That Bush, is Not Burning! is a publication where written content is delivered to your email address. Content covers historical research, book reviews, art criticism, and independent essays by Bailey Sheehan/ and other artists and writers. An archive of writings published prior to ‘your’ signing up is available for purchase.

This method of distribution seems most ethical.

Let me explain:

(sometimes)   art criticism can bestow qualities and actions unto an object that are outside what is empirically given. These fictive qualities that are effectuated by art speak often go on to produce real affect, which in turn stands to be— manipulated.

(I can’t stand) that— art is often denied any objecthood of its own. An art that is documenting or interpreting some other thing is digested under the assumption that said art object is less than a thing than that which it is documenting.

So, to paraphrase academic Steven Shaviro, this publication will be interested more in effect than cause, and “evocation rather than explanation”.

Art criticism and critical thought do not represent the institution of art— they are an active participant in the institution of art, and help to constitute its hegemony. Thus the writer needs to be aware that their work is inevitably productive, and must then work to minimize the destructive capacity of that production. We should start by retreating into a network that is somewhat enclosed. Here the writer may set ethicals bounds to their practice (the annihilation of: metaphor, symbology, virtue signaling, etc) in an arena that encourages an understanding that, even though those bounds will never be met there is greater pleasure in that failure than the comfort that accompanies succumbing to our institutional training. That Bush is Not Burning, will attempt to detail exactly what an ethical writing practice and an even power exchange between the many institutions of art and their constituents may look like through both exposition and implemented practice.