Doing Time - Essays on Using People

Bungee Space by 3standardstoppage Verified independent store

→

A series of essays concerned with the ethics of writing (about people and art), as well as a reflection on the identity politics of the early 2000s. To write about someone else mea ns both to expose and transform them. This is the dilemma of writing that Janet Malcolm describes as "morally indefensible." In Doing Time: Essays on Using People, Kristian Vistrup Madsen deliberates on his correspondence with an inmate in a California prison named Michael. Over several years, this spawns a series of reflections about the politics of solidarity and appropriation, but also about writing itself and what happens when life is turned into art. This book is a portrait of a friendship interpolated by great difference, and of a fearful time in which experience and identity are everything, and thinking not enough."The first few letters on my part were punctuated by hesitancy, a dutiful respect for the difference between us: that I couldn't possibly understand, or even with the moral implication that I oughtn't. Heavy with sarcasm, I wrote to Michael in prison: 'Meanwhile, I am working in an art gallery. We sit in a room full of MacBook Airs in minimalist outfits and talk about the migrant crisis.' But he had written nothing to warrant such pleas for reassurance. My respect for difference, then, was not the same as respect for Michael, but rather a way of excusing my own position, working through my own guilt." Kristian Vistrup Madsen is a Berlin-based writer. He holds degrees from Goldsmiths, University of London, and the Royal College of Art, and is a frequent contributor to magazines such as Artforum, Frieze, Mousse, Spike, Flash Art, and Kunstkritikk. June 2021 Softcover; 150 x 220 mm, 168 pagesText by Kristian Vistrup MadsenDesign by Dan SolbachLanguage: EnglishEdition of 600ISBN: 978-3-9819108-4-1 Show more