I’m Totally, Like, Not An Expert In Anything At All
Sandee Moore
(Presentation script)

(Move to podium where there is a pile of books.)
“Having already given myself away, I am now going to present myself to you as an expert—in the uniform of the expert.”
(Slides of experts in their uniforms. Point imperiously to have technician change the slides.)
(Put on Glasses, labcoat, tie, false beard)
“The uniform functions as a parergon. It frames the authority of the individual wearing it. While the uniform is not the substance of authority, it could easily be switched with another uniform without disturbing its function to signal authority, it is the frame that produces authority. When I present myself as an expert, I take away your power,to question and to doubt.”
(Pick a bookk from the podieum and read:)
“The expert, exemplified for Levi-Strauss in the engineer, chooses his tools in order to “create events [change the world] by means of structures.” Levi-Strauss, The Savage Mind, P. 22. The expert produces: produces structures, produces disciplines, produces knowledge, produces boundaries. One of the dangers of expert structures is that they risk becoming totalizing discourses. To quote Alan Taylor on Deleuze and Guttari, “A totalizing theory will see the entire world through its own lens, and will then, in turn, construct the world according to that lens.
Perhaps it is time to set aside the lens (or lenses) of theory…””
(Take off glasses.)
“The bricoleur, which can be translated into English as “Jack-of-all-trades,” creates structures by means of events. Levi-Strauss, The Savage Mind P.22. Or, in other words, the bricoleur responds to the world rather than creates it. Levi-Strauss positions the bricoleur as the inverse of the engineer (expert). This inverse relationship does not make the bricoleur and the engineer binary opposites, but rather acknowledges that they perform the same functions differently.” (Read from book)
“The Savage Mind, P.17: [The bricoleur’s] universe of instruments is closed (if extensive, nevertheless limited) and the rules of his game are always to do with “whatever is at hand.” The bricoleur’s elements are specialized up to a point, sufficiently for the bricoleur not to need the equipment and knowledge of all trades, but not enough for each of them to have only one definite and determinate use.
“Suzanne Lotbiniere-Harwood makes a call for models of academic speech that do not mimic the authorititarian (and masculine) structures that have been the standard. She says “…it’s not “papers” we give, it’s our bodies. It’s the words they have written we come to translate through our bodies.” (La Voir Sa Voix, Lotbiniere-Harwood, P. 25)
“The expert model leaves out the body and social relations. It is a lens that reproduces its own point of view. Likewise, (masculine) disembodied, asocial discourse tends to reproduce itself, even through female subjects. Lotbiniere-Harwood puts forth the challenge to find new ways of speaking that are not framed by traditional models of (totalizing) discourse.
“These footnotes and references to theorists—the language of the expert that I have donned, as I donned my expert uniform—lend authority to my utterances.”
(Show slide of bibliography page)
“And what do these discourses become in the hands of a bricoleur?”
(Take of all of the trappings of the expert and lay on podium.)
“If I am taking things--theories, objects, thoughts--
(gesture to screen and to costume)
“out their original structure and using them in unexpected ways, ways different their single intended function, am I being irresponsible? Or could this possibly be a strategy for transforming and translating my sources through my body, my subjectivity. Is it a possibility for a non-totalizing, non-authoritative structure?”
“ I fear that I am half-baked.”
(Take out toaster oven and set on table. Plug it in and preheat oven to 375.)
“I have slipped into the subjective and pliable language of metaphor. I seek to produce meaning through a decidedly non-authoritative activity—baking!”
(Don uniform of non-authority, the apron. Set out and name the bricoleur’s materials: cat food tins, flour, sugar, baking soda, cocoa, vinegar, baking soda, oil, bowl.)
“I wanted to transform something else into a bowl for this talk. But everywhere I looked, there were bowls. If I am going to adopt the model of the bricoleur, I should use the materials at hand—even in those incidences where they are a perfect fit and can be used for their intended purpose.”
(Dump dry ingredients into the bowl.)
(Ask audience:) “Does anyone have a pen I could borrow?”
“ What I find so attractive about the model of the bricoleur is the ability to adapt when one does not have the “right” tool for the job…like a mixing spoon. In a way the bricoleur subverts the notion of protocol and rigid structure by transforming materials and using them in unexpected ways.”
(Take pen from audience member and begin mixing the cake batter.)
(Politely to the technician:) “Tammy, may I please have the next slide?” (Show slide of piles of cake ingredients being mixed together.)
“The bricoleur takes elements of different disciplines and mixes them in, perhaps, unconventional ways to create a unique product. Experts are often bound in and by their discreet disciplines. The bricoleur is an acknowledged “non-expert.” (In all fairness, I must acknowledge that activity of experts is always overflowing the boundaries of their fields…)”
(Ask the audience:) “Are there any experts in the room who would like to overflow their boundaries (though not overflow this bowl, please) and contribute their expertise to this project?”
(Take mixing bowl and pen to audience and have them stir and pass the bowl along. Borrow coffee without asking from somene in the audience, add with oil to the batter.)
( Ask the technician politely to display the Wochenklausure slides.)
“It is the belief of the Austrian group Wokenklausure that the isolation of experts from each other in expert communities bounded by discipline can be unproductive and even dangerous.”
(Speaking in an exaggerated Valley-girl accent:) “I think we all know the of that famous story of how the atom bomb was invented… A bunch of scientists out in the desert working on top-secret stuff… And not even bothering to think about or find out how it would all be put together… They were so immersed in the concerns of their own projects and disciplines… They were totally spaced out when it came to seeing the big picture.”
