ArtSeen
Karsten, What are You Doing?
Central Park, the intersection of a path through the Ramble and the 79th Street Transverse Road. Afternoon. WHITE approaches from the east, KREJKAREK from the north. Krejkarek holds one end of a blue ribbon; the other is tied around the tail of a lobster.
WHITE: Karsten, what are you doing?
KREJKAREK: I’m taking my lobster for a walk.
WHITE: You can’t do that.
KREJKAREK: Nerval did, in the Palais-Royal.
WHITE: Won’t it suffocate?
KREJKAREK: [reaches into his tote bag and pulls out a plastic spray bottle] Saltwater. I spritz him every few minutes and he’s fine.
WHITE: What is the meaning of this?
KREJKAREK: I’m interested in time.
WHITE: I don’t get it.
KREJKAREK: Do you know how long it takes a lobster to walk from 57th Street to the Great Lawn?
WHITE: No.
KREJKAREK: Neither do I.
WHITE: Is this a piece?
KREJKAREK: Yes and no.
WHITE: Do you consider it a political act?
KREJKAREK: If there is a politics left to art, it is the politics of time. The failure of utopian thought was to frame the problem in terms of space. We need to think uchronically. I will follow this lobster into a different modality of temporal experience. New possibilities for action may arise.
WHITE: This disturbs me.
KREJKAREK: Please explain.
WHITE: I’ve just come from the Biennial, where most of the art was time-based. I had an hour and a half to see the show. All I saw were empty rooms with Xeroxed notices telling me I’d missed the art.
KREJKAREK: That’s an exaggeration. Why didn’t you plan your visit better?
WHITE: Who has the time? And durational art makes the situation worse. Only the leisure class can experience it.
KREJKAREK: This smacks of resentment. Why not examine your commitment to the object?
WHITE: Art encodes the expenditure of time, for appropriation by those who already have too much. Is it any wonder that Christian Marclay’s The Clock is the most popular art film in the world?
KREJKAREK: Roger that’s reductive, not to mention boring. You’re just cheesed off because you’re a painter. Critique also reiterates the logic of the dominant order. What matters is to keep moving. If you can’t accept that then you will never understand contemporary art. Look. It’s a beautiful day. Come to the Great Lawn with me and my lobster.
WHITE: I can’t, I have to go. I’m on a deadline.
KREJKAREK: Your loss.
WHITE: Yeah, probably.
They walk away.
Contributor
Roger WhiteROGER WHITE is a painter and an editor of the journal Paper Monument.
RECOMMENDED ARTICLES

On Harriet Feigenbaum
By Alex A. JonesMAY 2023 | 1x1
The aesthetic of regeneration is different from the picturesque. It is about the perception of a certain type of beauty found in the surprising incarnation of life as it emerges from neglect, or death. Down in the mining pit, locust trees grow up out of stinking dark water, but as I walk by, a group of colorful wood ducks fly out from their undergrowth, shouting in annoyance.

Pat Steir: Paintings, Part II
By David RhodesSEPT 2022 | ArtSeen
After arriving at the gallery, located on the Via Francesco Crispi, a short walk downhill from Berninis Palazzo Barberini, I needed a few seconds for my eyes to adjust after the August sunlight outside. Then, the full subtlety and clear radiance of these cool, austere paintings had full effect. This second iteration of a two-part summer exhibition by Pat Steir comprised eight paintingssix predominantly red, yellow, and blue on black and two white on black.
Kiro Russos El Gran Movimiento
By Alonso AguilarOCT 2022 | Film
El Gran Movimiento, the narrative focuses on a group of miners from the rural town of Huanini who walk for seven days with the hope of finding a stable source of income in the capital city of La Paz.
Laurie Anderson with Paul D. Miller
JUNE 2022 | Art
On the occasion of Laurie Andersons exhibition, The Weather, at the Hirshhorn Museum, Editor-at-Large, Paul Miller spoke with Anderson on episode #483 of the New Social Environment. Their discussion touches upon Andersons attraction to the taboo, her desire to make a walk-in comic book filled with words, and her fascinating collaboration with a supercomputer at the Australian Institute for Machine Learning.