Middlemen

In both art and science, the products of (small groups of) individuals are disseminated to the world by other companies. In the world of art, these companies are the galleries representing artists. In the world of science, they are the publishers and their journals.
In both these situations there is a clear distinction between those who produce the goods and those who distribute them to a wider audience. The presence of such middlemen is common in many industries, but an uncommon aspect found in both art and science is that the financial benefits to the intermediary are far greater than those of the producer. Scientific publishing is now a multi-billion euro industry and the largest of the art galleries have turnovers in the range of tens of millions of euros.
The curious similarities between the two fields are the result of imperfect information on the consumer side, combined with some leftovers from an older world where the financial risks were differently distributed and legally arranged. 

For both scientific publishing and art galleries the most valuable asset is the firm's reputation.
For example, the price of an artwork is linked quite directly to the standing of the gallery it is shown in. Similarly, a scientific discovery is generally considered more impactful if it's published in a journal of significance. It's therefore imperative for both galleries and scientific journals to become, and remain, reputable. It's also easy to see that for both fields there is simultaneously no inherent and necessary connection between the quality of the work and the social standing of the middleman. The intermediary does not change any intrinsic property of the final product. That the perceived quality of the intermediary is nevertheless seen as a useful indication of the quality of the good is due to a characteristic that economists call imperfect information.
In both art and science, there is no information about the quality of a good that is both reliable and readily available. The causes of this imperfect information are different in each field, but over the course of the last century they have led to a similar outcome where the intermediaries have a disproportionate influence on both the kind of goods that get produced as well as which consumers have access to it.

Any consumer needs information about a good in order to make a decision about what is worth spending their money on. They can either have full access to all necessary information, which is called perfect information, or limited access to one or more characteristics of the good, which is called imperfect information.
In both art and science, information about the quality of a good is difficult to ascertain for a large number of interested buyers. Quality in the arts is next to impossible to quantify and subject to changing cultural perceptions. And while scientific merit can be checked in principle, this requires an impossibly large amount of time, money and other resources, so in reality it is unfeasible for any one party to make an objective judgement based on their own experimental knowledge about the quality of all articles published in all journals.
Hence, for both art and science, there is a lot of effort that goes into convincing a potential customer of the value of the good that is being sold. As the goods themselves don't provide accurate clues to their genuine value, this is done through less direct means that convey a perception of longevity. Such (signs of) longevity can ostensibly only be reached by consistently providing quality goods.

Galleries and artists today try to provide credible signals of value by demonstrating a long-term commitment to each other. Until the early 20th century, this meant that dealers were directly buying (nearly) all of an artists output, thereby putting their money where their mouth is. If nothing else, this would at least demonstrate to a potential client that the dealer has a strong belief in the artist. And the dealer is only able to aquire those works today if they have made sound financial decisions in the past. These days the commitment is less strong, expressed by 'representation' of the artist by the gallery. The financial capabilities of the gallery are generally demonstrated through large, and mostly empty, spaces in expensive buildings in desirable locations, as well as participation in ludicrously priced art fairs.
I've written elsewhere on this blog how this shift is likely partially caused by changes in anti-trust legislation in the Western world in the first half of the 20^th century, so I won't delve any further into this subject here.

The publishing of scientific works likewise underwent significant changes in the last two centuries.
A scientist is usually employed by a university or some other institution, and when they've made a discovery, they write up what they've done to try and make it known to others what they have discovered. It is of course difficult to reach a broad audience, even in the age of the internet, so this is one thing a publisher can help you with. A publisher possesses ways to reach an audience that any single scientist doesn't have. A publisher also has access to infrastructure. Although these days more and more of scientific publishing is done digitally, physical printing and distribution of materials has historically been a venture with large upfront costs, combined with specialised knowledge and equipment. These upfront costs carry significant financial risks, which can only be borne by a large company that is able to spread such risk over multiple ventures. 

It's also a well known fact that most scientific literature has a very small readership. Current estimates on the audience size of the average journal article range from single to triple digit numbers.
Yet at the same time, there is a great number of scientific articles that are published every day. With such fragmented readership, there is little possibility for scientific texts to gain widespread attention in the same way a newspaper article or a viral video might. Therefore, to a broad audience it is virtually unknown what the value is of any given article relative to all the other articles that are available.
As already stated, some of this uncertainty is remedied through the reputation of the journal the article is published in. This reputation is mostly based on the reception of the works that were published by the journal in the past, as well as the academic standing of its current editor(s). There have been attempts at quantifying this reputation by metrics like a journal's impact factor, which essentially measures how often articles from a journal have been cited by other scientists. But as Goodheart's law states, any measure that becomes a target seizes to be a good measure, so such undertakings merely repackage the problem instead of solving it. 

Both industries thus have a small customer base and these customers ought to be sceptical of the goods they provide and the high prices they ask for them.
So how do these middlemen leverage their position to create profits for themselves?
In the arts it is a simple question of gallerists charging very high commissions for their work, so that a handful of sales can provide an adequate amount of turnover, especially when their risk is spread over a number of artists.
In scientific publishing, exorbitant profit margins only arrived around the turn of the millennium, and to see why this is the case requires a short history lesson on copyright law, and in particular how such laws were implemented in the United States of America.

The foundation of today's copyright legislation was laid at the Berne Convention in 1886. This type of copyright is based on an idea of author's rights, where the creator of intellectual property is also automatically the owner of intangible rights relating to that work. These reproduction rights could then be licensed to a third party, such as a publisher. This can happen in different ways, but it must be noted that a perpetual exclusive license to reproduce the work is an option, even when the author retains the copyright in such a case.

This is in contrast with the common law idea of copyright, which is much more focussed on the economic right to publish and distribute. The United States, which legal system is based on common law, was thus late in incorporating the principles of the Berne Convention. In the early 20th century, copyright for individuals did not exist, but a publisher could register the publication of a work at the copyright office to obtain its copyrights.
It's a bit of an oversimplification, but it wasn't until the Copyright Act of 1976 that the intellectual property laws of the United States became more closely aligned with those of most other countries.

This change has quite directly lead scientific publishers to mandate their authors to sign over their copyrights to the publisher, instead of licensing their papers. At best this can be seen as a good-natured attempt to retain the best publishing standards possible, but it's much more likely that this decision was aimed at retaining control over the substantial captial the publishers had ammassed up until that time.
For example, in the 1966 edition of the Handbook for Authors of Papers in the Journals of the American Chemical Society, the section on 'Liability and Copying Rights' is only half a page long and simply states 'The Society owns the copyright for any paper it publishes'. This was true under the federal copyright laws of the USA at the time, which required registration at the copyright office.
Interestingly, the section on 'Liability and Copying Rights' of the 1978 edition of the Handbook for Authors of Papers in the Journals of the American Chemical Society was nearly twice as long as the previous edition. It now contained the following phrase: 'Under the terms of the Federal copyright law, effective January 1, 1978, scientific publishers who wish to obtain copyright ownership of papers in their journals are required specifically to obtain such ownership from the author of each paper. Since it is necessary for the widest possible dissemination of scientific knowledge that the society own the copyright, authors are required to transfer copyright ownership before publication of their manuscript.'

