Nietzsche: "Only thoughts which come from walking have any value"....pity he wasn't a runner.

....I am interested in philosophy, running, politics, the philosophy and politics of running, the philosophy of politics and the politics of philosophy. Expect no coherence of theme on here....

Thursday 17 December 2009

Turner Prize: I miss out again

And for the third year running the Turner Prize judges have passed me over in favour of an endorsement of modern so-called art. This year's winner, an abstarct mural by Richard Wright, is arresting enough but not innovative in the manner of my own entry: my training run from last Friday, conducted in front of a number of respected art critics including Professor Hermione Nugget, Chair of the Department of Gender Outreach Studies at the University of the West Country.
I really thought I was in with a shout this time. My refusal to wear a garmin was described approvingly as "an attempt to place the run within the parameters of the traditional artistic canon without itself being bound by the constraints of that canon". My distinctive running gait was said to be "the opposite of poetry in motion and all the more iconoclastic for that" (I thought I was a mild overpronator but these critics had seen more than I). When I slipped and landed on my backside on the descent from Westwood into Bradford on Avon, the moment was praised as being "emblematic of the collapse of bourgeouis aesthetic standards under the weight of their own internal contradictions". Furthermore, my place within the running pack (last and behind a woman to boot) was described as being a "paradigm of the neo-Hegelian subversion of the typical male power hierarchies" (a good thing apparently).
At one point I thought I'd embarrassed myself. On returning to the clubhouse I noticed that someone had left the veranda door open and before I could stop myself the words were out: "For God's sake shut that door. I wasn't brought up in a barn you know!!". I turned to the critics with the intention of apologising but I was assured that no such apology would be necessary as my "iconoclasm with respect to the prevailing religious stereotype involved a subtle restatement of a desirable secular heterodoxy". I was assured I'd get extra marks for that.
But it wasn't to be so once again I am a runner up (pardon the pun). It has been suggested that I write to the Turner judges and request the Appeals Procedure but this is no longer possible since, due to an administrative error, the Appeals Procedure did itself win the Turner Prize in 2001 and now sits in a designated viewing area in the Tate Moder.
Still there's always next year. I might enter my 2002 PB in the Benfleet 15.....

No comments:

Post a Comment