Random #3 - Lists

 Alan Fletcher (designer) and Jamie Jauncey (writer)

The list. Concise. Precise. Dissonant. 

1. Contributors to Art South Africa's March 2010 issue: Siemon Allen, Peter Anders, Esmé Berman, Rory Bester, Belinda Blignaut, Anthea Buys, Fred de Vries, Alexandra Dodd, Kendell Geers, Catherine Green, Kerryn Greenberg, Randolph Hartzenberg, Leon Krige, Marilyn Martin, Achille Mbembe, Kyle Morland, John Nankin, Alexander Opper, Malcolm Payne, Mario Pissarra, Lloyd Pollak, Ivor Powell, Tracey Rose, Robert Sloon, Robyn Sassen, Kathryn Smith, Roger van Wyk, Jasper Walgrave, Pam Warne  

2. Some well-known Ukrainian internet porn stars: Veronika Fasterova, Nella Miartusova, Snejana Onopka, Luba Shumeyko and Elena Berkov.

3. Excerpt from Tracey Rose's forthcoming column: " White white white white white white white white white white white white white white white..."

4. Lunch: Monday, cheese roll from Raith; Tuesday, salami roll from Raith; Wednesday, chicken roll from The Kitchen; Thursday, cheese roll from Raith.

5. Requests for transcript of writing prior to publication: one.

6. Requests for PDF of layout prior to publication: two.

7. Number of artists who came into studio to check colour proofs: one.

8. Likelihood of finding cover image's caption on the internet: none.

9. Time before publisher flies to Johannesburg to hand over completed magazine: 15 hours.

10. Price paid for Alberto Giacometti's L'homme qui marche I (Walking Man I) at a London auction house last night: £65,001,250 (or R775,000,000).

11. Cups of tea today: four.

12. Cappuccino: one.

13. French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu on the links between economic capital and culture: “So it has to be posited simultaneously that economic capital is at the root of all the other types of capital and that these transformed, disguised forms of economic capital [including cultural capital] … produce their most specific effects only to the extent that they conceal (not least from their possessors) the fact that economic capital is at their root, in other words – but only in the last analysis – at the root of their effects.” (from essay The Forms of Capital, 1983)

14. Number of times Bourdieu is cited in the forthcoming issue of Art South Africa: zero.

15:  "A list, especially one that ranks or categorises, can be a salve for the anxiety of living in an era of information overload. But the relief is short-lived. Listing the options is not the same as selecting one of them to stand by. Unless you have something to say with your list, the experience of both its creation and use ends up being hollow..." Alice Twemlow, 'From the (a) trivial to the (b) deadly serious, lists dominate visual culture' in Eye magazine (Issue 47, 2001)