“perhaps the muse was always a critic, always a builder of stacks of things “interesting to look at”
“always a mind in relation to another.”
“Inside every critic is a coach or, to use Isabelle Graw’s image, “a sort of amplifier.””
“deferential, wry, combative. Humorous. Detached. At sea.”
Art’s stupidity, Mayer suggests, is the reason for its persistence in her memory: it is too dumbfounded to move.
But what first punched art in the face? Probably life. Or, as Mayer says, “fucked up time.””
“They are, at their best, avenues of grace within fucked-up time, languages of perpetual inquiry and curiosity, poses of submission and dominance and everything in between, a practice of turn-taking in a world that runs on theft and greed.”
Anahid Nersessian. Originally published in Mousse 86.
