Publication + Artwork
New York, New York, U.S.A.
UpSet Press, 2019
A type of art work… Important to note and repeat.
A TYPE OF ARTWORK… that is unmanifest, and unannounced…
(And is not the equivalent of ‘doing nothing’.)
The NothingDoings constitute a type of artwork that thrives on being not manifest and unannounced. The NoDos constitute a radical shift away from the production of objects and even from the curation of non-object-centered experiences. Not only do the NoDos constitute a new way of creating art and a new artform–and in the process shift the paradigm of artistic creation and the epistemological, aesthetic, and social quiddity of art–but they also, through the subtle operations at work in each type of NoDo, shift the paradigm of living and of experiencing art, and even shift the paradigm of paradigm-shifting.
Here are some excerpts that will shed light, O yes…
{From The Complete NothingDoings}
The NothingDoings of Amir Parsa constitute a radical shift away from the production of objects AND from the curation of non-object-centered experiences, a general poetics that leads to—without ever claiming adherence to—the ‘art-ing’ of the living of life. I should, perhaps, reword that: the NoDos (pronounced ‘NoDoh’ and not ‘NoDoo’) also disrupt the art/life paradigm that is a bit ‘in vogue’ as of this writing, the ‘life-as-form’ paradigm, the ‘ephemeral aesthetic’ paradigm, the ‘relational art’ paradigm—you get my drift. Not only do the NoDos constitute a new way of creating art and a new art form—and in the process shift the paradigm of artistic creation and the epistemological, aesthetic and social quiddity of art—but they also, through the subtle operations at work in each type of NoDo, shift the paradigm of living and of experiencing art, and even shift the paradigm of paradigm-shifting.
That’s right: it can be put forth with much aplomb that the NothingDoings, in their variety, their irreverence, their humor and their rigor, had and have, as core principal objectives: to save art from itself, save the artists from excessive drowning in the mechanisms of the art world, save a downward spiral into the perpetual construction of objects and the production of non-objects, and lead to or at least propose a rebellion against these modes of fashioning art. The NothingDoings invite, I should say impose, a pause, a reconsideration, a radical shift as I alluded to above, a shift of shifting, towards, well, justement, the NoDo. A well-needed, crucial pause, I say again, a necessary cessation of activities in the regular realm, a cessation of excessive activitation (that’s right activitation—not a typo) in the regular regime, in favor of non-activities, or, more accurately, a-activities, ultimately making the phenomenological processes that allow the arts to be part of our lives—that is, seeing, feeling, breathing etc.—the constitutive components of the artworks themselves.
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