Twenty-three years later, I get the feeling that the act of allusion has replaced the act of expression. Day by day, we rely on a subtext that either vanished or never existed, collectively waiting for someone else to fill in the gaps of what we thought we meant to say. Overstimulated and still bored – ahh hell – even the clearest of images have become too much to bear.

Because the more we try to deny it,
the more we become aware,
that behind all representation
lies an empty vessel of despair.

Tragedy and the Superflat, Daniel Moldoveanum https://www.spikeartmagazine.com/articles/tragedy-and-the-superflat

is it things moving through the world forming shapes, or is it shapes moving through the world forming things?

Since it is sure of its ability to control the entire domain of the visible and the audible via the laws governing commercial circulation and democratic communication, Empire no longer censors anything. All art, and all thought, is ruined when we accept this permission to consume, communicate, and enjoy. We should become pitiless censors of ourselves

— Alain Badiou,  2004

9. The only maxim of contemporary art is: Do not be imperial. This also means: Do not be democratic, if democracy implies conformity with the imperial idea of political liberty

— Alain Badiou, Fifteen Theses on Contemporary Art