Correspondence from Tim Brennan to Richard Carew 6 August 2010

Dear Richard Carew,

Many thanks for your letter dated 17 July. Your reflections upon your own motivations of enquiry into our material past are extremely useful in relation to the work I pursue. I can see why you might have reservations as to the naming of my practice as ‘radical’. Indeed one of our more recent humanist scholars, Raymond Williams suggested that any venture that is publicised as being ‘radical’ invariably is not. And so I am taking a gamble here.

My approach has been to enquire into our ‘doing of history’ and to free the material traces of this process (processes) from contemporary categorisation. Examples might involve the following objects that emerge from artistic and historical events are often understood within the terms of sculpture; ‘artefact’ (professional); ‘find’ (amateur/professional) or ‘antique’ (commercial). There is interplay and slippage between their status but ultimately, as taxonomical conventions, they go unquestioned. In 2010, this limits our ability to understand the entire materiality of our lives beyond that of the saleable (commodification). I am therefore calling upon the terms of, ‘Antiquarianism’ as a means to manoeuvre through this problem. ‘Antiquarianism’ for yourself was perhaps ‘radical’ in the sense that it was ‘new’. It is ‘radical’ now, in part because it is ‘old’.

I will indeed consider the use of the walking stick beyond that of its practical function. It is as much a ‘wand’, ‘pencil’ or ‘spade’ etc. as it is a tool for steadying oneself along a walked path. I am looking forward to peering through that which appears obvious ‘to define the outlines of oppressione and conflicte that stande beneathe, before and above’ us.

I feel that we have a close affinity with regard to the above.

Kind regards

Tim Brennan