Attn: Intention

2014

Part of the work Portrait of a Young Artist in the Age of Knowledge Economy

Attn: Intention

Excerpt:

Dear Intention,

. . . What drives me is a strong wish to zoom in on the why behind any given action, rather than the what for. Crucially, my question is: Is it possible to do something intentionally yet without wanting a specific outcome? I humbly hope that you can help me answer this question, I really do.
I would also like to know if you (once you've showed up and nourished my longing to act) stay put all the way through my actions? Or do you leave me at some point in the beginning?

I wish to avoid your openness becoming trapped in the drill of productivity. Because you are even when I do not move or respond to you. By saying ‘productivity’, I refer to the command/response tendency I perceive in my contemporary society. A demand for always acting with a rational or specific aim in mind. This I am critical of, but is it possible to do something without an end?

If we are indeed able to act without there being an end to our actions, then let's grab the precious opportunity to explore the vast possibilities of un-productivity. We are offered an invitation into an open land, ruled by the freedom not to produce graspable, exchangeable objects and this is an outstanding deviance from the norm of productivity.

This gets me thinking about Odradek, who you might know. I've recently been introduced to Odradek by Franz Kafka who must have met or dreamt of (let’s just call him ‘O’ from now on; and yes, it is a he, Kafka gave O the gender, which is peculiar – why gender, when no lungs?). The family man in Kafka's short story Die Sorge des Hausvaters is haunted by O who unexpectedly and unforeseeably shows up under the staircase of his house. . . .

Yours sincerely,
Marie

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