Paul Conneally On your way out chuck me an idea or two…
Dave Beech This is a comment, which is fine, but isn’t it anti-dialogue or ant-intellectual? Or is it more specific – anti-leftwing?
Paul Conneally Hi Dave – the comment isn’t intended as any of those things and the work itself certainly not in fact the anti could possibly be replaced with pro but exploring what where and between who dialogue (intellectual or otherwise) and in particul…ar political takes place – the idea of burning ideas is stupid provocative and liberating at the same time – It gets us to think about what ideas or theories would any particular group or individual actually choose to burn or erase in some sort of cultural revolution if they could? As soon as they burn / erase from cultural / political memory theory / ideas that they don’t like then their own ideas / theories perhaps become redundant…
Dave Beech burning ideas is conventionally thought of as repressive, isn’t it? The reason we dislike it on the whole is that it does away with the solution (dialogue) at the same time as dismissing that which you oppose (the text). The only way I can see it being ‘liberating’ is in its potential to liberate us from socially sedimented texts (holy scripts and the like), but even then it is a liberation that is executed through illiberal means, isn’t it?
Paul Conneally but what if we burn ideas we like too – The Hot Chestnut Man makes no distinction – each text will bring something to the roast – he doesn’t ask the reason for burning any particular text – maybe ingesting a chestnut roasted using a left wing text is just as nutritionally charged as one roasted with a right wing a text – maybe not – maybe they bring something distinct to the digestive process… that Chestnut Man… whats he playing at…?
And your question? Essentially ”yes” and by proposing to do so we strike up thought and dialogue such as your thoughtful response which even within it exposes how easy it would be to see the burning of some texts as illiberal but also that… pull inside to burn ideas / texts that we find the most personally abhorrent – for you those “socially sedimented” texts – “holy texts” and then which texts are holy apart from those that use the word to describe themselves… and texts that are moving to holiness… quick get the Pope.. or someone more qualified (the workers?) to beatify a text or two – maybe excommunicate a few too… like the guys that decide on University reading lists… and what constitutes their correct interpretation…
Paul O’Kane It is touchy to burn anything at the moment, what with lads burning Quorans in northern pub carparks and mad Republican preachers and all. It’s healthy that since the infamous 30s Nazi book-burnings this act has become a kind of taboo. How…ever, it is still an act that is available for reappraisal, and in an artist’s hands any action or gesture or image can be reviewed and re-evaluated. The image or gesture is recontextualised and thus requests or requires reconsideration. In this case I would NOT immediately think the artist is being anti-Left, it would seem more likely that they were bringing all ideas onto the level of their material, support, aiming at a new equation of ideas-versus-materiality or ideas-versus-acts. To me, the fire here represents time, or history, against which all ideas (Right or Left, Political or Religious, or Philosophica) are judged and against which all ideas are defenseless. But burning an idea on paper also demonstrates that an idea is precisely NOT material and thus even escapes the fire as an idea is still an idea no matter how many times you burn its material manifestation. In this way the artist could be said to be ridiculing the sad actions of Nazis, of Republican preachers and of lads in Northern pub car parks i.e. burning Quorans is taboo and deeply offensive but it will do nothing to diminish or tarnish the ideas contained on those pages -which many Moslems learn off-by-heart anyway and keep in mind. For these reasons the ‘piece’ reminds of me of classic conceptual art, dematerialisation-come-performance (a la Vito Acconci perhaps)
