of slivers, if in fact two circles are going to be discernible at all. These two chalk circles will be drawn pretty much directly on top of each other and function like an inextricably difficult version of Mike Ried’s ‘Runaround’.

Back to Festinger and his quack theory, we know from the point of view of our own practice that engaging in relations of distribution of the system of art is detrimental to our work. We do more and improve more without engaging in opportunities of public display. Some insignificant benefits are had from public display; a brief opportunity of objectivity comes with engaging in relations of distribution, due to the consciousness of others perceiving the once private work but that is more conducive to improving the practice if public display is done on our own terms. Opportunities arising (albeit rarely) from the wider institution of art do not contribute to improving our practice save for forcing a heightened level of self-awareness of our complicity and hypocrisy; of us keeping our feet planted in both of the camps Morgan Quaintance describes.

Yet, knowing all that, we were asked a couple of months ago to participate in the Coventry Biennial and pretty quickly said yes without much hesitation. Why did we agree to participate? We like Coventry - perhaps we have a sentimental attachment to the city. Thom spent some of his formative, childhood years there. We had an exhibition there a few years ago and met some very nice people in the process. Regarding our practice the experience of the exhibition was productive. Although the exhibition was within the institution of the University we were shielded from any painful institutional bureaucracy by the curator of the space, and were left to orchestrate the exhibition on our own terms, to produce publications and organise talks etc., again all on our own terms, which meant we could do things that were useful to the practice, useful in the sense of improving the practice. The positive experience of the exhibition left a positive impression of Coventry as a city generally. By the time the exhibition was over we’d had enough of exhibiting.

Very soon after the exhibition in Coventry finished we were participating in the EVA International in Limerick, which we’d been asked to participate in, and again said yes without really thinking about why; for what purpose etc. In actual fact we decided to simply recycle parts of the exhibition from Coventry and have the space in Coventry liaise with Limerick to arrange for the work’s transportation and installation. For the administrative functionaries of this specific institution, it may have been better if we had just said no in the first place. One of us can remember standing in Sainsbury’s car park in Stafford fumbling for his car keys, whilst explaining to one of the curatorial staff in Limerick, that the order the framed posters got arranged in didn’t matter too much. Uttering the sentence “whatever you think looks ok” while trying to sound like a professional practitioner is a hard trick to pull off. Ultimately the exhibition within the Limerick Biennial was one of distance due to exhibition fatigue and a desire to just get back to our respective darkened rooms to continue the practice away from directly engaging with our relations of distribution in the public context and the unpleasant direct light of the institution. The reason for having accepted these biennial invitations is not to do with prospecting for subsequent opportunities, in the sense that one exhibition tends to open up further opportunities. In actuality we would be perfectly content with not being involved in another biennial or exhibition within the institution ever again. Regarding accepting the Coventry Biennial, it is to do with being addicted - not to exhibition or the possibility of public exposure - but to the possibility that doing something in the public context may open up something positive for the practice, positive in the sense of improving the practice; of moving the work along towards being better, somehow. But these facts are in no way submissible. It is clear to us that although as stated generally our experiences with engaging in the public context of displaying art are not positive experiences, it is not particularly difficult to understand why practitioners do it. Our practice over the last 12 or so years has taught us that it is considerably more productive for us not to exhibit, or at least to do it in our own terms, which importantly isn’t separate from the system of art. We know the experience of participating in the forthcoming (if it is forthcoming) exhibition at Coventry won’t, in terms of the practice, be a particularly productive experience, but yet, we still said yes to participating.

The reason for the ability of artist’s to perpetuate this ongoing dissonance as part of a practice or more accurately a career is something to do with how the artist emerges within the field. Whose particular subsumption, subjugation renders it difficult for the practitioner to perceive or understand things within the hierarchical structure of the institution at their own specific level or above them. Whereas they can and do perceive things from the lower-level, from below them. Which is presumably where they’ve emerged from. Which in itself explains why the lower-level is more accessible and available to perception. The Participant can’t comprehend what they don’t have direct familiarity with, understandably.