This last sentence is simply not true. A perpetual, even exclusive and non-restricted, license to publish poses no practical objections. However, such a license would still leave the ultimate ownership in the hands of the author, so that the publisher could not license the work out to third parties. Transfer of copyright ownership thus is an issue of control of the work beyond the any direct publishing efforts in their own journals.

However, it might have been vital for publishing companies to protect those interests. In the 1970's, publishing was still a complex and costly business, with large upfront costs and little or no guarantee that anybody would be interested in the final product. The publishing industry had a high risk of failure and the small number of scientific publishers that have survived, only survived because they originally published books that turned out to be of particular significance and relevance to other scientists. Unlike most of their publications, these tomes had several reprints and made a healthy profit, which could offset the cost of the many failures.
It is, however, impossible to predict which publications become a hit, and if the publisher didn't own the copyright, such a reprint would have most likely have to be renegotiated with the author. This author by then has of course seen how well their book is selling and so they'll likely want a bigger cut for themselves, or could even let the reprint be done by a different publisher altogether. This is therefore debilitatingly risky to a publisher during that time, and so the transfer of copyright ownership may have been a reasonable request in the 1970's. 

This all changes towards the 2000's and the advent of widespread internet access. Through more than a century of publishing and consolidation in the industry, a handful of scientific publishers are in possession of enormous archives and because of their insistence on copyright ownernship, they have full control over them. Through digitisation these materials are now also easily searchable and through the internet they can be distributed at negligible cost to the publishers. In other words, the publishers' material capital is now more valuable than ever, while their operating costs have fallen dramatically.
As a result their profits have risen to extraordinary heights. To illustrate this fact, two of the top ten highest paid CEO's in the Netherlands are scientific publishers. 

In summary, the presence of middlemen is necessary in both art and science to create credible signals about the quality of goods. And in both these markets, the middlemen have understood the necessity of their presence and found ways to leverage that power into great profits by essentially exploiting the weak negotiating position of their suppliers and in some cases those of their clients.
Such predatory practices are much lamented in both industries, yet I'm unaware of any proposed solution that could remedy the problem. Many of such initiatives are focused on the (financial) inequality of the artist/scientist and gallery/publisher, but I believe a solution can only be found in making information about the quality of goods readily available to end users.

As a final remark, it must be noted that book publishing in the arts is a market that functions remarkably well, considering the difficulties that exist in scientific publishing and the sale of artworks. In art publishing, there is a healthy market of buyers and sellers, while risks and profits are usually shared in reasonable terms between the artists and the publishers.
The reason for this is simply that an art book can quite literally be judged by its cover. When selecting which art book to buy, an interested buyer usually can find the books that appeal to them by considering the design of their covers. Art books also retain their value rather well, so that even if a mistake is made, a buyer can still resell the book at only a minimal loss. Therefore information on the quality of a good is widely available, while the cost of misinformation is marginal.
This is the exact opposite of scientific publishing and the market for artworks, where credible information is hard-won and the costs of getting it wrong can be extremely high.

I can't stop reading!

I don't think I ever spoke about it here, but I don't particularly enjoy the writing process. In all honestly, I don't really like reading, neither.
Yet I like to learn, so I'm forced to read, and I believe things need to be expressed that aren't said elsewhere, so I'm compelled to write.

In the last couple of weeks, I've bought more books than I have time to read, while checking out some books from the library to boot. My own irrational behaviour puzzled me, until I realised I was feeling particularly anxious and troubled by the world. Ever since I was a child, I've tried to soothe my worries by gaining knowledge, and a greater comprehension would often lead to me to feel separated from the rest of the world. This isolation led me to seek a greater understanding and that greater understanding would make me feel more isolated.

So, for this, my 200th post on this blog, let me paraphrase the lament uttered by Fat Bastard in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me:

I read because I'm unhappy.
I'm unhappy because I read. 

It's a vicious cycle.

Why You Probably Shouldn't Cite Either

I've written previously on this blog about why I tend not to cite others in what I write here.
Now that I've written a number of papers in the field of chemistry, I would like to add a subtle, but important, nuance to that argument that largely pertains to texts that others have written.

In the natural sciences, any paper typically has a structure where a problem is introduced, then a methodology is described for finding answers to that problem, then the results of that methodology are described before they are interpreted in how they may relate to the initially stated problem. References to other sources are usually found in the first part of these writings. When describing the problem and the methodology, it is very often useful to know and state how others have approached similar problems in the past and how their approach relates to the question you are trying to answer now.
However, in the interpretation of your results, it is rare that any other sources are referenced unless you obtained some highly unexpected outcome. The reasons for this are obvious, as only you have done your experiments in the way you have set them up, so only you have anything to say about how they relate to the problem at hand.

This is very different with the kind of citation I most often encounter in art theoretical texts. There, the problem and methodology tend to be of the author's invention, if present at all, with little to no reference to other authors having worked on similar problems. But then when the author is drawing conclusions from their observations, various other authors are referenced who drew similar conclusions, so as to confirm and endorse the validity of the author's ideas. Quite naturally, there is no necessary relationship between the truth of a statement and the amount of times a statement has been uttered. So once again, this style of citation is therefore nothing but empty pretence attempting to veil a weakly constructed argument.

The Artist's Artist's Critic's Critic

During 2023 I recorded most of my visits to exhibitions on a website called The Artist's Artist's Critic's Critic. On this website I scored each exhibition one to five stars on six characteristics: difficulty, entertainment, originality, legibility, consistency and craftsmanship. I also recorded the time spent at the exhibition as an indication of my affinity with the work.
Part of the reason I started this undertaking was to see if I could develop an alternative to the subjective and nonsensical star rating system that's used by various media outlets. By trying to formulate those aspects of an exhibition I adhere importance to, I thought it might be possible to provide some insight into my own viewing behaviour, while still having a numerical ranking system.

Now the year is over I have crunched some of the numbers and it gave some interesting results.

In 2023 I recorded 79 exhibitions. 65 of those were solo shows, of which 31 were at museums, 21 at galleries and 13 at other institutions. Of the 14 group exhibitions I recorded, 7 were at museums and 7 took place at other institutions. I visited no group shows at commercial galleries.

When rating something 1 to 5 stars on six different characteristics, the range of the total scores lies between 6 and 30, with an average of 18. This equates to a 3-star score on all six characteristics.
The average total score I've given to those 79 exhibitions is 18,25, with a median of 18 and modes of 12 and 22. This was surprising to me, to find that I ended up with the factual average as my personal average. That does mean there was some degree of consistency to my judgements, which could be interpreted as a degree of objectivity.

In terms of average score per characteristic, difficulty had the lowest with 2,6; then entertainment with 2,7; originality with 2,9; craftsmanship with 3,3; consistency with 3,4; and legibility with 3,5. Although all scores only deviate from the theoretical average of 3 with maximum 0,5 points, it was surprising to find that legibility scored slightly higher overall. Part of the reason I included legibility as a characteristic was to measure the degree in which the exhibition requires explanation beyond the works themselves. It's good to see I rated only 15 of 79 exhibitions with one or two stars on this point, as I definitely think this is a problem within art in general. But I guess by measuring I found that it's not as big a problem as I thought it was.
That difficulty is the lowest scoring metric doesn't surprise me however. I defined difficulty as the ability of the exhibition to make think and challenge me intellectually, and while I enjoy many exhibitions, these days its rare that they show me something I can't make sense of. In fact, only one exhibition scored five stars on this subject, which was Philip Metten's solo exhibition at Zeno-X gallery in Antwerp.

