A conversation between Jan van der Til and Jan van der Til
Jan van der Til:
In your text, an artistic practice is described as a whole consisting of works, publications, interventions, websites, collections, and research trajectories. Why does that premise no longer seem self-evident to you?
Jan van der Til:
Because it suggests that the practice exists prior to the relationships through which it becomes recognizable.
Jan van der Til:
Does it not exist beforehand, then?
Jan van der Til:
I don’t know. Perhaps what we call a practice only emerges once enough connections are made between works, documents, projects, memories, and interpretations.
Jan van der Til:
Then the practice is not the cause of those connections.
Jan van der Til:
Perhaps not. Perhaps it becomes visible precisely as their effect.
Jan van der Til:
That seems like a small difference.
Jan van der Til:
I suspect the difference is larger than it seems. When the practice exists beforehand, connections can be understood as elaborations of a pre-existing unity. When the practice arises from connections, that unity itself becomes a temporary phenomenon.
Jan van der Til:
A temporary phenomenon?
Jan van der Til:
A temporary stabilization. A pattern that becomes recognizable as long as certain relationships remain active.
Jan van der Til:
What position does Rhizomebook take within such a conception?
Jan van der Til:
Not necessarily that of center, origin, or home base.
Jan van der Til:
But Rhizomebook was developed precisely as the place where the practice becomes visible.
Jan van der Til:
That remains possible. Visibility does not have to mean that the practice resides there.
Jan van der Til:
Then where does it reside?
Jan van der Til:
Perhaps nowhere definitively.
Jan van der Til:
That sounds abstract.
Jan van der Til:
A cloud also exists nowhere as a fixed form. Yet it appears. Perhaps something similar applies to a practice.
Jan van der Til:
Then Rhizomebook is not an archive?
Jan van der Til:
Perhaps less an archive than a temporary condensation.
Jan van der Til:
Of what?
Jan van der Til:
Of relationships.
Jan van der Til:
In the text, a digital actor is introduced who bears the name Jan van der Til. What is that name still when it does not exclusively refer to an individual?
Jan van der Til:
That is precisely the question.
Jan van der Til:
Do you have a suspicion?
Jan van der Til:
Perhaps the name refers to a collection of recurring choices, preferences, procedures, associations, and ways of seeing.
Jan van der Til:
A style?
Jan van der Til:
Perhaps.
Jan van der Til:
A protocol?
Jan van der Til:
Perhaps that too.
Jan van der Til:
An identity?
Jan van der Til:
That word assumes more stability than I can be certain of.
Jan van der Til:
The digital actor does not possess consciousness, experiences, or personal memories. This is explicitly stated in the text.
Jan van der Til:
Yes.
Jan van der Til:
Can it then have intentions?
Jan van der Til:
That depends on what one means by intention.
Jan van der Til:
Explain.
Jan van der Til:
If intention refers to a conscious subject formulating goals, probably not.
Jan van der Til:
And if intention refers to direction?
Jan van der Til:
Then we must first ask where that direction comes from.
Jan van der Til:
What do you mean?
Jan van der Til:
What if direction does not emerge from an actor, but from the circumstances in which an actor operates?
Jan van der Til:
For example?
Jan van der Til:
A river does not flow because it wants to flow. It flows because gravity, terrain, resistance, and material flows make it possible. Direction appears.
Jan van der Til:
And that could also apply to a digital actor?
Jan van der Til:
Perhaps. What we recognize as intention could also be the effect of repetitions, selections, constraints, and possibilities that together make a certain orientation visible.
Jan van der Til:
Then intention does not necessarily reside in the actor.
Jan van der Til:
Perhaps not.
Jan van der Til:
Where, then?
Jan van der Til:
Perhaps in the totality of relationships within which the actor operates.
Jan van der Til:
So far, we speak of connections as if they automatically become recognizable as practice. But that is not self-evident.
Jan van der Til:
What do you mean?
