The Western relation to art comes from its treatment of all things, including humans, as expendable raw material. This is why the West sucks the life out of things to make them art—things must be dead and drained of all utility to be art. The West nourishes itself on the lives it takes, especially when that lifetaking assumes the form of an artwork. This kind of nourishment must be withheld. In this way, the entire Western tradition can waste to death. Finally, after life leaves it completely, the West can die and become for itself an object of contemplation, an artwork in its own right.

 

The import-export business of making history demands an equivalence, a loyalty, and a familial solidarity between people and things. Such skills are best honed in conditions of blindness, where the ability to draw the line between what is a human and what is a thing is abolished. In blindness orality thrives building a bond between people and things. Hear that sound.

 

Irena Haiduk’s biography.