Art suspends ordinary operations and provokes productive puzzlement

Evidence

The experience of art as a special kind of attentional entanglement has something to do with that sort of puzzlement. We move across the world encountering lots of familiar things, and in their familiarity we are able, for the most part, to pass by with little to no reckoning. We do not often stop at a door to consider the nature of doors (in general) or the configuration and qualities of the door before us (in its particularities). And not every door that did stop us and request our attention would be a work of art. But a work of art on a door (or, as a door) would indeed occasion just such a suspension of ordinary operations. In such suspended moments an activity of not-being-sure sprouts, takes root, sends up a sprig, and FLOWERS. — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 384

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Leaving unfilled space in art lets rare events gain significance — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on…, 428