Christina Barton
Lecturer in Art History
Victoria University of Wellington

'Running room'. It's the best term I've read lately to describe art's function. Running room is the mental breathing space art creates between life and experience, the productive gap for critical thinking. It's a term I like because it doesn't have too many pretensions but it gives art a task and grants it a place that is both relative and distinctive. It's not a new term, (it was first used by Karl Kraus at the beginning of the 20th century) but it has been brought back into play by Hal Foster, who calls for its strategic redeployment as a means to counter the trajectory of our moment. He's arguing against a world where everything is regarded as 'so much design', where everything is made to be consumed, where art is just another accessory. Does his plea for autonomy mean Foster was a modernist wolf in postmodernism's clothing? Or is he right to try to resist a situation he sees as capitalism's revenge on postmodernism? I don't know but I'd like to think these words are more than just wallpaper.

Hal Foster, 'Design and Crime' in Design and crime (and other diatribes), London: Verso, 2003.