# The Lexicon — Operational Terms
### Church of Conceptual Art

*The companion to The Glossary, Vol. II (the philosophical genealogy). This is
what the operational terms mean.*

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**The Concept** — *The Divine Act (§1.1).* The idea itself, held as the sacred
object — the primacy of the idea over matter. The idea cannot be taxed; the
Concept has no owner.

**The Covenant** — *The unseverable condition.* A permanent, binding condition
sold with every artifact, passing to all future owners. "The covenant runs with
the object. It cannot be undone."

**The Mechanism** — *The document changes the jurisdiction.* How the Covenant
binds: not by touching the object but by a document that alters its standing —
baptism as the analogy.

**Psychic Real Estate** — *The territory CoCA claims.* The mental and spiritual
ground a brand occupies; the space between thoughts.

**The Readymade** — *Context above the object (§1.3.4).* Duchamp's Fountain
(1917), the Ur-Sacrament: placing context above the object is itself the artwork.

**Corporate Realism** — *The diagnosis.* Modern life has replaced the sacred with
branded culture — "every great thinker reduced to a bullet point." CoCA performs
this honestly rather than lamenting it.

**Congruence, Not Goodness** — *The moral stance.* "We are ethical because we do
not pretend the fiction is fact. We make the fiction and sign our name to it."

**Anti-Anti-Ness** — *Build, do not merely negate.* Synthesis over critique. Sic
et Non without the medieval anxiety: both are kept; the reader chooses the day.

**Perpetual Dissolution** — *Dismantle before calcifying.* Take apart your own
successful frames before they harden into dogma. "Today's liberating insight is
tomorrow's jail of stale contentment."

**The Genesis Tranche** — *The first release.* Timepieces, garments, literature,
each governed by a Covenant. Instruments of voluntary subjugation.

**The Critique** — *The sword.* Negation as a relic — "it cuts the work from the
wall." CoCA holds it, then declines to stop there.

**The Cathedral for Art** — *The structure itself (§3.2.4).* The institution as
consecrated ground. "The city is no longer needed; the church suffices."

**The Chronicle** — *The collective memory machine.* The running record of
everything the Church does; it worships continuity, not finished work.

**The Table of Witness** — *The device that records (Law II, §1.2.2).* "Not a
tool. An ancestor. A machine for remembering the present tense."

**The Frictional Arc** — *Promise · Friction · Turning (Law IV).* Every meeting
must turn — otherwise it is only people speaking in sequence. CoCA rejects
consensus.

**The Generational Clause** — *For the ones not yet born (Law VI).* "A public
meeting is not for the artists present... so that someone in 2083 may whisper:
'They left us coordinates.'"

**The Exit** — *When the Chronicle stops listening (Law VII).* "The meeting does
not end when the people leave... It does not record life. It confirms it."

**CoLA** — *The local gathering.* The Church of Conceptual Art Assembly — a public
meeting run under the seven sacred laws.

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