Transformative States and Distinct Images

Francis Halsall and Declan Long in collaboration with MA ACW (NCAD)
2:00 – 3:30pm, Fri. 13th April 2012
The Joinery, Arbour Hill, Dublin
All are welcome

This coming Friday a discussion on the occasion of Emmanuel Rohss’ show at The Joinery will be led by Francis Halsall and Declan Long. The discussion uses Jean-Luc Nancy’s text “The Image – The Distinct” as a starting point for a conversation about the contemporary status of The Image in relation to aesthetics, objects and The Sacred. The text is available to read in advance. For a copy email: halsallf@ncad.ie

Art is necessary and is not a diversion or entertainment. Art marks the distinctive traits of the absenting of truth, by which it is the truth absolutely. But this is also the sense in which it is itself disquieting, and can be threatening; because it conceals its very being from signification or from definition, but also because it can threaten itself and destroy in itself the images of itself that have been deposited in a signifying code and in an assured beauty. That is why there is a history of art, and so many jolts and upheavals in this history; because art cannot be a religious observance (not of itself or anything else), and because it is always taken back up into the distinction of what remains separate and irreconcilable.

Jean-Luc Nancy, ‘The Image – The Distinct’