Smart talk about art

I don't like it one bit.

I'll try to be cogent today and while not breaking from my endless litany of complaints, I would like to set more positve goals, even if they are not attainable...

I've been doing a bit of "promotion" for the Perceival videos. By this I mean the most minimal things like writing my friends on YouTube and informing some of the writers of art blogs that I sometimes frequent. I'm not so enthusiastic about this because I'd rather be, you know, drawing pictures. But the promotion is essential if I want more than just my closest friends to see the work - I worked hard on the videos and I'm not embarrassed about saying I think they're worth watching.

Anyway, there is a trade-off when making art in being self-involved vs thinking of the people who will receive the work. Between being specific to your own thought, following your own fantasies, investigating your own ideas in your own personal language, not censoring or editing your thoughts, not worrying about embarrassment, vs. thinking of the presentation of the work, how your viewers will see and interpret it, whether they will be able to understand your intent, giving them ins and clues and editing out the obscurity. It is easy to say "The most private artwork IS the most universal artwork because everyone thinks specifically, and lives a private life, so the personal IS the universal." I'm not saying that statement is wrong. Just that it is an oversimplification. Sometimes the private is not universal. Sometimes it is obscure, un-understandable, wrongheaded, opaque, etc. Sometimes you SHOULD be embarrassed about your private thoughts, some thoughts are not worth sharing, sometimes you need to change yourself, make yourself a better person. There are also those who say "Creating a work and editing it so that people can understand what you are trying to say imposes a rigor on the work that CREATES specific thoughts in the mind of the viewer, that enables specific communication, so in fact the universal IS the specific." Well, again, yes and no. Sometimes following a specific fantasy is really worth it. Maybe the viewer has to really work to figure it out. But I for one like throwing myself against a wall sometimes and I like to read things and look at art where it is clear that the creator doesn't care to lend me a hand. That is, as long as it is absolutely brilliant and enthralling. Of course, the willfully obscure, the obfuscated, the silent water that don't really run deep - these are awful.

Where was that narrative again? Oh yes - smart talk about art. The Perceival project is "interactive" in that it asks people for a simple opinion. This might be too simple to call "interactive," but I am really serious about it. It's not by any means theoretically or technically complex enough to call it "media art" and it isn't a revolutionary form of interactivity, but it is occuring at a place in the progression of my own artmaking where I am really paying attention to the response to the art. This is, after all, a very basic part of communication - in a conversation you talk, then you listen. I'm trying to be honest, not groundbreaking. I'm not claiming success yet though.

Anyway, in the course of doing all this promotion bullshit I have gone to some blogs and followed lots of links in the hopes of finding some random stranger who might dig the videos. Because I am excited about showing my work to people! That's why I make art! But it's like going into the city - the world is so huge, there are so many people, and they are all doing their own thing. Oh my god the world is so huge. It's overwhelming, so I get overwhelmed. Pretty simple. Now, in this way I used to go to galleries and get absolutely overwhelmed by how amazing and profound everything I saw was. But now I'm a little more jaded and I judge pretty harshly - partially as a way of protecting myself from this kind of mental short circuit that would leave me feeling yucky. But also because I've seen a lot of the tricks and I'm getting used to them. Not that I don't see great stuff.

And it's the same on-line. I see a lot of trickery. The thing that really gets my goat is the language used to talk about art. I'm not talking about the "big words" - for there are art words that us artists tend to forget are not everyday words - like "aestheic" "intention" "authority" "postmodern" "intervention" to name just a few simple ones. I think these words are just like "spanner" "plumb line" "compressor" and "OSHA" are in construction. Words we use at work. But I really enjoy talking to people about what my art means without using these words because it challenges me and lets me know that I'm not just playing a big game like a bunch of carpenters who sit around sharpening their chisels all day but never build any cabinets. And so I don't disapprove of these words. In fact, I love these big art words because they enable clear communication. Receiving a specific thought is absolutely grand.

The words I don't dig are the ones that make art seem fancy. Names of museums, galleries, cities, artists, institutions, movements, writers, theories, and all the specific noise are thrown around like they really mean something. Like they are so impressive. Not that I don't want to learn more about all these things, but I want to really learn about each one, bring it down to the understandable level, find out what is believable about it. But when they are all thrown at you together it forms a giant network of borrowed significance with absolutely no feet on the ground. And then there is often money, fame, parties, flying to far off places, the rituals of meaningless social excitement, the subtle and not-so-subtle signs of power and oppression. Don't believe in yourself, artists, writers! Don't think that someone else's meaning is going to do anything for you! What do all these names matter? What does it matter than I live in New Jersey, that I am skinny, that it is sunny, that I have had shows here and there, that I am going to such and such a school? It seems like interest in these things is a distraction. Hit your head with a rock and it goes "thump" and it feels like a tap or it can really hurt. Breath in and out and it feel very similar to anybody breathing in and out.

