Last month I had to write a new promotional blurb for the Surrealist Training Circus, the other creative child I care for these days. Like the terrible speller I am, I referred a number of times to the circus's choice to make spectacles at Bard College in response to the threat of Apocalypse as 'Upsurd'. My editor/boss/mentor Paul responded that, evocative and apt as this creative spelling was, it was incorrect. I cringed.
The circus, though, is definitely UPsurd. Though irrational (beyond rational?) in nature, working on it makes me feel empowered and optimistic, and it is designed to make all participants and spectators feel that way, too.
Most of my experience right now is not so UP, though, but also is not so emotionally neutral as to be called AB(surd). I am scared by most facts and tidbits of news, by the pile of trash I haul around, the overarching feeling that I am ending my schooling in to a petrifying moment to be alive, and that in my lifetime the planet will become only more unweildy and the urge to comprehend will only be more strong. I find the act of articulating this fear empowering, despite its inherent futility, because I am grasping at some sort of ownership, and as a consumer and a creator, ownership feels good. I can't catagorize this work as depressing. I choose to do my year's body of learning in to the messy, insular, impractical mode of Studio Arts. The work I am doing and the body of knowledge that informs it make me feel both gloom and lightness. It is that funny-depressingness that exists when I stumble on something that should only be funny if it is not actually depressing (real), but is depressing, shouldn't be funny . Whatever makes I or you feel this way a peice of one big, greater something. There is only one force that makes you laugh as you hold you head in your hands, and that is what I am feeling, drawing from, working for. It is DOWNSURD.
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Midway and Personal Complicity in Danger
Monday was my midway board. I expected it to be low-key, and to feel in control. I cleaned up my studio, and made a list of questions, specific quandries I wanted advice on. I never looked at the list once during the hour. I anticipated entirely wrong.
I felt like over the course of the hour Julianne went through the internal process I went through over the past few months. Being excited, coming to realize the delusional grandeur and potentially preachy elements of my ambitions, and then finally reconciling it with a need to focus on the personal, to not illustrate because comprehensiveness is not possible.
I was so frustrated for much of it. I know I know I know I KNOW this is impossible. I know I KNOW I shouldn't want to make replicas, ilustrations, signs, falsities that attempt to directly communicate some sort of larger problem, and yet I still have that impulse, deeply, but this is not an impulse to be didactic-okay, maybe a little bit. But mostly really its to be self-educational. I believe and feel like I have to believe that art will help me figure stuff out. They said 'don't worry about the audience,' and I'm really not worried about them. I'm worried about me and my place in the world, my relevance. This exersize, this year, is entirely (and mostly unapologetically) self-centered.
So self-centeredness is the antidote to the problem of preachiness in art? That sounds terrible. Better if I call it self reflection. Political impulse+self reflectedness=art-condescendence
My board helped me identify a few parts of my design for the six rooms that don't yet fit this agenda of including myself in all presentations, not to try to be an invisible intermediary between art and information. The Port, definitely, was starting to feel funny, and they suggested instead that I just have everything in carts custom-fit to the objects. this is awesome. this makes more sense. I need to figure out how to make the carts and how exactly to talk about why this is what needs to happen.
They also really didn't like the bunker, and that bummed me out. I really loved the idea of having an installation made of canned goods, but again they said that this was trying to talk about a phenomena outside of me- consumerist paranoia in general instead of paranoia that is mine. This is true.
The idea from the bunker came directly out of Andrew Szasz's book "Shopping Our Way to Safety: how we changed from Protecting the Environment to Protecting Ourselves". The book is about Inverted Quarentine, a term he invented to talk about fear of global danger/calamity and the catagory of responses that a person uses to try to separate onesself from harm. Just like when Americans built bunkers in their back yard to prepare themselves for the threat of nuclear war, we are now moving to the suburbs, buying our bottled water and our 'natural' foods to quarentine ourselves from the danger all around- which is a real, real danger. We consume so many man-made substances from eating, drinking and breathing, that newborn babies are now born with an average of 200 chemicals ALREADY INSIDE OF THEM. These include commonly known toxins such as lead and arsenic, pesticides, phthalates (thats the stuff that makes plastic malleable- proved testosterone interrupter and in SO much plastic. I just learned about them a few months ago and they scare me a lot), and all sorts of the sythetic compounds, some of which we have very little or no idea what the potential effects on humans are.