Fading again

Any bifurcation in terms of practitioners ‘making, displaying and controlling’ their relations of production will and can only take place within the system’s boundaries. They will constitute nothing more than examples of self-description, in the same way that this text and Morgan Quaintance’s text does. Any specific institution such as an artist’s or critic’s practice or an art magazine, has its place within the wider institution of art: the art system; )arthood(.

Any internal bifurcation may accord with the following: the critic as an individual is unique and not inherently part of the institution. The critic as an individual can enter freely into association with other individuals or institutions and equally freely reclaim their freedom. The critic’s practice is only an institution within an institution; it is not with the institution but with the individual that all institutions within the institution are incompatible. But the critic who approves of the institution’s principles and supports them, without question (the exhibition review/feature seems to be a good opportunity), even purely in order to secure the reproduction of their own relations of reproduction, exchanges their individuality to become an institution within the institution. The critic ceases to be in association with the institution the moment the imposition of certain principles of constraint are accepted, replicated and defended. At that point the critic as an institution is born. As an institution the critic constitutes a deceased association. The critic can only reclaim their individuality if they doubt the institution and reclaim a position outside the institution, to be impartial. The critic cannot be impartial within the institution. Only as an individual.

Gone again...

This is a quote from Stirner “Only individuality acknowledges no injunction to ‘fidelity’ and ‘commitment’: it permits everything, including apostasy and desertion.”

Were we told in Morgan Quaintance’s text what ‘brilliant’ in regard to Southend’s Toma means? Is it even necessary in the context of pointing out instances of the system of art that apparently fall into one of two camps: good or bad? But the absence of elaborating on words like ‘brilliant’ resonates through the text. Otherwise are we meant to accept that the quality of any given work is based on ‘moral’ considerations? That does seem substantive at least? The conspicuous appearance of these unsubstantiated adjectives coincides with descriptions of the ‘parallel sector’: “brilliant, stella, significant, deft[ly], magisterial, formidable”. At least one of us remembers the words ‘game-changing exhibition’ appeared somewhere but we can't’ find it now, but the failed search did reveal ‘curatorial milestone’ - it might have been a dream. What would a game-changing exhibition consist of? Can a game-changing painting be painted? The only sense in which an exhibition can be game-changing is literally. Such as prior to the exhibition, the exhibition wasn’t included in the game. It’s production/distribution coincides with its inclusion in the game. It is game-changing - the game having been changed, by the addition of the exhibition in the game. Problematically in this sense, which seems to be the only meaningful one available, all exhibitions are game-changing.

Although up to our ears in the rancid swamp of the art system we are encouraged to “make no mistake that positives are there”, “given all the negative elements of the political turn explored” in the text. It’s advisable not to use the phrase ‘make no mistake’ prior to making a mistake and also because it constitutes a characteristic example of authority exerted, of a critic positioning themselves above both the reader and the artist, written from the perspective of having attained the completed requisite knowledge not to err; of self-fulfilled understanding and the critic as self-confirming centre of truth.

The wider institution of art as idée fixe should not be tolerated. The characterisation of two internal camps, one good one bad is merely the perpetuation of the wider institution of art exactly as idée fixe and is redundant in “forging a more progressive and egalitarian present and future”. This distinction supposedly between a wrong and a right way to operate within the same hypocritical system is merely operative internally as summed up in the oxymoron contained in the reference to Fanon of a continuation of a process of starting again from scratch. If there’s a binary choice it’s between ‘starting again from scratch’ or ‘continuing’ with the idée fixe of the system as it currently exists. The web of hypocrisy of the system of art is confirmed in the web of hypocrisy of the text. It hangs on the frontiers of these two presumed distinct camps offered as a binary choice, between which our attention swings back and forth, attaching its fine threads of deception and self-deception. Not vigorous enough to serve ‘morality’ without doubt or weakness, not reckless enough to commit wholly to egoism, it totters now towards one now towards the other in a spider-web of hypocrisy, crippled by an addiction to halfness, which ultimately catches only miserable, stupid flies.

