Pre Critical Contexts
To include the notions of criticality and compulsion within a conception of a given thing’s becoming-art complicates the thinking that traditionally opposes them, in which artistic expression and artistic rationality are incommensurable. Moreover, it stresses that theory does not have to precede practice, that it can happily occur at some point during the process of becoming-art. This much was noted in a New York Times review of Hideous Gnosis, the academic conference on black metal in which Ovskum was quoted. ‘Their work is basically philosophy’, it argued. ‘It is theoretical, a grid for looking at life, with ancient roots’ — noting, lest the assertion appear hysterical to those less inclined to take the légions noirsand their apologists so seriously, that it ‘could do with a critical apparatus’. From R. Keehan on Koji Ryui