A lecture at SVA Thursday evening by Ann Lauterbach (poet and critic, co-chair of writing at Bard College and visiting critic at Yale) on The Given and the Chosen: A Meditation:
The work of art mediates the given and the chosen. It takes place between the fixities of received orders and possible forms which simultaneously confirm and escape through those fixities. To decide to treat experience as the site of transformation of the given by way of the chosen is to decide to live as an artist. The materiality of the world, its givens, presents itself to the artist as a field of possible relations, or choices.
The work of art mediates the given and the chosen. It takes place between the fixities of received orders and possible forms which simultaneously confirm and escape through those fixities. To decide to treat experience as the site of transformation of the given by way of the chosen is to decide to live as an artist. The materiality of the world, its givens, presents itself to the artist as a field of possible relations, or choices.
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