Self-reflecting momentarily: in our own recourse to writing, the part aimed at ‘trying to work out what to do next’, we’ve repeatedly fallen foul of being distracted with a concern for ‘improving’ the practice as part of maintaining it - as opposed to disbanding with it - at the expense of considering a total negation of the system in which the practice operates. Some of the reasons for taking this dead end have been partly influenced by Popper’s talk of ‘piecemeal adjustments’; more fundamentally does ‘improving’ our practice reach its final aim? No. This attempted production of a “better” is tainted with ‘halfness’. Practices, those maintained by artists, critics etc., are tainted with ‘halfness’. It storms heaven only to make heaven again, it over throws an old authority only to legitimate a new authority, it only “improves”.

The bifurcation Morgan Quaintance identifies is as redundant as the system that is supposed to be bifurcated. It propagates the notion that although there exists a realm of bad practice within the system of art, the system itself is fixed and merely to be tolerated and accepted as witness to these abuses within its structure as some sort of neutral, non-ideological but ultimately fixed idea. Rather than that, it is constructed by this bad participation, these bad participants. Morgan Quaintance confirmed this himself by listing good examples operative within the same system, perpetuating the notion of the wider institution of art as ‘fixed idea’ and impervious to being dismantled but that just needs to be populated by better people, all those better people ‘interested in forging a more progressive and egalitarian present and future’. Within the system of art it is not possible to distinguish good from bad practice, beyond superficial instances. Any form of engagement constitutes subjugation and reduction to the system - to the institution - such as the text - and this inner voice. Within a system reproducing its own self-description and operative purely as an institution - producing evermore internal institutions. Listing today's up-and-coming Rimbauds is essentially exactly the same as listing tomorrow's nearly-dead Gormleys. Practitioners already functioning within the wider institution of art can only replicate the system’s conditions, this is the nature of a self-describing system; good and bad examples of practice are redescribed simply as practice within the system - replicating, reproducing the system.

The only way of ‘forging a more progressive and egalitarian present and future’ in terms of the art system, that Morgan Quaintance suggests is taking place in a ‘parallel sector’ could come to function only after the wholesale dismantling of the system of art. After the system that currently constitutes the wider system of art has been dismantled in its entirety, could a more progressive and egalitarian present and future be forged, phoenix-like. The only means of achieving this fresh start seems to be through the use of criticism. Ironically Morgan Quaintance squanders an opportunity of the only means available to begin weakening the system as it exists as a ‘fixed idea’, by perpetuating and emphasising the wider system of art as a fixed impervious idea, that can only be dealt with by being adapted internally, bettered, improved, ameliorated.

Functioning in either one of these two camps is neither here nor there, both perpetuate one and the same fixed idea. Producing exhibitions in either camp, writing texts in either camp is merely reproducing and legitimising the entire predetermined fixed idea. Throwing doubt on it from within ‘camp-good’ is not enough. ‘Subjects vegatate in subjection, virtuous people in virtue, without ever putting to these fixed ideas the searching knife of criticism.’...

²

Anecdotally the student crits organised at Goldsmiths college, at least twenty years ago mindlessly, metaphorically gagged the object-in-question’s-producing-subject. Presumably as an attempt to emphasize the ‘anything-goes’ relativist-careerism-meaning machine the place is renowned for. The “critical intellectuals'' at Goldsmiths were merely replicating the hierarchical structure of entirely unsubstantial cognizant exertion of authority that got their own work out of the neo-conceptualist’s notepad and into the commercial sphere alongside their equally hackneyed offspring’s wares.

³

David Gross (1973) On Writing Cultural Criticism, published in Telos, Summer 1973

⁴

F.R. Leavis states an artwork is “something that should contain within itself the reason why it is so and not otherwise.”