Broadly speaking, I rated solo shows at galleries the highest, with an average score of 20. Solo shows at institutions received an average score of 19 and solo shows at museums received the true average of 18. Group shows at institutions scored a slightly below average score of 17, but group exhibitions at museums on average scored a mere 14. This is also the biggest deviation from the norm with 4 points. These low scores for group exhibitions reflect my overall impression that curators aren't very good at making exhibitions and that this is especially true for curators working at museums. In fact, the only group show that scored above average was The insincere charm of things at the Balcony in the Hague.

Some interesting low scores came from shows by Anne Imhof, Jenny Holzer, Simon Denny, Kasper Bosmans, Helen Frankenthaler, Ragnar Kjartansson, and Elmgreen & Dragset. These are all normally considered highly rated artists, if not globally then at least in their respective countries of origin. Yet the shows I saw of them in 2023 apparently weren't exactly up to snuff.
I personally found it interesting that Daan van Golden at Micheline Swaczjer had a below average score as well. That just wasn't a very interesting show with works from an artist I otherwise greatly appreciate.

Of course I also have a top five of shows that I've recorded in the past year.
My top show, with a score of 28, was Tomma Abts at galerie Buchholz in Cologne, followed by Thomas Schütte at De Pont in Tilburg. The latter got there purely on the quality of the works themselves, as the curatorial effort was average at best. Third was Jeff Weber's Image Storage Containers at the CNA in Dudelange. I doubt many people have seen that exhibition, but it was very well put together on all fronts and punching well above its weight.
Fourth and fifth place are actually by the same artist, namely Aglaia Konrad at the FOMU in Antwerp and then later in the year also at Mu.Zee in Ostend. Once again just excellently put together shows that merely faltered a little bit on the entertainment factor.

Only one show actually got the average score of all 3-stars and this was Blank. Raw. Illegible..., curated by Moritz Kung at the Leopold Hoesch Museum. It was a comprehensive group show of 'empty' books and about as average as an exhibition can be. The presentation was adequate enough to be unnoticeable, simply unremarkable in every way possible. For an audience it's often hard to understand books when displayed in glass vitrines, but each book was carefully considered and shown in such a way to be as accessible as it could possibly be. The books on display presented a very broad, thoroughly researched overview and thus for every uninteresting work in the exhibition there was also a gem that got you excited. And as unusual the premise of the exhibition was, it was simultaneously also somewhat obvious. If you want to have a yardstick for what a neutral and average exhibition looks like, that is it. It was spectacular how unspectacular it was.

As a final remark I only found a very weak correlation of 0,28 between time spent in the exhibition and the overall score. The bulk of this number comes from the correlation between the scores for entertainment and for difficulty, with a correlation to time spent of respectively 0,40 and 0,32. All other metrics had a correlation of 0,18 or less. So if you make me laugh or think, I'm going to spend (slightly) more time at your exhibition. 

Keeping track of the exhibitions I've visited like this has been an interesting experiment. I would also say that I've mostly succeeded in my attempt to rate the exhibitions as objectively as possible on each of the six characteristics. When all the scores are added up, each exhibition is found in the quartile that corresponds to my more intuitive and 'unfiltered' opinion of that exhibition. I'm not sure if I will continue to keep track of the exhibitions I will visit in the future, but it's been personally interesting to systematically record one's thoughts and I believe it has given some indication that a more objective rating system for exhibitions is possible by using different metrics than those that are commonly used.

A Well-Constructed, Meaningful Table is Worth the Extra Money

As an adolescent I never liked chemistry because it didn't make any sense to me. Our high school teacher had us copy equations with strange symbols that seemed to strictly adhere to inexplicable and invisible rules whose full scope and mechanisms couldn't be shown to us students. This is also an experience that seems to be a relatively common one for the people that I've spoken to about the subject.
Now that I've actually learned some of those invisible rules and understand a reasonable amount about how chemistry works, I've come to the conclusion that a substantial part of the perceived difficulty of the natural sciences is partially a problem of graphic design.

And I'm not talking about the kind of 'scientific illustration' design, I'm talking bare bones letter spacing, kerning, tabulation, ink coverage and em spaces.
At its core graphic design is about the structuring of information. While many chemists I know are concerned with how to structure information, very few approach this problem in the same way a graphic designer does. Yet the graphic designer, on their part, rarely understands the context and content of the scientific texts presented to them. Without such understanding it is impossible to accurately structure that information for easier comprehension.

The problem of creating legible texts has naturally existed from the beginning of scientific publishing, especially to those who wish to standardise certain aspects.
The American Chemical Society, or ACS, thus first published its 'Handbook for Authors of Papers in the Research Journals of the American Chemical Society' in 1965. Most of this book is of course about naming conventions, how to write correct molecular structures, and so on. A small part is however concerned with what one would call 'design', even if it is in the abstract sense of the word. For example, the three page long section on tables contains phrases like: 'Tables should be self-explanatory and should supplement, not duplicate, the text and figures'; 'When numerical data are presented in columns, the decimal points must be aligned', and 'ruled lines and brackets may be used in moderation, particularly after column heads and stubs, but they should never be included as a substitute for good alignment, adequate spacing, or clarity.'

Such phrases echo those found in other more graphic design oriented reference works, such as 'The Elements of Typographic Style' by Robert Bringhurst, who has phrased the latter sentiment in the following manner in its section on tables: 'There should be a minimum amount of furniture (rules, boxes, dots and other guide rails for travelling through typographic space) and a maximum amount of information.'
This is perhaps a little more poetic than the previous expression, but both sentences nevertheless stress the fact that the form of the table should befit its content and that the legibility of that content should be the main priority.

Even if the ACS already considered the appearance of such 'table furniture' in 1965, this interest in graphical details quickly seemed to wane and a stronger focus on technical matters took hold.
A new edition of the Handbook was printed in 1978, now titled the 'Handbook for Authors of Papers in American Chemical Society Publications'. This revised edition no longer makes any mention of the appearance of the tables themselves, but further elaborates on the correct formatting of many technical aspects. It suggests, for example, to express multiple measurements in a table as a mean, rather than separate entries. At the instances when this revision does present new guidelines on the visual structure of texts, they are often of questionable merit, such as the suggestion that one should 'keep column widths of comparable size, whenever possible', which can hardly be considered a universal truth.

By 1986 the Handbook was superseded by 'The ACS Style Guide: A Manual for Authors and Editors'. This publication sees the problem of graphic design in terms of practical concerns such as the available space and technical reproducibility, not as an inherent factor contributing to the legibility of the presented information.
The section 'How To Construct Tables' starts with the inspiring reminder that 'tables are much more expensive to typeset than text; the larger the table, the more expensive. A well-constructed, meaningful table is worth the extra money, but anything else is a waste of money and does not enhance your paper.' Further considerations are insights such as: 'if you have three columns that do not relate to each other, perhaps the material is really a list of items and not a table at all' and 'if your table has alignment and positioning requirements, perhaps it should really be a figure'. Which are of course exactly the kind of universally applicable guidelines any chemist is looking for when attempting to construct a legible and concise table. 

