Hello, ARTIST! Thank you for your patience, you’re through to 0800-CALL-A-CRITIC, the twenty four hour critical help hotline. This is Dog Star speaking – the brightest star in the night sky. Woof! What artistic malady can I be of critical-assistance with today?’

Dog Star is it? Big sigh. Yeah, listen. I am not an artist, I am a critic. Critic with a capital C, and I feel like an imposter, ringing you up like this. But there’s no 0800-CALL-IF-YOU-ARE-A-CRITIC help hotline. Where do I go when I find myself in a critical malady, in need of critical-assistance? I am jealous of artists, they have what I perceive to be a formal procedure for acquiring assistance. But who reviews the reviewers? Sad song playing on the world’s tiniest violin. But—

‘Woah, you’re all good,’ I heard pages shuffling. ‘We do actually have a critic-to-critic protocol.’ An office chair creaking on the other end, ‘let’s start again. Hello, CRITIC. This is Dog Star. Woof Woof! Hit me with your critical malady, my tail is wagging I am ready to go.’

Great, thank god — thank DOG! Ok, where do I begin? With insecurities? With metaphors? Started a website with my friend in art school, now I am a critic but only by cosmic accident. I never really properly learned how to write about art so I constantly have this feeling like I am doing something wrong. But it’s ok, I am just dancing to the beat of my own drum, dancing like no one’s watching, hoping no one’s watching because I just want to dance. I’m just making up the steps, half the time I don’t really know what I’m doing. But we think of knowledge as something stable, something that gets imparted to us — we are often subjected to it. I like to think about knowledge as something we stumble upon, that we figure out for ourselves. I also don’t want to think about it too much. I get the feeling that the dance moves only make sense or feel important to me. Like, no one’s watching because we’re all just dancing, aren’t we?

‘Woof — ok. Just so I am clear: dancing is an idiosyncratic metaphor you are using to describe writing criticism?’

Yes, it seems that way.

‘You say seems, and I sense hesitance, a need for distance?’

Well it would seem—

‘GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!’ Real chesty low dog growls down the phone.

What’s with the growling?

‘I am a dog.’

Well it’s a bit much. The dancing metaphor is a minor detail — I don’t need to precisely describe how I understand the experience of writing criticism, I need to get to the malady, but—

‘We’re talking about an opque internal process that only really makes sense to you. For me to assist, I need to understand, so you must be precise in describing the internal process.’

Bad Dog. Ok, yes, dancing isn’t a precise metaphor. It’s just the metaphor I use when I am describing it to other people. There’s a metaphor I use when I am talking to myself, but I really feel kind of self-conscious and vulnerable about it.

‘Caller, I am literally a celestial dog in the night sky — who am I going to tell?’

I think of myself as a kind of engine. Or like, I am a car and the engine is my brain? I know it doesn’t make sense but I don’t really feel the need to clarify it much. I am an engine that produces writing. I put stuff in to the engine, stuff comes out. But then obviously, how does that engine work? Your guess is as good as mine, because I’m no mechanic. But it is also totally not a rational machine. The engine is also obviously my mind and — this is the unoriginal self-conscious bit — I think inside this engine brain there is an internal space. Like, a landscape. Internally. Because only I am allowed in, it is totally and completely mine, it exists within me. Sometimes that mental landscape is clear and it feels more real to me than the world outside of my head. I can disappear into it completely, I can get lost, I don’t necessarily have a map to it like — it surprises me.

‘And the writing comes out of the engine? Or the mental landscape?’

Yeah, it’s like… I know I’m mixing my metaphors—

‘Which is very confusing, because — remember, I am a dog.’

And a star, yeah sure. But I think I need to mix the metaphors. One is external — I’m aware that I produce the writing so other people can read the writing, it might have a function a purpose or an affect. The writing responds to external stimulus (art, exhibitions, conversations, culture in the widest possible sense), it is a way for me to be in conversation with the world around me, a way for me to make sense of the world and my place within it. But then the other internal metaphor — that’s because, in a way, I only ever want to please myself. This is quite a selfish thing! I want to retreat to myself, take the conversation back home and chew on it, have the final word. I am not convinced that my writing makes any measurable dent on the world — not in a mehmehmeh sad way, it’s fine. I am genuinely a-ok about that because it makes a dent on me!

‘But then why bother putting it on — it was a website, you said?’

