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1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	Jill Giegerich	.

M. So how'd all this come about?

(Laughs) Maybe it's the logical conclusion, I don't know if it's the conclusion, but it's a logical stage in the flow of motion of the capitalist endeavor, starting back in the Renaissance.

M. Okay, but then if that's the case, how come this... one of the hallmarks of that kind of work is its attachment, if not genuinely, than at least in a winking kind of way, to critical ideas.

You mean that it tends to engage that very criticism...

M. It genuflects before that. Even if it's not sort of genuinely doing that, the mere fact that it's disingenuous, but it feels compelled to at least posture that, what does that mean?

Well, that also has always been the game of modernism. The game of modernism is very oedipal. It's always about killing off, or disparaging or critiquing the ideology of the fathers, the king, that came just before. So I think that it's been doing that for a very long time. I don't know that... Modernism is very paradoxical. That's the interesting thing about it. It's constantly kind of falling into itself and critiquing what went before and then becoming that thing. I'm not sure that critiquing from a position of being immersed in what you're critiquing is the most valid way to critique. Maybe you have to literally fall out of it. Maybe you have to just fall on your head to be able to really, truly critique the society that you're living in. And even then I'm not sure if the best way to do it is a straight on frontal assault. There might be a more engaging, positive way to go about it. I don't pretend to have found that way. Critiquing from the position of the gallery space to the already converted seems like such an exercise in futility. Again, it's like an energy consideration of mine. But critiquing from a more vibrant position might be interesting, might be more compelling.

M. I have no idea what this word "critique" is or where it came from. It's like a hitchhiker that won't go away. Like some obligation that we're saddled with. I don't know how it got here. But I don't think it came from artists.

No, I think it probably came from certain philosophers, didn't it?

M. I don't think it came from capitalists either. But it sure suits their...

(Laughs) Yeah. Well, it's certainly being used today by capitalists, the posture of critique ... That's the great power of the capitalist society, what it can absorb and use for its own end. But I guess when I think of critique...

M. That makes me very suspicious of its sources.

Where do you think its sources are?

M. It's got to be from academia. Where else can it come from? I'm not really convinced that it's specifically from philosophers. Actually, I'm not even sure if it's from academia, I think it's from religion. I think it's a religious urge. And I think that's the way it functions.

That's interesting.

M. You know when I was a kid people would walk in front of the church and they'd cross themselves. They genuflected. It was a thing that you did, you know.

Yeah. Are you saying that critiquing is like genuflecting?

M. Yeah. Yeah.

Who are you genuflecting to?

M. Some invisible power. Some invisible authority that... I'm not sure what it is, but there's this whole attachment to authority that I see. Work goes and is at terrible pains to justify itself, in terms of it being a critique, that that is its origin and that is its destination and that is its justification. And that it's really not just this lurid fixation on something... It's moral. It's moralizing.

That's interesting.

M. And to me it's really suspect in the same way that anything that moralizes is [suspect]. You know that Jimmy Swaggert is doing what he's doing. Who's surprised? Give me a break. So if the art world is wearing this thing on its shoulder, what are they doing after hours?

That's very interesting what you say about, that you think that there's a kind of religious impulse to it. But that leads me to an interesting question, so then who's the god and I wonder if the god isn't the god of logic.

M. God and the devil are the same.

Who is the deity then? Who is the authority? Do you think it could be logic, science and logic?

M. Where I would go, off the cuff, is say God and the devil are the same and the devil is whatever we don't want to know about, about us, like the last Pogo episode. I don't know. The whole thing about incorporating critique, or being in some kind of proximity to it, is about this professing goodness, virtue... not just virtue and goodness, but also smartness, like a knowingness, which is also about a kind of membership. I mean all of those things can't go together in anything approximating some kind of truth value. I feel some kind of oppressive conformity in the quarters where it's like the worst place to see it.

Yeah, it's true. It's a frightening place to see it. It does signal that something is dying. At least that's what it feels like to me.

So what do you think is the best... I mean it's really easy for me to rattle off what is so difficult about making art. But what do you think is the best thing about being an artist? Or is there a best thing?

M. It's doing it. When you're actually doing it. When you have that... I mean it's not really describable. It's a high... It's a mental state. It's a mental state that every once in a while you hit it, you hit it and then you just try to stay there as long as you can. It's an in-between state. It's between dream and reality, which is to say it's more real than either one.

Yeah. (laughs) Uh-huh. You said it.

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