You may have noticed that Minus Plato has not been itself of late. This year of upheavals has manifested itself in long gaps between posts, leading to months without any updates. But all of that is about to change. Today I had a revelation. Between checking Facebook, posting on Instagram, organizing action and groping towards a way to move forward, I realized that I have something very concrete and specific that I can do. As a Classicist who is not only committed to the power of contemporary art to transform and shake up his discipline by bringing it into his work as a teacher and scholar, but also as someone who believes that an appreciation of the past can bring some much need perspective on the challenges of the contemporary world, I need to make this clear in my daily life. And what better way than to make a commitment to Minus Plato as my daily space of engagement and reflection. In doing so, the first posts over the next few days will be dedicated to ideas of the everyday in both contemporary artistic practice and ancient philosophical writing. This interest is directly related to an exhibition I’m curating in January called Come Along With Me and a Graduate Seminar that I’ll be teaching next semester on “Ancient Ethical Handbooks: Lessons, Lives, Communities”. But for now, one impetus for this interest is how artists engage with social media as a way of resisting the pontificating and pretension of philosophizing. The first artist I want to discuss in this context is Petra Cortright and her e-book Hell_Tree. The transformation of her Twitter feed from 2007 into a work of art will be the topic of tomorrow’s post. See you then.
