ARE YOU A GOOD ARTIST?

1.

How do you know if you're a good artist? I don't mean good as in ethical or empathetic or nice, but creating good work.

How could you possibly know that? The mirror in your home presents a question mark, nothing more.

First, you want to look at what's being unsaid. Don't people tell you how they remember a work of yours from yesteryear? Haven't you received heartfelt feedback from your students? Won't your more successful colleagues ask you to collaborate? Do people talk about nice, not deep things in your presence?

Then, try not think what's being said. When you're being introduced to someone and they tell you they know you, it means you're hot shit, not that your works are good. If people write about your work without saying anything specific about the actual pieces but concentrate on your personality instead, probably you are not even doing art anymore but trading in hype. And if older artists mention you as an exciting new name, consider what they want from you, because they sure aren't interested in your craft.

If you are good-looking in a normative way, if you come from money, or if you're easy around people, you'll never truly know. A recipe for paranoia you might think. But you can't be too paranoid. Only if you're dead and there's afterlife, you might get to see if people say good things about your artistic practice in earnest. Even so, you'd be right to suspect you're being canonized only because a dead artist is a safe bet for admiration. The work might still be bad.

Kim Modig: Mapping (2017)

2.

Why do you have time to wonder if you're good or not? Don't you have work to do?

We both know this is the work. People say most of our time as artists now goes to applying for things, updating our resumé, or promoting ourselves in social media. But what about doubt? How much time does doubt take per week?

It eats your time especially if you had to fight hard to come through. You will always have more work  to do, because people see you had to break sweat to be here: No one likes visible effort outside sports so you drudge up the past labor. You put in extra hours to the the work of looking effortless.

If you're taking it easy, you probably have less work to begin with. When the day is done, you don't face the laundry pile of racism, sexism, or ableism. No one talked down at you today, misgendered you, or made you concsious of your body's unfitness to the rigid norms of this world. You never doubt if you are able to do something or not. You, as the adage of our times goes, just do it.

3.

If the axis of good or bad seems as repressing as any other dividing line, you may want to search for life outside its influence.

You become a hobbyist, performing your most convincing carnivalesque laughter at the fools who still grind away in the binary reality, begging for legitimization. When everyone else is hard at work proving their value, you do what pleases you. These things are done for the sole reason and wanting to pass the time in a pleasant way. There's no sense of getting better. Nothing goes anywhere because everywhere would be the same.

This is the small town aesthetic. Its downside is social control. Trying too hard rewards punishment. You won't be celebrated but shunned for your victories. Progression is off limits.

Music scenes often work like this, as well. One could say it's not a weakness, but a strength that makes it easier for everyone, for newcomers and veterans alike. Doing your thing is enough, as long as you're OK with unspoken rules and social norms that are reified as nonchalant clothing sense, rugged instruments, aimless songs, and, more often than not, copious amounts of alcohol.

4.

So you move to a bigger city, or look for a more competitive scene because you want the very best in the exchange of ideas. You want to take art seriously.

You meet a master who tells you they don't have any idea if what they do is good or not. The audience, or some random event like a critic defending the work to no end, will make or break the work regardless of your hopes and fears.

The master tells you about intuition and energies. Nothing else to it, they quip.

They don't need to think about good or bad because they're in a position where other people will do it for them.

In art, we like to place some people at positions where they can do exactly what they want and make other people follow their instructions to the t, because we think this is how quality gets made. When the chosen ones bore us, we give their seats to someone new, someone as audacious but who sings a different tune. The number of seats seem to never increase. It must be we like to know who is the best and who are the not good ones.

5.


Even when there are no prizes to be won or seats to fill, why do some people end up worrying if they're good artists when others don't?

If you've been encouraged all your life and told you can do everything and nice-paying opportunities have appeared from thin air, it might have never crossed your mind to question your abilities. That is the gist of privilege.

Strong self-esteem and being presented with opportunities also feed each other. You believe in yourself because people tell you so; but they say you're good because you radiate self-worth. This feedback loop gives famous people who release cookbooks, direct films, start cosmetic companies, star in everything. The doubtful recognize the good.

The people who worry about their worth will do so even at the top of the world. When doubt comes knocking, it moves in and never leaves. The only way to keep it at bay is to be around the good ones. But eventually you need to go back home.

5.

Are you a good artist? What do you think?

Books (pic by me)

WRITING ABOUT ART TODAY MEANS BEING WRITTEN ONTO

1. What to say with an exhibition?

I used to believe the following to be true: The medium of art exhibition is an ineffective way to share information to viewers.