Yeah yeah — valid question. If I really inspect the desire there, I guess I am hoping that I am secretly at the centre of the universe. I hope that others might find value enjoyment or use in what pleases me. If I am being more generous: I hope that everyone feels like an engine and a landscape, and maybe we’re like a microbiotic kinda permaculture system, where we feed off each other’s output, constantly filling up from each other, processing and then putting stuff out to feed others. That’s nicer, like, if everyone is the centre of their own universe.

Static crinkles down the line, vague doggy-snuffling.

‘This makes sense in a loose way to my dog brain. Caller, can I now press you to identify the malady?’

Well, I think the engine is stuck. Or the landscape is — I think it’s both. From the engine-side, it’s like something has blocked the pipes and I can’t get in there and unclog it. With the landscape, I think it’s like the weather has changed. A fog has descended and all of a sudden I can’t see the shrub that’s two paces in front of me. So it’s like I’m lost, but not in a fun exploration kind of way. I’m lost in a way that’s not really about orientation — I can’t even attempt to navigate myself out of the fog because it’s literally the weather. And then that’s making the engine splutter? So it’s a malady of both metaphorical systems.

‘OK, great, great’ shuffling pages, ‘obviously not great that you’re stuck but… WOOF! Identifying the malady is step one on our malady-to-remedy flow chat. Step two is: identify tried and tested methods of navigating towards remedy. Have you been stuck before? What did you do to remedy that, what has worked in the past?’

Normally, when I feel stuck, it’s because my engine is running on fumes. Stuff goes in, stuff comes out — so I need to put stuff in the tank to fuel the engine. I need to watch films and go to exhibitions and performances, I need to listen to a really good podcast or read a really good book or essay or article, I need to bear witness to someone thinking about something in an interesting way or making interesting connections or making meaning in a new way that I’ve never seen before.

‘And what does filling the tank do for you, or for… the engine? The flow chart says: identifying the purpose of the remedy may help to administer it to maximum effect.’

I don’t know, I think it just keeps the engine running? Like, I guess I need to throw all this stuff in the tank at random in the hope that something will catch. It’ll clear the blockage by sparking a thought or an idea that might lead somewhere surprising or unexpected.

‘And…?’

I can never really predict what it’ll be — if I knew that, the engine wouldn’t be stuck. But that’s assuming that the malady is external, a question of input.

‘Yes…?’

Well, Dog Star, I have been filling the tank to no avail. It’s an external remedy that’s not working anymore. I think I’m saying that the malady feels internal this time around. It’s THE FOG, which is within the landscape, which is within me. I’ve never had a problem with the landscape before. I don’t think I can change the weather, actually. Maybe it is unremediable, and this is the end of the line for the engine and for the landscape and for the writing that the metaphorical systems loosely represent.

‘Oh no no no,’ dog yelping and yipping, the sound of pages flipping in a big ringbinder. ‘This sounds like CATASTROPHIC THINKING which is something the training said we must avoid at all costs!!!’ Loud big dog barking down the line, barks blaring out the phone speaker.

Dog Star! Okokokokok, chill out, god— I mean, dog. You’re a bit intense, has anyone ever told you that? But fine. Let’s assume the fog can be cleared.

‘Brilliant! It can, I’m sure, so how might we do that?’

A really strong wind, running the heat and a/c at the same time, send out the gritters—

‘How have you been filling the tank, up until this point?’

The usual. I have watched films and listened to podcasts and I have gone to exhibition after exhibition after exhibition and read articles and books — actually, the book I’m reading at the moment is Infinite Jest, that David Foster Wallace doorstop. Novel the size of a newborn infant, right. No spoilers, I don’t know if dogs can read—

‘Of course we can, don’t be patronising.’

