The Site of Art

Questions about the site of art interest me less and less. By 'site' I mean where, in one's practice, the art resides. Or to put it another way, whatever other people think 'art' is doesn't interest me. Increasingly for me things, objects and manufactured stuff is either good or it isn't, on its own terms. Its own terms are those which it means to achieve, as readable or displayed by what it is.

This means that those works that are difficult to 'read' or interpret, or to understand what it is they wish to do, what it is they wish to be, are by their nature disturbing. They disrupt the assumption of intent we make in other works. Here I am thinking less of those works that mix up genres or styles or play one paradigm off another for dissonant effect, and more of works that seem at first uncategorisable, because they are so different. Because they do not conform to expectations.