I
am currently working with NTU fine art colleagues towards the staging of a research
‘convivium’ entitled No Telos, which is scheduled to take place in
Venice this September, as part of a wider academic partnership with the East Midlands 2017 (EM17)
Research and Development project at the Venice Biennale. Convivium – pertaining to a
feast: a model for being-with, from com
- ‘with, together’, and vivere - ‘to
live’, vital. We conceive the convivium as a social model for ‘spending time’ together
to ‘feast’ on and explore shared research and ideas. The ‘convivium’ is a cross between an artists’
residency and symposium, held over 3 days we will explore and engage with the two separate key
themed strands. The event will be held throughout the city, within the biennale, and over
convivial communal evening meals.
No Telos
Telos – with its etymological origins in the Greek télos (end), téleios (perfected)
and teleîn (fulfillment) – refers to an ultimate object or
aim, a specific end or purpose. In teleological terms, the value of action is essentially
goal-oriented, determined in relation to achievement and attainment, the event
of completion, of finishing, of reaching the designed destination or target.
Arguably, through its radical ‘purposeless purpose’, art operates in wilful
refusal or subversion of this teleological tendency. The Venice Convivium takes
the theme No Telos as its overarching guide, seeking to
explore this through various approaches that emphasise the journey of process
as a subversive or resistant act; that embrace the potential of open-endedness
and unfixity as core principles; that privilege meandering, tarrying, waiting
and deviation above finding the quickest path; that favour opening things up
rather than reaching a conclusion. The principle of No Telos will
be explored through two strands of enquiry that broadly address ideas of
process + place respectively, provisionally identified as:
* Process as a
subversive act: approached through the
complementary practices of ‘doing’ (including ‘dirty practices’ and the rebellion
of making, experimentation, play) and ‘not-doing’ (with an emphasis on a
certain withdrawal of action through slowness and stillness, contemplation and
observation, alongside meditative, durational or even ritualistic practices of
attention)
* Place / Under
construction: taking the
site-specificity of Venice as an external stimulus or context for working ‘in
situ’, this strand reflects on the inscription, description and narrativising
of space and place, the contingent and provisional stories (histories,
conversations, fictions) and [human] traces that collectively constitute and
re-constitute the archaeology of locality.
No Telos members include Andrew Brown,
Emma Cocker, Katja Hock, Danica Maier, Andy Pepper, Derek Sprawson.
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