ninth discursion

If “in the observation of things there is also the observation of memory” then the site of criticism is the finding and opening up in the artwork of what breaks from memory, from history. Critical engagement seeks the discontinuity, the rupture with the past that reveals this actual present, or throws light into an expanding hinterland of potential futures. In the desire to make legible something outside of an “observation of memory”, something improbable and momentarily outside the layers of institutional framing, a critical engagement or interpretative encounter needs to apply maximum stress to the artwork.