Distant Voices and Bodies in a Market Square

Summary

Introduction

This essay is a revised version of a chapter of my dissertation Jag hör röster överallt! – Step by Step (Gedin 2011). The dissertation also consists of several artworks and three exhibitions: one show of my own works, a second of some of my works together with works by others, and finally an exhibition only including works by other artists and regarded by me as an artwork in its own right. One of the purposes of my dissertation is to look closer at – and to blur – the borders between the artist and the curator. I see a possibility to understand artistic work as a kind of curatorial work and in order to explore this I have made recourse to some ideas of the Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin. His discussion of the author, the hero and the novel can be applied to different kinds of works of art. Thus one of my aims is to apply literary theory (and philosophy) to fine art. The way in which Bakhtin develops the concept of polyphony in the novel is especially fruitful in this context. A novel consists of many different ‘voices’ organised by the author, and this demands that a certain distance must be maintained between the author and these ‘voices’. One could say that in this sense the author curates the novel, and that curators and artists are editors organising the world into art.

I have used the idea of polyphony explicitly in my text, bringing a number of different voices to the surface: real comments, email conversations, quotes and some invented remarks, in order to invite the reader in and open up the text for discussion. Taken together, these different voices are intended to demonstrate how art, and lives, are constructed with the help of already existing material. My aim is to use artistic research as a way to speculate and reflect upon the making of art, and not to perform traditional philosophy. However, I do not want to withdraw to a romantic artistic position where one can sneak away from the arguments simply by pointing at one's work of art. I do argue for certain points of view, which is an important part of artistic research, as I see it.