A text describing, articulating, evoking the procedural principles of the Five Years project, at least in a fragmentary manner... romantically

Dorrian, Edward

Summers, Francis

UCA Research Online

1011- So here again is the peculiarity of that turning toward… which is detour. Who-ever would advance must turn aside. This makes for a curious kind of crab’s progress. Would it also be the movement of seeking?-  All research is crisis. What is sought is nothing other than the turn of seeking, of research that occasions this crisis: the critical turn.-  This is hopelessly abstract.  1 Since meaning is given by such a placing in common (the continuity of a series of always discontinuous and even divergent texts, of essentially different forms and ‘genres’), […] they belong already to the fragmentary or, more simply, to fragments, sentences, paragraphs, which, when put into relation with others, can take on a new meaning or further our research. 2The occasion of this. An introduction arising in part from a conversation. A verbal correspondence between Edward Dorrian, Marc Hulson and Francis Summers. In	the	darkness	of	The	Hare’s	wet	concrete	garden.	A	pub	on	Cambridge	Heath Road. It was about, in some ways, a notion of collection, a notion of participation. As artists involved in the Five Years collection of practices – a loose	collection,	but	a	collection	or	a	collective	body	nonetheless	–	we	talked	about the participation of Five Years within an event. JTP09. 3 Then forming the basis of a response to the invitation from Autonomous Organization. 4 And now the occasion of this. An introduction to Fragments. 5This	past	triadic	conversation	skirted	loosely	around	what	defined	the	col-lection	of	artists	that	comprises	what	is	known	as	the	collective	enterprise	Five Years. This conversation strayed into how this collection of practices might involve itself in a project that ran parallel to Frieze and Zoo, that dis-played an ‘artist-run’ response to the display of expertly managed identities and	free	market	of	commodities	that	is	an	Art	Fair.	The conversation could easily have strayed thus:How this collection of practices might involve itself into a project that runs parallel to an idea of research. An ‘artist-run’ response to the display of expertly	managed	identities	and	free	market	of	commodities	that	is	Knowl-edge Transfer Partnership. That is Academic Research? 6  The participation? The end result (not of that conversation but of the action of those in Five Years) is what we now sit in. A marginal space. An extra-institutional DIY classroom promising programmes of discussion and debate.	Developing	through	‘critical	reflection’	the	requisite	documentary	evidence (archive, publication, research, etc) Disseminating the research. Our research. Our Research: A Fragment on Fragments1213this	time	thinking	on	the	aphoristic	mode	of	René	Char	-	that	with	the	ar-rangement of a fragmentary speech we encounter a new kind of arrangement not entailing harmony, concordance or reconciliation, but that accepts disjunction or divergence as the infinite center from out of which, through speech, relation is to be created: an arrangement that does not compose but juxtaposes, that is to say leaves each of the terms that come into relation outside one another, respecting and preserving this exteriority and this distance as the principle [...] Juxtaposition and interruption here assume an extraordinary form of justice. 11As a collection of fragments, then, Five Years approaches its own arrange-ment as a collection that foregrounds the justice of exteriority, a refusal of synthesis through selection. An arrangement at the level of disarray. 12An organisation in pieces (a collection of pieces, a collective based on the fragment), Fragments shows not one distilled collective concern, but a concern for collective equivocity. Such a term does not call towards ambiv-alence or ambiguity. Instead it points towards equal voices, towards the struggle that equality demands. To place voices in equal is to experience not harmonic synthesis (achieved through the sublime violence of sublation) but the constancy of struggle, of the discordance of discourse among equals. The	collective	whole	or	work	of	Five	Years,	then,	is	the	work	of	the	empty	place around which a garland of fragments operate. As fragments (each practice a fragment) each practice is that of the ‘complete’ individual – the hedgehog or porcupine principle whereby the fragment individuates com-pletely – but these complete parts converge as on a garland. The string upon which these fragments are strung, Five Years, encircles an ‘empty place’ as the site of incompletion, of the refusal of completion through synthesis. Here	the	possible	activity	of	dissensus	rather	than	consensus	can	take	place,	if one is brave enough.Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy, in their analysis of the Romantic fragment, 13 point to this – their understanding of the fragment is that it points to both completion and incompletion, undermining both para-digms,	pointing	towards	a	notion	of	the	dialectical	as	“it	covers	the	thinking	of identity through the mediation of non-identity”. As both part and whole, as thoroughly complete (as a hedgehog) and incomplete the fragment and the	empty	space	it	provokes	troubles	a	logic	of	identity,	that	logic	which	in	part underwrites an organisation, principally a named participation in an Art Fair/ Academic Research. In a move of covering identity with non-iden-tity, one might say that the refusal of identity that is Five Years points towards	the	status	of	antagonism	defining	the	social	field,	a	site	where	the	struggle for identity is never assured.Such a notion is undoubtably Romantic if one was to return to proper names. If one were to return to Frederich Schlegel’s notions of the fragment, one	could	look	at	his	Critical	Fragment	no.103	to	find	a	parallel,	and	find	an	analogy	for	the	working	principle	of	Five	Years.	Refusing	the	work	of	harmony – those works of beautiful coherence - Schlegel sings the praises of the piece in pieces: the motley heap of sudden ideas 14		from	which	some	kind	of	unity emanates, not from any synthetic principle, but from the free and equal fellowship that corresponds to its particular form of disarray. Lacoue-Labar-the and Nancy point to the inherent ideal and organic politics that resides in	this	heap	of	fragments.	Without	unity	but	united	by	a	politics	of	freedom	and	equality,	one	might	make	a	correspondence	with	the	motley heap of sudden ideas that is, for better or worse, the organisational principle named Five Years.The	Salon	de	Refusé	of	2009	was	put	forward	albeit	briefly	–	a	space	remi-niscent of nineteenth century art-politics, a space that exists alongside the time	of	the	crushed	communes.	The	salon	we	find	here	is	of	those	(perhaps)	refused to the inclusive-exclusive bordered space of Zoo and Frieze. And the University? So	what	kind	of	refusal	might	be	counter-staged,	what	kind	of	marginal	activity might there productively be? The critical turn. A dubious proposi-tion: Dissemination through publication. Our research as a salon of refused, a salon of refuse, a salon of refusal. If the members of Five Years were to engage in this salon (with and against this act and institution of refusal), what	kind	of	engagement	could	there	be?	Collaboration and resistance. A problem, then. How might an artist-run organisation, a collection, a collective, a communal project, participate in	an	event	linked,	however	tangentially,	to	this	notion	of	an	Art	Fair,	of	partnership. Of being outside the fair. Apart. But displaying on its margins, temporally if not spatially. Dissensually.Such	a	problem	became	one	of	identification.	How	do	we,	participants	in	Five	Years,	define	ourselves	in	relation	to	this	display,	to	this	mode	of	dis-playing. How do we identify ourselves to be seen in relation to the expert discourse.	The	market?	The	Lesson.	[The		Great	Refusal]	To	participate	in	the	mode	of	the	fair.	Research	Group.	Research	Associate.	One	must	display	within	its	protocol,	to	submit	to	being	named	and	identified	in	this	process,	to submit (even if marginally) to its form of management.To digress further. A term used repeatedly in this conversation of three was that	of	the	Romantic	movement.	A	movement	identified	from	the	eighteenth	and nineteenth century. A proposition emerged: Five Years is conceived as a Romantic project. This is naive. 7 A consequence of this was the putting into play of another term: the fragment. As a proposition this has been followed through. Five Years: Fragments. The mode of participation has been explic-itly that of the fragment, or of the fragmentary.Five Years’ participation of display has been by way of the fragment. To identify Five Years has been to identify a string of fragments arranged around an empty centre not a coherent synthesis bound by a proper name. In a more general way, as a collective body, Five Years, we might say, is a collection of fragments. A body of practices that sometimes converge, at other	times,	do	not.	To	make	an	analogy,	one	might	draw	upon	readings	of	the discourse of Romanticism. Such a discourse is littered with fragments, from	incomplete	projects,	to	ruins,	to	definitions.A fragment, like a miniature work of art, has to be entirely isolated from the surrounding world and be complete in itself like a porcupine. 8A dialogue is a chain of fragments.	[…]	 9Listen! Another Romantic, Novalis: the literary seed of the fragment is that which might lead to a plural writing, a writing done in common: The art of writing jointly is a curious symptom that makes us sense a great progress in liter-ature. One day, perhaps, we will write, think and act collectively. (His example? the newspaper as a piece of collective writing:- Newspapers are already books made in common). 10Or let’s turn our ears towards Maurice Blanchot who has gathered together these	quotations	on	the	fragment	by	Schlegel	and	Novalis.	He	remarks	–	14151415A series of fragments are put in play. Not a continuous writing, but a discontinuous one – not a theory of the fragment, but a practice of the fragment – a number of practices that constitute the fragmentary nature of Five Years.So	far,	so	meta-textual.	We	have	talked	about	a	shared	idea	of	how	a	roman-tic	fragmentary	project	might	be	thought	of.	We	have	talked	about	what	Five	Years	might	be.	We	talked,	that	night,	about	a	notion	of	bureaucracy	–	of	how	a	Romantic	project	finds	itself	organised.	We	talked	that	night	about	recent returns to notions of the Terror, of how the actions of Robespierre and Saint-Just might be seen as a form of instrumentalised Romanticism: frag-mentation literally put into action, romanticism and order being put into a bureaucratic	formalisation.	