I feel like I have Seth Price’s practice as an artist on the tip of my tongue and it gives me that feeling – sort of like trying to get a shit out – where I alternate between receding (letting it come out itself) and pushing it out.
But, it will never come out.
Did you ever receive a pleasure from simply experiencing the feeling of having a word on the tip of your tongue? Like the catharsis of getting it out would have been a disappointment?
That’s maybe the first feeling to refer to when trying to come to terms with Price’s practice. Perhaps one could say that Price’s practice is about that line between memory and articulation. Perhaps.
But it would feel like a lie – like there would be so much else in the work that’s being neglected.
Alternatively, saying that might feel like a lie because the work actually falls far short of such an ideal. It’s “just an object, just a gesture,” as Price puts it.
And perhaps that is what the work is about in the end. Perhaps.
Perhaps one should stop trying to over-think these things!!
But, then, that pleasure – that perverted love of the delay – is lost. Is that what I want?
Honestly, no.
Here’s a confession:
Ever since I’ve become at all interested in the work of Seth Price, it’s been one of the few things that “keeps me going.”