Conceived in conjunction with the Camberwell Space exhibition In an Absolut World True Taste Comes Naturally, this half day symposium will expand and reflect upon the themes of the exhibition.

The genre of nonsense raises philosophical problems from the first. There is a confrontation between meaning and non-meaning in the production of nonsense. The absurd is also born from this conflict. The absurd is of course not the ridiculous, and nonsense is not no sense.

In An Absolut World True Taste Comes Naturally focuses specifically on intentional forms of nonsense within the visual arts—artists who mean not to mean. Tracing a tenuous vein from the aggressive poetics and ‘anti-sense’ of Dada to the dissolution and multiplication of meaning in contemporary works, this artist-curated show places an attention on nonsense as a strategy of obfuscation and interrogation of meaning.

What do we consider nonsense today? Under what conditions is it recognisable? The artists in this show deal with these questions in different ways: some work in the phonetic snarl, some generate nonsense via the removal of context or rearrangement of syntax, some play in the continual unfolding and deferral of meaning.

Participants:
Kim Schoen, curator of the exhibition In An Absolute World…, artist and founder of Material Press, Los Angeles
Professor Jean-Jacque Lecercle, author of The Philosophy of Nonsense
Ami Clarke, Artist and Founder of Banner Repeater
David Toop, Chair of Audio Culture and Improvisation, University of the Arts London
Pavel Buchler, Artist and Research Professor at Manchester School of Art
Duncan Wooldridge, Leader of BA Photography, Camberwell College of Arts