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Kiaer's fetishism - in which objects gain authority through compositional attention, finickyness as gospel (think Fried's theater and the "arrangements" of minimalism's staging of viewership doubled w/ awareness of this expectation), the vestigial dust detritus and bits, remnants totemized by a self-aware anticipation of the viewer, and arranged for them - is probably the best argument against speculatory theories. The arrangements anticipate the viewer, appear as though inhabited, sentient by the specificity of their arrangement, a logic which cannot be seen but inferred, winking, and attributed to the Wizard of Oz, an intelligent design from some immanent spectre, but really just a smokeless mirror and us believing again in ghosts. The mirror reveals something way more interesting than that. A paraphilia in which the actual objects are substituted by an administration of attention.
Michael E Smith at Lulu, Michael E. Smith at Susanne Hilberry, Zak Kitnick at Clearing, Renaud Jerez at William Arnold