The Altered Heart – Re:Iterate @ Kerrytown Concert House

In actuality, the word ‘iterate’ already implies repetition. There is no need to ‘reiterate’, as when you ‘iterate’ you are already uttering over-and-over. We can iteratively respond to someone else’s iteration in a design process, and there is no need consider it a ‘reiteration’. It may not be wrong, but it may also be superfluous or hyper-redundant.

And yet in dealing with people, sometimes attempts to clarify through repetition do not get people’s attention (or comprehension). Do we, then, find ourselves iterating, and iterating, and yet our meaning still ignored, we attempt to hyper-correct. Thence, do we ‘reiterate’?

Artists iterate. What is the art of the artist, aside from the iteration of solutions to aesthetic problems? What is a sketchbook, other than an early version of an iterative design process? What are studies? What was Monet doing painting those same haystacks, over-and-over, anyway?

The construction of warp and weave, in fiber, is very iterative. The formation of paper, a common artistic substrate, has a repetition of fibrous formations, similar to fiber arts. Drawings often have a repetitive / iterative aspect, even within a single drawing, in the develop- ment of a stroke or mark-making vocabulary. Vast quantities of repetition and reiteration, over time, may turn drawings, to icons, to sym- bols, perhaps even to written words? When drawing becomes writing, we assign image to signify… thought? …culture? … sound? Sounds, especially perhaps those made by percussive strikes, when repeated, iterated, cycled over-and-over, can form rhythm and music. Be- cause of their gestalt, repeating iterations (material or performative) over-and-over in a space causes those iterations to assert a sense of meaning over a space. Do we ‘reiterate’ as we repeat iterations?

Or are the iterations the content, now? Are the process and content one and the same, with the dissolution of temporal and spatial dis- tance via technology? Are we just iteratively responding to the changing stimulus of social, economic, and political conditions? Or are we iteratively seeking “something other” through aesthetic exploration? Do we ‘reiterate’ as we re-assign meaning, the iteration of the moment of technical artistic expression, changing through repetition into something with an additional cultural, social, political, or aesthetic meaning?

As artists, are we really just small production businesses? Are we really librarians? Are we really junior academic administrators? Are we really art critics? Are we really arts administrators? Creative directors? Project managers? Or through the constant reiteration of aesthet- ic study, over time, are we just artists, no matter what else we may seem to be at the time?

Andrew Thompson, Megan Heeres, Michael Nagara, and Sarah Rose Sharp respond to the conundrum of iteration. Or was it “reiteration”? Iterating through repetitions of marks, materials, or even scales, we utter over-and-over again:

‘We are artists.’

‘This is art.’

Gallery Reception: Thursday, October 12th, 2017 – 4 PM – 6 PM

Exhibit showing October 8th – November 8th

More about Kerrytown Concert House here…