Collectivism after Modernism - autonomous learning - Blogs

84 Chris Gilbert
and categorized the group’s statements—referred to as “blurts” to indicate
their not necessarily logical character—among which it established loose and
more naturalistic, if not fully logical, connections. In both projects, a web
of meaning and connections emerged, while the reader, made active rather
than passive, was invited to retrace and reactivate the connections. These
days the Blurting project is online on the Web site of Zentrum für Kunst und
Medientechnologie, where one can test its working. 17 To take a not particularly
representative example from the more than four hundred blurts in the
booklet, blurt 32 under the heading “ART” reads: “Are we concerned with
changing the rules of the game or starting a new one?” It leads via the strong
connector (→) to blurt 54: “Challenging habit and reXection is surely not
limited to categorically ambiguous art. Rather, categorically ambiguous art
forces labyrinthine ruminations about ‘art,’ the ‘category’ art, the boundaries
of art, art’s ‘nature’ etc.” According to the weaker style of connector
(&), this blurt leads to blurt 212 under the category “LEARNING”: “Art &
Language’s categorical ‘trouble making’ has caused some genuine cognitive
distress in the art-world: hence a realization of the potential of the gallery
(as a public learning situation).”
FIGURE 3.3. Art & Language, Index 01 (Documenta Index), 1972. Eight Wle cabinets, text, and
photostats; dimensions variable. Poster, lithograph on newsprint, 72.5 x 50.6 cm. Private collection,
Zurich. Courtesy of Art & Language.