Routine
second night in a row of normal sleep patterns. 12am - 9 am. beautiful. complete with the most bizarre dreams. In the evening, I return to the flat to a feeling of anxiety. I cook and eat, alone in silence. I want to be monastic about this time, but instead I have an inclination to be compulsive (indulge in some extreme behavior). Then I begin to read. Reading eventually seems to pacify, even nourish me. I then sleep once the sky darkens. I have returned to my loving dream world, vibrant and alive, demonic and innocent, real, decisive and chosen for me. I awake to urgent anxiety, then calm myself by routinizing, breakfast, walk to studio, experience, think, soon email (hilarious how the thought of email soothes while providing a continuation of to~do lists)
Why the punctuated anxiety that lives on both sides of transition, day to night, night to day? Performance anxiety. Purpose-driven quandaries of intention. Unknown. Anxiety of living with the self sans technological distraction. To be in the brain. To live in the perpetual conflict of a war-torn mind, voices battling for supremecy, elves, trolls, fairies. I don't know. It's all what you get used to, no? Mine are different from yours, you'll never fully know mine and I never yours. Isolated creatures seeking comfort and connection, so tragic. The ancients were better at coming up with explanations and coping mechanisms for our isolation and cosmic tortues, but ultimately we modern folk have been socialized to quiet the mind through copasetic forms of technological incubation. Put the small human under the lights and instruct them to feel warmth.
Somehow when I couldn't sleep, I had envisioned this project of roaming the streets, in the few hours of darkness, looking for mythic Norwegian tomte tiptoeing about. I suppose I'm aclimatized. It's been one week since I arrived. I'm having trouble this morning, justifying this exercise of self-indulgant blogging. Slash I'm running with it fully. me me me. I'm scattered today. It's raining on me today. I already ate my lunch that I packed to have at the studio and it's still morning. My discipline is lacking. Now it's snowing on me. Maybe I've entered this hermeneutic center circle of self and can't get out. I have all this time to ponder within my own little mind. Part of it cheers to be the most important element around and the other part champions for silence. The self and me and I and ID and ego. Does it ever end?
I've been making an effort to read more, now that I am without a computer at my flat. It's a practice. I hoard books like a good capitalist, although I justify it because they serve the intellect. The irony is, I rarely read them. They are like intellectual blankies. I would sleep in books if I could/I do. Moving on, last night I read exerpts from the collection of essay's titled, "Site-Specificity: The Ethnographic Turn." It should be right up my alley and is, yet reading art critism creates an internal LA traffic knot in my stomach, as if all the cars on all the highways were put into my stomach at 5pm. This is where self-help books come into play, "I'm Smart Enough, I'm Good Enough and Gosh Darn It People Like Me." I should like this book and I do, but in reading this essay by Miwon Kwon, titled "Experience vs Interpretation: Traces of Ethnography in the Works of Lan Tuazon and Nikki S. Lee", I experienced utter turmoil and self-doubt. She addresses the concept of participant observation, that it "encompasses a relay between an empathetic engagement with a particular situation and/or event (experience) and the assesment of its meaning and significance within a broader context (interpretation)." She gathers this idea mostly from James Clifford who wrote, "Writing Culture." I'm fascinated. To give the viewer something outside of the artist's self-indulgant experience, to provide a level of criticality, an offering of interpretation of what actually went down in the ethnographic experience is important (something relevant for us, as a society, to take from, learn from, move along from). Basically she argues that an artist's work provide an account of an experience but also an interpretation of that experience in relation to society (that it provide a critical interpretation or highlight the lack of ability to interpret). Determining an approach and the content of an interpetation, assuming an authoritative position, given our self-reflexive times, is a tall order, espeically within a visual medium. I have trouble assuming one stance throughout a blog post let alone a project. I believe she is arguing for a stance, no less, and I understand that, but...
