Blurting In A & L

Answer 2/19

Author: John Abbate  
Posted: 15.11.2002; 05:21:50
Topic: Question 2
Msg #: 612 (in response to 611)
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Thomas: By "redescribe their communication until the expected arrives and fills the dialogue with a new content" I think you are referring to an eventual stabilization of the code, and an agreement among members to abide by this code, such as to give the discourse a secure enough foundation to engage in the realm of content--to employ a sort of full speech that transcends (what might be characterized as) a kind of self-conscious, discursive formalism. But given that Art & Language and Conceptualism more generally prefers to adhere to an avant-gardism that entails constant renovation of the discourse, might it be possible to say that the discussions of Art & Language were structurally barred from the possibility of engaging new content? The suspicion arises, for me, that Conceptual Art in fact consisted of the most sophisticated development of the aesthetic signifier, wrapped in the rhetoric of the signified!