Chigurh’s haircut: three dialogues on provocation

This 3000 word essay, due for publication in December 2011, is part of a publication on the subject of ‘Provocation’, part of the series ‘Transmission’ published by Sheffield Hallam University/Site Gallery. The subject of this essay is the dialogue between the provocateur and her audience. My central claim is that the dialogue between provocateur and audience is balanced between two very distinct modes that define ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ provocative art. In ‘weak’ provocative art, there is complicity with moral failure that is expressed in the mutual recognition of opposing positions or interpretations. In ‘strong’ provocative art, the artist assumes this moral failure as her personal cause or mission. In the first case, the provocateur interprets a structural problem of ethics in inter-subjective terms; in the second case, this inter-subjective solution is itself rejected as unethical, in favour of a personal commitment to the structural problem.