Scattered Speculations on the Question of Cornell (Joseph)

an informal talk on joseph cornell
(notes by david brazil)

at the home of taylor brady & tanya hollis

in attendance --

taylor, tanya, rob halpern, lee azus, brandon
brown, alli warren, david brazil, jason
escalante

following -- a transcription of the notes
i wrote that evening -- supplemental memories
in brackets -- direct quotes indicate speech

my point of departure for conversation
was the coincidence that both brian whitener
and i, who went to see the show together,
independently found ourselves thinking of
the work of walter benjamin & specifically
of the arcades project

which led me to pose the question:
is there a theory of history in the work
of joseph cornell?

(cf. this quotation from 'the arcades project':
"method of this project: literary montage.
i needn't *say* anything. merely show.
i shall purloin no valuables, appropriate
no ingenuous formulations. but the rags,
the refuse -- these i will not inventory
but allow, in the only way possible, to come
into their own: by making use of them.")

[tanya talked about her early encounter with
cornell & its formative character -- as well
as wendy kramer's simultaneous discovery
of jess --]

[tanya also spoke of the emotional quality she
saw in cornell's work -- the boxes as a way
of communicating --]

[the conversation turned to chance]

"chance as objective hazard" [TB]

Cornell as furtive

"a set of foregone conclusions" [TH]

destroying surface

"a set of procedures that undo that
at every stage" [TH]

decollage

Duchamp v. Cage (aleatory v. stochastic)

[everyone asked TB to define 'stochastic']

[BB spoke of Rrose Selavy, the perfume bottle,
etc. as well as the curational savvy of the
Philadelphia Duchamp room as against the
facile thematization of the SFMOMA show]

[DB mentioned the 'Portrait of Ondine' as
displayed in the show, as a riff on Duchamp's
Green Valise]

"domesticated chance" [TB]

"I haven't actually regularized the stop" [TH]

is aesthetics about the stop?

the anti-archive.

a series of decisions about appearance.

"a series of decisions made by someone as
random as me" [TH - referring to archival work]

Blaser on chance --

[Taylor read extracts from robin blaser's essay,
'mind canaries,' on the work of the sculptor
christos dikeakos, collected in 'the fire':

"christos dikeakos's show is a splendid
occasion to turn back and really think about
duchamp and to come forward to understand
this artist's contemporary mind. i must imagine
chance which is comprised of time, event, and
condition in contrast to traditional illusionism,
abstraction, ideality or immortality. the
thought that is art is operational in both the
small and the large, the private and the public,
because it does not define the self as closed
into itself, but in relation to an outside of
persons, society, politics, and cosmos. i do
not want this to be confused with contemporary
apocalyptics, -- that haunting millenarianism
that wishes desperately for an end of time or
history, and that ends in a despotism of spirit
or matter. dikeakos presents the relational
condition of the present. He has thoughtfully
considered hans arp’s sense of chance:

'chance opened up perceptions to me, immediate
spiritual insights. intuition led me to revere
the law of chance as the highest and deepest
of laws, the law that rises from the fundament.
an insignificant word might become a deadly
thunderbolt. one little sound might destroy
the earth. one little sound might create a
new universe' (arp, 'dada')

[...]

the devastation of the western sense of order,
of 'reality,' of the transcendental forces us
to imagine that god, ourselves and the world
are incomplete -- a matter of continuous
creation."]

[RH spoke about melancholy in Cornell's work,
about introjection as against incorporation --
in the language of Abraham & Torok unless I am
mistaken]

"disturbing forms of repetition" [RH]

"a more productive relationship to loss" [RH]

an object unable to enter encounter with chance

melancholia

engagements that would catalyze

"uninterrupted set of exceptions" [RH, quoting
wall text from SFMOMA]

the relationship of chance to meaning

chance as a figure for loss

an unrepresentable place from which
to render judgment

"a disabling stability" [RH? TB?]

"a deep page" [JE -- the boxes as not
essentially sculptural -- "as close to
two-dimensional as you can get"]

"a problem in that body" [TH, referring to
Cornell]

pure image, real essence

[JE talking about the tenets of Christian
Science, Cornell's church]

"things falling out of grace"

deliquescence into 'base matter' (Bataille),
recrudescence into aura (Benjamin)

[tanya brought out a triptych of works]

"the page allowed to become fleshy" (TB,
referring to tanya's artwork)