The ACS Style Guide was last published in 2006 and kept the same technical focus throughout its lifetime. A general belief in technology solving the problems of design seems to be prevalent in the attitude of its authors. The section on tables in the 2006 edition remained largely unchanged, although it now had some tips on using word-processing software: 'In Microsoft Word or WordPerfect, use the software’s table feature, rather than aligning columns using the tab key. Entries arranged with the table feature are more likely to be properly aligned in publication than entries that have been tabbed.'
That this was very likely a useful tip to a number of their contributors gives some indication of how inexperienced your average scientist may be with genuine problems and solutions of design.

In 2020 the American Chemical Society replaced its style guide with 'The ACS Guide to Scholarly Information'. This is a completely rewritten digital-only guide, which in their own words is the 'go-to tool to help students, librarians, researchers, and educators communicate effectively'.
Unfortunately I couldn't tell you whether or not this 'go-to tool' has any clearer information on the uses of graphic design in scientific texts, as it is shielded by a prohibitively expensive subscription model which is separated from their other publications. While I have easy access to a number of the earlier editions through used bookshops and various libraries, no public or universitary library in Europe presently provides access to 'The ACS Guide to Scholarly Information', even if a large number of them actively subscribe to the journals of the ACS.
Ironically, the only two chapters the ACS provides free access to on their own website are the brand-new chapters on open access and inclusivity, which includes a subchapter on 'socioeconomic status'.

Thus while the importance of legible information is commonly acknowledged in various scientific fields, the large and constantly changing requirements from within those fields have kept scientists unable to focus on increasing the legibility of their work through graphic design.
In turn, the resulting body of poorly structured information has placed a significant cognitive burden on nearly all scientific texts, which has further complicated the transfer of information in fields that already require specific knowledge. Resolving this issue will however require editors with working knowledge of (various) scientific fields, as well as graphic design principles. Adding extra steps in the editing process will also cost time and effort, and therefore money, which is something no business is ever looking to do.
It is therefore unlikely that the issue of legibility in science communication, perhaps especially amongst professionals, will improve substantially over time.

SNAFU

In the Netherlands there is a biennial prize for young art criticism, called the 'Prijs voor de Jonge Kunstkritiek'. The aim of this prize is stated explicitly as attempting to present an opportunity for young writers to focus on their writing and get some clout with mediapartners from the press. The stated reason for its existence is that there are plenty of prizes for writers who have gained some degree of recognition, but little to no opportunities for young writers with little experience.

This year the main prize was awarded to Laura Herman, who has been head editor of a major art magazine between 2016-2020 and is currently head of the department of curatorial studies at KASK, Ghent, a prominent art academy. With a CV that eclipses all but one of the jury members, it could hardly be said that a prize like this will have a significant impact on her career. Not even the actual prize is useful to her. The three-part prize consists of an insubstantial €3000, publication of her review in a smaller magazine than it has originally been published and the appointment of a mentor to somehow further guide her career.
In all reality the only tangible benefit is thus an ego boost and her win is therefore diametrically opposed to the aim and mission of the prize.

I don't fault the jury for selecting her. Her work probably stood out as above par in the anonymised entries.
I am however indignant at Herman choosing to participate. By participating Laura Herman has actively and knowingly taken opportunities out of the hands of others that objectively could benefit more from them than she can. Her participation can't be described as anything other than short-sighted selfishness, made worse by the fact that she won.
Because not only does her win means that some other deserving person didn't, it also communicates to future participants that their competitors will be people who already have significant careers and are able to focus all their time and energy on their writing. This deliberately shuns those who might possess some talent but are yet unable to break through into the limelight, which are exactly the kind of people the prize claims to be aimed at.

With all the outrage these days about people who abuse their positions, I thus fail to understand why this particular twisted example of such abuse is lauded and applauded.

I get to be a hypocrite, you get to be a hypocrite, everybody gets to be a hypocrite!

During the last decade or so the critical discourse on art has focused heavily on privilege. The question who gets to say what and why repeatedly comes up. Because these strong voices are leading the reception of today's artists, I was extremely surprised to see the critical response to Ragnar Kjartansson's exhibition Time Changes Everything at De Pont in Tilburg, the Netherlands. The nine reviews I have read unequivocally praised the exhibition, with uncritical descriptors like 'fantastic', 'spectacular' and 'gifted' being thrown around. Yet when I visited the exhibition myself, it struck me how the works on display could only come from an extremely privileged position.

In various interviews about the exhibition, Kjartansson waves away the need for authenticity in art, as he claims that he doesn't even know what authenticity is supposed to mean. But the need for authenticity in art boils down to intellectual honesty. If one is not at the very least sincere in one's own aims, then art is nothing but a con, aimed at making others believe you. If deception has to be used to convince the other, then so be it. Like the emperor and his new clothes, it is only the powerful and the privileged who can get away with consistently bullshitting an audience in this manner. Perhaps that's even what could define power, namely the possibility to have your merit and integrity go unquestioned by others.
An artist, then, like the little boy at the end of Andersen's story, is somebody who can hold a mirror up to society only because he speaks the truth and is willing to stand up for that truth, regardless of his position in that society. The importance for authenticity in art thus stems from the wish of art to be anything other than entertainment for the wealthy, as it has traditionally been.

Yet Kjartansson seems to embrace this latter half as a worthwhile approach. In an interview with the Guardian he says of the position of a successful artist that 'it’s like life at the court of the 1%. You really feel like a court jester'.
In that same interview he nevertheless purports to 'think I am a very critical, good-thinking political person, or try to be'. This seems to indicate that he sees himself, and by extension his work, as a critical reflection on his privileged surroundings. In his mind he is the little boy and not the naked emperor.

I can't help but to disagree with his self-assessment. While I could agree with Kjartansson that he isn't at the centre of the court, but merely its entertainer, I can't be convinced that he is wearing any clothes.
As I am reaching the limits of how far one can push that particular analogy, perhaps we should simply examine the works in the exhibition. In particular I will take a look at the resources they require as well as the lack of diligence present in the ideas they profess.

Because it is the ideas that are important to Kjartansson. 'What you see is less important than the message that is contained in the object', he says.
Yet it's in the field of ideas that his works tend to come up short. He makes up for this lack of substance with top of the class production values. Even I have to admit that every single work in the exhibition is museum-quality in the way that a professional maker of movie props would use that word. However, such high production values require a lot of money and little else, something that the other reviewers have failed to note.

