Allison Collins and Erdem Tasdelen: Conversation About Art and Unrequited Love

"Let us say that love is a process which arranges experiences, without the law which arranges them being decipherable from within these experiences." - Badiou

How do we love art, and does it return our love? 

If we are to think about art as an experience that can be counted into our relation to the world, what can it mean to invest our emotional selves in the process of art? Can we love art as a thing (or an event or encounter) that is indifferent to our presence? If we must measure the meaning of our love (for art?), the question of return provides a clue to an underlying premise: that when we invest ourselves in an experience, (when we give our love), we expect a return. 

Does the question itself come from a condition in which we expect a return for our investment?

In this conversation Allison Collins and Erdem Taşdelen will speak about their mutual and disjunctive approaches to finding meaning in art. Quite possibly they will talk about over-investments, and how relationships to art (making, looking, showing) are informed by their own experiences with love. Expect some references to Roland Barthes' A Lover's Discourse, and a discussion of Taşdelen's work Dear, among other references to poetry and prose that consider and complicate our notions of the experience of love.