måndag 31 augusti 2009

"We must learn to see more, to hear more, to feel more."

Idag låter jag mig inspireras av Susan Sontags essä "Against interpretation" från 1964. Debatten är en annan nu, men likväl är Sontags text fortsatt intressant. Funderar kring hennes enkla, i mitt tycke, sanna satser om hur lätt vi missar saken för idén om saken. Lika givande med hennes dåvarande kontext i tanken. Och frågan om instrumentens trubbighet inför de objekt som inte passar formen är väl minst lika relevant idag?

"What is important now is to recover our senses. We must learn to see more, to hear more, to feel more. Our task is not to find the maximum amount of content in a work of art, much less to squeeze more content out of the work than is already there. Our task is to cut back content so that we can see the thing at all. The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art–and, by analogy, our own experience–more, rather than less, real to us. The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means. In place of hermaneutics we need an erotics of art."

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