Jesse Stecklow at Sweetwater

(link)

Stecklow takes signs and basically subjects them to any permutation that can be reasoned (though aren't necessarily reasonable.) It's generative, endless seeming. "Long associative chains." Content pulled from the air. Which was corn. Which lead to ears. You can read about it. There is a logic but it might as well be meaningless. It is merely the means to free associate another thing. Isn't that a metaphor for all art today? Conjure from air not an artwork, but a process that can endlessly generate artwork? Stecklow makes it more fun because at least the machine is transparent. Willfully arbitrary. Rhoadsian. Maybe Darren Bader. Qs of how is meaning generated? 

See too: Jesse Stecklow at Chicken Coop Contemporary & Adrian Piper at Hamburger Bahnhof

Jesse Stecklow at Chicken Coop Contemporary & Adrian Piper at Hamburger Bahnhof

Jesse Stecklow at Chicken Coop Contemporary
Adrian Piper at Hamburger Bahnhof

Hypertrophied conceptual art still flexing instructionals retains, at heart, an interest in poetics, the fissure in semantic conclusion, the discrepancy in language's overt clarity and concern for bureaucratic legalese and recipization standing in for that object, even the most bureaucratic language fails and is semantically open, poetic. Information is pleasurable, activating our brain's dopamine reward system, addictive, we consume it without need for it, lack of place to use it just silver information reflecting its space, "consciousness and experience can not be described in materialist terms" in Stecklow's terms. Piper's contractual better world exchanges real world ethics with paper versions, "each individual voluntarily commits to align his or her future deeds with ethical principles such as honesty and reliability. ... They form a community of people who are likely to be trustworthy in the future." Which like nuclear disarmament leaves one community at a disadvantage, obligatory trustworthiness advantageous to others lacking it, the trustworthy lose the tools maintaining MAD strategies pleasant standoff, lies at the ready, trying to replace the grey world with black and white text never quite as functional.