1. 1.What do I do well? (Strength)
2. What can I improve upon? (Weakness)
3. What’s next? (Future)
I know why I am producing and more importantly what I am producing is not limited to this SMP or defined by the art discipline. My work started years ago and will be continued unavoidably. I have found artistic license to be a medium itself as I pursue my goals. The resolutions I made last semester to work not only for but with the interest of the community has solidified. I am also starting to get a grip on who exactly this community I speak of is, and what my role in the community may be. De-commercialized land-art still resonates deeply with my motivations and future intentions. More importantly, I am most confident with my cross disciplinary approach to both research and production, an attempt to speak a universal didactic language that has been divided between the academic disciplines.
Because I choose to sample from a pool of varying perspectives and approaches, I can often improve my specificity. I consistently lack artistic reference because I do not come from an art background, so I often find artists working similarly later than I would like. I also have denied relevance to the work I do outside of SMP to the work that I was doing last semester, something I have started changing and am finding very consuming. Along the same lines I rarely speak with my peers outside of the art discipline about my work, which needs to change for my “universal didactic language” to be realized. Lastly I need to get my hands dirty and reengage with my writing, something I lost last semester while spread too thin.
As far as what’s next, I have been working for over a year with President O’Brien to develop a wilderness ethics course to be taught through St. Mary’s. An extension of the Leave No Trace trips that have taken place in Patagonia and
This is fascinating. How far have you come along with this project? Obviously conceptually this whole endeavor is art alone, but how do you see art, particularly site-specific art, playing a role in this? Do you intend for this course to overlap disciplines and count for art theory credit as well as environmental science as well as...?
ReplyDeleteSorry for all of the questions, everything you write and discuss is so abstract that I am usually left with more questions than answers.
Mike,
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, I agree with Sarah. If I had just read this without having talked to you about your project before, I wouldn't know what the hell was going on. Might I also remind you that people said that about your work in the gallery--they just didn't know that you wanted it to be a reality--it wasn't clear enough; you weren't starting with the "this is what I'm doing".
Perhaps when you write you can try starting with basic basic basics and then working up to your more complicated or universal ideas/intentions so that the reader/audience has a place to ground themselves before you start talking about big Ideas.
Also, I don't know whether "didactic" is the best word-choice, especially when paired with place-based-learning, which is (as far as I can see) the opposite of didactic--it's all experiential and not someone telling you what to do or think.
"didactic: adj.
-intended to teach, especially in having moral instruction as an ulterior motive
-in the manner of a teacher, particularly so as to treat someone in a *patronizing* way"
Now, I don't think you want to patronize people, but that's definitely the association that I have with "didactic". I got turned off because of it, in fact. I think I know what you mean, more or less, and I don't think any of these words quite fits, but maybe see what you think of them: moralistic, instructive, instructional, illuminating, educative, educational, or helpful.
Anyhow, just something to consider.
Thanks guys,
ReplyDeleteYou will have to excuse me for lacking details in the first peice about what I am doing. It is a fairly hefty project that will need a lot more elaboration. I'll post a message here soon that has a little more detail about where I stand. I am out of a car and a computer and the internet for the time being so connections are a little few and far between. Also thanks for red flag on the word usage, bonnie you are right that my intentions are not patronizing, i suppose my exposure to the word has not been so loaded. There is, although, a degree of omniscient ego that is assumed as a place-space teacher/guide/instructor (almost as if parental). I do not assume the experience that the role demands, but I do search for the message from such a figure.
Too often are we told by those examining our artwork that creativity is such a gift. They, our audience, stare at our work with their right hand on their wallet and their left hand scratching their heads. The products of our creative drive have become the objects of an economy, a language, and a lifestyle that escapes societal norms. We as an art world have isolated ourselves to a discourse once spoken universally. But we have not been pushed into such a lonely position by subversive dictators. Our perch on the fringe of society has been of our own fabrication. What is worse is what we have taken with us is an essence of humanity that is being lost as it is further associated with our introverted profession. We who live so uninhibited to create have the responsibility to help others remember how vital the lost art is.
