How We Practice, CARLA (Pdf)

8 Contents Le Louvre, Las Vegas 34 Evan Moffitt How We Practice Carmen Winant 12 iPhones, Flesh, 38 and the Word Share Your Piece F.B.I. of the Puzzle at Arturo Bandini Federica Bueti Lindsay Preston Zappas 42 16 Amanda Ross-Ho Photographs Women Talking Erik Frydenborg About Barney Catherine Wagley 52–57 Reviews 24 Honeydew Lingua Ignota at Michael Thibault —Eli Diner Faith Wilding at The Armory Center for the Arts Fred Tomaselli and LOUDHAILER at California State University, Fullerton Benjamin Lord —Jonathan Griffin Trisha Donnelly at Matthew Marks Gallery 30 —Don Edler A Conversation with Bradford Kessler Amalia Ulman at ASHES/ASHES —Aaron Horst Char Jansen The word “practice” pops up How We as a leitmotif throughout the show’s densely texted catalogue. We used to speak of what art- Practice ists do as their art or their work or, tangentially, their style, vocation, discipline, allegiance, or What do we mean when we use passion. But now all is practice, the word practice today? What, for with a sense of discrete, profes- instance, do my students mean sional enterprise. In a way, the when they describe how the internet fashionable usage recalls the informs their practice? And is that rage for academic critical the- different from the yoga teacher, who, ory that dominated highbrow while correcting a posture in a recent art and art talk during the 1980s class, told me that my “practice and '90s. A subsequent, general seemed off”? As a practicing artist, rejection of that brainy orien- writer and teacher, the more I sit with tation remains tied to it as a this seemingly self-evident piece of shift of emphasis in the formula lexis the more disconcerted I become “theory and practice.” A practice by our mutual, if conflicting and presumably speaks for itself, in open-ended, usage of it. How can one a community of practitioners, word at once describe a process, the like those with nameplates in an ideas behind that process, and the office complex. application of that process? Why has it become such common parlance in Schjeldahl brings up three the world of visual art, and in apply- critical points here, worth bearing out: ing it so broadly, what nuance are we possibly doing away with? 1. Practice has supplanted My aim is not to argue against words like “discipline” or “style” the term-as-idea—to snuff out the because it reflects the art word simply because it’s fashionable— world’s desire to legitimize and but rather to make a case for the professionalize. The word itself potential of practice through a more is sub-defined as a place of sensitive understanding of what it business. Who owns practices, might offer artists. I’ve tried to explore after all, if not doctors, dentists, these questions without over-abusing and lawyers? the word itself, though that too proves a (surprisingly demonstrative) chal- 2. Practice implies a community- lenge. I’ve gotten so used to slinging bound enterprise, determined the term around that now I can’t think and defined by the characteristic up any others in its place. of membership. I’m not the first person to question the overuse and under-in- vestigation of this word. In his 2014 review of the Whitney Biennial for Carmen Winant (b. 1983, San Francisco) is a writer, The New Yorker, aptly titled “Get with artist, and Assistant Professor of Critical Studies at It,”1 Peter Schjeldahl wrote about a the Columbus College of Art and Design in Columbus, phenomenon he labeled as “The Age OH. Winant is a regular contributor to Frieze magazine, The Believer and Aperture Magazines, X-TRA, of Practices”: and Art Papers. She is an editor at WAX Magazine and the co-editor of The Highlights Journal. 34 Carmen Winant 3. Practice refers to an evolving professional group operating within theoretical turn in art, art crit- a privatized market and/or academic icism, and—though Schjeldahl framework—and overlook other doesn’t directly say it—MFA possible readings or implications of Feature programs that now offer the word and its possible ideation. terminal degrees in some form My first encounters with of practice (social, critical, practice, as a ritual and a site, were or otherwise). miles away from the art world. For a decade, I was a competitive distance It’s hard not to agree with runner and practice, once again, had Schjeldahl on each front: that twin meanings: it was both where practice is in fashion because it holds I went—from, say, 6:30 am to 10:00 inside of it communal, cerebral, and am, and then again at 5:00 pm—as expert tendencies—and that words well as the thing I did once I got like “vocation,” “passion,” and even there. At the time, I didn’t know the “production” feel dated and one-di- word tautology, but if I did, I