Chigurh’s haircut: three dialogues on provocation

This 3000 word essay, due for publication in December 2011, is part of a publication on the subject of ‘Provocation’, part of the series ‘Transmission’ published by Sheffield Hallam University/Site Gallery. The subject of this essay is the dialogue between the provocateur and her audience. My central claim is that the dialogue between provocateur and audience is balanced between two very distinct modes that define ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ provocative art. In ‘weak’ provocative art, there is complicity with moral failure that is expressed in the mutual recognition of opposing positions or interpretations. In ‘strong’ provocative art, the artist assumes this moral failure as her personal cause or mission. In the first case, the provocateur interprets a structural problem of ethics in inter-subjective terms; in the second case, this inter-subjective solution is itself rejected as unethical, in favour of a personal commitment to the structural problem.

Art as provocation is a concept that has inspired deliberation, controversy, altered perceptions, and possibly inspired some to take flight from typical modes of praxis. However, what actually constitutes a ‘provocative’ work of art remains in question as a truly provocative act is always contingent on a particular context. Consider, for example, the historical trajectory of the Duchampian ‘readymade’ and the rhetorical force of its contemporary manifestations.

In the series of lectures (2010–2011) how art can provoke, activate, and antagonise the viewer without referring to or employing well-known aesthetic and political strategies that seek to produce shocking and immediate affects, is explored. Most importantly, we will consider how the concept of provocation is at its most trenchant when it is conceived as fluid and unfixed, and discussed and disputed outside the borders of the hoary discourse of the historical avant-garde.

The lectures are interested in a provocation in art that is determined by a broad range of contingent factors, external to the physical properties of art.