|
by babel
1st January 2000
391 was reborn at 12:00:00 am, 01/01/00. Self-consciously returned to the blank slate, 391 is a child of the new, whatever and wherever that has been. Each second from now takes us further from the nostalgic nineties into the naughty naughties, 00's. This double-zero (like James Bond) has a licence to kill, and kill it must: the prophets and pariahs of postmodernism, the charlatans and egoists of art, the shallowing social relations of the DisUnited Kingdom.
391 does not formulate these ideas, anticipating or creating critical analyses. Instead the words are a call to arms, to rescue the written word from a downward spiral into insignificance - a fall hastened by the pedestrian musings of once critical artists who have slipped into establishment.
The word is a mirror to the world. It must be allowed to grow and adapt, to find new forms of production and distribution.
391 is a mirror to the word. To do this it asks you to COMMUNICATE. In the last millennium the static dementia of the monologue held sway. When theorists realised a truth (that possible readings of a text are exactly as numerous as the number of readers) they condemned the audience to a sub-scientific laboratory testing of responses, tastes and desires. The guinea pigs were taught how to abandon their values and become part of a new process of generalisations, custom-built averages to determine fashionable consumption patterns. The definition of consumption itself grew to encompass/cater for/exploit those areas of culture which once were able to question. Now the mouth of art moves, but it has nothing to say.
We ask you to move from monologue to dialogue. What do you think?
Go further than this: turn dialogue into the mirror itself. Your words will create discussions or cause confusions; they will be misunderstood, mistranslated, or left for another to participate in the dialogue. These dialogues, and the processes that inform them, can be impartial lights to illuminate ourselves, your selves, and create spaces where the word can find new form.
We don't know who our explorers are, nor how many there will be; we don't know if we will agree with what they say, or even if they will say anything at all. What will you decide to do after reading this word?
Throw it away, leave it in a random place, post it to someone you don't know.
Send us your emails: incomprehensible ramblings, ideas and inventions, instructions, deconstructions, illusions and confusions, delusions and deletions. You'll find us receptive.
--- ||||||||||||||||||||| it's UP to you ||||||||||||||||||||| ---
| - - - - download: .rtf ( 56.8 kb) - - - - - |
|
