Challenging expectations with absurdity is one of the central means by which humour “offers a short circuit that exposes our [perpetual] discomfort” with instability. This short circuit is directly linked to what I understand to be the critical function of art, or what Simon Critchley has called art’s ability to provide an “oblique phenomenology of ordinary life.”
Humour exposes an insecurity that is ultimately irrepressible. Humour and photography share the short-circuiting mechanism that exposes this insecurity. Such connections may account in part for the centrality of photography as a conceptual medium. On the one hand photography, like humour, allows human vision to access phenomena that would otherwise be invisible to the naked eye. On the other, it withholds the possibility of ever truly mastering the subject.
Levity : humor or frivolity , especially the treatment of a serious matter with humor or In a manner lacking due respect.
Gravity: suggests depth and seriousness, extreme or alarming importance.
I chose those two quotes because I’ve never read anything so thoughtful . As a kid what attracted me to art was the DADA movement. Even though I wasn’t old enough to understand the conditions and motivations many of the artists making it were under, I couldn’t help but smile and be inspired. Reading this I get a deeper appreciation for Marcel Duchamp, who often challenged expectations with absurdity.
Phenomenology refers to the philosophical study of our lived experience, and Oblique (as in the military march command) refers to an angle. Arts ability to give life that pause and change of pace is why I create. That sentence is beautiful.
The second quote I chose hit home for me. Photography has allowed me to share things most people will never see or even care to look at. Concerning the issue of mastery, why would you ever to want to master anything? I can get behind, Getting better at something like drawing or painting or basketball where technique and time invested yield reward. But It is very different from Photography. It is a fickle art because as much as you know your camera, which takes time in its own rite, the world is uncontrollable, you can’t control the sun, people, or any other of the million variables around you. This is where zen comes in for me. I simply bear witness and do my best.
Question for the class. In what instances have you met expectations with absurdity?
I’ll go first, I got to spend a lot of time with my grandma for the last 10 years of her life. She had serious health issues. My goal every day was to make her laugh as much as possible. I’d walk in with my shorts rolled up, I’d say stupid things, make stupid faces , hug her longer than appropriate, blow and mess up her hair, mime weird things to her, crank call her, I’d even get my kids in on the absurdity which she called stupidity. Oh yes , group hugs were our specialty. I hope when I’m in that condition someone does it for me
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