"I Prefer Not To"

"I Prefer Not To": Gestures of Refusal and Disobedience

When Herman Melville's famously disobedient Bartleby the Scrivener utters the words "I prefer not to," he denounces an entire system of choice, demonstrating a mode of behavior that moves beyond structures of acceptance and negation. My thesis investigates the possibility of resistance in art, examining strategies of refusal and disobedience. I pose the question of whether gestures of refusal in art can function as nonverbal attempts to express political discontent. These gestures may be read as counterstrategies to traditional, more openly political artistic practices. Such small, almost banal works may risk going unnoticed; their political importance is not necessary visible, and often not explicitly stated. The works presented in this inquiry thus invoke an understanding of subversion as an almost unperceivable act, a strategy that seeps subtly into social consciousness. Such gestures function as something like stumbling stones—obstacles that disrupt, redirect, or sabotage the flow of the everyday. Proceeding through close readings of a number of recent art practices, I explore gestures such as falling, standing still, and crossing out in the works of Bas Jan Ader, Johanna Billing, Jiri Kovanda, Lotty Rosenfeld, and others.