10/11/23
Today I asked my architecture friends for their manifestos.
Lucy thinks making art is a lot like chewing things and spitting them out: you chew an idea up and spit out some art, and you have to chew and spit to see yourself reflected back at you in the object. I say to Lucy but Lucy that I guess by that logic, all research is me-search, and all art is inherently kind of self-centered. How do you design things for other people? Lucy pauses, and then she says that she sees her art practice and her architecture practice as fundamentally separate in that sense: she makes art for herself, but design is first and foremost for other people. She says she could never be happy just making things for herself.
I also ask Adam for his manifesto. Adam says he’s been thinking a lot about shadows and intimacy. I show him Ukeles’ Maintenance Art Manifesto.
What I want to know is why it’s only the art kids and the architecture kids who get asked for manifestos. Shouldn’t the engineering kids and the computer science kids and the economics kids also be made to reflect critically on what they do all day and why?
10/28/23
Lately I want my art to be invisible.
Not in a depressing “I hate everything I make” kind of way, but in a “I think the world is really cool and other people are really cool and I want my art to be about that and for that and not about me or for me” kind of way. I worry sometimes that it’s quite a selfish thing to want to be an artist. Who am I to think that I have anything worthwhile to show anyone? Who is anyone to think that way? I think it takes a certain degree of delusion and egocentrism to want to take up space and time with the stuff you create.
This is not to say that I believe in or aspire to be a crystal goblet — I think it’s equally delusional and egotistical to assume that a position of neutrality exists at all, much less that you as an individual are capable of occupying that. Just as it takes a certain degree of self-importance to want to make things for yourself, I think it takes an equal — if not greater — degree of self-importance to assume that you’re even capable of completely setting aside your own subjectivity and making things solely ‘for’ other people. Besides, doesn’t empathy, by definition, require the self-centered subjectification of another perspective? Isn’t the desire for one’s art to actually ‘matter’ to other people grounded at least, in part, in the (selfish?) desire for love and attention?
This is why I am deeply uninterested in making art for galleries, and why I hate the idea of art galleries in general. The very idea of an art gallery — a room intended for the sole purpose of viewing art — separates the viewer from their lived reality and attempts to place them in a liminal space. Who am I to think that what I think or feel or say is somehow more beautiful or important than the average viewer’s everyday experience of the world? The implication is that people have to leave their everyday lives in order to experience beauty and art, and frankly I find this implication depressing and stupid. When was the last time anyone other than an artist saw a work of art in a gallery and genuinely, truly found it more meaningful than, say, their friends, or their family, or the perfectly cloudless blue sky right outside the gallery? Frankly, I would rather be a doctor than a gallery artist because at least doctors actually help people live their lives more fully.
But I’m not a doctor, so instead I want my art to be invisible. I don’t believe in art for art’s sake any more than I believe in medicine for medicine’s sake, just as I don’t believe in putting people in galleries for the sake of it any more than I believe in putting people in hospitals for the sake of it. I want my art to help people experience their lives — their messy, imperfect, mind-numbingly banal and boring real lives — more fully and deeply. I want my art to be lived-in, worn-down, like an old sweater you wear holes into or a song you play on repeat. I want to make art that you can’t imagine living without. Maybe that makes my art invisible, or maybe that makes it hyper-visible: the bottom line is I want zero separation between art and life itself, and I want my art to actually do something.
I don’t quite know what that looks like just yet — if to create anything at all is to demand space and time for yourself, maybe the goal of art should be to make art that gives other people the space and time to create for themselves. Maybe that means making an actual sweater. Maybe that means not making anything for anyone at all, and calling this refusal in itself a kind of art. Maybe art is fundamentally selfish and overrated and I should have been a doctor insead.
10/31/23
Today I went to see an Important Art Person speak at Yale. They basically argued that all art is useless and should be allowed to be useless — most corporate jobs are bullshit anyway, so we may as well accept the fact that art is useless too. As an artist, you should always be your first and last audience.
I’m not usually one to stir the pot, but I put my hand up and asked a kind of thorny question. I said, I don’t mean this as an accusation — I’m an art major myself — but don’t you think the notion that you are your first and last audience is a bit of a self-centered position to take? I feel like it takes a great deal of privilege to have the space and time to create art, and I have this incredible art education and I have all these wonderful doting professors who genuinely want to know what I think and how I feel and I just feel like it’s selfish to keep that to myself. Why make all this stuff if I’m not going to share it? Wouldn’t the world be better off if I decided to be a doctor instead?
The Important Art Person, who for the record seems very nice, basically said it’s normal to have self-doubt as an artist but you should push through and believe in yourself and just make stuff anyway. I appreciate the sentiment but I feel like his answer missed the point entirely.
11/2/23
Maybe art lacks a point the way love lacks a point. Maybe I have this all wrong.
11/8/23
11/16/23
11/23/23
12/3/23
Today I downloaded some peaceful minecraft music to use in a project. Sometimes I wonder if all I do is make really elaborate memes.
12/14/23
I had dinner with Sarah last night, and she said Yeju told her that if the path forward is clear then you’re probably walking somebody else’s path.
I had dinner with Sarah last night, and she said Yeju told her that if the path forward is clear then you’re probably walking somebody else’s path.