Postponed my flight to NY til tomorrow. Meeting with FLR on Sunday so there was really no need for me to be there tonight. Projects before parties. Much to do.
Thinking during last night's somewhat productive insomnia about how to answer the 'How is this a VCS project' $5000 question. Sure - first the usual justifications appeared (investigating and investing in the processes and production of visual culture / semiotics of performance and play / etc....) but then it seemed suddenly and quite simply obvious:
VCS is itself a battle of disciplines, a performance of paradox embodied, a masquerade of projects and shifting alliances. VCS has no fixed identity. It is what it is all the time. It's liminal, impossible, and exciting - it challenges assumptions and resists categorization. VCS is itself an occupant and antagonizer of the borderline. Its 'residents' fight binary'd paradigms because their activated space is that of being between / both / neither either/ or. Why...?
... Is it all in the name?
Visual Critical Studies?
I'm reading The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature, and one of its fundamental assertions is that - to paraphrase - the visual is not a critical faculty. Judgemental - yes indeed. But critical?
... I need to think more to articulate this better.
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