fan fictions

D and I took adderall early on yesterday and worked from a café so we didn't speak to each other pretty much until the evening at which point we went to dinner at Palais de Tokyo.

Maybe because the majority of the galleries are closed right now or maybe just because, but the courtyard has this very dystopian feel. All these skaters and unpleasant looking guys are posted up by the fountain and there are people's little nesting areas in the buildings nooks and crannies. I don't mean this in a fetishistic sci-fi way; it struck me primarily as a great set if one were to make a dystopian film in Paris. Maybe that's no better. Anyway, now I'm thinking about how maybe it's a real brain worm to see a building in disuse with some seedy elements and think d y s t o p i a. But also I think it's ok to like, use your imagination and to use it to think about worse versions of the present. I really think that's alright.

Anyway, we left the restaurant and somehow the whole way home we talked about art criticism. D had read this thing about film franchise fan theories and the death of the author and how we should stop writing fan theories off as people trying desperately to figure out or read meaning into the movie. I said this was an interesting take and made me think that art criticism is all just fan theories about artworks.

We further explored this on our walk via that whole Simone Leigh Whitney Biennial post thing and also somehow Rosalind Krauss' L'Informe show–maybe because I'd been reading about both earlier in the day. But basically the takeaway was that, duh criticism should live on its own and nothing id definitive. It's all just fan fiction and there is nothing real to be unearthed about art or a film anyway. With the Simone Leigh thing, her position is so frustrating because it entirely shuts down the flow an artwork exists in or something. (Like you only want people who share your set of references to approach the object? Maybe you should write a love letter to your people then and not make a sculpture. Certainly you can speak to a specific group primarily but I don't think you can (intelligently and responsibly) be upset when viewers outside that knowledgeable group present their criticism (fan theory).)

Later, we talked about climate change and this self regulating hut that yesterday at dinner O--- said he was hoping to design and whether it was scalable and whether that was even the point of it. Then we watched Big Little Lies.

I hope that O--- makes his hut; it seems cool at the very least.