File spoon-archives/seminar-11.archive/collage_1994-96/seminar-11.Oct94-Nov94, message 15


Date: Wed, 26 Oct 94 08:42:00 EDT
From: ma-AT-dsd.camb.inmet.com (Malgosia Askanas)
Subject: Re: subject construction


FLIP wrote: 

>>  What kind of viewing subject does collage construct?

> pardon the comparison but i believe that the implication here is a shift of 
> responsibility for the impact of art from the audience to the maker. we now 
> recognize (from TV as an example) that the artist, as perpatrator, is 
> giving the audience, as subject, the terms for understanding a work as 
> well as the work itself. in this way the force of a work, as well as 
> much of its meaning, is determined in the production.  this is generally 
> a more powerful position for the artist as opposed to the older and 
> softer "all work is open to interpretation since all people are different, 
> and bring their own experience to it"

OK.  It is interesting that you have used the word "give".  The model
in which I am _given_ something is somewhat different than the model 
in which I _am constructed_ by the work.  I understand the phrase 
"subject construction" and believe that it is an extremely useful 
point of view, but I don't like the formulation "what kind of subject 
does the work construct?".  It suggests that the subject is fully 
and unrestistingly constructed by the work, and
also seems to invite a move into psychologizing.  What I like better 
is this, for example:  What kind of subject-construction goes on 
in/through this work, and by what means? 

Do you see these two questions as equivalent, and me as quibbling?  Or
are they not equivalent, and the one I don't like is productive in
ways I am being unaware of? 


- malgosia 

   

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