Q: Hi, there. I was wondering how you situate this new project with relation to the project of the open university, specifically the third year of the graduate course. Whole range of ask you car teaches last ten years those books on modernism and it’s pivotal, and it also recently republished and focused upon 20th century. Obviously, there must be something for you to be considered, at least in terms of the market share and shifting books in book shop etc. So how does your project relate to that project?

RK: I promised I would not talk about that. So Yve-Alain has to talk about that.

Q: Why?

RK: Why? Cause I have very mean things to say about. My students one time, you know, I assigned as a text book and my students are all furious, because I had spent $75 on, you know, and I only assigned three of them. I basically told them all of it is just a junk, and they shouldn't bother reading it. So for them to invest all this money in this book that I told them was unreadable made them exceedingly angry and it’s one of the reasons we really felt we had to do this book.

EB: You are not very good at keeping your promises.

RK: You are right. I am an ego maniac.

EB: Could you speak less rapidly, because I don't understand the question.

Q: Yeah, yeah. Somebody raised the questions of relationship between your book, the present book on the discussion today and the Open University course on the art of the 20th century and I am pleased this is to come out as I said. I don't want to configuration about it as Adrian suggested. I do think it’s an issue which is worth addressing.

I hope to speak for a person in this room who seems to be raising the point, if I understood the point correctly, about the modernism. There is a question here about kind of the anecdotal history of your book and various issues which, the person in this room was saying, advertises the subject of the debate on the modernism, and I am tempted to agree with that. I think that in contrast to Rosalind’s remark which I really don't understand about the book which she recommended to here students. What I was saying before you asked me to clarify it was that having the fact that there are several Open University courses with many books. Some of which has been internally produced the one in 1980's some of which has been co-produced, you books produced by Thames and Hudson and ours produced by Yale.

Now, the current series of the book which has been in the market last 2 years in indeed on the art of the 20th century which is very much same kind of territory that your book covers. It covers in a very different way I think it's quite interesting to look at the way in which your book and our series of the books approaches the similar area which is to say modernism, at the time of modernism, anti-modernism and post-modernism. We defeat this in significantly different ways. I'd rather, my mode would call it a vacant of complement, I think, to think this enormous book has been produced some kind of repost to something we did in the past.

I don’t really, I need clarification on that. I think, I would really want to talk about the question of modernism, how you conceive modernism, how you conceive the concept of medium specificity and indeed, perhaps, without wanting to find the frames, how you think your project differs from what you think our project is, and maybe we could speak to what we think we are doing as well. So if that gives a bit of focus to the debate, about how we represent the art of 20th century and then I'm all follow it.

RK: Are you addressing your question to me, or to Yve-Alain?

YB: I think to both of us. And one thing which I, the relationship between our book and Open University book. I can't answer it at all, because I've never read the Open University books. I didn't have them, I didn’t use them so I don't ever how many books there are I am totally open university virgin. So I cannot. The issue of the definition of modernism, anti-modernism and post-modernism, is indeed very open. I think, as far as modernism is concerned, we took a fairly, you know, fairly ecumenical notion of arts that is involved with some kind of reflexivity and tries to address the issue of modernity in a reflective way. I think that's a kind of the working definition of modernism.

RK: Well, my response to what's you are raising would be that one things that happens in the open university volumes is that the theoretical frameworks for discussing various phases of the history of modern art, those frame works are incorporated into the discussion. They are sort of the discussion of history is made...I am sorry, you know, you cannot pull it away from these theoretical matrices and I am thinking particularly of the cubism and collage discussion which is completely permeated by notions of semiology. And what we wanted to do in, you know, by deciding that we would have these methodological introductions is that we wanted to pull all those tools away from the places where they would be incorporated into the text. And, you know, through that separation, this was again kind of pedagogical decision, what it meant was that someone using the book could understand, you know, when semiological language or issues, you know, when those things appear, when they get applied, let's say, to various moments of the history of art. You would recognize them and you would understand, "Oh, there we were talking about the index, there we were talking about something else." So, my feeling about or my criticism of the Open University textbooks is what I've just said, that I think sort of infiltration of this sort of theoretical tools into the historical discussion in those books is inapt and confusing. Voila.

Q: Can I just add something... Is this thing on?

RK: You should need to put your microphone close to your mouse, because it's very hard to hear you.

Q: Can you hear? OK. I do have to go back into history finally here. Because this question is a relationship of theory to the history is a significant issue. And in the course which began in 1983, I think it was, 1981 or 1983, we, the people who was involved in producing the course, which was a course "modern art and modernism", that actually was prefaced by a theoretical introduction.

The methodology of the course was going to follow which was at that date, fairly straight forward social history of art methodology which is historical materialism set games in very polemical way what was seeing the idealism of the formalist modernism. Now, the book to which Rosalind is referring is essentially one essay in four of the books which came out in 1993, is completely out of date in terms of our work. It's not even a part of the course on art of 20th century, which is much wider worse. But, one thing across in this correct to point out is we no longer separate the theory and the methodology from the history. We tried produce, this is the term which I am not happy with, but we tried to produce a pluralistic course with many different voices one of which happen to use semiology in fact Russian socialist semiology, as the way of analyzing cubism that is only one part of the much larger enterprise. I want to rather talk about is the current course which does address the art of 20th century which has not four authors in a way that your book has, but almost 20 authors and equally wide ranging treatment of the art of the 20th century, not just painting but installation performance so on and so forth. The way in which we decided to approach that with not to isolate the theoretical apparatus of the beginning in the shape of four essays and one formalism socialist art whatever. But, the devise we took is to begin in hear and now to operate with kind of archeology rather than chronology. We would look at a series of individual works much like Yve-Alain talked about earlier. Work of abstract modernist painting, Duchamp ready-made, work of expand field we would unlabeled problems from that. And then take a step back and look at the chronology of the 20th century from the variety of different perspectives to do with gender studies, globalization, formalism and so forth.

So the reader will end up with something like Yve-Alain's kaleidoscope. They would be able to form a past way through different points of view without prescribing yet at the same time being quite reflexive about the problems and issues we wanted to bring out in an open ended way.

There is a way in which the philosophy which might occur next within our disciplines, is already underpinning the terms of the debate in which we are now working, just as the deconstruction was chipping away at high structuralism when we were first begin to learn high structuralism. And I kind of like to return, I think is very important, into question of temporalities and actually what I kind of find interesting about this book is exclude your model but the temporality is very porous. This whole so called chronology is kind very porous and very open grid, through which different positions can work. Maybe that next project that is something we should be doing here over the next years or actually looking at this models side by side and looking at these histories of pedagogy and if it's that all important I don't know if you do and suffocated by that but that's kind of seems to be the dimension of the debate and if we can come back to this later it would be great. I'm not quite sure if we can pick it out in detail now. I don't want to, you know, stop the question.

AR: Thank you.

RK: Thank you.

AR: We seem to be moving back in the way used to the question. So, yes, that rose still. OK. Who's next? One is in little further back.