would mensional in comparison. This is an have used it to describe the linguistic astute analysis, one of the few I’ve shortcoming of going to practice to read, but it only goes so far as to practice. My athletic life drew to a unpack the word in relation to, and in close as I neared the end of college association with, culture (corporate, and, longing to move away from a cooperative, institutional, etc.). In world-as-body and into a world-as- a short 2007 New York Times essay mind, I could not imagine a single titled “What We Talk About When point of overlap between the two, and We Talk About Art,” 2 Roberta Smith went so far as to hide my jock identity made a similar case with similar from my newfound artistic friends. I terms, arguing that the word practice, changed out of my running clothes in which intimates the need for a license public bathrooms stalls after practice or permission to make work, “turns to avoid any conversation around, or the artist into an utterly conventional acknowledgement of, my other life. I authority figure.” Like Schjeldahl, was still too ignorant to consider the Smith resents the word not only as a potential that one world lent to the vestige of vocabulary specific to MFA other. I’d ventured into visual art in programs, but also as a reflection of part because it seemed irreconcilable those programs’ professional function: with running. Practice followed me artists now feel they must receive a persistently, unwittingly, from one life terminal certificate to produce seri- to another. How could the same word ously. In the minds of these leading apply to such different sites of action? critics—both of whom have been As with any festering conflict, around long before this word came this one eventually, recalcitrantly, into style—neither the term practice bore fruit. Though I dodged it for nor its broader professional implica- years, my training as a runner even- tions leave sufficient space for the tually opened up broader possibilities experimentation that is the real work into what I had compartmentalized of the artist. as my “creative” life. I don’t mean to I’m struck at once by how imply that I began making art that accurate and how limited this under- pictured athleticism (though I did standing is. Schjeldahl and Smith ap- do that for a while and it was pretty proach practice from a singular and terrible), but I began considering how somewhat rigid point of view—the the terms of practice for the athlete’s 1. Peter Schjeldahl, “Get With It.” The New Yorker 17 March 2014. 2. Roberta Smith, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Art.” The New York Times 23 December 2007. Online. body could provide some insight for experiments, Barney strapped himself every artist’s body. into home-fashioned restraints and In order to do this, I needed to reached against them and toward a circumnavigate problems like legiti- far wall with drawing utensils in hand. macy, license, and ultimately, salary— In other cases he held a long pen and naturally put forward by professional jumped on a small trampoline while critics—as well as the idea that both reaching for the ceiling. Though only art and sports are generally compet- one of these early Restraints makes itive and require a lot of “hard work.” direct reference to sport (in Drawing See Philip Glass’s recent interview on Restraint 3 Barney tried to clean and Fresh Air,3 in which Glass likens a mu- jerk a bar made from frozen petro- sician’s capacity for self-discipline to leum wax and jelly), they all tapped a Reynolds Chelsea Photo: the training ethic of athletes. Or refer familiar muscle memory for the young to the essay “Athletic Aesthetics”4 by former quarterback. Brad Troemel in The New Inquiry, in These blunt experiments—and which the drive to create a singular they were crucially “experiments,” artist brand online is compared to a never “performances”—mimicked and sportsman-like competitiveness. Like enacted the terms of practice for the every football, tennis, swimming, athlete. Though the subsequent Draw- boxing, basketball, or running movie ing Restraints would become slicker ever made, these treatises are not and more refined, it was these early, untrue, just facile. They flatten all messy experiments that did the real athletic experience into the training work. I recognize every single one as montage and the championship an engagement with untold repetition, match while disregarding that its exhaustion, stamina, anxiety, futility, veritable reality is comprised of masochism (however tame), and hundreds if not thousands of private most of all, the real beating heart of hours spent repeating grueling tests practice: failure.

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