Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology - uncopy

half dreams seem particularly unattractive. There is, however, within the unspecified usage of
the word a function which infuses the process of making and seeing art. The root word “image”
need not be used only to mean representation (in the sense of one thing referring to something
other than itself). To re-present can be defined as the shift in referential frames of the viewer
from the space of events to the space of statements or vice versa. Imagining (as opposed to
imaging) is not a pictorial pre-occupation. Imagination is a projection, the exteriorizing of
ideas about the nature of things seen. It re-produces that which is initially without product. A
good deal of what we are “seeing”we are, in this sense, actually imagining. There is an overlap
in the mind of these two dissimilar activities. We cannot see what we cannot imagine.
One does not frequently think with his eyes closed, although what one is thinking at any
moment need not be directly concerned with what one is looking at. A non-visual thought (one
without back-ground) seems highly unlikely.
Ultimately, description as a critical method fails. Pretending to a non-subjective rendering
of the object, it cuts off the peripheral pressures of experience. When visual data is accepted
as the only basis of apprehension, there is no possibility for an account of intentions. At the
same time, descriptive self-enclosure does not create itself as its own sole recipient.
Would anything change if sensible things were conceived of as “across” space, rather than “in”
space? First, objects would cease to be the locus of sight. Then, no longer centers in themselves, they
would demand to be perceived as the organization by everything around them. What might result
from this conjecture is a sense of trajectory rather than of identity. That which common sense has
always presented as a unity (objects) become only the negatives in a field of determinants. Opaque,
yet fragmented, what is seen is only what stops my view beyond ...itisinfrontofmebutwithout
being in depth. Profiled in this way, matter surrenders its obstinate chunkiness to reveal only a position
in a cross section of orientations and levels, these levels merge on but one plane into dimensional
sense data. And even on this plane, thought can efface them.
Aprocedural work of art is initiated without a set product in mind. In a piece of this
kind the interest is only in knowing that the procedures, step by step, have been carefully and
thoroughly carried through. The specific nature of any result is contingent on the time and
place of implementation, and is interesting as such. It is the “proceeding”that establishes it.
On approaching the threshold of non-enduring art, we can easily postulate an art of microseconds...butrarelyseeit.Whydoes
art have to be any more distinct than peripheral vision? I do
not mean this in the sense of “now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t.” I am imagining an art which by
taking up all the expected requirements of our basic modes of perception would, in so doing, render
itself invisible.
mel bochner excerpts from speculation (1967–1970) 195