Friday 28 September 2012

Messianic Musings

Show Name: I Love Criticulous and Critculous Loves Me
Artist: Gareth K Vile
Venue: Arches LIVE 2012
Date: Sat 29 Sep 2012 |2pm onwards | Foyer| Free

Descriptions (from The Arches Website): He took confession, investigated murder, chatted to stars and was locked up in a basement for his art. Now Criticulous faces the ultimate challenge: collaboration. 

Unwilling to admit that criticism is not the original art form, Criticulous fights his ego and mounting anxiety to present a series of pieces that brings dance, radio, dialectics, sculpture and the audience into his relentless quest to understand a world he did not create but reflects.
Contains desperation.


I rather fear that I am suffering from an existential crisis. That's unsurprising. I am an imaginary construct, designed to express the various neuroses of Gareth K Vile. Fortunately, he has got plenty of them, and I'll be around for years while he tries to work them out.

So, of course, technically, I don't exist. But that isn't what an existential crisis means, anyway. It's people with more thought than intelligence wondering about their purpose. My purpose is very clear. I am cleansing the earth of its existing notions about criticism, and replacing the popular image of the critic with something new.

But thinking about it, the popular image of the critic is of an intelligent, honest writer, who applies a detailed, practical knowledge to the assessment of art, before communicating in a straight-forward entertaining prose.

That's not so bad.

And the new critic I am supposed to be heralding? A buffoon who forgets the names of artists, who does not do research, who can't even decide how many stars a show is worth. 

And damn, if I don't lack agency. I am just a cypher for someone else's half-baked ideas. I bet this is how Jesus felt just before the Romans caught him. 


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