The centrepiece of the exhibition is a work titled Woman in E. In this work, a woman dressed in gold, holding an electric guitar, stands on a slowly revolving stage in the middle of a big circle of golden glittery curtains. Every minute she plays a single E-minor chord, which resounds throughout the open exhibition halls of the museum.
In the caption of the work it's mentioned that the E-minor chord is particularly suited to expressions of sadness, mystery and heartbreak. Like many of Kjartonsson's works, it wants to evoke a sense of pathos and melancholy. Yet realistically, one chord on its own isn't ever going to do that.
Therefore the critical reception pays much more attention to the performer. The women performing the work do so in shifts of 90 minutes at a time. This is explained as being about endurance. '90 minutes is a long time, but only then do you get the kick of exhaustion', says Kjartansson. Yet again I have to question his claims. Is 90 minutes really that long of a time to do something like this? The museum guards similarly stand around in the museum while not interacting with the public for many hours every single day and this certainly isn't heralded as a great achievement. Perhaps being looked at as an exhibit is a bit of an odd experience for the performers, but that's something you will quickly get used to.
The work does require one type of commitment, however, and this is a substantial financial commitment.
Let's do some quick calculations. The exhibition runs for four and a half months. That is 134 days. On each of those days the museum is open for six hours between 11.00 and 17.00h. This means that there are 804 hours, at the very least, that the performers are getting paid. If they're paid the Dutch minimum wage, that amounts to € 8.892,94. Which in turn is the same amount of money that the Dutch Mondriaan Fund provides to 'proven talents' to sustain their artistic practice for an entire year. To spend that kind of money on one temporary work for one exhibition is thus an impossible proposition to most artists.
But of course this is glossed over by Kjartansson. He is interested in other things. 'The performance premiered in Detroit in 2016', he told De Tijd, 'Martha Reeves, the famous Motown-singer, came to see it. She told me that I had used the wrong chord. According to her B-minor would fit the project better. I think she was wrong'.

This is but one of many not-so-subtle showings of Kjartansson's showbusiness connections that he displays both in and outside his work. In one room in De Pont there is a video registration of The National performing their song Sorrow for six hours. The work is simply titled A lot of Sorrow.
Again many commentators remark the repetition and the length of the work. On the Endurance Art wikipedia page it's even listed as one of the examples of the practice. Kjartansson seems to agree with this interpretation. In an interview with the Financieele Dagblad, he has said that 'the performance also simply becomes hard work'. Yet at the same time he has asserted elsewhere that the band enjoyed the performance and 'didn't find it tiring at all'.
And quite frankly, such a performance shouldn't be tiring. In the end all that has happened here is that Kjartansson asked a group of people to carry out their chosen profession for six hours. Such a feat was described by the writer of the Financieele Dagblad as a 'war of attrition'. While it might be for his readers, I personally don't see why doing your job for less time than a regular 8-hour workday should become a lauded museum-worthy achievement.
And this is just one of the many of the things one could question about the work.
I ask myself if this work would have the same impact if it simply were some hired session musicians playing a cover of the same song? I would argue that such a work wouldn't be some extraordinary event that the audience should be glad to have witnessed, but rather one more drawn out rehearsal session in a long list of drawn out rehearsal sessions. If the power of the work thus depends on the stadium filling headliners featuring in it, then there probably isn't a whole lot to be found in the message contained within such an object, to use Kjartansson's phrase.
The croony, soft-sung Sorrow also isn't a particularly difficult song to physically sustain for a longer amount of time. This fact isn't denied by Kjartansson. He has remarked about his surprising trouble of finding opera-singers for his work Bliss, that the three minute section he had them repeat 'was a comfortable passage' with 'no great highs or lows'. In other words, he had explicitly chosen something that would provide little discomfort to the performers. Even in the pursuit of endurance, Kjartansson stays within the confines of Hollywood, where there is very little real danger. Yet it is nevertheless of vital importance that the audience believes that there is. In this environment it is the appearance of the world that's important, not it's factual reality. It doesn't matter whether or not something is actually difficult, what matters is the audience's uncritical perception that the thing is difficult.

This avoidance of reality and its genuine challenges, while nevertheless presenting them as truth, is a recurring theme in Kjartansson's work. At the entrance to the exhibition there is a large room with six paintings. Each is a wintery landscape that measures a comfortable art-for-the-living-room size of 85×105 cm. They're paintings that are clearly made by somebody with some higher art education, but are otherwise fairly unremarkable. Upon reading about the works, however, it turns out they were made en plein air in the cold landscape of the Icelandic lava field Eldrhaun. Kjartansson wanted to test himself with the painting series; 'in the freezing cold I wanted to finish a painting as quickly as possible to return to the warmth of my car', he says.
Yet the paintings were made with dabs of undiluted oil paint and simple chemistry tells us that it thus can't have been much colder than -10 to -15° Celsius, as otherwise the paint would have simply been frozen to a solid block. While such a temperature is certainly uncomfortable, with a warm car close by it can't really be seen as a test of the self unless that self has been treated particularly well by life and it's not used to discomfort or adversity.
In comparison, the well documented recent en plein air paintings of David Hockney are monumental undertakings. Painting in the Yorkshire winter, he too complains about the cold and wet conditions. But Hockney instead assesses that the cold 'makes you want to work fast, but you also don't want to work sloppily just because it's cold'. To Hockney, the painting itself is still the end goal and the, less extreme, cold is merely an obstacle to overcome. His paintings eventually led to some highly ambitious multi-panel paintings, that would be complicated logistical undertakings even if made in a large studio, let alone in chunks in the outdoors. Yet Hockney goes through all this effort to make his paintings, even if the chain smoking artist is an elderly gentleman who has absolutely nothing to prove to the world.
If we look further beyond the arbitrary status of painting as a particular artistic activity, then artists like Hamish Fulton, Richard Long and Andy Goldsworthy have had a far more extreme and intimate relationship with nature, which they have nevertheless moulded into unique forms that make their works and their practice instantly recognisable, as good artists do.
When we thus look again at Kjartansson's paintings we can see that they are better explained by envisioning a rich kid spending fifteen minutes in moderately cold weather to create something his gallerists can more easily sell to private collectors. To think these paintings are anything other than this harsh description is simply mistaking the romantic notion of reality with reality itself.

Which is also what Kjartansson has done himself with the earliest work on display. Titled Me and my Mother, it is a seven minute long video that shows the artist's mother repeatedly spitting in his face. This version from 2000 was made when Kjartansson was still in art school and the ritual has since been repeated every five years. In his own words, he had made the work to impress Aernout Mik, who visited his school as a guest teacher. Yet Mik's observation was that Kjartansson's mother was seemingly enjoying herself, while Kjartansson was aiming at drama. This matter of fact observation calmly asserts the truth before us. The truth that while having your mother spit in your face is an offensive gesture, if she's an experienced and well-known actress who can very well understand the difference between the appearance of a performance and its ultimate function, then it's not that big of a deal. In all actuality, it seems to me that if a mother is willing to do this only because her son asked her to, then that shows that she has a lot of faith and trust in the artistic judgement of her child. It's a loving gesture, really.
Furthermore, it should be noted that saliva is about as clean as bodily fluids get. There is very little taboo associated with spit. In fact, most of us had our mother's spit on our faces when she licked her finger and cleaned some smudge of our cheeks when we were children. And we all have done similar things to our mothers. If Kjartansson ever becomes a father, then chances are pretty high he in turn will be inadvertently be puked, peed, spat and shat upon by this newborn child.
If on the other hand we contrast this work with somebody like Leigh Ledare, who has made a whole series of properly pornographic works of his own showbusiness mother, then it's clear that Kjartansson's position is once again nothing but a very safe space where nobody is challenged and nobody can be hurt. It's all very pleasant and comfortable, but somehow the audience is implored to be moved and feel deep emotions.