Apologies. So Infinite Jest is the name of this film made by some experimental filmmaker, and it is apparently so entertaining that when people watch it they enter a state of catatonic bliss, perfect pleasure. They just want to watch it over and over and over again. They cannot bear to look away, to eat or sleep or shit or anything. They just want to rewind the tape and watch again and again and —- there’s this side plot quest, or main plot, I can’t tell — where these Quebecois separatists are trying to get their hands on the Infinite Jest Master tape so they can use it as a weapon or as leverage for their separatist demands. The thinking goes: if they find the missing master tape, they can disseminate it or something and it’d be so lethally addictive it would render the entire population of the USA catatonically blissed out. Like all their needs would be met and satisfied in watching Infinite Jest. In watching the film, their needs and wants are actually reorganised around the film itself — they have lost interest in everything else, or lost the ability to want or need anything else (like eating sleeping and shitting). And it’s interesting, and I actually cannot believe David Foster Wallace wrote this book in 1996. The same way I actually cannot believe Frank Herbert wrote Dune before 9/11. I don’t really know why I’m telling you about Inifinite Jest—

‘I must respond truthfully: I also do not know. But my tail is wagging and I am a fantasy of a perfect interlocutor, in that, my task is to listen and encourage you to keep going in pursuit of this point.’

I mean, probably I’m just fulfilling an archetype: person who read Infinite Jest now can’t stop telling everyone about Infinite Jest. But then David Foster Wallace himself also said he had like a malignant addiction to television. He spoke in intervews about like, the relationship between pleasure and achievement and entertainment, and this gaping chasm of emptiness at the heart of it all. And that, I can believe that came out of the 90s — shoegaze and irony and all that. But — and here’s the thing, maybe. David Foster Wallace also wrote an essay about fiction and television (I think it was called E Unibus Pluram, or something like that). And like, he opens it by saying that fiction writers tend to be OGLERS, they lurk and stare and they like to watch and view. I know I am a critic and not a fictionist, but in the language of Infinite Jest’s recovering addicts at Ennet Halfway House, I’m identifying hard right now. When we’re out and about, at a restaurant or in a crowd, my Mum will sometimes roll her eyes and say ‘SHE’S GONE!’ Because my eyes have glazed over and actually I am not participating or present in a conversation with her anymore. I’m actually over there, listening to a conversation 5ft behind me. Ogling! Anyway. For this ogling demographic, television appears to be a ‘godsend’ because it is like a perfect one-way ogling superhighway. You can watch anything and everything without being caught or watched back, literally whenever you want. But it’s like — it’s giving you what you say you want, but it is also trying very very hard, maybe too hard, and it’s also expecting us to try just as hard. Like, oglers are actually secretly just voyeurs, and TV isn’t voyeurism. It is an illusion of voyeurism. Real voyeurism is about watching people who don’t know you’re there. We watch TV and TV is fully aware that we are there — that’s the entire reason it is there, it’s sole purpose in existing is for us to watch it. It is trying too hard to catch our eye. And it wants us to try hard for it too, to suspend our disbelief and pretend that the people on screen don’t know they’re being watched, even though we know that of course they know. But we have to suspend our disbelief, pretend that this is real and that it satisfies our ogling desires. And like, that’s a banal point. But then David Foster Wallace says we know this, we play along anyway and we’ve been playing along for so long now. We are basically very well trained dogs — no offence…’

‘None taken, I am exceptionally well trained and a very good boy.’

I see. But… Here, Dog Star… Do you not think about what kind of dog you’d be if you weren’t well trained, or even trained at all?

‘… Caller, I am not the one experiencing maladies of a critical nature, but I sense, in this attempt to deflect, that we’re heading away from the point you’re trying to make.’

I’m saying that the artifice of this whole televisual arrangement has trained us, or shifted our perception of what ogling even means. David Foster Wallace says that in the beginning, television pointed beyond itself, and we (the viewer-ogler) looked where it pointed — usually at versions of real life. But now, well trained as we are, we just look at the pointing finger. We want to watch people who are doing a good job of acting like they’re not being watched — TV gives us this in spades and, at some point something flipped. Obviously, the perfect version is to just be a peeping tom and ogle real life for yourself, but the artifice of televisual training has reorganised our needs and desires. We now want the artifice, the illusion, the pointing finger — we are satisfied just watching people pointing, rather than looking at the thing being pointed at. It’s the Infinite Jest Master tape, it’s catatonic bliss! Dog Star? Do you follow?

‘Copy Caller, but can I press you to identify the point of this Infinite Jest tangent? As it relates to the nature of your critical-malady, the engine-landscape and the conundrum RE: filling the tank to come un-stuck.’

Filling the tank isn’t working. My tank is actually full, maybe, and it’s full of things that are trying too hard to catch my eye. Everything wants to be seen! Everything is pointing and wanting me to look at it’s pointing finger, wanting me to not notice that the finger is not actually pointing at anything. And it wants me to suspend my disbelief, pretend I don’t know the entire point is to see it pointing. All this pointing could never clear the fog. That is the blockage.

