Thursday, July 7, 2022

Peter Wächtler at dépendance


(link)

Wächtler is always learning a new skill. Usually a craft (for its labor representing love.) A handicraft that a lot of people have spent a life "mastering," but which Wächtler gets suspiciously close to competent before abandoning it. (It should be noted this will all be abandoned.) Desertion of techniques perhaps preventative against said technical mastery, a mastery that would prevent identification with its wet-eyed novice. You "an uninvited spectator to his own stubborn failure at coming of age." Jeff Koons of the rags we call him. The rag is sympathetic in a way diamonds aren't. But it structures Wächtler's question, is it still earnestness if you forbid any other sentiment? Can it be manufactured?