(1) The momentum is decisively no longer in English departments but in arts, design, architecture and music.
(2) These places demand and crave something fresh and, as has often been the case on my travels, they were very receptive to OOO, or had already been studying it.
(3) The artists on the panel were both positioned vis a vis forms of realism—not your grandma's realism, for sure. Padraig Timoney was fascinatingly committed to working directly with media in a way that was suggestive to him of what he was hearing at the conference. For instance, he has done paintings that he then worked over with photographic developing fluid—photography, as he argued, being one of the ultimate realist tools. Of course what happens when you do this is very strange. And “broken mirrors,” treated with chemicals so they don't reflect:
Martin Westwood was already very familiar with Harman's work and had been working with all kinds of object-oriented art already. I was particularly struck by his talk about different forms of economy in and around art. He was keen not simply to get involved in economies of exchange, which he associated with relationism.
Westwood did an extraordinary piece in which he modeled the ceiling of the installation space on the floor—upside down and with all the right pieces and pipes, but nonfunctioning, of course. (Image is above.) The idea was that the spectators would have to walk in a weird interstitial space between a functioning tool of which they were now aware (the ceiling above them) and a broken tool (the ceiling below). It was a very striking piece.
(4) Graham just reminded me how Nietzsche said your philosophy can change when you change the music you're listening to. There are all kinds of reasons why art and OOO seem to be hailing each other right now. Several people told me that I had given them reasons to do more art and feel good about it—nice one.
OOO has a lot of space in its heart for innovation, creation and the love of things.
Thanks again to the incredible people who made it all work: David Reid and Eliza Bonham Carter, Kevin Love and Amanda Beech, and a host of others.