Anti-Ligature Rooms

by Contemporary Art Writing Daily

Anti-ligature rooms are designed to protect the inhabitants from themselves. Cells that work to prevent us from any agency in the biggest, grandest sense. A room full of paintings that won't let you kill yourself. Anti-Ligature Rooms by Contemporary Art Writing Daily is an attempt to retexturize a world – a world streamlining a smoother digestion of us, of our resources and our art. Fear for an art that is affective palliative to an experience that's just generally bad.

Contemporary Art Writing Daily is an author project. It has been described as “a black eye in the face of contemporary criticism.” Since 2014, it has contributed texts to numerous exhibitions and publications.

I have no idea what an Anti-Ligature Room might be, but the greatest advances in culture, or at least the most thrilling ones to me, are those that basically ask: If I learn the language of whatever this thing is, what will it reveal that at present I’m completely unaware of? Knock, knock. Open up, I’m coming in.
–––Mark Leckey

72 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2021

Reviews

[Aaditya · Rating 3 out of 5]

Anti Ligature Rooms picks up on fragments left behind by Barthes, Baudrillard, Krauss, etc—while also acting as an excercise in “style” in writing about contemporary art.

It has really thought out (nice but a little dry?) moments where it ties together, for instance, surrealism in the 1920s and surrealism in the 2010s.

It does really well in thinking through libido. Mostly through little graphs that compare the frequency of terms Google searched (one compares “ruined orgasm” with “depression” if I recall correctly). This is also where the fragmented choppy writing style becomes a productive force.

It also does really well when they actually talk about art—for instance they position Acconci’s work as a response to the authoritarianism in conceptual art.

The writing also really falls short when they try to compare chicken farming with plum farming.

[14ofmarch2 · Rating 4 out of 5]

It ends on a something about curtains, and starts with the casino. Gives a good take on contemporary art, and like contemporary art you are a projector, projecting hard so hard as there is nothing there, glass, glass keeping the (gross) world out but then denny’s surfaces, porn,, anhendoia, when u look at art too much and you can’t vibe w it anymore like if I fast for days I like Thek, otherwise I hate him. the sections are good “trash” which brings up cartoon core, cuteness, Darwin and sianne ngai, ,” Puppet invisible hand, eating disorder ad control, Devin fore “an expression of a need for control” fantasise, the way artists think, irrationality, “surrealism”, the association game surrealism roots Euler’s sharks, based on misregonition, fragments, tablets, entertaining associations which what Richter rates or talks about from memory (?? Which is so representative of the fragmentation of subjectivity), based on fucking Magritte. Association to meaning, to language, “words align more meaning to us”… they repeat passages (the material entrails etc) cubisms damage 2 the sign, splitzing it into association game, bois kahnwiler, that Krauss essay on cubs, context language helps, Rosetta Stone, the soul and the fucking chicken, chickens being more efficient than plums, the understanding shit is interesting, “aesthetics fictionalising understanding” research art vs the fucking Clair bishop essay, “we excel at imagining spirits p 38, “what u don’t understand” meaning theacrtocality and leiske, everything looking like broody, blankness the fucking vacuum “Broodthaers is a discursive artist who pursues the withdrawal of meaning, and this, in turn, facilitates his art’s commodification” “broadcasting idea” docility and meaning, artist-refuser, the coat rack meaningless but investing something in it, that in turn makes it even more empty, one thing being another thing, being another thing, Magritte. the ecology of the mouth, site of exchange, incest, talking about your work, art as chastity on your dick, if you arnt the artist you have this (internalised facisism that you ) can’t touch it depression thru cadification, pain, self harm anhedonia, no fun, no fun my babe, no fun, victim hood a little life