Author Archives: brogan

Receive/Transmit Process (eg. amplification), transform, edit, reconstitute Modulate (parasite it, make it a carrier for some other signal) Interfere (disrupt, destroy) Repeat, split, divert Multiplex

There is no need to add art to walking. Walking already contains its own dimension of poetry. Practices such as the Situationst derive and psychogeography, for all their continuing charm, tend to suggest that just plain walking is not enough … Continue reading →

The French philosopher, Jacques Ranciere, describes politics as “the transformation of the sensory fabric of ‘being together’”.1 In this manner, he conceives politics in strongly aesthetic terms; it involves the redistribution of socially-configured sensible experience. Ranciere argues that possibilities for … Continue reading →

Alan Kaprow describes his ‘activities’ as having a paradoxical relation to art.1 They involve him performing everyday activities, such as brushing his teeth, but without any thought of the art institution – indeed without any particular thought of art at … Continue reading →

I need to speak more clearly about the relationship between art and aesthetics. I am tending to either blur the distinction or insist upon it very strongly. My general view is that art represents an institutionally-configured sub-set of the aesthetic. … Continue reading →

How are we to make sense of the relation between images and interference? On the one hand, it would seem, we are faced by the spectre of a vast and endlessly proliferating machinic economy of the image, in which precisely … Continue reading →

[jottings at Melb airport] Don’t really get the notion of objects without subjects. How can you think object and subject separately? They form a logical pair. Just saying that there are only objects without subjects does not solve anything. You … Continue reading →

Consistency is the death of thought.

Kant speaks of the unknowable thing in itself. This describes the thing’s alienation from the apriori – from the interiority of the categories of rational thought. Knowledge can recognise similarities and differences between rational categorical modes and the stuff of … Continue reading →

Working with electronic media involves a contract with oblivion, nonetheless still weird to discover old stuff that survives. Was copying old VHS tapes to DVD when I came across a number of audio tracks that I recorded in the late … Continue reading →

So at one level I reject the idea of a critical art – an art that stands outside life, engaging in interference, subversion, etc. Yet, at the same time, I also reject the idea of an art that blurs the … Continue reading →

Just watched Pare Lorenz The Plow that Broke the Plains (1936) and The River (1937). Two pieces of compelling New Deal (Farm Security Administration) propaganda – beautifully photographed, with poetic expository narration and wonderful music scores (Virgil Thomson). I am … Continue reading →

Some weeks ago, in the reserve beside our house, this mattress appeared as a makeshift bridge across Byarong Creek. At various times I have considered dragging it out of the creek, but, with no clear strategy for disposing of it, … Continue reading →

Why pursue these dusk images of clouds? Especially after the brightest hues have faded, after red passes into pink, purple and blue; after darkness itself becomes tangible? Why portray them above the silhouette of parks, trees, hills and suburban roofs? … Continue reading →

Another dusk image – once again legible in terms of traditions of Romanticism…and, no doubt, photographic cliche. But no wish to assert the originality of this image. On the contrary, what interests me is that it is so easy to … Continue reading →

The start of a well-used path in a gully off Gipps Road. It heads up through steep bush to the old coal mine. The path used to be narrow and follow a single, devious line, but has recently broadened and … Continue reading →

A very strange sequence of events. Three days, three injured animals. Two days ago I’m entering the shower early in the morning and I see a composite shape stumbling through the small park beside our house – a small brown … Continue reading →

For many years I was deeply committed to programming-based projects. I could perhaps term them experimental, artistic projects, but I was never quite sure. They were certainly always equally engineering projects. The instrumental side of things was part of the … Continue reading →

I am tempted to write, repetition is the greatest luxury. To imagine pure repetition, the prospect, for instance, that a “for loop” offers in computer programming, is to render time in the image of space; as though time could be … Continue reading →

I have not written anything for a month. Is this bad? Should I always be writing? Perhaps. To write regularly maintains some semblance of robust, creative productivity. But this is not how I work. Not when it is precisely the … Continue reading →

Just finished Claire Bishop’s Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship (2012)1 Great book, very clearly written and based upon a huge amount of research. Provides a very useful survey of participatory art practices across various regions (chiefly … Continue reading →

In suggesting a definition of militant art, Alain Badiou proposes: “[a] militant vision of artistic creation is when an art – a work of art – is a part of something which is not reducible to an artistic determination.”1 Badiou’s … Continue reading →

Despite his antagonism to the notion of unitary being, there is one thing that links Badiou to Parmenides: a suspicion of common opinion, of truth in the guise of the already known – the status-quo. The only fidelity that matters … Continue reading →

Contemplating giving up code, formal computer programming; the work of elaborating systems that quickly become debilitating complex. Most of the work is in the elaboration of potential – potential that often passes unrealised in terms of any genuine need. Perhaps … Continue reading →

Some rapidly sketched distinctions between computer programming code and the coded systems of conceptualism. None of this will make much sense without reading some of the earlier posts below. Expressive rigidity/flexibility: I guess one could object that any use of … Continue reading →