This work is an effort to renounce two fundamental misconceptions that inflict our generation. Both stem from developmental inhibitors that blind our children from their needs and their source.
The first misconception is our construction of the “self.” The false virtues of independence and individualism have undermined the pillars of community and cooperation that built our homes and raised our children. An epidemic of loneliness has struck western society at its heart, severing our brothers and sisters as we scramble to find identity. We are, by nature, a social species; the introverted fad that our own art world has propagated must end.
The second misconception is our definition of creativity and its agency. Creativity, innovation, and adaptation are as essential to our existence in this biosphere as our reproductive abilities. Yet we have grown prude to our inherent creative impulses much as we have our sexual impulses. Now individuals admittedly renounce their creative potential, a claim as profound as impotency. There are too many of us who will carry on abstaining from the mindless imperative of innovation.
In both instances, we do not remember what it is we need. We need the stimuli that will change our lives in order to innovate, and we need our community to remind us that we cannot do it alone.
Such a reminder requires a new classroom. The architecture of the new classroom can have no windows or white walls. There can be no rows of desks or overhead projectors. There can be no floor, ceiling, electricity, or air conditioning. There can be no barrier between the lessons learned and the cold chill whipping off the water. There can be no barrier unless the students build it themselves.
There is no window large enough; there is no definition high enough. We need a playground to bring us into adulthood.
Mike, I would argue: what if people are fundamentally need introversion? I know I do. People need to be with people, extend ourselves outwards, surely, but I believe we also need to be within ourselves. Introversion is not necessarily loneliness. Rather than being entirely social or asocial, I believe there must always be a balance. Do you see this at all?
I am glad that you are writing a manifesto and trying to clearly declare your work.
In Zen Buddhism, teachers emphasize the importance of staying present as a means to enlightenment. They say if we are to find any peace, any harmony, any lasting happiness, and any end to suffering, it is by living in the present moment. If we can be where we are when we are there, then nothing is lacking, nothing is wrong. In our presentness, everything is as it should be.
And yet, how is everything?
Few of us ever notice what it is to walk, what it is to see, what it is to breathe because these are automatic, and supposedly mundane experiences. We are too concerned with where we are going, or what we are looking for, and the actual walking and looking fall to the background. And breathing? It just happens, and we live because of that breath, that air, relying on it happening without effort.
(but how wondrous is a single breath when you feel it. and each one is always different, though the same—rising//falling//pausing. but you have to feel it.)
To be here, in the present, is actually far from mundane; it is full of sensations, feelings, and thoughts. We are taking in from the world around us—grounding ourselves in our surroundings—and at the same time we are contributing to them, adding our breath, our thoughts, our emotions—floating through each moment. The present is mysterious and engaging because to be present is to simultaneously know and not know. It is to be at once floating and grounded. It is to be in-between, both awakened and at wonder. --
To paint is to breathe. Or at least it is the same sort of experience. It is a taking in and a letting out. I see light and color, delight in them. My surroundings permeate me; I dissolve into them. I reflect back out what I have taken in; I translate and transform it. The paint holds the shifting light and color still, and it holds me still, but only so much. There is a continual shifting, an accumulating and evaporating of sensation. When things shift enough, they blur together.
I am hardly the only person interested in dissolving into my experience. Agnes Martin’s work is “wordless and silent” because it is, because when she lets herself dissolve into her experience, there is only this, this, this. There is no room for anything else. Similarly, Uta Barth’s blurred photographs link physical reality with mental reality; there is no separating out the body from the mind or from our surroundings. Martin, Barth and I, all of us want the in-between. We want to be grounded in our surroundings, our experiences, but we also want to float—just enough—to be here.
This work is an effort to renounce two fundamental misconceptions that inflict our generation.
ReplyDeleteBoth stem from developmental inhibitors that blind our children from their needs and their source.
The first misconception is our construction of the “self.”
The false virtues of independence and individualism have undermined the pillars of community and cooperation that built our homes and raised our children.
An epidemic of loneliness has struck western society at its heart, severing our brothers and sisters as we scramble to find identity.
We are, by nature, a social species; the introverted fad that our own art world has propagated must end.
The second misconception is our definition of creativity and its agency.
Creativity, innovation, and adaptation are as essential to our existence in this biosphere as our reproductive abilities.
Yet we have grown prude to our inherent creative impulses much as we have our sexual impulses.
Now individuals admittedly renounce their creative potential, a claim as profound as impotency.
There are too many of us who will carry on abstaining from the mindless imperative of innovation.
In both instances, we do not remember what it is we need.
We need the stimuli that will change our lives in order to innovate, and we need our community to remind us that we cannot do it alone.
Such a reminder requires a new classroom.
The architecture of the new classroom can have no windows or white walls.
There can be no rows of desks or overhead projectors.
There can be no floor, ceiling, electricity, or air conditioning.
There can be no barrier between the lessons learned and the cold chill whipping off the water. There can be no barrier unless the students build it themselves.
There is no window large enough; there is no definition high enough. We need a playground to bring us into adulthood.
Mike, I would argue: what if people are fundamentally need introversion? I know I do. People need to be with people, extend ourselves outwards, surely, but I believe we also need to be within ourselves. Introversion is not necessarily loneliness. Rather than being entirely social or asocial, I believe there must always be a balance. Do you see this at all?
ReplyDeleteI am glad that you are writing a manifesto and trying to clearly declare your work.
In Zen Buddhism, teachers emphasize the importance of staying present as a means to enlightenment. They say if we are to find any peace, any harmony, any lasting happiness, and any end to suffering, it is by living in the present moment. If we can be where we are when we are there, then nothing is lacking, nothing is wrong. In our presentness, everything is as it should be.
ReplyDeleteAnd yet, how is everything?
Few of us ever notice what it is to walk, what it is to see, what it is to breathe because these are automatic, and supposedly mundane experiences. We are too concerned with where we are going, or what we are looking for, and the actual walking and looking fall to the background. And breathing? It just happens, and we live because of that breath, that air, relying on it happening without effort.
(but how wondrous is a single breath when you feel it. and each one is always different, though the same—rising//falling//pausing. but you have to feel it.)
To be here, in the present, is actually far from mundane; it is full of sensations, feelings, and thoughts. We are taking in from the world around us—grounding ourselves in our surroundings—and at the same time we are contributing to them, adding our breath, our thoughts, our emotions—floating through each moment. The present is mysterious and engaging because to be present is to simultaneously know and not know. It is to be at once floating and grounded. It is to be in-between, both awakened and at wonder.
--
To paint is to breathe. Or at least it is the same sort of experience. It is a taking in and a letting out. I see light and color, delight in them. My surroundings permeate me; I dissolve into them. I reflect back out what I have taken in; I translate and transform it. The paint holds the shifting light and color still, and it holds me still, but only so much. There is a continual shifting, an accumulating and evaporating of sensation. When things shift enough, they blur together.
I am hardly the only person interested in dissolving into my experience. Agnes Martin’s work is “wordless and silent” because it is, because when she lets herself dissolve into her experience, there is only this, this, this. There is no room for anything else. Similarly, Uta Barth’s blurred photographs link physical reality with mental reality; there is no separating out the body from the mind or from our surroundings. Martin, Barth and I, all of us want the in-between. We want to be grounded in our surroundings, our experiences, but we also want to float—just enough—to be here.