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\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Date: Mon, 9 Jan 2012 09:21:35 -0500
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 From: James Rovira
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Subject: Re: [Humanist] 25.602 on failure<\/p>\n
I was struck by this quotation too.\u00a0 I think my starting place is the
definition of failure as the disjunction between intent and realization.
From that, I go in a few directions.\u00a0 I’ll be thinking in terms of art, but
art as techne – anything executed with skill and intent.<\/p>\n
– failure to realize my intent sheds light upon the nature of my intent. It helps me understand it in more detail and specificity. I may learn to redefine my intent.
– failure to realize my intent may cause me to question or even abandon my intent. Of course this questioning or abandonment can be negative, as in a kind of despair, but it can be positive as well.\u00a0 Perhaps the actual product can be better than my intent and completely different from me.
– failure to realize my intent establishes the artwork as something other than me, something that has “a life of its own."\u00a0 It changes my view of art.
– positive failures to realize my art establishes a dialectic between inspiration and skill.\u00a0 My "unintentional intents,” whatever their source, come to be as important as my consciously controlled intent.<\/p>\n
Thank you again for provoking discussion, Willard.<\/p>\n
Jim R<\/p>\n
\nThe 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 entrepeneurs. 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.’“<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Date: Mon, 9 Jan 2012 16:44:04 -0800
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 From: Brian Croxall
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Subject: Re: [Humanist] 25.598 on failure<\/p>\nFailure is something that I’ve been thinking a lot about over the last year
or so. I think we need to become as public with our failures as possible.
The sciences have a few journals of negative results, which help other
scientists know which paths are not as profitable for exploration. We
should be looking to do the same when possible.<\/p>\nI’ll offer up my 2011 MLA talk as a call for more dialogue about failure:<\/p>\n