1. inTuition and reflection (scholars and artists, school and practice) (19 oktober 2017 - NOTES FROM #1)
Intuition and reflection aren’t in stark contrast with each other, nor is it an either-or situation. What we need to look at is how one of these two notions is being discussed a lot at art schools and the other is not. How come the notion of intuition is so subordinate to the artist’s reflection on their own work? What are we hoping to read in the artist’s view upon their own work? Are we that lazy? Shouldn’t we start with just looking at the work ourselves, as spectators? At the university, there is an entire department full of people who are being trained to look at art, to look at its context, to think along with the artists about the meaning and intention of their work, whether the artists in question are dead or alive. Whether the artists themselves had thought about it or not. How come art students don’t meet with these other students unless they are looking them up themselves, unless they have graduated and hopefully meet one another within the field.
Within our current society (one obsessed with economic success and ‘plain useful science’) the art schools have turned into something strange. A place originally intended to assist young artists in developing their artistic skills now generates art producers. Young artists are being prepared and armed to handle the art world as it is now, sick with liberal and financial obligations, succumbed to the apparatus. In order to make them able to produce something (in general, an object, something physical, appeals most to a materialist mindset but performative arts won’t escape this completely), and to be able to write about that and sell the idea. They should succeed over the entire line of writing reflective and creative text, have insight in the dramaturgy of a piece, have some knowhow of curating/programming, networking, production, technique, sales, promotional affairs. Even when nudged to ‘think outside the box’ and to politicize all the ‘naive’ work the students would normally like to do (as in, creating in and on itself) there isn’t much space to actually colour outside the lines. To really think about what the system could or should look like. To critique the school as institution. Because inside your atelier or at your desk or in a studio -if you managed to get one to yourself- you are able to make the rules. Outside, no, there you have to face a whole other set of rules. Because maybe school isn’t the place to ‘colour outside the lines’. But that makes art schools what? A farce? A paradox?
Intuition is hard to legitimize and affected choices are hard to sell. We all love science, don’t we? Scientific and economic departments, and law schools are doing well. Other components of our educational system face severe economization, budgetary savings.
Beware, this isn’t a duality ‘intuitive art’ and ‘reflective art’, ideally, art is still combining both. The question is, what are we reflecting upon in the research towards a new piece of art? Nothing has been made yet. Are we thus reflecting upon life? Are we asking ourselves the hardest question of all and so dismantling the primary urge and desire to create something new?
It needs courage and pretension and stupidity, perseverance and a whole lot of luck to be able to make art and sustain yourself.
Should we not, at this point in history, be dealing with the problems at hand in other ways? Or what is it that compels us to deal with certain problems (in part) by making art? And why is it so important to protect art from questioning it in a way that is just not applicable to something that should also, and certainly, be approached intuitively.
Let’s talk about our intuition. Let’s talk about how it happened to be so that, when the first humans roamed the earth and faced far more direct danger on a daily basis than we do now, they still felt the urge to create.
Part of art doesn’t want to be talked about. Part of the artist can’t shut up about the work they are doing and part of the artist would like to avoid the subject altogether. This might sound awfully romantic, but there’s an incomprehensible core to an artwork that makes it enticing, just so, just for what it is. Part of the artwork doesn’t endure the constant questioning of itself. Because the basis from which it sprouts might be so futile, so banal, so universally known and (mis)understood, that it would kill itself rather than feel the pressure for constant legitimization.
It would cease to exist, especially within a society like the one we are living in right now. And maybe we just need to realize that accepting certain rarities and complexities is a more complete way of living than the constant scrutinizing and dismissing of things we don’t understand right away. Because sometimes, not always, but in some occasions, discourse and critique isn’t the way to understand.
(to be continued)
2. Filling and Creating Space (The art of creating a Platform) 3. Conversation and Separation (Dialectics and Reformation) 4. Aliens, Lovers and Ghosts (Roles for Future Play) 5. Now or Tomorrow? (Durational work, episodes, waiting and thinking about future) 6. Art or Therapy (Self-care in the art world)