Art Critique Midwifery notes
Art Critique as Midwifery of a Shifting Consciousness
What is our role here, beyond being mere vessels for content - nodes in data streams that only aim to amplify and accelerate the extraction of data, measuring, indexing, and positioning users into abstractions of political affiliations to be used by future regimes? The Tragedy is real for those who endure it. Unreal for those who consume it.
Hypernormalisation (2016)
Yurchak A. - Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More (2006)
#hypernormalisation
tragedy is hyperreal - Baudrillard () - Simulacra and Simulacrum Hyperreality
and Hypernormalised - 
"the focus remained on numbers, trends, and the familiar rotation of people meeting again and again"
Why was I invited to Beast Studios
- emphasis on being the most - the biggest - spectacle. Debord - The Society of the Spectacle
For over a decade we have seen the art world's discursive shift toward a rhetoric of care, collectivity and interdependence. But what has truly changed?
Not Much, I am afraid. Perhaps, nothing at all.The primary reason is that discourse alone does not birth transformation.
We are experiencing a loss - not only of language, but of democracy, and of our own humanity - induced by a discursive economy that runs on the accumulation of ethical or moral positions that is then exploited by algorithms and by fascist logics to expose and divide society.
Trapped in Notion’s Second Brain — How Notes Joined the Attention Economy (and How to Break Free!)
discursive economy - and affective economy - Ahmed, S. (2001) - The Cultural Politics of Emotion
We are not here to affirm what is already legible. Nor to celebrate excellence nor to distil meaning. We are here to dwell in the threshold. To test a different paradigm:
Critique not as authority, but as companion.
Not as a verdict, but as dialogue.
Not as control, but as initiation.
I posted a screenshot of this to the nt discord and I think that is quite funny actually.
1. Departing from Judgment
anyway - judgement as hierarchical and pervasive, as a way of claiming an illusory form of power and safety. MAFSxManosphere snips in the same sort of way as Gia MAFS Australia 2026 and the women she enlists, the fear of social exclusion, judgement.
Oh! Berlant, L. (2011) - Cruel Optimism.pdf
the thing desired is the very thing that impedes its satisfaction - judgement, pursuing the power to judge or the power judgement appears to give us creates the judgemental social atmosphere that disempowers us:
Judgment seemed to provide power even to the powerless, in the interest of truth. But what it increasingly conceals and reveals is fear.
Fear of uncertainty.
Fear of not knowing.
Fear of losing ground in a shifting cultural terrain.
Fear of powerlessness.
golding, w. () - lord of the flies
bbc lord of the flies 2026
MAFS as microcosm - specific class, neo-aristocracy, Netflix Bridgerton. Austen, J. Rigid social hierarchies and the judgements that attach to them provide a sense of safety. Paranoia Sedgwick, E. K. but embeds participants in judgement in cruelty, sets the tone of social interaction to competition. It's riveting on an interpersonal scale within the structure of The Experiment/ Reality TV, in the same way that one might enjoy being hit and dominated within the structure of a consensual scene. But in the same way, taking the interpersonal play and applying it to discourse, politics, the social sphere, the relationship as a whole, takes it into the realm of abuse. Art as a social-interpersonal space of play - artistic CAFAB.
Decontextualizing that sentence from the whole interview, which, across many layers of meaning, opens up spaces for critique of the current cultural landscape—or as in the case of Cornelius Tittel’s simplistically articulated attacks on Biesenbach—repeats the strategies of disparagement, oversimplification, and detachment adopted by fascist propaganda.
Colah is providing a window on the subtle workings of language in bureaucratic spaces and how it can be used to illuminate and deceive at once. Rather than taking a pre-prescribed stance, the interview traces the messy, contradictory, and often silent undercurrents that form part of curatorial work today—especially when dealing with histories of violence, complicity, and resistance, and current structural constraints that are, to be sure, not equal to the sort of repression we are witnessing from afar in Palestine, Myanmar, Sudan, DRC, or many other countries in which state structures are deeply sunken in overt authoritarianism. This is not the case, yet, in Germany.
