Limit Experience

Submissions Closed

 

There is a tradition of art that aims for the outer boundaries of consciousness, physical feeling, interaction, thought.  This art is unafraid of criticism and doesn't pander to the desires of  institutions.  Often when it is made the artists themselves feel repulsed, concerned, or afraid of what they've done.  Uncertainty reigns, and so does some super pure form of reality through the human organism.

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Here is a wikipedia page.  Working on linking to pdfs of readings by these authors on limit experience

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I've had this experience in life and art and I believe in it as an extra-powerful vessel for whatever matters to us.  Social change, spiritual change, just the desire to feel alive and unencumbered by our world's half-truth's and meaningless responsibilities.

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When I started reading philosophers like Bataille and Foucault and Lacan I got delivered really great descriptions of what I had felt from life in strong doses, what became the foundation of my art practice.  Each of these people write about limit experiences and, essentially how freeing they are to the mind, body and spirit.  This freedom comes form a willingness to approach and look at the unknown.  You don't have to make art out of these things, but they lend themselves to extra-potent art that people tend to respond to deeply.  Also, I think at various cultural moments people need this kind of art...an unbounded, courageous look into the void that can help us push into new territory as far as thought and living and all that go.

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Lately I've been looking for an area to interact with this kind of art and haven't been able to find like a concentrated pool of this kind of thing, so i thought I'd start searching through curation.

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I conceive Limit Experience as an online space for the collection and dissemination of work (video, performance, sound, music, painting, drawing, film, photography) that tests limits or even that is just extra uncanny, uncomfortable, or weird.  It is a space for work that feels like a new born demon baby--really fresh and sublime, but kind of embarrassing and potentially dangerous.  There is a lot of nice art being made right now, and this is not the space for it.  This is like the death metal venue of art.  It is a space for work that is half done, and maybe even bad...like maybe terrible.  We don't care if work is "good." We don't care if work is "done."  We care if work seeks the limit of human experience, pushes a boundary, or makes the audience or maker uncomfortable.

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Importantly, work does not have to be disturbing, abject, disgusting, etc., though all of those qualities are welcome.  I think it is totally possible for limit seeking work to be like divine, sublime, beautiful, but in my observations even that type of limit seeking work has to grapple with something ugly to define itself...so think on those things if you want to submit.

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Unsure of whether your piece meets these criteria?  Ask yourself these questions, then just submit anyway whatever you answer:

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--Do I feel simultaneously excited and humiliated by the thing I've just thought of or done?

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--Do some people literally hate it?

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--Is it hard to look at?

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--Is it very different from what you've done before?

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--Is it hard to describe?

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--Would it be hard to show in a gallery without all kinds of unconventional arrangements and a really chill open-minded and probably kind of crazy gallerist who doesn't need to make money?

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--is it dubiously even art at all, or is it so shitty or unexpected that it would be laughed out of a typical art school crit or commercial gallery???

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--does it eschew craft and aesthetics, or use them to an end that is incongruous with artistic convention (harmony, prettiness or beauty, etc.)

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If you think you have a work that meets these criteria, submit it here.  Submissions Closed

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