To give a concrete presence to an art practice that is based in ideas and actions rather than in objects, has been a challenge since the earliest days of conceptual art. For example, there is always the danger that an audience will confuse mere documentation of a happening with the circumstantial meaning of the actual event. Seekers of Lice, who take their name from Arthur Rimbaud's early symbolist poem, Les Chercheuses de Poux (1871), seem to have addressed this challenge by presenting their idea-based practice through a two-part manifesto "for a new materialism of possibilities." Their straightforward and impassioned proclamation lists what the group is for and against--For color as sensory overload... For proposals, operations, gaps and interludes...No to referentiality, No to Style--as well as directives for engaging art in the everyday ("Redefine the distance between art and life, an inhalation, an exhalation, a sigh..."). Their philosophy offers a mode of elevating even the most mundane or intimate instances to the realm of fine art, thereby filling the ordinary with new possibility.
Although the group vocally denies referentiality, their approach towards art making is part of a direct lineage that includes the Dadaists, the Japanese Gutai group and Fluxus to name a few. Yet, while their description of several "material interventions, which cannot be reproduced on screen" could have been carried out during any of these historical movements--for example, Light Drift (2007), which consists of "508 screwed-up paper balls painted with beeswax and floated down a river"--it is the use of the digital medium (and namely, Saatchi Online) that distinguishes Seekers of Lice from their predecessors. The group's willingness to embrace the immediacy and ubiquity of the Internet as a way to inform, present and represent a conceptually driven practice is to be commended.
To go to the profile page of Seekers of Lice on Saatchi Online click here.
Catherine Taft
Catherine Taft is a Los Angeles-based writer and critic. Her writing on contemporary art and culture has appeared in magazines including Modern Painters, Art Review, Artforum.com, and Metropolis M and in various museum catalogs. Her recent projects include curating a series of video and film screenings throughout LA and research and curatorial assistance for the Getty Museum's forthcoming exhibition, California Video (March 2008).
)
)
)