A Certain Lack of Coherence

Artists Must Begin Helping Themselves

Interview with a 10,000 Year Old Artist

"A Certain Lack of Coherence
Writings on Art and Cultural Politics

Jimmie Durham, writer, sculptor, performance artist and poet, is one of the most controversial figures in contemporary culture. This anthology of writings ranges from his appeals to the American Indian nations for strength and unity of purpose in combating the corrosive effects of colonialism, to his acerbic critics of Western culture and its redemptive myths of the “Other”. For Durham, art and its institutions are not separable from political realities; the West’s representations of ethnic and cultural authenticity, its constructions of primitivism and aesthetic value are intimately bound to discourses of colonialism and racism. The author’s keen understanding of historical process and witty subversions of Western thought challenge any complacent attitudes we may harbour on multiculturalism and offer a model of how we might think and act differently about the world.