Death of the Author

From the Tuesday lecture—‘art & environment’, I found an interesting thing that images show the experience. Why I say this? Because in the beginning Miss instructor asked us a question that ‘what do you see from the environment is interesting?’ Everyone must have the different images, because of the different experience. Before I came to class, I was waiting outside and siting before the glass door at first floor.  When I sat in silence, I can see the clear rain lines drop down on the window, clear, transparent and looming, those feeling made me feel relax and comfortable suddenly. Maybe other saw the same scene, they may never have the feeling like I felt this way.  Thereby, when I in the class, when the instructor said ‘everyone can be art suppliers’,  I have had a very strong resonance. Although not everything  is art, when you see something in an art way, you can think you are seeing an art work. Like when I saw raining in normal times, I would not feel like that. But when I tried to focus on the interesting phenomenon, I would think it’s art. From the romantic tradition into modernism into postmodernism, everyone has different feelings in the different age of art, despite their overall style is the same.       

Thereby, that make me thinking of the "Death of the Author," which written by Roland Barthes. It seems like these two things seem analogous. Bart said no matter what the intent of the author, text only has consistency on himself. But as long as the text once published or rendered, readers met with encounter, they may think in the cultural way, and thinking, creating meaning for themselves. Those text viewers would always change, instability, and allow question to find the real meaning. They are not concerned about its general structure, but the creative reading.  Stripping from the authority and criticism of the author, giving the meaning  and interpretation of the right to viewer and bringing more literary space of creativity to reader. Thereby, in the multiplicity of writing, everything is to be disentangled, nothing deciphered. This idea of Roland Barthes completely turned traditional reading  to a new way. Also, the cost of the born of reader must be the death of author. Every time you are reading something, while you are writing something. Readers with their own unique blend of criticism, interpretation, explanation, using their experience or interests in the idea of writing text, at the same times, the collapse of the traditional method of reading. He will be liberated from the authority of the author. The real talker is not the author, but the language. If there is anything I gather a wealth of diversity, that is not the author, but a reader. In my own opinion, ‘Death of the Author’ in favor of the independent life outside of the work itself. The moment when the author completed works, the relationship between the author and work is going to the end, the right of the real meaning is given to the reader. Roland Barthes once said that ‘a piece of the immortal, not because it imposed a meaning that added to different people, but to everyone, it suggests that a different meaning.’ The most important thing to a work is the meaning which reader gave. Thereby, right of interpretation has been released back in the hands of readers, symbolizing the death of author and the regeneration to readers.( I know this is an abstract type, please excuse my grammar mistakes, I'm going to try my best to explain what I really wanna say~~~~but u, the viewer, you can create the meaning if u want, I wish I can give you the power).

Thereby, when I saw the art work which from Kiki Smith, at first, I think I have no idea about that. But Tyrras said we should bring something into art work, then associated with my own experience, I think that Kiki Smith worked with various kinds of materials and many topics of which include shame, our relationship to nature, and she is even considered to be a feminist artist. I remembered that in the interview Kiki said such sentences, ‘ I long for something radical--whether it be in my own work or in the art world. Works of art world seems to have been continuously outputs dominates, it is no longer exist as an interesting art world, and I now is one of the products manufactured. These are all artists can't decide. When I first came to New York really took no small effort to practice this. I remember at that time, I wanted to do something other than my own, but sometimes I do not have such a personality.’Kiki see themselves really rather surprising, especially after watching so many of her works, but the truth is probably that, although mood heated Kiki works, always impose an unexpected powerful influence to the audience, but Kiki I was in a very naive point of view of their own creation. Like she said, she sometimes doesn't understand art, she will feel like a ordinary art is weird. But she believed the goddess of inspiration from art, Goddess when art came when she had to do was follow the just do it. Art for her was such that is not complicated. (By the way, I really wanna say that she looks like Professor Trelawney in Harry Potter.)

As regards the William Kentridge--anything is possible, I really appreciate his creative minds. Does every people who have strange ideas in order to become an artist? William Kentridge said that, ‘Absurdity] is in fact an accurate and a productive way of understanding the world. Why should we be interested in a clearly impossible story? Because, as Gogol says, in fact the impossible is what happens all the time.’ When I saw the process of his work and idea,  I understood the meaning of why he said anything is possible. Like his own words, ‘With its playful bending of reality and observations on hierarchical systems, the world of The Nose provides an ideal vehicle for Kentridge. The absurdism, he explains in the documentary's closing, "...is in fact an accurate and a productive way of understanding the world. Why should we be interested in a clearly impossible story? Because, as Gogol says, in fact the impossible is what happens all the time.’