The Wrong Place

Abstract

It occurred to me some time ago that among many of my art and academic friends, the success and viability of one's work is now measured in proportion to the accumulation of frequent flyer miles. The more we travel for work, the more we are called upon to provide institutions in other parts of the country and the world with our presence and services; the more we give into the logic of nomadism, one could say, as pressured by a mobilized capitalist economy, the more we are made to feel wanted, needed, validated, and relevant. It seems our very sense of self-worth is predicated more and more on our suffering through the inconveniences and psychic destabilizations of ungrounded transience, of not being at home (or not having a home), of always traversing through elsewheres. Whether we enjoy it or not, we are culturally and economically rewarded for enduring the “wrong” place. It seems we're out of place all too often.

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Miwon Kwon

Miwon Kwon is Assistant Professor in the Department of Art History at UCLA and teaches in the MFA in Visual Art Program at Vermont College. She is also a founding editor of Documents, a journal of art, culture, and criticism.