WEAPONS OF ART INSTRUCTION

Again we witness a good talk about intellectualized modes of prefabrication. I cannot avoid admiring the level of control Diana Thater strives for in her projects. That control, unfortunately, does not calibrate the actual way we experience the work.
"Beauty has depth. History has meaning. Screw the market! Keep the faith! History is to be read. Beauty is to be believed. Screw the market. Keep the faith."
Thater's speaking self is bratty and her sweeping generalizations about art may have been considered if they acquired extra dimension or two. The tiny loop of language in the lecture did not intentionally dumb down the work since Thater's manifesto is eight sentences long and sherecitess it like a grocery list every time it appears on screen (9).
The actual installations of China and Delphine are simple, quiet and pretty despite the historical bravado that Thater displays as the inventor of wall projection, durational meaning outside of linear narrative (abstract time), and sculpturo-arhitectural aspects of collaged projections that point to the most literal signifier of video-the color bar. All these things were examined much better long before Thater made anything (also in writing: Kittler, Cavel, Joseph etc.).
Jump looks just like Stryker described it. I feel that the only reason that Thater did not choreograph the rope jumpers is that it would look a lot like Spike Jonze music video (as if it already doesn't). Variant performances of Bob Dylan remind me of works I like that do much more with the multiple processing of popular and personal experience (Huyghe's Third Memory) and the mapping of inter-translation between media and the individual (Holt and Serra's Boomerang). This time Thater had money to make something good and it is still nowhere near Sol LeWitt's pencil art.
The fact that Thater comes from art history shows and not in a good way. I would feel much better if her personal causes and narratives stayed in written form and the video installations become physical attachments to lectures. That would be refreshing.
I do not think that anybody doubts that Diana Thater is a smart woman. She obviously studied art and knows what works (or should work). The lack of imagination and a surplus of calculation result in wrecks of advanced academic content. Diana Thater does not lack content. She lacks vision.
Simply put if one's approach comes from places as abundant as history of art and the end product is self-admittedly boring this does not make the work special even if we are all excited that someone finally wants to make work that strives for multidimensional historic and aesthetic content. I think that we all consider history a meaningful referent. Having your head in the right place is only one element of a good practice. Many academicians have that. But ultimately is it not the way that one permanently deposits meaning into objects that makes one an artist?
Thater designs everything from museum banners to her monographs and this would be cool if one with such license would show range with a resource as vast as design. We all hope for artists like Smithson, Nauman and LeWitt who turn every outlet of their work into media of their own. In Thater's practice the ideas of conceptual greats stay replicated footnotes (Smithson's Spiral Jetty and Nauman's Stomping the studio).
In conclusion, I feel that Diana Thater should be shown to students and it is good that this was that kind of lecture. I hope that students can separate her manner and look at this work as a very crude diagram for the way artists should think about making.