User:Lbattich/Diedrich Diederichsen - Judgement, Objecthood, Temporality

Diedrich Diederichsen, "Judgement, Objecthood, Temporality", in Jeff Khonsary and Melaine O'Brian (Eds.) Judgement and Contemporary Art Criticism. Artspeak & Fillip Editions, Vancouver. 2010.

Diedrich Diederichsen on the demise art art criticism and judgement in the contemporary artworld.

The dream world in which art can exist outside rules of cultural and social production, is "a hellish, petit-bourgeois dystopia in which people play games without winners," with "zombies who avoid con flit by any means."

In current contemporary art world: "opinions are supposed to be relative, debates open, and results postponed." The audience is encouraged to " rather interact than judge."

Contemporary art: "An avoidance of judgement is not only held to be natural, it is also politicised in a semi-heroic rhetoric."

Quoting Tirdad Zolghadr: "complaining about the lack of judgements is as widespread as judgements are absent."

Negative judgements nowadays "simply [do] not exist anymore."

This may be due to the fear that producing a negative criticism would result in social and professional death. When writer are an intrinsic clog in the art market, they are unlikely to give negative judgements: they would need a different support beyond their interest of survival within the artworld. Yet, "to adequately address contemporary art, one needs so much indexer knowledge that criticism from outside is hardly possible not even desirable."

Diederichsen wants to advocate "a practice of criticism that eventually produces judgements – of course not final, holy judgements, but judgements of value." To assess the art object more clearly.

Diederichsen elaborates on Gerald Raunig's distinction between:

• critique as open process – a general perspective towards the world;
• a narrow-minded notion of critique as practical and useful instrument that helps you get through the world – helps you decide between consumer options.

Critique in the first sense is the very process that suspends judgement. This is a "process-oriented critique-as-away-of-life" which focuses rather on the self, and does not have anything directly to do with the experience of a subject vis a vis and (art) object. Critique in this sense may be the reason why the critic may feel that by making negative judgements toward an object is the same as making them toward a person (the author of that object, for example), that it will insult someone, not only professionally, but on a personal level, and that we are too civilised for that. Objects are (or remain very close to) people.

For Diederichsen, "it is exactly the possibility of arriving at judgements that makes this particular critical activity an unstoppable one, because it articulates seemingly final decisions all the time." "It has to continue forever; it has to permanently rediscuss what it has seemingly been decided for good."

"Judgement is meant to form an aesthetic basis for how we live." This is a synthesis, Diederichsen claims, of the two distinct notion of critique previously mentioned."