(Oh I'm really doing this ok) - so the way that Bec participates in the bullying at first only to have it turned on her - the way Gia eggs it on as a shield for herself, and Juliette's reactivity is pushed - (ough) MAFS as Microcosm oh my god ooh hmmm Opposites Attract oh disgusting. This is a serious subject Eddie. No, play - yes, these topics are serious, everyone who already understands how serious it is feels overwhelmed and paralysed by its seriousness, and everyone who doesn't understand yet how serious it is has turned their brain off to suffering or been siloed away from it by reality tv and instagram and so a fucking. Funny and playful and entertaining and accessible take is more likely to fucking break through to them. Not many people will be interested in reading a fucking serious essay about fascism and authoritarianism and abuse and hetero patriarchy, but something framed around two tv shows they enjoy? or a short story? that introduces these ideas and gathers together the different threads for people to explore further whilst encouraging and empowering them to do so?
ohhhhh - Fake reality TV show - something that must already exist or be in the works - The Season - Bridgerton/Mafs style reality tv dating show
There's a real potential for that with #digitalgardening actually - each reference can link to a further exploration of the topic -
anyway - with the #MAFS - the over-emphasis on decorum and language - the use of swearing, the idea that someone is being vulgar or rude, hides the critique of the power dynamics at work - Juliette and Bec are both made into targets for their language, their reactivity, easily goaded into acting out, and the audience is encouraged to look at Gia as a mastermind of the whole thing, whilst ignoring that the structure - A Reality TV Show in which Strangers embark on arranged pseudo-marriages and are isolated from their communities for up to three months whilst being challenged to reveal deep personal "truths" and build intimacy with someone they just met with weekly rituals of group scrutiny and grievance airing followed by Judgement From The Experts and group couples counselling designed to manufacture as much entertainment and discussion of people's behaviours as possible
Netflix Bridgerton too - what is "updated" is the identities, whose fantasies are taken seriously etc. and it is intended to be fantasy, to be escapist and raunchy and entertaining.
symptomatic of a broader problem: the lack of care through which articulate disagreement, disapproval and dissent in ways that do not replicate the very punitive culture these groups expose and seek to challenge through their positionality.
i suppose this article is making a similar misstep - focusing on process and decorum at the expense of the broader structure within which art critique takes place. or does it?
As arts and cultural workers, we must rescue critique from its weaponization as a tool of judgment, from the rage that fuels and propels it. In the current state, it fails to articulate collective alternatives. We must ask what happens when critique holds space for the birth of effort to metabolize power, contradiction, pain, and possibilities that are multiple, opaque, and fugitive?
"art not as a finished representation but as an ongoing process of co-becoming and co-witnessing"
rather than seeking clear answers or fixed positions, it follows the subtle traces of an ethics of being-with, whereby art becomes a space where we learn how to be aware of each other, of our shared vulnerability, knowledge, thus birthing and nurturing plural methodologies.
To reimagine art criticism as midwifery of consciousness is not to abandon analytical and dialectical rigor, nor a commitment to justice. It is to reconfigure what rigor looks like—less the sharpening of knives, than the building of vessels strong enough to carry what is fragile, inarticulate, or yet to come.
Sontag, S. (1966) - Against Interpretation
Erotics of art - "a practice of attention - one that privileged presence over projection, encounter over extraction... what art does, not just what it means."
"politicized erotics - one that moves from arousal to accompaniment, from individual sensation to collective responsibility"
Where Sontag invites us to feel more deeply, the midwife invites us to stay.
Where Sontag interrupts interpretation in defense of the sensual, the midwife intervenes again: in defense of the emergent, the fragile, the unborn.
Eroticism awakens attention. Midwifery sustains it.
Eroticism resists the violence of meaning. Midwifery resists the violence of isolation.
2. Critique as Midwifery
"ceding interpretive authority, critique can open itself beyond control, toward co-creation... This requires critics to be vulnerable. To name their positions, sensibilities, and complicities."
you’ve been traumatized into hating reading (and it makes you easier to oppress)
Ghani - There's a Hole In The World Where You Used to Be "there is no after, only a through"
The midwife does not invent birth. She does not command it. She accompanies it. She reads pain - not to suppress it, but to hold space for it. To breathe through it. Midwifery offers a model of critique grounded in this recognition. A through that can only be understood as birthing. To reimagine the art critic as a midwife is to move from extraction to presence. To practice critique not after the fact, but alongside - as a form of ethical proximity.
Saliga, R. G. () - midwifing a cultural shift
"The physiology of birth mirrors the physiology of transformation: to move through rupture and reorganization, we must stay present to what is becoming."
connecting dots, opening concepts, providing tools and education for becoming. Oh! I am finding my why! The Anatomy of a “Why”
I want to write in order to join up the concepts I am exploring, to share tools and approaches to thinking that empower people to take a step back. to make it accessible and easy. a companion to transformation.
3. From Judging to Healing
The question becomes not: what is this work saying?
But rather: what is it trying to bring into being?
And: what does it require of me to support that process?
To reframe critique as a form of healing requires us to confront cruelty—not only in our institutions, but in our imaginations.
The Argentinian anthropologist Rita Segato speaks of the “pedagogies of cruelty” that train us to stop feeling. To endure pain by silencing empathy. To turn bodies into things.