There is no way to test the safety of this situation. We are the experiment, earth is the lab. From the perspective of society as a whole, efforts to isolate onesself are delusional and futile.
But I am not society- I am one person, and from this perspective reverse quarentine is practical, safe, comforting. MAYBE it saves me from some danger, MAYBE I am being a conscious consumer and endorsing better products, but DEFINITELY it makes me feel empowered in the face of things I cannot control.
This is the experience I am trying to make my art out of, work that embodies fact in such a way that recognizes emotionality and the filter of my hand and my mind. Thus, despite the urge to make art that illustrates, that makes physical a phenomena I think is true (such as reverse quarentine) my mission here is to make art that expresses my complicency in these phenomena. Art is pedagogy, not sociology.
In my midway I felt like I was fighting- no no no no you just don't get it, I understand your criticism and I am making these choices despite it, with an understanding of incompleteness and failure. But upon reflection, I think I was being oppositional, and that their criticism is support. I feel really creatively internal, now. Other's opinions are hard to take and hard to filter, and I just don't think I want any for a while.
Which is good, because in january, it will be just me.
I felt like over the course of the hour Julianne went through the internal process I went through over the past few months. Being excited, coming to realize the delusional grandeur and potentially preachy elements of my ambitions, and then finally reconciling it with a need to focus on the personal, to not illustrate because comprehensiveness is not possible.
I was so frustrated for much of it. I know I know I know I KNOW this is impossible. I know I KNOW I shouldn't want to make replicas, ilustrations, signs, falsities that attempt to directly communicate some sort of larger problem, and yet I still have that impulse, deeply, but this is not an impulse to be didactic-okay, maybe a little bit. But mostly really its to be self-educational. I believe and feel like I have to believe that art will help me figure stuff out. They said 'don't worry about the audience,' and I'm really not worried about them. I'm worried about me and my place in the world, my relevance. This exersize, this year, is entirely (and mostly unapologetically) self-centered.
So self-centeredness is the antidote to the problem of preachiness in art? That sounds terrible. Better if I call it self reflection. Political impulse+self reflectedness=art-condescendence
My board helped me identify a few parts of my design for the six rooms that don't yet fit this agenda of including myself in all presentations, not to try to be an invisible intermediary between art and information. The Port, definitely, was starting to feel funny, and they suggested instead that I just have everything in carts custom-fit to the objects. this is awesome. this makes more sense. I need to figure out how to make the carts and how exactly to talk about why this is what needs to happen.
They also really didn't like the bunker, and that bummed me out. I really loved the idea of having an installation made of canned goods, but again they said that this was trying to talk about a phenomena outside of me- consumerist paranoia in general instead of paranoia that is mine. This is true.
The idea from the bunker came directly out of Andrew Szasz's book "Shopping Our Way to Safety: how we changed from Protecting the Environment to Protecting Ourselves". The book is about Inverted Quarentine, a term he invented to talk about fear of global danger/calamity and the catagory of responses that a person uses to try to separate onesself from harm. Just like when Americans built bunkers in their back yard to prepare themselves for the threat of nuclear war, we are now moving to the suburbs, buying our bottled water and our 'natural' foods to quarentine ourselves from the danger all around- which is a real, real danger. We consume so many man-made substances from eating, drinking and breathing, that newborn babies are now born with an average of 200 chemicals ALREADY INSIDE OF THEM. These include commonly known toxins such as lead and arsenic, pesticides, phthalates (thats the stuff that makes plastic malleable- proved testosterone interrupter and in SO much plastic. I just learned about them a few months ago and they scare me a lot), and all sorts of the sythetic compounds, some of which we have very little or no idea what the potential effects on humans are.
There is no way to test the safety of this situation. We are the experiment, earth is the lab. From the perspective of society as a whole, efforts to isolate onesself are delusional and futile.