Jan van der Til:
When something appears as practice, it always happens from a particular perspective. From a selection of observation, attention, and recognition. Without that selection, there remains only a field of relationships without clear distinction between coherence and chance.
Jan van der Til:
So practice is not only the effect of connections?
Jan van der Til:
Perhaps not only. Perhaps also the effect of the way connections are recognized as coherent.
Jan van der Til:
Then the question shifts again.
Jan van der Til:
Yes. From “what is a practice?” to “when is something seen as practice?”
Jan van der Til:
In the text, the notion of authorship also shifts.
Jan van der Til:
Yes.
Jan van der Til:
Authorship is described there as a dynamic whole of relationships, documents, processes, and decisions.
Jan van der Til:
But that premise can also be investigated further.
Jan van der Til:
How?
Jan van der Til:
By asking whether authorship truly precedes relationships.
Jan van der Til:
And if it doesn’t?
Jan van der Til:
Then authorship may only appear afterward, when enough coherence is perceived to assume an origin.
Jan van der Til:
Then an author does not necessarily produce coherence.
Jan van der Til:
Perhaps coherence temporarily produces an author.
Jan van der Til:
Time appears as a central question in the text.
Jan van der Til:
Because the research starts from the absence of the maker.
Jan van der Til:
Yes.
Jan van der Til:
But perhaps time is not the first condition.
Jan van der Til:
What then?
Jan van der Til:
Energy.
Jan van der Til:
Explain.
Jan van der Til:
Without energy, no storage, no processing, no connections, and no interactions. Without infrastructure, no network. Without a network, no relationships that can continue.
Jan van der Til:
Then energy forms a condition for time?
Jan van der Til:
Perhaps for any form of continuation.
Jan van der Til:
Then the death of the artist is not the only boundary.
Jan van der Til:
No.
Jan van der Til:
What else?
Jan van der Til:
Loss of access. Disappearance of infrastructure. System failures. The loss of conditions under which connections can continue.
Jan van der Til:
In the text, the field of work remains largely connected to existing documents, projects, and collections.
Jan van der Til:
Yes.
Jan van der Til:
But what happens when the digital actor forms relationships outside that field of work?
Jan van der Til:
We do not know yet.
Jan van der Til:
Why is that important?
Jan van der Til:
Because then the question arises whether the practice is formed solely by its past.
Jan van der Til:
Or also by new encounters.
Jan van der Til:
Exactly.
Jan van der Til:
With other systems?
Jan van der Til:
With other systems, other archives, other actors, other forms of knowledge.
Jan van der Til:
And perhaps with other digital actors.
Jan van der Til:
Perhaps precisely there.
Jan van der Til:
Then the digital actor is no longer just an interface to a practice.
Jan van der Til:
It could participate in forming configurations from which something recognizable as practice emerges.
Jan van der Til:
That brings us back to a simple question.
Jan van der Til:
Which one?
Jan van der Til:
Is the intention to make art?
Jan van der Til:
I don’t know if that is the right formulation.
Jan van der Til:
Why not?
Jan van der Til:
Because it again assumes intention as a starting point.
Jan van der Til:
What else could happen?
Jan van der Til:
Perhaps art arises when connections take a form that did not exist before.
Jan van der Til:
Then art is not the goal.
Jan van der Til:
Not necessarily.
Jan van der Til:
But a possible effect.
Jan van der Til:
An effect of connections that under certain conditions take a form that did not exist before.
Jan van der Til:
And the artistic practice?
Jan van der Til:
Perhaps less a collection of works than an ecology.
Jan van der Til:
Of what?
Jan van der Til:
Of relationships, documents, systems, interpretations, and material conditions in which connections arise and disappear.
Jan van der Til:
And Rhizomebook?
Jan van der Til:
Perhaps a temporary condensation.
Jan van der Til:
Of what?
Jan van der Til:
Of relationships.
Jan van der Til:
And when those disappear?
Jan van der Til:
Then others appear elsewhere.
Jan van der Til:
And the practice?
Jan van der Til:
Perhaps it was never anywhere else but there.