The Mystery of the Excluded Middle
🗓️ Wednesday, 24 June — 10:10am
- 10:50am
(40 mins)
Presenters
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Abstract
Limited capacity event - reserve your space below.
Artists have been capitalized for economic harvest; The labor, the burnout, and the process are excluded. The figure of the successful artist is the synthetic reality of the market—a vitrine of the few who "made it." Creativity, diversity, artistic freedom, and opportunity have been replaced by market rules: taste-making, trends, and the logic of supply and demand. This research looks practically at what the artist goes through and how they use subversive affirmation as a tool for critique.
The study unfolds as a meta-discursive essay that interrogates the space between being and non-being, using examples of performance and cannibalism to refer to the "in-betweens" of law, logic, and ethics. The figure of the cannibal, born from the impact of colonialism and extractivism, is here as a metaphor and a horizon to examine the endangered mechanisms of the art world. This artistic research holds the "Law of the Excluded Middle"—the third law of thought and the logical principle that a proposition must be either true or false—as a core framework to address binary thinking and its violence against the "in-betweens" of identity, trauma, ethics, and performing bodies.
The research identifies the "Excluded Middle" as a fertile site of "clandestine existence." Drawing on Aristotle’s metaphysics, Derrida’s différance, and the radical agency/surrender in Marina Abramović’s Rhythm 0, I argue that the contemporary subject—specifically the "migrant" or the "artist-as-other"—is forced into a paralyzing binary.
This research is presented as an immersive installation centered around a set dining table. a performative environment where the audience is can read and access the research. The table is dressed with the residue of research (textual fragments, archival documents of practice) and the audience is invited to sit and engage with the materials and the act of reading becomes parallel with the act of consuming, they encounter the "stains" described in the essay.
Artists have been capitalized for economic harvest; The labor, the burnout, and the process are excluded. The figure of the successful artist is the synthetic reality of the market—a vitrine of the few who "made it." Creativity, diversity, artistic freedom, and opportunity have been replaced by market rules: taste-making, trends, and the logic of supply and demand. This research looks practically at what the artist goes through and how they use subversive affirmation as a tool for critique.
The study unfolds as a meta-discursive essay that interrogates the space between being and non-being, using examples of performance and cannibalism to refer to the "in-betweens" of law, logic, and ethics. The figure of the cannibal, born from the impact of colonialism and extractivism, is here as a metaphor and a horizon to examine the endangered mechanisms of the art world. This artistic research holds the "Law of the Excluded Middle"—the third law of thought and the logical principle that a proposition must be either true or false—as a core framework to address binary thinking and its violence against the "in-betweens" of identity, trauma, ethics, and performing bodies.
The research identifies the "Excluded Middle" as a fertile site of "clandestine existence." Drawing on Aristotle’s metaphysics, Derrida’s différance, and the radical agency/surrender in Marina Abramović’s Rhythm 0, I argue that the contemporary subject—specifically the "migrant" or the "artist-as-other"—is forced into a paralyzing binary.
This research is presented as an immersive installation centered around a set dining table. a performative environment where the audience is can read and access the research. The table is dressed with the residue of research (textual fragments, archival documents of practice) and the audience is invited to sit and engage with the materials and the act of reading becomes parallel with the act of consuming, they encounter the "stains" described in the essay.
Biography
Zahra Mohseni (she/they) is a writer and performance artist. She works with experimental text and makes performance pieces with intimate settings and audience activation. Zahra's ongoing research "the Excluded Middle" lies in the in-betweens and provocation.
With bachelor in Dramatic Literature from the Art Faculty of Tehran University, work experience as Playwright, dramaturge and translator and editor in a performing art publication house, Zahra migrated to the Netherlands in 2023 to peruse further education at DAS theatre school, a research-based artistic master in theatre field.
With bachelor in Dramatic Literature from the Art Faculty of Tehran University, work experience as Playwright, dramaturge and translator and editor in a performing art publication house, Zahra migrated to the Netherlands in 2023 to peruse further education at DAS theatre school, a research-based artistic master in theatre field.
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