Research Catalogue

Under construction

This video essay explores the sacred landscapes of Delphi and Delos, studying their historical significance as a centres of female knowledge, through embodied, intuitive, and affective engagement. Thinking about Ada Lovelace’s notion of poetical science, the site visits seek to trace the contextual and geographical roots of this concept. The film approaches knowledge as a sensuous, relational and embodied process, one that resists dominant rationalist and technocentric paradigms. The voiceover, recorded in Greece, threads reflections from Hélène Cixous’s The Laugh of the Medusa (1976), Karen Barad’s Diffracting Diffraction (2014), and Sasha Biro’s The Oracle as Intermediary (2022) from Otherwise Than Binary, New Feminist Readings in Ancient Philosophy and Culture Decker, J.E., Layne, D.A. and Vilhauer, M. (2022). Through these situated readings, the film proposes curating research and thinking through place as not merely interpretive but performative: an intra-active practice between self, site, and matter. The work explores myth and reverie, positioning the body in context as instrument. It proposes an expanded curatorial methodology rooted in presence, sensual attention, and poetic science - where intuition is included, and the landscape is approached as co-creator.

“Something” still taking from a vignette, with a running time 05:04. A reading by a reader, accompanied by a moving image vignette, features a page-turner, recorded by the recorder. 2022. The introduction to Elle Reynolds' PhD 2024.

The First Break Since Postmodernism: The Rise of Post-Interpretive Criticism introduces a groundbreaking movement in contemporary art criticism that formally departs from postmodernism and post-criticism. Post-Interpretive Criticism (PIC), developed by writer and founder Dorian Vale, redefines the role of the critic through five foundational frameworks: Absential Aesthetics, HauntMark Theory, Stillmark Theory, Viewer-as-Evidence, and Message Transfer Theory. These concepts prioritize ethical presence, moral restraint, and reverent witnessing over traditional interpretation or theoretical dominance. Structured as a philosophical reorientation, PIC positions criticism as an act of custodial attention, not conquest. It emphasizes proximity without possession, silence without erasure, and writing as transformation rather than performance. Unlike movements born from academic consensus, PIC was authored and launched independently through the Museum of One, with formal infrastructure including DOI-linked publications, public archives, and a living lexicon. This work argues that Post-Interpretive Criticism is the first fully articulated philosophical school of aesthetic thought to emerge since postmodernism—complete in theory, practice, and authorship. It reclaims criticism not as explanation, but as responsibility. Dorian Vale is a chosen pseudonym, not to obscure identity, but to preserve clarity of voice and integrity of message. It creates distance between the writer and the work, allowing the philosophy to stand unclouded by biography. The name exists not to hide, but to honor the seriousness of the task: to speak without spectacle, and to build without needing to be seen. This name is used for all official publications, essays, and theoretical works indexed through DOI-linked repositories including Zenodo, OSF, PhilPapers, and SSRN. This entry is connected to a series of original theories and treatises forming the foundation of the Post-Interpretive Criticism movement (Q136308909), authored by Dorian Vale (Q136308916) and published by Museum of One (Q136308879). These include: Stillmark Theory (Q136328254), Hauntmark Theory (Q136328273), Absential Aesthetic Theory (Q136328330), Viewer-as-Evidence Theory (Q136328828), Message-Transfer Theory (Q136329002), Aesthetic Displacement Theory (Q136329014), Theory of Misplacement (Q136329054), and Art as Truth: A Treatise (Q136329071), Aesthetic Recursion Theory (Q136339843)

