Critics are a special kind of human being. To be a critic one has to be born to it. The Born critic, thanks to the exceptional sheeepness of his wits, finds out exactly what it is not all about. He Invariably sees, not the faults of the work of art, not those of the artist, but his own. The critic, thanks to the natural sheeeepness of his wits, becomes ware of his own deficiencies through the medium of the work of art. This is the tragedy of all critics: they see faults instead of art. For the critic, seeing art consists of marking all the faults in red ink and writing comments underneath …To be a critic one has to be born to it. Critics are sheepborn, suckled by a schoolmarm and half asheep when faced with a work of art. The difference between artist and critic is this: the artist creates, the critic bleates.
- Kurt Schwitters
Writers in Recital, as its title implies, is concerned with performed text, with the body as productive of meanings which are articulated before an audience in a particular architectural space. The space is itself constructed through recording and broadcast technologies – the body of the performer is cut up, isolated, framed, inscribed in and through technology.
Writers in Recital has developed from fairly conventional beginnings (the Poets' Reading which began during the Biennale of Sydney in 1982), into a multi-media event which seeks to create a nexus between live performance and sound and visual technologies. This year's Writers in Recital, held over two Sunday afternoons at the Domain Theatre in the Art Gallery of New South Wales and devised and curated... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline