“In the realm of art… failure has a different currency [than in other areas of life]. Failure, by definition, takes us beyond assumptions and what we think we know. Artists have long turned their attention to the unrealizability of the quest for perfection, or the open-endedness of experiment, using both dissatisfaction and error as a means to rethink how we understand our place in the world. The inevitable gap between the intention and realization of an artwork makes failure impossible to avoid. This very condition of art-making makes failure central to the complexities of artistic practice and its resonance with the surrounding world. Through failure one has the potential to stumble on the unexpected – a strategy also, of course, used to different ends in the practice of scientists or business entrepreneurs. To *strive to fail* is to go against the socially normalized drive towards ever increasing success. In Samuel Beckett’s words, ‘To be an artist is to fail as no other dare fail.’”
Lisa Le Feuvre, ed., Failure (London: Whitechapel Gallery and MIT Press,
2010),
www.whitechapelgallery.org/shop/index.php/fuseaction/shop.product/product_id/772(and it’s a beautifully produced book)
Yours,
WM
College London; Professor (fractional), University of Western Sydney;
Editor, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews (www.isr-journal.org); Editor,
Humanist (www.digitalhumanities.org/humanist/); www.mccarty.org.uk/