Let's Stop Pretending Academic Artspeak Reflects Actual Research - The Globe and Mail

11/17/2017 Let’s stop pretending academic artspeak reﬂects actual research - The Globe and Mail
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OPINION
Let’s stop pretending academic

artspeak reflects actual
research
RUSSELL SMITH
SPECIAL TO THE GLOBE AND MAIL
OCTOBER 31, 2017
I love the Artybollocks Generator, a site that spews a perfectly contemporary

bit of all-purpose, grammatically correct nonsense for use as an "artist's
statement." Just hit a button and it fills in a template with variable words such
as "spatial," "practice," "gendered" and "discourse" to come up with such
convincing gems as: "As momentary derivatives become reconfigured through
studious and diverse practice, the viewer is left with an insight into the
inaccuracies of our culture."
The joke is becoming an old one now, and in fact there are a few other
"instant art phrase generators" on the web. Its best manifestation was a semi-
serious analysis of "International Art English (IAE)" by a couple of PhD
students who in 2012 wrote a guide to its rules and usage. David Levine and
Alix Rule used software to analyze thousands of gallery artists' statements
and isolated several linguistic devices that have become mandatory in their
writing. They published the findings in the art journal Triple Canopy.
They explain that, in this language, an "artist's work inevitably interrogates,

questions, encodes, transforms, subverts, imbricates, displaces – though often
it doesn't do these things so much as it serves to, functions to, or seems to (or
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English for its lack of nouns: START TODAY
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Visual becomes visuality, global becomes globality, potential becomes

potentiality, experience becomes … experiencability." They reveal that the
phrase "the real" (as opposed to reality) recurs 179 times more frequently in
published art writing than it does in the rest of written English.
The point of this dialect, the researchers claim, is simply to show insider
status, to exclude those without the proper credentials or background from
the conversation.
This language has been the subject of mockery since at least the 1990s but it
shows no signs of going away. Recently, I read a call for papers for a Canadian
conference on art writing that was written by an anonymous master of this
vernacular. "As writing calls and responds in proximity to bodies both present
and absent, what performativities of language embody speaking subjects?"
asked the conference. It went on for a page, saying exactly nothing. Choose
another paragraph at random: "How do inscription, gesture and language
formulate and reveal cultural knowledge and difference? How does language
gesture across and within difference, and how might we consider geographies,
histories and futurities in this context?"
"Futurities" is great, admittedly. But also note the rhythmic tropes. In this
dialect, prepositions are often paired – "across and within" – as are verbs –
"formulate and reveal" – and adjectives – "present and absent" – and nouns –
"knowledge and difference" – carefully avoiding one meaning and constantly
suggesting ambiguity and flux.
Intelligent and educated people write this way, and they have a justification
for it. They argue that the theory they are reading cannot be easily simplified,
that each of these phrases is the product of many years of "research" and that
they are writing for other connoisseurs of the theory. Each of these phrases is
a shorthand for a complex idea that experts would understand, and what's the
problem with experts writing for other experts? Scientists do it all the time.
You wouldn't ask a doctor to explain every technical term in a research paper
meant for other doctors.
I have a couple of responses to this. First, I am not convinced that each of

these phrases represents a genuinely new or difficult concept. Many of them
complicate very simple concepts. (For example, "performativities of language
embody speaking subjects," above, probably refers to the idea that people of
different backgrounds use language differently.)
Second, the idea that critical theory is a kind of scientific research is a

misleading one. Middling graduate students often want us to believe that
because a theory has been put forward it has proved something, akin to a
pharmaceutical study that proves the efficacy of a certain drug.
You can see this belief system subtly represented in the style of citation notes
that the writers use. In-text citations (APA style as opposed to MLA style, for
those in the know) are creeping into philosophical writing and they do not
belong there. Let me explain: It is traditional in papers in the humanities to
use endnotes to provide source material – you put a little number in the text
and a note at the end. Endnotes say something like: "1. This idea was most
fully developed in R. Smith's 2017 work Wankers and Hogwash (Pretence
Press, 2017)." But scientists use a different style, in-text citations, which are
parentheses containing the author of a study and a date (Smith, 2017). The
idea here is that there was a study that demonstrated something you are
claiming.
But philosophy and art criticism prove nothing. Essays in criticism are not
summaries of experiments done in labs. They just advance ideas. The use of
this scientific reference style has crept into the humanities through the
vaguely scientific social sciences (I'm looking at you, sociology). It has been
welcomed by those who want to call criticism "research" so as to maximize its
authority.
If I make a loony statement – "chronormativity both negates and releases

binary hegemonies" – then follow with an in-text citation (Authority, 2017), it
looks as if I am referring to established fact. But I may be referring to a
sessional instructor at Simon Fraser who published in an online journal called
Radical De-Everything. The source and its persuasiveness needs to be
addressed in the text itself.
Let's stop pretending this language reflects "research." Let the reader decide
whether an idea is plausible or implausible by explaining it, not by presenting
it as established fact. Let's have an end to academic artspeak – and while we're
at it, start letting art speak for itself.
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11/17/2017 Let’s stop pretending academic artspeak reﬂects actual research - The Globe and Mail

Let’s stop pretending academic

I love the Artybollocks Generator, a site that spews a perfectly contemporary

They explain that, in this language, an "artist's work inevitably interrogates,

Visual becomes visuality, global becomes globality, potential becomes

I have a couple of responses to this. First, I am not convinced that each of

Second, the idea that critical theory is a kind of scientific research is a

If I make a loony statement – "chronormativity both negates and releases

FOLLOW US ON TWITTER @GLOBEDEBATE

MORE ON THIS STORY

Patois: When this Jamaican-Chinese-Canadian kitchen goes off-menu, good

Yes, the Quebec ‘language police’ does serve a purpose

Danica Roem becomes first openly transgender

Rosenberg: Investing in the Trump era, my

Saudi purge escalates with more arrests, frozen

Russia bans dozens of Canadians, refuses to name

Loblaw to merge Shoppers Optimum and PC Plus

1 Housing starts rise in October as multiunit construction soars

2 Trudeau ‘satisfied’ with fundraiser’s explanation after Paradise Papers leak

3 The F-word can fly in French, broadcast watchdog says

4 Wednesday’s analyst upgrades and downgrades

5 These overlooked stocks had easily beaten the TSX in 2017

Trudeau in Vietnam: 'I will stand up for Canadian jobs' 1:57

Trudeau accepts Bronfman's response to Paradise Papers report 1:10

Transgender Democrat makes history in Virginia 0:56

Democrats notch first major win of Trump era in Virginia 2:01

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