It's possible for me to say similar scathing things about all the works on display in the exhibition, but I would prefer to end with one last work that was presented in the smaller cabinets of the museum. It is titled Guilt and Fear and consists of 500 sets of salt and pepper shakers. The artist has had them made in porcelain by a local ceramics workshop. On each of these pots there is written either 'Fear' or 'Guilt'. While there is some merit to the obelisk-shaped works, and they're pleasant objects to look at, I'm confused as to why there are more than two of them present in the exhibition.
They are lined up on shelves against the back walls of the eleven small cabinets at the museum. While they fill most of these cabinets, the 1000 objects aren't quite enough to fill all the spaces wall to wall. So unlike Antony Gormley's Field or Ai WeiWei's sunflower seeds, the work shows a sense of restraint, rather than limitless abundance. And if you have a sense of restraint, then why would you restrain yourself to the rather large number of one thousand?
It is also not the case that one could marvel in the differences when comparing individual specimens to each other, as would be the case with a work like Francis Alÿs' Fabiola series. Thanks to the good work of the ceramics workshop, the pots are about as identical to each other as any handmade object can get. To see one literally means to see all. Making a thousand copies is then once more nothing but expensive. The only reason Kjartansson seems to do what he has done is because he can and this is the kind of reasoning the worst of the oligarchy employs.

On the whole it thus seems that the ideas present in Ragnar Kjartansson's exhibition are watered down or child-proofed versions either of what we already know, or what some other artist has brought us in the past. To Kjartansson this doesn't matter, because he describes himself, and his fellow artists, as court-jesters. What they produce is self-conscious entertainment by the rich and famous, for the rich and famous.
While I do not have a problem with this attitude per se, in a cultural landscape that claims to reject precisely such values, it is baffling to me that such a hollow, yet conscious and complete, embrace of those core beliefs is gaining such universal critical acclaim.

Clarification

If there is a great achievement in modernism, then it is the realisation that it is better to present things straightforwardly, simple and clearly. That window dressing, ornament and unneeded complication are great enemies for the effective transfer of any kind of information. 

 

Within art such clarification efforts first lead to geometric abstraction such as the works of Piet Mondriaan, which was consequently further refined and eventually ended up at the austere forms of what is commonly known as minimalism. As this formalist direction was somewhat of a cul-de-sac, attention quickly shifted elsewhere.

The viewpoint that art and art's materials should be art's only subject matter was abandoned, although the post-modernist works that followed very much maintained that modernist adhesion to clarity. In his works Jean-Michel Basquiat uses various materials, many contrasting colours and little in the way of easily describable geometric shapes. Yet he brings it all together in a clearly legible overall ensemble, just one that consists of many more parts. The same goes for artists like Jenny Holzer, Felix Gonzales-Torres, Sherri Levine, Sarah Lucas, Juan Munoz, Pipilotti Rist and so forth. Their works are perhaps difficult to interpret, but they're very easy to read visually. There is little, if anything, added to those works that doesn't serve a specific function and the elements that are present are distinctive, both within the boundaries of the work and in regard to other works and objects.

This 'as simple as possible, but not simpler' principle can still be found in the more recent trends of installation art with complex narratives, such as the work of Simon Starling and Sarah Sze. It is thus the great enduring strength of simple and clear expression that it communicates as effectively as one possibly could. Whatever it is you wish to draw attention to, it is always and forever achieved best by removing unnecessary elements and working hard to find 'le mot juste'. 

Outside of art, especially so at the turn of the millennium, I believe that this kind of simple and clear expression has had largely negative connotations with commercialism and politics. Clear-cut unambiguous visual communication was and is linked to corporate logos, political slogans and other easily-digestible formulaic arrangements. Naomi Klein's aptly titled book No Logo is a clear example of this sentiment.

This association presents a problem for those who wish to simplify and clarify, as their efforts can quickly be conflated with reductionism. Reductionist thought is almost always harmful because it is produces incomplete and thus incorrect points of view. 

 

Moving back into art, it is easy to notice that in the last twenty-odd years there has been a shift away from readily understandable and coherent visual structures. This shift could be understood, and would even be justified, if one imagines that art's subject matter has become ever more intricate and complex, so that analogously these subjects could only be treated in the most arduous of ways and through the most complex of forms. 

Yet what we see is that the subjects that are being dealt with are increasingly reductionist views about binary relationships; rich vs. poor, men vs. women, black vs. white, and so on. Those reductionist messages are then propped up by adornment and ornamentation, which serves as an overall detraction of both. If a message is too rudimentary to be spoken about in anything other than one-dimensional symbols, then dressing it up in shiny packaging diminishes it even further by increasing the distance to the information.

 

Ultimately the most important skill an artist can have is the ability to present things as clearly and as legible as possible. If you can do that, you can make art out of any material and about any subject. If you can't do that, then you're simply speaking not a very good artist.

Artists who never achieve great clarity have however always had their own place in history and thus the issue with this trend at the present time doesn't lie with them. Instead the predicament comes out of a critical reception that is putting greater emphasis on the subjects these works discuss rather than the lack of clarity and convoluted presentations with which they do so. While nobody denies that certain issues are of great concern to the world, what is being said in an artwork is less important to its 'art' than how it is said. If the present concern for subject matter and personas in art is thus taken seriously for too long, then one runs the risk of art becoming nothing but beautification of life's minor and major inconveniences.

 

More Anecdotal Evidence

I've been working in what is known as the arts for over a decade now and it struck me today that in all that time I have never seen anybody working in this field genuinely listen to anybody else's viewpoint. Of course there have been times where I've seen people give other people a tip about another artists' work or some small thing they could improve, and on occasion this has even been pursued by the receiver.

Yet I can't recall any instance, not even one, of a situation where two people disagreed, with person a arguing against person b's standpoint and where b let go of their standpoint simply because they couldn't refute the argument made by a.

Such a straightforward acknowledgement of a shared reality is something I've seen happen almost everywhere else in my life. I've seen it occur between footballers, chefs, racing drivers, chemists, botanists, video game designers, lawyers, skateboarders, logicians, philosophers and religious figures. But in my experience the free spirits of the arts are somehow surprisingly dogmatic and unable to veer from their own hard-won viewpoints. 

In the most recent outline of the cultural policy of the Dutch government, two defining features of visual arts were found to be 'research and discourse'. Yet what's the point of discourse if there is apparently no receiving party for one's arguments and the best one can hope is for is to find a room full of people nodding enthusiastically along to whatever you are saying.

The irony of writing this in a blogpost with a limited audience unfortunately did not escape me.