‘So… To use your idiosyncratic metaphorical language, it sounds like what you need is a filter for your engine’s tank?’

Right! But ok, now we’re getting into it. Isn’t that the point of a critic?

‘Caller, I am dog enough to admit that I don’t follow.’

The critic is meant to be the filter! In my tank-filling attempts, I listened to a podcast called DECODER RING, an episode called IS CULTURE STUCK? And the short answer is: yes. The host speaks to a critic called W. David Marx, and somewhere in the middle of this discussion about cultural stuckness, they come to an interesting point about the role of the critic in sustaining cultural production. It is the critic’s job to filter through the culture, identify what’s going on. Run a diagnostic of sorts: what’s good what’s not, what’s pointing at things and what’s just pointing. The critic engages, and frames it all in words so we all have a sense of like a shared map to navigate the landscape of culture with. Do you see the potential problem yet, Dog Star?

‘I have noticed an oblique parallel in your repeated use of the word landscape, yes.’

Good boy, very good, yes. The entire reason I write criticism in the first place is because I kind of object to the idea that some guys get to draw the map that everyone else uses to orient themselves. That little model of what criticism is relies on the critic being a really good filter for everybody everywhere always, and that just isn’t the case. It can’t be! I started writing criticism on the internet with my friend because I wanted to be the centre of my own universe and make my own map — I wanted that for everyone, and this was my way of entering a microbiotic permaculture universe system or whatever. But W David Marks then talks about how the internet kind of killed critics — or, at least that’s what I think he was saying. At some point in this conversation I stopped paying attention because I was thinking about landscapes and maps and permaculture universes. The internet could have opened up access for everyone to produce culture, or to produce their own cultural landscape map — for themselves and for others. But it didn’t! It just opened up new access points for consumption of culture. You can now access culture without a map, without a guy telling you ‘head northwest for 5 miles and you’ll hit a small town called KRAFTWERK, AUTOBAHN (2009 REMASTER), it’s very nice, enjoy your visit!’ You can now produce culture for everyone to access, so you now have to think about how you can make it appeal to everybody everywhere always.

‘Caller, It sounds like you are having a crisis of faith. You doubt the value and purpose of your very job as a critic. This sounds like catatrophic thinking, of the depressive kind — where you do not believe in what you are doing, or what others are doing. You believe you are obsolete, you believe that culture (as it once stood) has died.’

Dog Star, fuck obsolescence. Critics do not have an inviolable right to exist or issue directions. I don’t want to tell anyone where to go on their map, that’s not the point! I just want to navigate my landscape without all the fog getting in the way. But how can I!? The crisis is this: everything is pointing, it’s clogging up my tank, my filter used to work so well I never even noticed it, but now it’s broken and I don’t know how to sift through. The filter used to be critics, but the internet killed them. I don’t know if everyone feels this way about their personal filter, I don’t have the language to formulate the question. In fact, my entire understanding of how culture might be navigated is being revealed as a fiction.

‘If we just return to the flow chart… Can I ask you to return to the first step: identify the problem… Maybe we could re-identify the problem?’

I’m stuck, culture’s stuck, I am spluttering engine-wise because there’s a warm front coming in from the North West causing heavy fog across my entire mental cultural landscape.

‘GRRRRRRRRRRRR’

DOG STAR, for the love of dog! This isn’t catastrophising, I am allowed to express despair!

‘GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR’

How am I meant to clear a blockage when nothing is sharp, nothing is really about anything or pointing to anything. It’s all an illusion of what I want, what we all want. This is what the French would call ennui: I am listless, dissatisfied, suffering from a lack of excitement that can only be remedied with real true genuine peeping tom ogling. I need to return to real life, but I have no idea where that is — in my critical engine-landscape metaphorical equivalent.

