Teorija kao umetnička praksa / Theory as Art Practice

Jonathan Lahey Dronsfield

Abstract

"Theory as art practice“ is a two-part set of notes outlining the position that research in contemporary visual art practice is constituted as much by word by text as it is by image, as much by what can be said about it as by what one sees, and that what one sees is in any case already written. Or in other words, and simply put, there is no such thing as a pure image, as pure practice, as image which is not always already written or practice which is not always already theorised. Indeed more than this, to the extent that artworks can show something about theory that the theory in question is blind to. The word in the form of discourses on art and the writing that visual art is, are no less than conditions of possibility of seeing. Part I focuses on what is written in the visible. Part II addresses how words de-materialise, de-representationalise and de-figure the visible. The coda is text as image claiming a theoretical position, provoking artists to say otherwise, or to the contrary prove what is said there, either way in the form of visual artworks.