I LOVE MY IGNORANCE OF THE FUTURE THE 2019 COLUMBIA MFA THESIS EXHIBITION “Will you allow as a certainty that we are at a turning point? — If it is a certainty it is not a turning.1
1 Maurice Blanchot.
In Maurice Blanchot’s “The Infinite Conversation” a chapter called On a Change of Epoch: The Exigency of Return asserts that one can never know when one is in the middle of a turning point. In the same chapter, Blanchot reminds us that Nietzche later revised his own statement ‘I love my ignorance of the future’ to ‘I love the uncertainty of the future’, in a way allowing for a more palatable version of the first statement. Either way, the idea is that the only thing we truly know, is that we don’t know. Of the significance of the statement, Blanchot relates, “do not be impatient to the point of anticipating by a too resolute seeking what is in store for you. Do not simplify. But there is this uncertainty; the ignorance borne by the hazardous traits of the future. 2 {…} It is safe to say that uncertainty of the future looms especially large throughout the 2nd year of Columbia’s MFA program (or any graduate program for that matter) be it for the preparation of the thesis exhibition itself, or for the coming aftermath of the MFA program — or a nice cocktail of both! It is a particularly trying time when a certainty of many details must be secured amidst feelings of great uncertainty. Fortunately for art students, ‘the unknown’ should by now be a dear old acquaintance, returning as they do each time to blank pages and canvases, empty screens, and unformed material. The studio becomes a place to gamble with the unknown. It is a brave act that often goes underappreciated. Learning to love the unknown echoes Rebecca Solnit’s rumination on the ‘unforeseen’ in her book, Getting Lost: “How do you calculate upon the unforeseen? It seems to be an art of recognizing the role of the unforeseen, of keeping your balance amid surprises, of collaborating with chance, of recognizing that there are some essential mysteries in the world and thereby a limit to calculation, to plan, to control.
4
“On the Change of Epoch: The Exigency of Return.” The Infinite Conversation. Translation and foreward by Susan Hanson. Theory and History of Literature, Volume 82. University of Minnesota press, Minneapolis and London. Page 264.
2 Ibid, 280.