Putting Down A Cup

A segment of my 2015 master's thesis about the difficulty in describing actions:

 

'Let me describe putting down a cup to further demonstrate this difficulty.
First I have to hold the cup and I do this by clamping it between three fingers, little finger excluded, and my thumb. My thumb is near my chest and my arm is bent at the elbow, forming pretty much a straight line. My wrist is turned outward from my body. As I start to move towards the table I must monitor the level of the liquid in the cup, because spilling is unwanted. I have to move slowly, but not too slow, nor too fast. It is vital that I go from balanced standstill to moving in one fluid motion as any hesitation
can cause the unwanted spilling. Assuming I am standing, my upper arm is slightly pointing outward and away from my body at the beginning, moving to a more vertical, downward and forward position when moving the cup from chest to table. My forearm performs the resulting roughly 45 ̊ half-rounded rotating motion without too much deviation from this path, while my wrist compensates through a series of small
movements to keep the cup level. As the cup gets near the table my fingers grip the cup ever so slightly tighter and the movements become just a little bit slower, as to make sure I don't slam the cup down on the table. The actual touching of cup and table almost exclusively happens in two stages. First there is one side of the cup that hits the table, before the whole cup is lowered till it sits flat on the table. *da-dum* I keep on gripping the cup for just a tiny moment until I release and the action is finished.

Putting down a cup is a very simple action yet it takes me almost 300 words to give but the plainest description of the movements it consists of. I believe this is the reason why there hasn’t been a great deal of writing on art in terms of actions and movements. If putting down a cup already requires such a long description, the often novel and complex actions that are used in art surely require pages of tedious text.'

Comments and Suggestions are Welcome

“HERE I AM, KILL ME IF YOU WISH” 

 

“Here I am, kill me if you wish.” This chilling yet familiar call does not have the same meaning, nor does it involve the same risk, when voiced by different people and under different circumstances.2 What is this statement? Who utters it, and under which circumstances? What are the material and political conditions that compel people to expose themselves to lethal violence and demand, “kill me if you wish,” rather than hiding from death? What causes members of certain groups of the governed to instigate this threat, this invitation to physical harm, rather than living their slow deaths in the shadow of deferred violence? My assumption is that the answers to these questions are to be found in the theater of impunity imposed by those who would execute them, in which the valorization of the new and the constitution of the past as a realm apart play key roles. This theater consists of the systematic attempts to ruin the material worlds and cultures of the groups to which these people belong, and to use their labor power and skills in building worlds from which they will not benefit and for which they will not be recognized. The origin of a call such as “kill me if you wish” cannot be traced to the individual who utters it or the particular situation in which it is uttered. Under the imperial condition, this is a recurrent call—even as it is itself under structural threat of disappearing under dead bodies—because it is a response to being deprived of a place in a world and of a world in which one could have a place, a place secured among objects and people that one recognizes and where one is recognized as more than a piece of property, a unit of labor power, or a source of tax revenue.3 This call, whenever it erupts, provokes violence that enhances the institutionalized violence that is required to maintain imperial temporal and spatial divides. We don’t have to hear the explicit words of this call in order to discern it in the movement of hundreds of thousands of people presently fleeing their homes for the countries of their ex-colonizers in Europe, and effectively making the latter accountable for their fate, though these same ex-colonizers have done everything they can to relegate their colonial crimes to a distant past. Through this call, one can get a glimpse of the imperial condition, under which such a call, when uttered by members of particular groups of populations, is likely to be answered by an act of killing.4 Though this call erupts without prior warning, it makes apparent a system of imperial violence under which the group to which its utterer belongs has long lived.

 

2. The call is often associated with and celebrated as part of a national revolutionary founding myth. However, in such contexts, when the lives of different groups of populations were not improved but rather made more vulnerable, more exposed to violence than lives of others, the events during which such a call is uttered often remained unreported. 

3. As it will become clear later, it is not exactly the loss of one’s place within a community, as Hannah Arendt argues, in her endeavor to describe the decline of human rights and the association of one’s place in the world with the right to have rights.

4. And there are always different effects such a call has on the community to which the person who utters it belongs. This call was institutionalized as a motto—“liberty or death”—and often used, quite metaphorically, during what have since the eighteenth century been called revolutionary “independence” struggles, even when the people seeking independence have themselves been subordinating others.

 

 

- Azoualay, A. Plunder, the Transcendental Condition of Modern Art and Community of fabri, in Barois De Caevel, E. & Roelandt, E. (eds.), CATPC, Sternberg Press, Berlin, 2017.

 

 

This is the first paragraph of a text I've recently read and I was dismayed by its illegibility. 

The writing is full of redundancies, complexly structured sentences and ill-defined terminology. The formatting also doesn't attempt to alleviate the strain put on the reader, as even in the original printing there were no line breaks to be found.

This kind of writing can appear immune from criticism because of its density, but I have nevertheless decided to write an initial commentary on this paragraph. For this commentary I pretended the text was written by a first year undergraduate student. I believe this is a healthy attitude to deal with this kind of obscurantism, as any appeal to the author's authority will immediately fall by the wayside.

 

 

“HERE I AM, KILL ME IF YOU WISH”

“Here I am, kill me if you wish.”

[The text starts with the double assertion of a direct quote. Even in the heading this quote is indicated as a quote by placing it in quotation marks. However, no origin for the quote is given in a footnote.]

This chilling yet familiar call does not have the same meaning, nor does it involve the same risk, when voiced by different people and under different circumstances.2 

[Why is this call familiar if its origins are not stated? And why is familiarity placed in opposition to its 'chilling' qualities? Do we have to draw the conclusion that familiar things can only be pleasant? 

What are the differences between the different people and circumstances and in what way do those differences change its meaning and its risk?

With regards to the footnote, it is in fact nothing but additional speculation filled with indefinite articles: 'often associated', 'in such contexts', 'different groups of populations', 'lives of others' and 'often remained unreported'.

A keen reader should also notice that although it is the first footnote of the text, it is numbered '2'. Footnote '1' was used on title page to thank Kareem Estefan for the careful editing he did. This isn't something one should use a footnote for.

Footnotes are for referencing other texts or providing additional information, as is done in footnote '3'. However, there the author simply states 'as Hannah Arendt argues', without saying where or even how Arendt does this. I believe the kids call this 'name-dropping'.]

What is this statement? 

[Instead of posing such a question, a scientific text should provide answers to, or clear outlines of, precisely these kind of questions. I understand this is a still an introduction, but I nevertheless would say that providing a context in which the reader should place this quote is a far better idea than simply asking this question out loud.]

Who utters it, and under which circumstances?

[Ibid.]

What are the material and political conditions that compel people to expose themselves to lethal violence and demand, “kill me if you wish,” rather than hiding from death?

[This is a first assertion of the existence of a binary choice between hiding from death and exposing oneself to lethal violence. All the while it has yet not received any other context in which this choice is to be made.]

What causes members of certain groups of the governed to instigate this threat, this invitation to physical harm, rather than living their slow deaths in the shadow of deferred violence? 

[Which certain groups? By who are they governed? What consists of living a slow death? What violence is being referred to and why is it deferred?]

My assumption is that the answers to these questions are to be found in the theater of impunity imposed by those who would execute them, in which the valorization of the new and the constitution of the past as a realm apart play key roles. 

[Texts like these ought to be written to attempt to provide those answers, not making assumptions about where they are to be found.

The impunity spoken of here is implied to be self-imposed by the party normally receiving the impunity. Yet this is not explicitly clear from the text as written here, other than by naming it a 'theater of impunity'. By not making this unambiguous, the sentence reads as an accusation that's disguised as an assertion.

