"For Bersani and Dutoit, recognizable images are linked to a fascistic demand for cognitive "order" and to an oppressive Cartesian subjectivity. The very condition of speaking—speaking to the viewer—for them depends on a subjectivity that seeks only to master and negate the other. Thus discursive experience is always/already compromised by its association with an "appropriative consciousness." It is inconceivable for Bersani and Dutoit that one could ever speak with viewers, only at or against them. Rothko, Samuel Beckett, and the filmmaker Alain Resnais are said to represent the possibility of an "anti-autoritarian" or "non-sadistic" stance. They are artists who, heroically, refuse to speak to the viewer and remain instead sealed inside the "narcissistic" universe of their own creations. As Bersani and Dutoit write: "Rothko gives us a perceptual lesson in the constitution of the real rather than an epistemologically or morally superior (and intensely 'expressive') version of an already constituted real." Here, as I noted above, Bersani and Dutoit can conceive of a relation to discourse or representation ("a version of the real") only as something that requires one of the interlocutors to take up a position of "superiority" and negation relative to the other. Yet Rothko clearly does take up a position of superiority over the viewer. His work, according to Bersani and Dutoit, will "train us in new modes of mobility (or modes to which we have become blind)." The concept of "training" here echoes Greenberg's description of the preparation that viewers must undergo to appreciate a challenging work of art. It evokes the image of the artist as epistemologically (and, I would suggest, morally) privileged subject who will each the "ungifted majority" how to grasp the illusory nature of the real."
—Grant Kester Conversation Pieces
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If I have interviewed you or if you have already scheduled an interview, please disregard this email.
Otherwise, I have included a link for you to schedule your interview below, which is the easiest way to do it without a lot of back and forth emails.
Recent interviews are Jorge Pardo, and Robert Storr will be next.
I am writing to you from Yale University Radio because I am interested in interviewing you for the radio station.
For the past four years I have been interviewing major curators, artists, critics and museum and gallery directors.
Please use this link below this paragraph to schedule a time for the interview if you are interested (it will be under 30 minutes), - you can just pick from my available times and it is confirmed, and you will get emails confirming it as well. It will be recorded by phone through a conference call, and the scheduling link below takes into account your time zone. I have time slots scheduled over the course of this year, so you can schedule it far in advance if necessary.
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Some previous interviews with artists are Gregory Crewdson, Marilyn Mintner, Mary Heilman, and many others. Some curators interviewed were Shamim Momin, Laura Hoptman, David Ross, as well as Gallerists like Betty Cuningham. Writers and critics interviewed include Linda Yablonsky, Ann Lauterbach, David Hickey, Barry Schwabsky and more. The late Arthur Danto was also interviewed.
If you are interested in being interviewed I would prefer to speak on the phone and record it, which is then edited and broadcast. If that is not possible, I can also send you questions and do this by email only, but I would prefer doing it by phone if possible. I am seting up a schedule to talk over the course of this year.
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