Cold & rainy, last night fell asleep under inadequate blanket. Sigh.

Thinking about video I watched the other day in which a gallery owner was talking about the vocabulary of contemporary art, wondering why she said 'vocabulary' rather than 'conventions', pretty sure it would be more accurate. Generally, though, people's sense that art is a monolithic entity with either a vocabulary or conventions, a language or a society- well, it's just so misguided it makes me want to scream. Not even languages or societies are actually like that, much less art. Structuralism dies hard, I suppose.

What I mean to say is, none of these things actually exist, not as things, anyway. People imagine they understand their world, it's not theirs & they don't.

The contemporary 'period' is more complicated than 99% of human history put together, most people aren't fools enough to imagine they understand all that, but treat the present as pure intelligibility more often than not. The effect of focusing their attention on semi-isolated local zones, I imagine, neglecting all the drift, fuzziness, seepage around the edges, only notice the incursions with the broadest brush, say the effect of the 'economy' on 'art'. People's fields a lot like the field of vision in this regard.

Strange, alien world.

Should shower & get ready for work.