When you have a limited amount of time to do something it is important to have a clear goal and a good idea what the steps are to reach that goal. You prepare by getting the materials needed and streamlining the process in all ways possible to maximize efficiency. Then when the allotted window of time arrives the execution is smooth and hopefully successful since there has been thoughtful organization and planning. One must not be surprised if the process itself or other outside factors work out a little differently than planned. There may be another chance or it may be just good enough. In any case the process revolves around the initial clear goal. This is what we strive towards as Goal Oriented people.
Dismembering this linear approach and removing the definitive goal, I am in vertigo.
Goal evaporates. Goal is dissected, dismantled. My studio practice is about questioning and experimenting not about a goal or a thing. It is about ideas right now most of which evade my articulation.
What happens if the troops defect and lose their loyalty or question that initial clear goal? What if we question not only the goal but the process and the materials? There is a sense of vertigo, of exhilaration and exhaustion, of flailing and failing, of dispersal and disjunct. What are we doing if we don't know what we are doing it for? We grope for meaning. The goal no longer holds dominion over meaning. Does the process mean? Does the scattered action amount to anything? What is the thing? Is there a thing?
Here I am this week with recipes and no idea if I am making a main dish or a set of unrelated tapas in a bento box. Hot houses, terrariums, narratives, collections, living systems, re-contextualizing, glass chambers, growth, life-support systems...... make it - paint it. I am bringing systems into my studio, making worlds and painting them. Making stories.
I am daunted.
Artists
I looked at Pheobe Washburn for her installations and work with systems, Emily Eveleth for her scrumptious paintings and indulgence in micro-scale, Jessica Stockholder for her public installations, and Meg Webster for her bi-discipline work in landscape architecture and art.
I do know what you are going through, Sylvia. I feel somehow that we are all going through something similar, whether it's at a level of consciousness or not.
ReplyDeleteI may seem like a smarmy, trite foolish person (seem?) in saying this, but I think of this contemporary art construct (theres that damnable word again) as a Matrix. Yes, same as the film. If you're familiar with it, recall the line: "There is no spoon." It is the same for us: there is no spoon - the spoon being a "thing."
It is all too huge, because it exists within us. And within us is something in touch with the infinite. We can never address the "thing" directly; it is so vast. We must find a back door, a wormhole (whatever sci-fi allegory you want to use - okay - I want to use) to even catch a fleeting glimpse, and do our level best to not record, but reflect. Reflection comes within the process, through making.
Just keep making, and be aware of yourself within the space of creation - but not hyperaware; best to float. The end result will be some reflection of truth; the truth about how you caught that glimpse, but not the thing that you glimpsed itself. That will be enough, for it will satisfy you. And that's all that matters, in the end. For you will know exactly why you did what you did, and that fortifies any defense you may be required to make against your creations as well as your creative process.
My best to you in all this. -R.