But I am not society- I am one person, and from this perspective reverse quarentine is practical, safe, comforting. MAYBE it saves me from some danger, MAYBE I am being a conscious consumer and endorsing better products, but DEFINITELY it makes me feel empowered in the face of things I cannot control.
This is the experience I am trying to make my art out of, work that embodies fact in such a way that recognizes emotionality and the filter of my hand and my mind. Thus, despite the urge to make art that illustrates, that makes physical a phenomena I think is true (such as reverse quarentine) my mission here is to make art that expresses my complicency in these phenomena. Art is pedagogy, not sociology.
In my midway I felt like I was fighting- no no no no you just don't get it, I understand your criticism and I am making these choices despite it, with an understanding of incompleteness and failure. But upon reflection, I think I was being oppositional, and that their criticism is support. I feel really creatively internal, now. Other's opinions are hard to take and hard to filter, and I just don't think I want any for a while.
Which is good, because in january, it will be just me.
Sunday, December 9, 2007
a plan for december
I am on the verge of a new phase of construction, my studio is overflowing with 2' by 4's, boxes of newspaper, bags of bags, boxes of boxes. plastic. paper. wood. to make dividers between spaces. I am wondering whether I want to go ahead and by some drywall for the altars room. I'm really attached to having some walls that have that perminent look of Wall. that I can paint a great color and will read as a neutral background, rather than an object, a sculpture, so that I can place other sculpture on top of it and have the content of that object read. Drywall does not read as a materia because in the gallery and most places it just means wall. divider. I don't think its going to work out to use the ethical loophole of taking art materials from other students once they're done, because kerry is the only one using drywall and I'm sure he's going to want it for his project...so I guess I'll buy some. I am a consumer, too.
Backing up: I feel like I've settled on some definitive ways I'd like to divide space and content. I'm resisting the urge to think of these six spaces as representational of any six approaches- to not think of my space as comprehensive in an anaylitical manner, but rather to work from the messiness of many different impulses and approaches and let that messiness sit because its' honest. Not to sort. Or, to sort but not feign completion.
I hope I will stay open enough to let this list morph as the construction takes place:
THE PORT:
If we live in one world with one set of material expectations
it must be so that materials move around.
cola across the ocean is scissors across the studio,
consumption is trade is contaninerization
I am not separate from these processes.
art materials are materials, too.
THE BUNKER:
All this information causes panic and, like the people we are, we think about self-protection.
Isn't that just what eco-products are all about?
natural organic packaged everything is so interesting, and I wonder if these objects will speak for themselves.
buying food is an interesting space in trying to be an ethical consumer, because I buy so many foods that I think are terrible to buy, despite rules for myself about it. Buying food to make art out of feels totally okay, because then I can sell/give the food away and it will get eaten, and thats necessary consumption.
THE OFFICE:
Making flow charts is futile and I want to do it anyway. directly on the wall like Daniela keeps saying? why does that communicate such urgency?
I need a desk to call home base/put my computer at a la abigail's little studio a la elswhere's desks.
Walls of newspaper here, too.
That's interesting: the two types of walls- wall as neutral surface with art on it and wall as art. both are vehicles for content.
THE TRASH ROOM:
What do we do with material once we're done with them?
This was the seed of the project- save all of my trash.
I still wonder if it will be visually interesting enough to stand on its own.
also, videos about electricity, gasoline, water? maybe also one to represent food waste?
THE ALTARS:
I am not an Autonomous Artist, not alone in my thinking
I want to recognize explicitly the shaping of my ideas and explore the way this becomes a process of idealizing other individuals as autonomous thinkers/doers in exactly the way I do not want to be thought of, seeing them as embodying particular aesthetics, ideals. This is what happens to people when you know them as thinker/doers not people.
this makes me think back to the book I made for laura's class sophmore year. "all art is autobiography?"
buckminister fuller. mierle laderman ukeles. bell hooks. andrea zittel. thomas hirschhorn. bread and puppet. elsewhere. greg moynahan. maybe a couple of authors? don't know who yet.
This room is probably the least clear, makes me the most nervous. that's okay.
HEAVEN MADE OF PLASTIC BAGS
big room full of plastic bags.- it just has to happen.