Critique has not been immune to this training. In fact, cruelty has long been inherent to it.
- thinking about my reflexive cringe towards that webcomic, my sarcasm and frustration at people seemingly unwilling or unable to "think for themselves" - it is a cruel instinct, it makes me feel superior. I resent having to help, I resent the feeling that I must help - it brings up all the old wounds of organizing, and the insecurities - perhaps it is, more than anything the insecurity. And don't we sometimes need to feel the insecurity and soothe it with some (private, intimate) gossip and mockery? To play at cruelty in the safety of our close relationships. How does that fit into frameworks around abuse? Intimate Authoritarianism The Ideology of Abuse - I suppose intimate authoritarianism can be a contrast to midwifery - critical authoritarianism, the ideology of Cruelty
About romantic love we are taught that we will receive a romantic partner who can and should fulfill our every need and fantasy, and that it is acceptable to do whatever necessary to find and bind that person to us so that they can serve as the fulfiller of our every wish. We are taught that in pursuance of that person, it is acceptable to stalk, threaten, coerce, manipulate, and harass, so long as it is, in name at least, done “for love.” We are taught that jealousy and possessive behavior is an important expression of our love. We are taught that when the people close to us do not fill their role as wish-fulfillers well enough that we are justified in responding to their perceived failure with punishment and manipulation until they submit to our demands to our satisfaction. We are taught to turn interpersonal connections into private property relations, and there is a host of ready-made justifications at our disposal to excuse any number of abusive acts so long as they are done in service of keeping our “property” under our control, whether they are a romantic partner, a child, an elderly parent, or even a close friend. (from Intimate Authoritarianism The Ideology of Abuse)
the way romantic love is conceived here and the way that the "pedagogies of cruelty" treat the object of critique A Manifesto in Four Themes Critical Times
It has not been possible, in any historical instance, for us to accede to the state and then reorient history in order to guide it toward well-being of most people. This is because the politics of the state and the struggles over its control are indelibly patriarchal. The structure of gender asymmetry today remains the patriarchy instituted in the beginning of history. This patriarchy finds in the state its ultimate, concrete realization, and the state's persistence shows us the urgency of finding other forms of struggle.
ways in which patriarchal forms of authority bypass #empathy
Segato, R. L. (2016) - Patriarchy from Margin to Center.pdf
back to this:
Cruelty is growing—not only in the way death is inflicted, or rapes are carried out—but also in the ways in which bodies are disposed of: dumped in landfills, stuffed in garbage bags. These practices are increasing. This increase has to do with a pedagogy—a teaching of disdain for life, of teaching people that we are in a world of things, where things dominate life, and where bodies are things. And things don’t feel.
Learning not to feel, not to acknowledge suffering, learning to endure pain—this is a core feature of all military training: the hardening of the body. To endure one’s own pain and then become completely insensitive to the pain of others is essential to this phase of capitalism.
"To consider a work of art a “thing” is exactly the problem."! critical authoritarianism - applying the logics of authority and perfectionism to art - hays code
I question the use of "psychopathic personality" but understand what it is trying to convey. The particular approach of American Psycho - the spectre of "The Psychopath" as an assembly of traits that are socially selected for to accrue power, wealth and prestige in capitalist heteropatriarchy.
Havîn Al-Sîndy, an artist I deeply admire—and whose path I am committed to accompany— said to me:
*Not everything can be healed. Not every wound will close.
Not every work seeks healing.
And criticism must be able to endure that too.
4. Birth Over Death
Midwifery, as a metaphor for critique in times of global war and techno-feudalism, challenges the expectation that critics must own or condemn, determining an artwork’s value or social function. It instead embraces the idea that critics can be part of the process by which artistic, social, or political meaning is slowly articulated, never how it is fully determined.
Debeucklaere, B. () - Om (Mother) (compare/ contrast with louis theroux?)
Newton's discomfort with celebrity - how fame/pedestalisation gets in the way of organizing - organizing as another form of midwifery? Newton, H. P. (1973) - Revolutionary Suicide.pdf
Amro insists on the power of nonviolent presence. His activism is rooted in visibility, not as provocation, but as a strategy of refusal: to be there, to remain, to walk where walking is forbidden. He documents and speaks from within the experience of occupation, not about it.
His efforts to build international solidarity and local resilience are grounded in the belief that transformation begins with accompaniment—showing up, bearing witness, and resisting the erasure of everyday life.
Instead, they cultivate long-term trust and attend closely to context, contradiction, and the rhythms of ordinary existence. They remind us that critique is not a neutral act; it is entangled in the worlds it describes, and, therefore, bears a responsibility toward them.
This does not mean abandoning critical acumen.
On the contrary, it means sharpening it through humility, curiosity, and relation.