The Art of Distraction

STATE OF THE ART is I ~.mte these words one warm complete his feat in real time, della Francesca, with nothing to Paradise’, only what Williams September day at my desk in without any of the compensa divert him save for a brimming rightly calls a ‘modest fellow’ sooth-east England, the actor Shia tory pleasures afforded by seeing bowl of fruit. Next, I would point with wings. Benjamin owned LaBeouf is running 144 laps around a Hollywood A-lister break to how the sheer volume of con Angelus Novus, and presumably the perimeter of the Stedelijk a sweat. I’m a great admirer of temporary art production, not looked at it a great deal. A surfeit Museum, Amsterdam. Entitled Van der Werve, but even I couldn’t to mention the professional and of attention - a surfeit of oranges -- METAMARATHON (2014), this per- hold out for more than a frac social pressure on those who show, peeled and eaten - might, it fa nnance work is his contribution tion of Nummer dertien. Then sell, collect, teach or write about seems, distract us from what is 'Metamodernism - The Return again, I felt much the same about it to demonstrate something close actually there. : : History’, a 12-hour symposium LaBeouPs turn in Indiana Jones to omniscience, often makes I was going to write about " a t ‘seeks to draw a cognitive and the Kingdom o f the Crystal the Clarkean minimum difficult to all of the above, but then I heard map of our present in order to Skull (2008). I check Twitter for achieve. From there (perhaps via about #m e Ta m a r a T h o n . I check prasp the changing contours of our news of #METAMARATHON. One a study made by the Metropolitan Twitter again. Somebody has everyday lives’. Like the speak user opines: ‘#ShiaLaBeouf Museum of Art, New York, claim posted a picture captioned: ‘Francis ers in the auditorium — among so sexy in his purple spandex!’ ing that gallery-goers spend on Fukuyama a bemused bystander’. them the anti-Cassandra of late Another asks ‘What Have U done average 32.5 seconds looking at So I guess the author of The capitalism, Francis Fukuyama, 4 Situationism lately?’ and links to a single work, and a rather predict End of History and the Last Man -rïeze co-editor Jorg Fleiser and the a video of the actor warming up. able broadside against anybody (1992) has finished delivering artist Cally Spooner — I can’t hear In Amsterdam, LaBeouf continues who thinks a biennial or art fair is his lecture and is watching the LaBeouPs grunts and footfalls, but to pound the pavement, accom the perfect spot to put their iPad’s actor punish the tarmac. The nevertheless I find myself won panied by the artists Luke Turner camera through its paces), I would account @Stedelijk informs its dering what motivated the star of and Nastja Sade Rônkkô, and segue into a paragraph on Karl followers that ‘Shia LaBeouf had Transformers ill: Dark of the Moon a handful of fans. Perhaps he is Ove Knausgârd’s extraordinary a special meeting with perfor 12011) to stage his jog. Perhaps thinking about the title of his 2010 sequence of six autobiographical mance artist Ulay!’ before the he simply took one look at Jay Z’s film, Wall Street: Money Never novels, M in Kamp (My Straggle, event, and that there are ‘Around Marina Abramovic-inspired rap Sleeps. Perhaps he is thinking 2009-11), in which distraction 130 lapse [sic] to go’. In the first epic Picasso Baby: A Performance about Guy Debord. is both the enemy and the motor volume of M in Kamp, published Art Film (2013) or, indeed, James Before news of XMETAMA- of the writer’s achievement. in English as A Death in the Franco’s various forays into con RATHON appeared on my social Returning to visual art, I’d wonder Family (2009), Knausgârd writes: temporary art and thought: “Well, media feed this morning, I had if cohabiting with a work makes ‘The only thing I have learned that’s got to be a whole lot better planned to spend the day writing it more or less visible. It would from life is to endure it, never than standing in front of a green about the attention we pay to seem appropriate, here, to men to question it, and to burn up screen and pretending to emote at works of art, in what the novelist tion Gilda Williams’s witty new the longing generated by this an anthropomorphic robot truck.’ Adam Thirlwell (by neat coin guidebook How to Write About in writing. Where this ideal has Followers of the Dutch art cidence another speaker at the Contemporary Art (2014), which is come from I have no idea, and scene might note that LaBeouf’s ‘Metamodernism’ symposium) discussed by Orit Gat elsewhere as I now see it before me, in performance bears a striking has called ‘the distracted era’. in this issue.1 Williams notes that black and white, it almost seems resemblance to Guido van der I would have kicked off with a pas Walter Benjamin’s famous riff perverse.’ Shia LaBeouf runs on. Werve’s film Nummer dertien, sage from Sir Kenneth’s Clark’s on Paul Klee’s ink drawing Angelus emotionalpoverty, Effugio C, publication Looking at Pictures Novus (1920), in his Theses on 1 Protocol dictates that I should mention Williams cites me in her book. It’s not much You ’re always only half a day away (i960), in which he asks: ‘How the Philosophy of History (1940), more than a footnote focusing on a curatorial (2010—11), in which the artist many people can look at a picture is more of a dazzling hallucina project (the answer to How to Write About runs approximately two and half for even long enough to peel an tory fantasy than an accurate Contemporary Art is not ‘like Tom Morton’), marathons around the perim orange and eat it?’ - a question description. Contra-Benjamin, so a footnote seems the right place to flag it up. eter of his house over the course that summons up the pleasing Klee’s image contains nothing in Tom Morton is a writer and curator, of 12 hours. This is a work about image of the tweedily patrician art the way of‘a single catastrophe and a contributing editor of frieze. endurance - not only that of its historian, museum director and which keeps piling wreckage His exhibition ‘Panda Sex’opens maker, but also that of his audi broadcaster settling down in front on wreckage’ nor any evidence at State of Concept, Athens, Greece, ence, who are asked to watch him of a Nicolas Poussin or a Piero of a ‘storm [...] blowing in from on 29 November. The Art Tom Morton of Distraction Movie stars, late capitalism and fragmented attention spans FRIEZE mo. 1 67 NOVEMBER • DECEMBER 2014 13.

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