Adam Pendleton's Black Dada Reader has been on my shelf for over a year. I like the idea of a book comprised of scans of books and have often thought I'd do my own but you know how it is, the ideas mount up, some projects, only half of which get started and half again finished. Ideas as a form of stuttering which never get fully 'pronounced', as in actually realised.
Flicking through the other day I settled on the Godard via Gilles Deleuze chapter and was struck by this passage...
...I like the idea of 'creative stammering', which I interpret as necessarily incomplete statements, continual beginnings, perhaps, or fragmentary creations. That's only me, who is incapable of actually fully understanding modern (post?) philosophy. Deleuze connects it with Godard's solitude, or does he mean singularity in approach...a kind of creative solitude? Whatever, the stammer...the creative stammer...perhaps everything I create is a form of creative stammering in that it does not represent/fulfil the idea of Fine Art and is therefore, in the eyes of the professional/cultural gatekeepers, not 'whole', not completely the kind of art they condone? Support? Admire? Yet Jean Luc Godard is, of course, wholeheartedly applauded by the art fraternity. He stammers with such style!
Likewise, Adam Pendleton seems to be very much embedded in The Art World and good luck to him. It goes to show, you can turn Xerox art to your advantage and get a lush book like this printed. And it is lush, in a suitably contrary way. Contrary as in the idea of Black Dada. The rock hard, coal black cover screams quality. And as you know, if you can get someone to shell out the money needed to print something that expensive, why, you can fill it with almost anything! Blurred photos...crap screenshots...doodles.
To further secure his position of credibility in The Art World, Adam talks the talk. Boy does he talk. See the video below. I mean, he really talks it, freely admitting, with a smile, that what he talks may not actually be understood. But there's the rub. The collision of cultures, the rubbing together of Dada, black politics of the 60s, Sun Ra, French philosophy etc...drop it all in the mix and see what happens!
I like this book a lot; the concept, execution and content; especially since I can't fully understand some of it. I scanned a few pages so you can have a look. Perhaps I should scan it all and make a book out of that...very Jorge Luis Borges, eh?
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