ReplyDeleteWe as a species stand out from any other in our ability to innovate and adapt, to change our fate momentarily with our creativity. At a critical point in time, about 2.5 million years ago, we found ourselves falling short as we attempted to keep our place in the ecosystem. We were physically maladapted for our environment. But necessity is the mother of invention, and our creative impulses became as critical to our genes as our sex drive. Today, our creative impulses have unarguably brought humanity to a position in the ecosystem that is almost unrecognizable.
This is the problem at hand—while creativity has been so critical to our individual survival, our modern world has been constructed not by ourselves responding to our needs but as a predesigned, prefabricated lifestyle devoid of needs at all. When was the last time we used our creativity as a reaction to a vital need? When was the last time we had to innovate, to adapt, and to evolve, as a physical manifestation of the humanity we have lost? When was the last time we actually inhabited our habitat?
This question holds the same answer as my previous question, when did it become socially acceptable to renounce creativity, a quality as vital as our sexuality? An admission to a lack of creativity equates to an admission of our impotency. Other species may be been fortunate enough, as some may see it, to exist as apart of our ecosystem instinctually and observe the process of morphological adaptation. The human species does not have this luxury; our naked bodies are not calloused enough. We feel the wind and the rain and the sun and the soil as stimulants to push us to adapt. In many ways we may see ourselves as the most sensuous of creatures, to our advantage or not.
But even the most sensuous of creatures, sat at a desk in a white room, will be found with the same conclusion that has infected so much of my generation. After feeling the smooth surface of the wood, the cool cleanliness of metal, the soft reflection of the fluorescent light on the wall, the angles, the volumes, the mass, the sounds and smells of the warm resonance of our own voices, the stiff immobility of the locked door, and finally the moist skin of our panicked brow, will all leave us sitting, starring, bored.
We all know the desk in the white room all too well. Here we engage in the mass consumption of information and knowledge in a likeness similar to feeding. We are told that our education is nourishment for the mind. Our brains will grow big and strong if we eat enough of the bland flavored green concepts. But paralleling food culture we have grown obese and greedy, eating everything sweet, fatty, salty, and sour, without exercising the calories to make us fit. We have forgotten the flavor that necessity will add to any nourishment. We cannot consume enough to satisfy our boredom.
The unwavering fascination that we observe so nostalgically in the innocence of a child is only lost to our own neglect, our neglect to immerse and saturate ourselves in creative processes with the same mindless imperative as our sexuality. Innovation comes with the same euphoric catharsis for the mind as an orgasm has on the body. To neglect either is to neglect living, and today I fear there are far too many virgins in the realm of the former.
For such new creators learning can no longer be apart of the consumption and waste process that institutionalized education force feeds us. Active creativity, direct engagement without our habitat, innovating solutions to problems affecting our lives from the split in our pants to the climate crises, are the only way to retain dedicated fascination. Art as we know it, the claimed expression of the creative process, can no longer engage in the process of consumption and waste either. Artists must engage in a form of social welfare not dissimilar to sex-education, assisting awkward young virgins in how to understand their newfound creative puberty. Giggles and gasps will ensue as the teacher explains the very natural process of building your own home, or what to do when someone thumbs their nose at the marks you have made in the sand. Students will have to bring a note with them because their parents do not want them to see the x-rated material of Joseph Beuys, spreading propaganda of the reality that everyone is in fact and artist.
The artist/educator must bridge a gap between our natural humanness and our modern image. The gap has created both fear and nostalgic fascination. We will happily and whole heartedly engage with the natural world through discovery channel or fund raisers to save the rain forests, but we seal our windows and disinfect our kitchens to insure that we don’t get too close. But the truth is like all things, the danger is only as great as our own ignorance.
There is a need to reevaluate not how we observe but how we experience our source, our habitat. We cannot sample it and return home to ponder. We cannot buy our way back. We cannot read enough to remember; we cannot study the cells or take pictures of the birds. Memories are not enough, they are an escapist excuse…
a very rough draft- just a little insight into where i am going with all of this- or rather where I am coming from.
ReplyDelete