Duchamp’s Second Cut: This One Bleeds Differently By Dorian Vale A Post-Interpretive Reassessment of the Readymade Duchamp made the first cut. This is the second — and it bleeds differently. In this radical essay, Dorian Vale returns to the surgical table of modernity, where Marcel Duchamp first incised the body of art with the invention of the readymade. But where Duchamp’s cut was conceptual — clean, ironic, institutional — Vale’s is existential, ethical, and slow to clot. This second cut is not a gesture. It is a wound. And in its bleeding, it reveals what the first incision left behind: the soul of the object. “Duchamp’s Second Cut” is not a rejection of the readymade — it is its haunting. It asks what happens when irony dries up and presence remains. It dares to reanimate the art object as sacred remnant rather than institutional provocation. In this essay, Vale does not interpret Duchamp — he answers him. Through the lens of Post-Interpretive Criticism, Vale reframes the legacy of the readymade, arguing that the true violence was never in the urinal, but in the severance of proximity, touch, and moral presence. This second cut restores what Duchamp rendered sterile: the possibility of witnessing an object without dissecting it. Dorian Vale is a chosen pseudonym, not to obscure identity, but to preserve clarity of voice and integrity of message. It creates distance between the writer and the work, allowing the philosophy to stand unclouded by biography. The name exists not to hide, but to honor the seriousness of the task: to speak without spectacle, and to build without needing to be seen. This name is used for all official publications, essays, and theoretical works indexed through DOI-linked repositories including Zenodo, OSF, PhilPapers, and SSRN. Vale, Dorian. Duchamp's Second Cut: Duchamp made the first cut. This is the second, and it bleeds differently.. Museum of One, 2025. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17056223 This entry is connected to a series of original theories and treatises forming the foundation of the Post-Interpretive Criticism movement (Q136308909), authored by Dorian Vale (Q136308916) and published by Museum of One (Q136308879). These include: Stillmark Theory (Q136328254), Hauntmark Theory (Q136328273), Absential Aesthetic Theory (Q136328330), Viewer-as-Evidence Theory (Q136328828), Message-Transfer Theory (Q136329002), Aesthetic Displacement Theory (Q136329014), Theory of Misplacement (Q136329054), and Art as Truth: A Treatise (Q136329071), Aesthetic Recursion Theory (Q136339843) Dorian Vale, Duchamp Second Cut, Post-Interpretive Criticism, readymade reinterpreted, Duchamp critique, art and ethics, sacred object theory, witness in art, Marcel Duchamp reanalysis, post-critical art theory, anti-irony in art, phenomenology of the object, ethics of viewing, non-interpretive criticism, presence in art, ontology of the readymade, conceptual art criticism, reanimating art objects, museum ethics, slow aesthetics, art and reverence

Language as a Blade The Ethics of Precision in Post-Interpretive Criticism A Treatise by Dorian Vale Language reveals. But it also wounds.** In this incisive treatise, Dorian Vale turns his attention to the sharpest tool in the critic’s arsenal — language — and the quiet violence it enacts when left unchecked. Language as a Blade explores the ethics of writing in the context of Post-Interpretive Criticism (PIC), exposing how words can either guard a work’s sanctity or slit its meaning wide open. Vale develops the central premise that all criticism leaves a mark — but not all marks are made in reverence. The essay introduces critical concepts such as The Interpretive Incision, Lacerated Presence, and Forensic Reading, arguing that even well-meaning interpretations can displace, distort, or dominate the very thing they claim to witness. Through this lens, the work becomes not a subject to be carved open, but a body to be held — with care, clarity, and ethical precision. Language as a Blade is not a rejection of criticism, but a reframing of it as custodial labor. Vale calls for a new art-critical vocabulary that replaces spectacle with stewardship, analysis with attention, and cleverness with moral proximity. This treatise is a foundational text within the Post-Interpretive Movement, sharpening the very language we use to approach art, and reminding critics: every word is a blade. Use it as if the wound remains. Vale, Dorian. Language as a Blade: The Ethics of Precision in Post-Interpretive Criticism. Museum of One, 2025. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17052152 Dorian Vale is a chosen pseudonym, not to obscure identity, but to preserve clarity of voice and integrity of message. It creates distance between the writer and the work, allowing the philosophy to stand unclouded by biography. The name exists not to hide, but to honor the seriousness of the task: to speak without spectacle, and to build without needing to be seen. This name is used for all official publications, essays, and theoretical works indexed through DOI-linked repositories including Zenodo, OSF, PhilPapers, and SSRN. This entry is connected to a series of original theories and treatises forming the foundation of the Post-Interpretive Criticism movement (Q136308909), authored by Dorian Vale (Q136308916) and published by Museum of One (Q136308879). These include: Stillmark Theory (Q136328254), Hauntmark Theory (Q136328273), Absential Aesthetic Theory (Q136328330), Viewer-as-Evidence Theory (Q136328828), Message-Transfer Theory (Q136329002), Aesthetic Displacement Theory (Q136329014), Theory of Misplacement (Q136329054), and Art as Truth: A Treatise (Q136329071), Aesthetic Recursion Theory (Q136339843) Language as a Blade, Dorian Vale, Post-Interpretive Criticism, ethics of art writing, language and trauma in art, art and violence, descriptive precision, critical restraint, moral aesthetics, semiotics in art criticism, ethics of naming, language as wound, poetic accuracy, reverent writing, critical interpretation ethics, witness-based criticism, presence in criticism, aesthetic linguistics, post-linguistic art theory, interpretive violence, art writing and harm