Panel Statement

Panel: Tyrannies of Participation

A video-di­rected group ex­er­cise/med­i­ta­tion/con­ver­sa­tion by Joshua Kit Clay­ton, Cor­don Off the Con­tempt in a Word Com­part­ment (and Other Whis­per­ing Mo­ments) in­ves­ti­gates the uses and val­ues of con­tempt, hy­giene, lan­guage and im­por­tantly, of whis­per­ing, as a means of con­tain­ment- para­dox­i­cally through the process of prop­a­ga­tion. The video asks au­di­ence mem­bers to con­sider and/or dis­cuss their own re­la­tion­ship to con­tempt and other top­ics within the space of the video it­self. Among other top­ics, this work plays with the no­tion that given a propo­si­tion (for ex­am­ple, a par­tic­i­pa­tory art­work) there is value in one’s con­tempt for the propo­si­tion and its ar­ti­facts, as a means of main­tain­ing one’s agency in the face of the propo­si­tion. Propo­si­tions them­selves may be con­sid­ered au­thor­i­ties and their pre­sen­ta­tion is­sues de­mands to the ob­jects of their “tyranny”, ei­ther im­plic­itly or ex­plic­itly. This work is an ex­plicit, though hu­mor­ous, tyrant, and re­in­forces its au­thor­ity through the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, en­cour­age­ment, and ma­nip­u­la­tion of the ob­ject’s re­sis­tance to au­thor­ity. A ques­tion for dis­cus­sion is whether given such a de­f­i­n­i­tion of au­thor­ity, is it ever pos­si­ble to elim­i­nate au­thor­ity, and if so what is the value in our ef­forts to do so?

• Joshua Kit Clay­ton is an artist, mu­si­cian, and com­puter pro­gram­mer, liv­ing and work­ing in San Fran­cisco, US. He is a grad­u­ate of the Bard Col­lege MFA pro­gram in Film/Video. He pro­duces dance music for post-rave ca­su­al­ties both on his own and in the band Pi­geon Funk. He is re­spon­si­ble for the de­vel­op­ment of Jit­ter, a video and 3d graph­ics ex­ten­sion to Cy­cling ‘74’s Max vi­sual pro­gram­ming en­vi­ron­ment. His per­for­mance and video based pro­jects ex­plore com­mu­ni­ca­tion, spec­u­la­tion, value, di­rec­tive, and the space be­tween artist and au­di­ence.

Full text (PDF) p. 439-442