What	might	a	Romantic	Party	of	the	Fragment	look	like?	How	might	it	identify	itself?	[…] to constitute collective or plural speech: a communism of writing.2. Thus the texts will be fragmentary: precisely to make plurality possible (a nonunitary plurality), to open a place for it and at the same time never to arrest the process itself - always already ruptured and as if destined to be ruptured, in order to find their meaning not in themselves but in their conjunction-disjunction, their being placed together and in common [mise en commun], their relations to difference. 15One	might	(perhaps)	look	here	to	Surrealist	history,	of	the	shared	terms,	manifest formation, violent expulsions and virulent retorts that occur in the artistic	collective	that	so	fore-grounded	the	art	of	fragmentation.	What	kind	of Part might there be to come?No Terror here though. No heads are rolling. But perhaps a haunting notion of the Ideal, of idealism, of the troublesome nature of putting the Idea into Action.	To	have	fidelity	to	such	a	notion,	to	an	equality-event	of	the	frag-ment, is perhaps what is happening in this show right now.To	have	done	with	instrumentalisation	then.	A	fleeting	proposition:	Roman-tic	Bureaucracy	is	put	forward,	is	put	on	hold.	(To	think	a	bureaucracy	in	terms	of	Romanticism	put	forward	by	Blanchot	would	be	to	think	about	an	instrumentalisation of a movement that necessarily composes and decom-poses,	that	comes	together	to	fall	apart.	What	ways	could	this	format	enter	the expert rule of the Art Fair? The expert rule of the University? Perhaps that	a	logic	still	haunting	this	project,	these	fleeting	events).So. Not Romantic Bureaucracy, then. That is happening already as an event form	that	persistently	un-works	itself,	refuses	coherence.	To	borrow	again	from	Blanchot,	we	perhaps	have	here	the	work	of	un-workingTo	end	for	now	with	a	question:	one	might	ask,	paradoxically,	what	is	lack-ing in the fragment? Both nothing and everything – it is both irresolutely complete	and	incomplete.	Instead	one	might	ask	how	one	moves	from	the	open	field	of	the	social	to	the	abrupt	violent	gesture	that	fragments,	that	causes the fracture of the fragment. Francis Summers, 2009, Edward Dorrian 20131 Maurice Blanchot, Speaking Is Not Seeing, The Infinite Conversation, translated by Susan Hanson, University of Minnesota Press, Minnaepolis and London 1993 p322 The Possible Characteristics, Comité: The First Issue. Bulletin Published by the Student-Writer Action Committee in Service of the Movement (October 1968) Maurice Blanchot: Political Writings, 1953-1993,	translated	by	Zakir	Paul (Fordham University Press,	New	York	2010)	p853 JT Projects is an ongoing experimental survey of artist-led initiatives providing a platform for dialogue and new collaborations.	JTP09	took	place in 2009 to coincide with Frieze and Zoo Art Fairs)4 Project Space Survival Strategies is a research project by the artist Elysa Lozano for Autonomous Organization, produced in collaboration with Invisible Venue.5 see introduction 6	Knowledge	Transfer	Partnerships	(KTP)	supports	UK	businesses	wanting to improve their competitiveness, productivity and performance by accessing the	knowledge	and	expertise	available	within	UK	Universities. The partnership recruits a recently qualified	graduate	(Associate)	to	facilitate the transfer of academic knowledge	into	the	company.	The	Associate	works	within	the	company and is jointly supervised by company personnel and a senior academic. http://www.ucl.ac.uk/advances/support/ktp7 We all think, as if it went without saying, that politics passes through the literary (or the theoretical). Romanticism is our naivité.  Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy The Literary Absolute: The Theory of Literature in German Romanticism, Preface. Translation by Philip Barnard and Cheryl Lester, State University of	New	York	Press,	1988	p178 Fredrich Schlegel Athenaeum Fragments 206. Philosophical fragments, translated by Peter Firchow, University of Minnesota Press, 19919 Fredrich Schlegel (from) Athenaeum Fragments 77. Philosophical fragments, translated by Peter Firchow, University of Minnesota Press, 199110 Maurice Blanchot citing Novalis. The Athenaeum, The Absence of the Book, The Infinite Conversation, translated by Susan Hanson, University of Minnesota Press, Minnaepolis and London 1993 p35811 Maurice Blanchot The Fragment Word, The Absence of the Book, The Infinite Conversation, translated by Susan Hanson, University of Minnesota Press, Minnaepolis and London 1993 p30812 Ibid.13 Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy The Literary Absolute: The Theory of Literature in German Romanticism, The Fragment: The Fragmentary Exigency. Translation by Philip Barnard and Cheryl Lester, State University of New	York	Press,	1988	14 Ibid. p5015 The Possible Characteristics, Comité: The First Issue. Bulletin Published by the Student-Writer Action Committee in Service of the Movement (October 1968) Maurice Blanchot: Political Writings, 1953-1993,	translated	by	Zakir	Paul (Fordham University Press,	New	York	2010)	p85

Our research: a fragment on fragments

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