Kwon ultimately tears Nikki S Lee's practice to shreads. I recall coming across Lee's work for the first time, the wide-eyed naive doe that I was, thinking "Wow, this is great." I liked her engagement in the world, her DIY type of experiential pursuit, active cultural agent, the world her stage(Erving Goffman would be proud), calling attention to interloping. A few years later I went to hear Lee speak about her work. Ultimately I wished I hadn't because all that I enjoyed about her work was squashed by her uninspiring explanations. I wondered how this inarticulate artist had gotten so far. Yet I caution myself of falling into the same intellectual trap I am addressing with Kwon, it's easy to critique other artist's work for their missteps and oversights, but it's not easy to make work. Why must we tear work down to lift other work up? Maybe this is where my pascifist nature or recently explored notion of Juntian law makes me want to retire from the artworld. I tire of the elitist posturing. If one creates to nurture an inner voice, romantic I know, then why critisize them for not going deep enough. Ignore the work, but don't call it out. It takes guts to create and in a time where creativity is undermined by plugging in, where we're encouraged to passively watch opposed to actively engage, to consume over create, I just don't think it's constructive. In fact, it seems to be a patriarchal inspired apporach that creates a club at the top, ultimately limiting the overall agency of visual art on a whole.
Let's help lift up opposed to tear down. Wouldn't it be a more pleasant society if we had more people engaged in creative pursuits? We don't need to build walls of elitist pomp to call some work legitimate and other work outsider. The categories are old and tiresome. It's a matter of personal preference and interest. It's great and normal not to appreciate some work, but personally I think it's more interesting to spend time on things you do appreciate opposed to those you don't. Maybe I'm just being oovey groovy, utopic, I say that and automatically think about the importance of historical criticism and our freedom to express it.
In this essay, I found myself wanting to defend poor Nikki and her practice. Why? I ask myself. Is it because I am fearful my work offers even less depth than Nikki's? Ultimately, yes. Then I wonder if that is such a bad thing? Sometimes the most profound things are the most simple. Logom.
What is the task of art? Does it all have to be uniform in its intention? No, but if you are educated as an artist and want to align yourself with an intellectual frame, then what? Then does one's art have to critique something? Does it have to educate the audience? Pose a critism of history, art, society, culture, identity, politics? And if it does, who is it for? And if art critics and audiences alike pick up on this riddled poetic, perfectly framed criticism, then what? Does the work then create agency for change? The task at hand is daunting. Paralysis by analysis. The benefit,the risk, the money spent, the investment and for what? Wise ones say, "do it to feed the soul, nurture the self, it's not about the reception you recieve." Must an artist know what all the parts are doing in a piece to make it perfectly, incisively communicative and smart? I never do, but feel inept and self conscous about it. (Like one day Miwon Kwon will call me out and rip my work to shreds.) If an artist worries about the critical tear down of a project during the creative process of making then they're fucked, but if they don't then they are likey to make plunderous work full of oversights and misteps. Where does gut fit in? Vision? How to follow instinct and then imbue interpretive theory to make a work strong? If I had my dream job and was an art instructor, advising doe eyes, I would suggest that they take control of their content through concept and form, because an artist should exercise control over what they are communicating. But how? Really? That's just frustrating. However, why does an audience want to spend time with work that an artist maniacly threw together based on whims and feelings?
Conflicted, is the state of affairs, I'm afraid. To have control takes away a lot of the fun. To be controlled provides respect. If one portrays a seriousness about their practice others believe them to be well thought and perhaps researched and legitimate. Is that the leftover male dominated mentality that still rules our society or is it as it should be? Can artwork not critique, but offer an exploration and possible alternative to our current model of societal behavior? Or do I just not want to push myself any further? Maybe I'm lazy and tired of the climb. People here push less because they have a system to rely on. I think of returning and wonder how I'll make money. Here, if you don't have a job your okay. If you have a part-time job you're solid. Propose something innovative to your local government and they'll likely give you funding. No worries about health care, and if you don't want to make art anymore and want to go back to school, great, it's free, educate yourself. There is less pressure, which seems to relate to a higher quality of life.
If you've made it to the end of this rant, you may be witnessing my inner psyche unraveling. My pigeon brain throbs. It yearns to espouse critical theory like Miwon Kwon and ultimately feels most comfortable roaming this life experiencing various subtleties in culture and enjoying the first season of Baywatch. I don't know. The stakes are high. It's why I want to find our dieing elders and have them hold me and tell me it will be okay, that life is about the journey, the loved ones and the small moments, not the critical stepping stones to stardom.
someone may need to control me. you can go on forever in this format.
the next post will be a haiku.
everything is actually quite good.
i might be trying to alienate the few of you that are reading this blog.
sabatoge. sounds so dangerous.
i've let the five of you in way too far.
how about some photos?
