intentionality – and travelling in the mode of a flâneur with less structure at hand. In my case, I want to know exactly whom it is that I need to talk to if I’m somewhere new. I don’t want to change the language of my practice. I know the intelligentsia is there. I just have to find it. So the last thing I want to do is to float into a location. I have to generate a meeting of intentionality between the other person and myself and for that I do the research before I go out there and I don’t compromise. SM
Exactly, it’s about constructing a language and continuing to construct that language. JK But
does that approach risk not taking advantage of difference? Of the unexpected? Of spontaneity? You are bringing a whole mindset to a place when, in fact, it’s a matter of trying to get away from that mindset that took you there in the first place?
CD
I have worked with intentionality in places where the opposite was common. For instance, most curators in the early 1990s would go to countries in Africa and negate that there might be an art critic or a philosopher, that there were artists there who were model engineers working with conceptual ideas and social contexts rather than materiality. With Art/Space/Nature, there is a fine line between training for this fieldwork approach, and just going there and checking things out as they happen. JK
I kind of like the roll of the dice of invitations that come my way. When I go to a place, it is because a museum or a gallery invites me, or because I’m invited to do a public work. It’s focused from the get-go. But sometimes I’ll go to a place and have no ideas. I’m cold. Yet I’ve pursued things and projects in subject areas that I never imagined possible and become very involved. Everything becomes visible until you spend time away. Then you notice a lot of differences, small cultural ruptures, and at that point ideas come out, if not consciously then at least unconsciously. But with Art/Space/Nature, how do you choose where you’re going and what is it that you do when you are there? 7