Lists of Instability

Southworth, Kate and Simons, Patrick (2009) Lists of Instability. [Website Content]

Abstract / Summary

‘Lists of Instability’ is a series of ‘incalculable’ events, actions and encounters in the form of six short ‘lists’ printed on graph paper which references technical language as compacted to ‘raw’ information and the concomitant desolation of common language. The sequential, calculable elements of the artwork are interrupted to open elliptical spaces of difference and otherness. The lists provide a material form to comment on the relationship between rationalisation, security and art through a range of protocols associated with state control and its impossibility., Specific attention to ‘the list’ as one of the named elements of a distributed art form articulates the element’s materiality; this materiality is framed in relation to the intensification of processes of opposing rationalisation within contemporary capitalism and artistic strategies of subversion. In everyday life lists are collections of elements organised within a set. Often, commas, semicolons and spaces separate items alongside delimiters such as brackets. Lists are used to manage the material and immaterial equally; lists infuse spontaneous acts with concrete calculability. The six lists each propose a strategy of subversion which follows the enervation of protocol.

‘Lists of Instability’ builds on research (submitted for RAE08) examining the use of protocol in contemporary art practice and articulating its relation to art historical use of instructions, for example; dada, fluxus, and Sol LeWitt’s work. Research into ‘the list’ directly informed other outputs in this submission: Art and Curating as Distributed Form, Cultural Capital and Electronic Village Galleries.

View Record (staff only)