And who are executed, also? It is presumed to be 'the members of certain groups' from the previous sentence, but their identity has not become known between this sentence and the previous one.

In the last part of the sentence 'valorization of the new' and 'the constitution of the past' are defined 'as a realm apart' to 'play key roles'.  I do not know what this means. I can guess at its meaning, to be something along the lines of how an idea of progress and distinct places in a unilateral timeline of development led colonialists to believe that they were justified in placing themselves above others, but this is not stated in the text and thus remains speculation on part of the reader.]

This theater consists of the systematic attempts to ruin the material worlds and cultures of the groups to which these people belong, and to use their labor power and skills in building worlds from which they will not benefit and for which they will not be recognized.

[After being used as a modifier, now 'the theater' is taken to be the main subject. The meaning of those two uses has shifted subtly, but considerably, in these two sentences. In the former it is to undermine the authority and implying the falsehood of a status of impunity, in the latter the term has taken on its own authority and ability to affect the world surrounding it.

For the rest there are again more unnamed articles that could've and should've be named:

Who were it that instigate these systematic attempts? What is meant with the material worlds and cultures? Which are the groups to which these people belong? Who are these people? What are skills in building worlds? Are they physical worlds? Spiritual worlds? Why will those people not benefit and why will they not be recognized?

Again us readers can make educated guesses towards the answers for these questions, but if you are attempting to study something, having the reader guess at what you're studying isn't a good quality.]

The origin of a call such as “kill me if you wish” cannot be traced to the individual who utters it or the particular situation in which it is uttered. 

[If the origin of the call cannot be traced, then don't place it in quotation marks, which implies a direct quotation of an individual or situation. Also it is quite a jarring jump from the previous sentence to this one.]

Under the imperial condition, this is a recurrent call—even as it is itself under structural threat of disappearing under dead bodies—because it is a response to being deprived of a place in a world and of a world in which one could have a place, a place secured among objects and people that one recognizes and where one is recognized as more than a piece of property, a unit of labor power, or a source of tax revenue.3 

[First off, four comma's, four conjunctions and a sidebar in one sentence is simply terrible practice if one attempts to elucidate. Compare and contrast with the following segment, where the words are simply reordered:

'Despite the structural threat of disappearing under dead bodies, this is a recurrent call under the imperial condition because it is a response to being deprived of a place in a world, as well as a world in which one could have a place. A place that is secured among objects and people that one recognizes and where one in turn is recognized as more than a piece of property or a unit of labor power or a source of tax revenue.'

Now we're actually able to follow the sentence, we see that an assertion is made that the call is recurrent, yet not a single direct citation has been given. 

The origin of the call doesn't even have to be verifiable. At this point mere hearsay of events where this call was uttered would be welcome. The claims made here are big; people are at risk of having no freedom at all and are apparently under the constant threat of death, yet who those people might be is still not known.]

This call, whenever it erupts, provokes violence that enhances the institutionalized violence that is required to maintain imperial temporal and spatial divides. 

[Whenever it erupts indicates a certainty of events unfolding. If this is so certain, one ought to be able once again to cite some examples.]

We don’t have to hear the explicit words of this call in order to discern it in the movement of hundreds of thousands of people presently fleeing their homes for the countries of their ex-colonizers in Europe, and effectively making the latter accountable for their fate, though these same ex-colonizers have done everything they can to relegate their colonial crimes to a distant past.

[Here the cry 'Kill me if you wish' is reined in a bit by stating that 'We don't have to hear the explicit words of this call'. We, as readers siding with the author, can simply recognise it in 'the movement of hundreds of thousands of people'. 

It can hardly be argued that from the movement of people itself such a cry can be discerned. If the author is on the other hand suggesting that fleeing one's country from the atrocities that are happening there is akin to a protest march, then I would consider that an oversimplified and somewhat disrespectful sentiment.

Furthermore, in 2015-2016, the people who were 'presently fleeing their homes' for Europe, consisted primarily of Syrians who fled from the civil war raging in their home country. 

Syria was a part of the Ottoman empire for over four centuries, before it was occupied by France after the First World War. The Ottoman empire had joined the side of Germany during that war and after their coalition lost that war, France was given control over Syria in the distribution of territories. This is similar to the way the USA and USSR gained control over Germany after WWII. Syria gained independence shortly after the Second World War, however, and has remained independent since. 

While I'm not claiming 'Europe' had zero influence in the complex history that has led up to the current state of affairs, the author's assertion that 'Europe' as 'ex-colonizers' are outright accountable is equally misguided and this shows how important it is to name names in (con)texts like these. 

Perhaps Syria wasn't to be included in the author's stylistic device, but by not specifying this, she is merely making an emotional appeal to the readers' engagement with then-current affairs, not practicing any kind of scholarship.]
Through this call, one can get a glimpse of the imperial condition, under which such a call, when uttered by members of particular groups of populations, is likely to be answered by an act of killing.

['this call', namely 'killl me if you wish', is revealed a few pages later as a mere hyperbole. The only factual mention of its utterance is described on page 354 of the book as ' "Kill me." '. While again presented in quotation marks, this quotation doesn't contain a footnote. It likely stems from a text that is footnoted three pages earlier, which is a report another scholar has written in 2001, based on archival documents from the Foreign Ministry of Belgium. The author of the present text describes 'Kill me if you wish' as 'the call that I propose to study here' on page 361, but it is a call that is apparently one primarily of her own invention.

In addition, yet even more vague terms are used. A quick google search for 'the imperial condition' only gives clear reference to the author's other texts, while 'members of particular groups of populations' is once again pleonastic and indefinite. 'Likely' in this case isn't a valid assertion without some factual statement of probability or further specification.]

Though this call erupts without prior warning, it makes apparent a system of imperial violence under which the group to which its utterer belongs has long lived.

[As we have shown the disputable origins of the call in the previous comment, it can't be said that 'this call' makes anything apparent other than the emotional appeal of the author, no matter how valid or truthful her statements otherwise are.]

With these 1400 words I've attempted to point out some of the misgivings present in every (!) sentence of this first paragraph. This is but an indication on where improvements could be made to the clarity of the text, without going into the factual research necessary to elucidate, specify and verify the claims of the author. 

The text in its whole is thirty times longer than this first paragraph, but contains similar verbose language throughout. It should therefore go without saying that it is an almost impossible task for any single person reviewing this text to separate fact from fiction. This is seemingly accomplished by design, with the author setting up a 'theater of impunity' for her own views, if we may borrow a phrase.

 

In the introduction to the book this text is featured in, the editors write that 'it was also important to us to widen the discussion by inviting authors whose thinking on some of the questions raised by the existence of the CATPC is crucial: Ariella Azoulay and F.V. offered us deep insights through their contributions.'

Far from providing 'deep insights', the presented text makes an argument through an appeal to emotions and obfuscation of premisses. This is deeply regrettable as it is otherwise a valid and important subject that the author quite clearly has extensive knowledge of.

Now, muddled arguments like these are unfortunately commonplace in art, so normally I wouldn't care all that much. However, in this case the author is a tenured professor at an Ivy League university. 

The standard of writing presented here isn't what one should expect from a student at a community college, let alone a professor at a top university, and I felt that this needed pointing out.