Writing out my ideas is both exciting and scary. Am I over-solidifying by putting in writing?
I know about myself that making a plan enables me to work in a more focused way, even if the plan is entirely going to change. I feel the need to write that, as if to make an excuse for approaching the work the way I am. because it is different from where my studio neighbors are in their senior projects? Interesting.
The definition of the actual spaces will determine a lot. Before I leave for vacation, I would like to have all the walls up. This means building a second loft above the trash room. Putting walls up around the alters loft and below the bags loft in the trash room, also building a connection between the two lofts. If there's time, it would also be great to build the port, because I want this to feel like a structural element (even though it isn't). I guess there are a lot of steps that have to take place before making it, though: stuff off shelves, shelves off the wall, paint the walls? at the very least, lets get prepped to paint before I leave.
that looks like a plan!
Backing up: I feel like I've settled on some definitive ways I'd like to divide space and content. I'm resisting the urge to think of these six spaces as representational of any six approaches- to not think of my space as comprehensive in an anaylitical manner, but rather to work from the messiness of many different impulses and approaches and let that messiness sit because its' honest. Not to sort. Or, to sort but not feign completion.
I hope I will stay open enough to let this list morph as the construction takes place:
THE PORT:
If we live in one world with one set of material expectations
it must be so that materials move around.
cola across the ocean is scissors across the studio,
consumption is trade is contaninerization
I am not separate from these processes.
art materials are materials, too.
THE BUNKER:
All this information causes panic and, like the people we are, we think about self-protection.
Isn't that just what eco-products are all about?
natural organic packaged everything is so interesting, and I wonder if these objects will speak for themselves.
buying food is an interesting space in trying to be an ethical consumer, because I buy so many foods that I think are terrible to buy, despite rules for myself about it. Buying food to make art out of feels totally okay, because then I can sell/give the food away and it will get eaten, and thats necessary consumption.
THE OFFICE:
Making flow charts is futile and I want to do it anyway. directly on the wall like Daniela keeps saying? why does that communicate such urgency?
I need a desk to call home base/put my computer at a la abigail's little studio a la elswhere's desks.
Walls of newspaper here, too.
That's interesting: the two types of walls- wall as neutral surface with art on it and wall as art. both are vehicles for content.
THE TRASH ROOM:
What do we do with material once we're done with them?
This was the seed of the project- save all of my trash.
I still wonder if it will be visually interesting enough to stand on its own.
also, videos about electricity, gasoline, water? maybe also one to represent food waste?
THE ALTARS:
I am not an Autonomous Artist, not alone in my thinking
I want to recognize explicitly the shaping of my ideas and explore the way this becomes a process of idealizing other individuals as autonomous thinkers/doers in exactly the way I do not want to be thought of, seeing them as embodying particular aesthetics, ideals. This is what happens to people when you know them as thinker/doers not people.
this makes me think back to the book I made for laura's class sophmore year. "all art is autobiography?"
buckminister fuller. mierle laderman ukeles. bell hooks. andrea zittel. thomas hirschhorn. bread and puppet. elsewhere. greg moynahan. maybe a couple of authors? don't know who yet.
This room is probably the least clear, makes me the most nervous. that's okay.
HEAVEN MADE OF PLASTIC BAGS
big room full of plastic bags.- it just has to happen.
Writing out my ideas is both exciting and scary. Am I over-solidifying by putting in writing?
I know about myself that making a plan enables me to work in a more focused way, even if the plan is entirely going to change. I feel the need to write that, as if to make an excuse for approaching the work the way I am. because it is different from where my studio neighbors are in their senior projects? Interesting.
The definition of the actual spaces will determine a lot. Before I leave for vacation, I would like to have all the walls up. This means building a second loft above the trash room. Putting walls up around the alters loft and below the bags loft in the trash room, also building a connection between the two lofts. If there's time, it would also be great to build the port, because I want this to feel like a structural element (even though it isn't). I guess there are a lot of steps that have to take place before making it, though: stuff off shelves, shelves off the wall, paint the walls? at the very least, lets get prepped to paint before I leave.
that looks like a plan!
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