‘WOOF! CALLER!’ Heavy panting and commotional clunking sounds, like Dog Star was leaping around in his office chair. ‘You are making these huge totalising statements, broad strokes that could never actually be completely true: the landscape of culture is hostile, the weather is terrible, nothing you put in is sharp enough to break through the blockage within you, pointing fingers, sifting through, broken filters. Which is it! Is the filter the critic or the critical mechanism within us all? And what is it! The pointing and the pointing to — what does that even mean in relation to art? Is it about meaning, or art’s relationship to real life and real things? Why does meaning or reality even matter? What if there is no point and art isn’t rational, what if art is just a kind of absurdity or about the absurdity of existence? You call yourself a critic — but the sifting and filtering… This is the nature of your job, these are the conditions you face. You endure the weather, pursue with navigation, despite any feeling of lost-ness or spatial disorientation, you keep sniffing down, sorting and filtering, looking for things that point you in different directions. Everything that is pointing is pointing at something, even if it is pointing at nothing. You must persist in following the pointing fingers because that is your job.’

…

‘Caller?’

…

‘Caller, do you copy?’

Yes, Dog Star.

‘My language is harsh. I do not mean to tell you to pull yourself up by your bootstraps or deny the reality of your ennui. I mean only to help you reframe the terms of it so you feel empowered to take action towards remedy.’

I understand.

‘Your fog, it doesn’t signify conclusion or an irremediable malady. It is a syptom of the direction being pointed out for you. You must follow it and continue to filter, not to identify an end point, but because the navigation is the job. Yes?’

I guess?

‘You guess?’

It’s hard to say—

‘GRRRRRRRRRR’

You’re relentless—

‘GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR’

OK!! Fine! YES! WOOF back at you.

‘Excellent. Now, you said that the perfect version is: to just be a peeping tom and ogle real life for yourself. What does that look like?’

Please don’t growl at me again. I don’t know. If I knew, I’d do it already and I wouldn’t be stuck.

‘You are at home, yes?’

Yes?

‘Time for a walk. I love walks! Get your boots, leave the house and walk down the road. Are you going?’

Yeah, I’m on my way.

‘Ok, don’t doxx yourself but walk and walk and walk for an undetermined amount of time until you get to Columbia Road. Turn away from the market, up towards a block of flats. Do you see a door?’

There are many doors.

‘One of the doors has another door behind it.’

There’s a peephole on the door behind the door. I am looking through the peephole and I can see through to the inside. A small room painted minty green with a dado rail. There’s an empty armchair facing me, and a painting in a frame. The painting shows me an arm lifted up into the sky, weilding a dagger. There’s a stack of magazines on the floor. I am pulling my eye away. The door with the peephole is perfectly white with decorative mouldings. It looks like an internal door, a door that would exist between rooms, not between a building and the world. On the back of the external door there is a folder with pieces of paper that say BEST WISHES… Dog Star?

‘I’m still on the line, but Caller, you have surpassed the need for me as a narrative device. I am still here, but I don’t need to be. The whole ruse of this back and forth dialogue as a mechanism that permits you to talk to yourself in writing, outside the confines of your head and its mental landscape (covered in fog), so you can carry the conversation towards a kind of resolution. This ruse that allows you to expose a series of ideas around stuckness, artifice, pointing and meaninglessness, to show and also — to be blunt — tell the reader that you have professional feelings of ennui in relation to the very culture that you are meant to be writing about. You have surpassed the need for that. You are a peeping tom ogling through the peephole. Yes, whatever is on the other side, it knows that you are there, that is absolutely part of the reason that it exists. Yes, it knows that you are watching it. There is still artifice, but I think the artifice is kind of the point — the artifice of voyeurism, of politeness, of appearances and quiet parts never said out loud, the artifice of interior design and politics and American culture. The artist (Benjamin Slinger) is behind the next door down, and you will have a conversation about the Gulf War, the Obama administration, the Oval Office and political theatre. You are experiencing professional ennui, yes. But some art is a finger pointing at something, and we are not meant to look too hard at the thing being pointed at. We are meant to think about why the finger is pointing, and maybe how. The artifice can be the point, the pointing or the pointing to, or the thing being pointed at.’

Looking through the peephole, I am looking at something and thinking about the way I am being directed to look. Outside > in. I am ogling, I am a voyeur. Maybe, Dog Star, it doesn’t matter to me: whether the thing I am ogling is aware of my ogling-presence. Maybe, Dog Star, the artifice being the point is a kind of absurdity that is also the point. Maybe, Dog Star, I have been thinking about this in a weird way. Maybe my task is not to ogle for conclusions to point to, maybe my task is to ogle and continue to navigate the landscape, sniffing and sorting. Maybe it is meaning that is obsolete, not critics. Dog Star?

Dog Star?

…

Dog Star?????