Consequences of a Duchampian accelerationism [2]

Kojin Karatani discusses Marcel Duchamp practice in terms of what he calls ‘bracketing’, which actively focuses on specific experiences of an object while ignoring or putting aside others; “with Immanuel Kant it became clear that what makes art art is the subjective act of bracketing other concerns,” which Karatani will explicitly state connects art to commodification. While the roots of the assessment are to be found in Kant’s notion of the aesthetic, the actualization of such a perspective is announced in and through Duchamp’s readymade aesthetic and its overt challenge to the central conception of the art object under modernity. The consequence of a Duchampian form of accelerationist aesthetics is the need to recognize the object, not as the source or origin but rather the black hole of subjection, a process the readymade actively speeds up.