I've been watching a lot of interviews on YouTube. I like interviews with musicians. A lot of my art is based on a theoretical structure I take from music. Of course it's a mixed up metaphor, Music is danceable. Art is seeable and rememberable. Sensual pleasure leads to a meaning you can invest yourself in. A meaning that is accessable by anyone. What I like about musicians is that they talk about how things sound, what people do with themselves, what they think things mean. And they do it without referencing anyone else. Because nobody really falls for "this music is good because so and so says so." People can see through that pretty quickly because music is profoundly sensual. Not that all music is instantly accessable through emotion, not that there isn't music that is opaque but worht investing in, not that there aren't profoundly interesting stories that open up new music to a host of complex thoughts and theories and interpretations. But I like the language, I like the relationship of the creator, the product, and the receiver. I wish art were more like this.

There is nothing more profound than a simple simple statement. I like heavy sounds. I like quick and catchy melodies. Robots are cool. Baby pandas are cute. Sharks are dangerous. Blinky lights are trippy. This painting is scary. This is stupid. This is amazing. That hurts. I feel great. I'm falling in love. I'm losing my mind. Not that I'm thinking all of these things, not that the words accurately descibe the reasons for the truth in themselves, but they are profoundly and honestly felt, and worth thinking.

You can't trick me with decorative language, you can't be impressive by trying to be impressive. For me all this complicated noise just falls flat on its ass. And I think it hurts as well. There is not an elite group of people who are better than other people because they are better educated or smarter or more successful. Anyone can master their life and bloom. And even the fanciest talkers can be absolutely miserable and hollow. I just want some acknowledgement of this. I just want some humility.

Malinowski, the social-anthropology guy, made two discoveries, the second of which is often ignored. The first was that primitive societies were not primitive - that they were just as socially complicated as the Western society he came from. The second is that the rituals of our own society are the same as those in the Trobriander Islanders he studied, just dressed up a little different. It is important to remember that we are all trying to feed ourselves and advance ourselves socially to find mates. The Trobrianders had an elaborate system of exchanging what looked like useless shell trinkets but were actually a kind of currency of social class. Duh duh duh. It's important to remember than art is just like this to an extent. And an element of hocus-pocus shamanism as well. But there is also something else. Two things - some for true shamanism, some shells and leather straps that are worth looking at because they are beautiful.

Not that I dislike analysis or specificity. I'm always trying to be more specific, to tune my brain more accurately to the world in order to see clearly so that I can choose the correct course of action. But it is essential to keep one foot on the ground. To remember that we are animals. From this point we can build a believable conversation.

I know that I am a hypocrite, but that is OK - I can hold many conflicting thoughts in my mind without them cancelling each other out. Perhaps the real problem here is that I am jealous of people who can write better than I can, who are producing better art than I am, who have more exciting lives than I do.

We might be able to think maybe half a degree of magnetude more accurately if we really really work at it, but we can't think differently. Like people who say that the dialectic is bullshit. No, it is a truly profound way of thinking. I wonder if aliens think dialectically? What if they think trialectically? Is that just nonsense, or is it another way of thinking that is un-understandable to us? For us, up is the opposite of down, or maybe for some boddisatvas and little kids it doesn't matter. Those are the choices. But for these aliens, there is up, down and jubjum. And Jubjum is the opposite of up and also the opposite of down. It's not sideways. That's enirely differnet. Sideways is less the opposite of up than down is. There is hot, cold, and jibblejoo. There is smart, dumb, and ijji-jee-jee. There is vague, specific, and ujutt. There is man, woman, and jeemutt. There is happy, sad, and quim-ijji. And quim-ijji isn't much like feeling OK. It is more like, I don't know, quim-ijji is to happy as jubjum is to up. But it's equally like jubjum is to down. But completely unlike either of these things. Cause of the trialectic.

So I can't understand the trialectic. Maybe that's cause I've got an Earth-brain, or maybe that's because there is no such thing as the trialectic. It's really impossible to care too much, cause I've got lots of dialectic thinking to do, and a little zen-mind thinking to do and I'm pretty much fully-booked with that.

But what I'm saying is that the profound is just a very slight complication upon the very simple. It's very close to home in terms of the full range of possible interpretations of the universe. So don't let tricky signs make you think there is a world of thought undiscovered by you. There is a world of undiscovered thought, but it is undiscovereable.