Category / Viewings

images, scenes, and situations. seen and considered.

by Sean Peuquet

Jay and Bey: P is not-P

As Jay-Z and Beyoncé watch Kanye rush the podium at the Grammys (to interrupt Beck before he accepts the award for Album of the Year), the power couple appear to embody the paraconsistent logic that aptly describes our cultural situation: P is not-P. The Vine, in particular, is a perfect format for this demonstration. We get to repeatedly watch Kanye’s stage-rush as both seriously horrifying and self-referentially comical. The kicker is the E! interview where Kanye reveals (at least during the interview) that he was serious. As a result, the Vine appropriately allows Jay-Z to perform our response to the E! interview when it loops: “uh oh, he’s serious!” We’re just stuck oscillating between interpretations of an event without ever knowing what it is. The same commodity returns to haunt us, sold back to us as its opposite, without undermining its ability to signify itself.

by Sean Peuquet

Adam Magyar, Stainless

Back in January of this year, Joshua Hammer provided a wonderful description of photographer Adam Magyar’s recent series, Stainless, in his Matter profile of the the artist. Drawing a distinction between the objectivity of Magyar’s digital scans—of people waiting on subway platforms and entire subway cars full of passengers—and the subjectivity inherent to Misha Gordin’s nightmarish and totalitarian Crowds, Hammer said:

Magyar, an admirer of Gordin’s work, also creates black-and-white photographs and video images permeated with a similar brooding quality, though his human beings are bound not by political systems, but by the limits of perception.

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