I struggled with most of the material for this week, so this is mostly just a brief attempt to work some of it out.
In "Reinventing the Medium", Krauss writes that it is only at the moment of photography's obsolescence--with popular ownership and casual use of cameras, plus the emergence of the camcorder, and later the digital camera--that it functions as "a means of what has to be called an act of reinventing the medium" (296). She paraphrases Benjamin, writing that there is a utopian "imaginative capacity" encoded in a technology upon its inception that is only "made retrievable" at the technology's obsolescence (304). The reinvention of the medium is possible through this released "cognitive capacity." What I don't quite understand is if she is saying that this return of the utopian has to do specifically with the technology's freedom from utility--does this maybe relate to Fried's concern with the crisis of art in relation to objecthood?
How might Krauss's notion (via Benjamin) of obsolescence as redemptive relate to Broodthaers' use of elements of the book and film (both of which could be considered obsolete or nearly-so, at least in the eyes of artistic practice) in Voyage on the North Sea? I am reluctant to say anything definitive about this because I am not sure I quite understand Krauss's reading of the film, but I do think that there is something here in addition to fiction as medium (though it occurs to me that perhaps I am misunderstanding her use of the word "fiction").
Like Adam, I was mostly confused by Fried's notion of the theatricality of literalist art. Though I gathered that he seemed to pinpoint this characteristic in the relationship of the viewer to artwork (and that this is tied into presence and an ongoing temporality), I just don't think I really grasp why he considers it the project of "true art" to distance itself from theater.
In "Reinventing the Medium", Krauss writes that it is only at the moment of photography's obsolescence--with popular ownership and casual use of cameras, plus the emergence of the camcorder, and later the digital camera--that it functions as "a means of what has to be called an act of reinventing the medium" (296). She paraphrases Benjamin, writing that there is a utopian "imaginative capacity" encoded in a technology upon its inception that is only "made retrievable" at the technology's obsolescence (304). The reinvention of the medium is possible through this released "cognitive capacity." What I don't quite understand is if she is saying that this return of the utopian has to do specifically with the technology's freedom from utility--does this maybe relate to Fried's concern with the crisis of art in relation to objecthood?
How might Krauss's notion (via Benjamin) of obsolescence as redemptive relate to Broodthaers' use of elements of the book and film (both of which could be considered obsolete or nearly-so, at least in the eyes of artistic practice) in Voyage on the North Sea? I am reluctant to say anything definitive about this because I am not sure I quite understand Krauss's reading of the film, but I do think that there is something here in addition to fiction as medium (though it occurs to me that perhaps I am misunderstanding her use of the word "fiction").
Like Adam, I was mostly confused by Fried's notion of the theatricality of literalist art. Though I gathered that he seemed to pinpoint this characteristic in the relationship of the viewer to artwork (and that this is tied into presence and an ongoing temporality), I just don't think I really grasp why he considers it the project of "true art" to distance itself from theater.
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