“Okay, let’s get cooking! What will be the outcome of our interdisciplinary mixing and baking ideas today?”
(Add vinegar to batter, stir, pour into catfood tins and put in oven.)
(Ask technician meekly for slide to be changed.)
“For each Wokenklausure (week enclosure) project, the Wokenklausure artists bring together a number of experts to discuss, propose and act on solutions to a specific, local issue—lack of medical care for Vienna’s homeless, Geneva’s public and embarrassing drug problem, and so on. The experts are “enclosed” for the number of weeks indicated in the title of the piece and brought into dialogue. Wokenclausure has found that for meaningful dialogue to take place, the experts must stop bumping up against one another’s expert fields (force fields) and interact on a human and social level.”
(Ask technician meekly for slide to be changed.)
“Thus, meetings between the experts are structured more like social outings—they lunch on a boat in Lac Leman or go tenting. Some examples of holistic solutions proposed by Wochenklausure are: a mobile ambulance service for the homeless, recycling beer cans into flooring for pulic buildings, and integration programs for drug users.”
(Ask technician meekly for slide to be changed.)
“While Wokenklausure brings together experts from different disciplines to work together, crossing the boundaries of disciplines to enact multi-disciplinary projects set in the social realm, they are still based in expert culture. The project carried out by the group in Geneva exposes Wokenklausure’s bias towards the expert and the exclusion of the non-expert. A group of experts, including social experts, chemical dependency experts, doctors, and psychologists, spent 8 weeks planning rehabilitation programs, needle exchanges, peer network programs and made plans to construct a half-way house for recovering addicts in downtown Geneva.
“When they heard of the plan, residents in the neighbourhood where the half-way house was to be located protested. They did not want the half-way house in their neighbourhood. The experts failed to consult the non-experts, and the division between expert and non-expert was maintained or deepened.
“Wokenklausure retain their position (of authority) as experts in their field--art. While they facilitate useful and productive dialogue across disciplines, in the end their work is always framed as art. Wokenklausure founding member, Wolfgang Zinggl, is adamant that Wokenklausure’s activities are not social work or activism, but ART. “[Wokenklausure],” he says, “is based on ideas from the discourse of art.”
“Interestingly, Levi-Strauss sees the activity of the artist as in-between or as a hybrid of the methods of the bricoleur and the engineer. The artist takes elements from other structures and fits them into the structure that she is producing through her own actions. Thus, bringing discourses from outside of art and placing them within an art structure is consistent with this model of the artist.
(Speaking in a non-authoritative Valley-girl accent:) “But, like, what if one were to, like, totally give it up. I mean, to relinquish the discipline in which they are recognized as an expert? …As well as the expert walk, the expert talk?”
(Beg to have the slide changed, “I’m sorry, could I please—could you just, yes, thank you.” A new slide of Lygia Clark’s relational objects appears on the screen. )
“The theraputic practice of Lygia Clark presents a radical rejection of specialization. In the late seventies and eighties, Clark rejected the category of “artist” and refused to have her work bracketed off from life through naming it art.
(Beg technician to change the slide.)
“She produced a series of “relational objects” made of common materials—sand, plastic bags, stones, air, shells, water, Styrofoam, nylon stockings, fabric and so on. These objects only had meaning in relation to the body; they had to be manipulated to be experienced. This is at odds with the traditional presentation and reception of art, where the artwork is percieved as having the authority to convey an experience or idea.
“Clark melded the practice of art with the practice of therapy. When these relational objects were applied to the patient’s body, they were able to experience their body as a whole—confusing inside and outside, animal and beast and awakening memory.”
(Beg technician to change the slide.)
“ Clark’s activity here is like the bricoleur—she takes unlikely materials and makes them conduits for experiencing the body. She eschews the traditional tools and discourse of therapy and art for the materials at hand. Furthermore, she has rejected her expert label, naming herself neither artist nor therapist.
“Her project is radically democratic—anyone can make a relational object. Clark is well-known for her propositions, instructions for the creation of a relational object using everyday materials.
“Anyone can be a bricoleur.
“Anyone can take a stone and place it in the corner of a plastic bag inflated with air and experience their body through this object.
“Anyone can bake a cake.
“The bricoleur is a democratic model for transforming the material and discursive environment. “All too soon I’m done.
(Open toaster oven door and pull out the cakes baking in catfood tins.)
“Or not done, half-baked. When I strip away the guise of the expert I am not uncovering a truth; I am just crossing over (crossing dressing) in another role. What happens when we go beyond boundary crossing,
(Stick finger in cake when I say “sticky”)
“when we create sticky areas of non-discipline, non-expert discourse? Being a non-expert means that one can move fluidly between disciplines—unframed and unbounded. It is to take the materials at hand and create one’s own practice.
“It is also to be without the frame of authority. One still has a voice, but is that voice acknowledged? When I say “like totally”, does that make what I’m saying like totally less important? Without an expert category, without a defined discourse to inhabit, can one find a place in the world? Will the in between and non-practices simply become part of the totalizing discourse when seen through its own lens, like the work of Lygia Clark, which is now being named and framed as art. Witness her recent retrospective at the Palais des Beaux Arts in Paris where propositions, like the bag with the stone, created by the artist are placed on pedastals and given more weight and worth than those created by ordinary people.
“Will these sticky non-practices—and I resort to metaphor again, maybe because it resists conforming to one single meaning—will these sticky non-practices be consumed by the totalizing discourse of expert culture?
(Lick half-baked cake batter off of finger.)