It's true in the sense that I don't usually go into exhibition spaces in order to learn something. But these sorts of jaded rules are meaningless in reality. What is information, or learning, anyway?

Things are also curiously hard to keep apart. You deal with your breakup in doing your performance piece and the other way around. And if you're an artist who's given an exhibition space and, coincidentally, got stuff to say, why wouldn't you voice it through your exhibition?

You know it's not ideal, but nothing ever is. So many other things play out in the process. An exhibition is the outcome from the crude equation of Life divided by Conditions times Chaos. You already know from the get-go how small your influence over the end result might be.

When writing about a show, should I try to suss out the formula I mentioned above? Should I be aware of what were the conditions of production? I should, but sometimes I wonder if that isn't taking away the power of the artist to present us with the works, without needing to point toward interpretative devices lurking somewhere next to them, the institution hosting the exhibition, or the world at large?

Or is there another formula at play, one in which your need to say “I did this, not some imaginary community” derives from an equation of Privilege times Ego minus Urgency plus Charisma? OK I admit this is getting a little fuzzy.

Privilege allows you to think you're doing it all by yourself. Those least vulnerable are the ones least dependent on communities. On the other end, there are those who are too scarred by past trauma to be amongst other people again. And why would you want to rely on such a messy thing as other people if you really don't have to?

The white cube with its modernist autonomy might be problematic, but I bet many artists long to be left alone and show their work in the way they want to, independent of who they are. Another question entirely is whether or not society should support these activities of self-expression.

Being able to control your creative output and own it are crucial aspects of artistic work, especially when it's the only thing under your control, as Olivia Laing, in their book The Lonely City, makes clear when writing about the artist Henry Darger who was alone for most of adult life, creating a visual world of drawings, paintings, and text, only unearthed posthumously, in a cramped apartment with very little means.

Perhaps that's why legendary recluse artists such as David Hammons (or any of the artists presented in Martin Herbert's book “Tell Them I Said No”) refuse to open the proverbial door when fame comes knocking. It would lead into other people stepping all over your process.

2. Community and art

Rejecting all communal notions from one's practice cuts to the core of the history of Western modern and contemporary art. It is carried by the idea of autonomous works that happen in a kind of vacuum, devoid of outside world.

It's a political project, as well. Independency is Nordic welfare society at its utopian best: everyone is taken care of and given equal opportunities so no-one is dependent on their friends or families.

But then this is reality for less and less people, all the while art is becoming more and more the place where rehearsals for community-building take place. This happens partly because conservative austerity politics need a band aid (UK art institutions give a deeply unsettling example of this), but also because contemporary art practices are changing from within.

Public has become the primal form of new art, and exhibition the secondary one. The word public here acts as a placeholder for assemblies, collectives, public gatherings, non-patriarchal familial constellations and so forth.

It makes sense that the latest Helsinki-based art organization born from the ashes of Checkpoint Helsinki (which, fittingly, came into existence to oppose the building of a museum) calls itself Publics, produces mostly talks and hosts events, and seems not to be putting up exhibitions anytime soon.

Another new local enterprise, Museum of Impossible Forms, is operating on a similar vein while referring in its name to the concept of museum, which the art historian Camiel van Winkel calls the end destination for all things avant-garde.

What was once the fringe program (talks, workshops) is now the headliner. When I look around, I can see some people having not really realized this. Others are angry, even. “Why is art about the other stuff nowadays?” This is another way of saying “I''m white and feel like I can't get enough exposure.”

In addition to how petty such statements ring, it's mindless to get riled up for all the retreats and workshops & complain how art itself has been forgotten. These events are what art is today. It's not about some limp relational turn anymore, but moreso that art is now being done by people who might possess different needs from those who came before, ie. basically white privileged men. Although in most cases this change hasn't reached the highest offices of art power.

The point is obviously not to say that what all non-white artistic practices add up to is some delightful communal picnic, but that art in the West is getting a reboot. And in order to do that, you need to retreat, take stock, plan, discuss, build a strategy, gather the troops, care for others and stay warm.

The shock that well-off, liberal white people are currently channeling by accusing identity politics, which has come to mean “not white hegemonic culture”, is the direct result of feeling like outsiders in the plethora of communal activities taking over (especially the local nodes) of the art world.

It follows that no one might need the kind of formalist-modernist, theme-led exhibitions we are mostly seeing today, made by curators and artists who received a similar education in taste, class, and thinking.

3. Will anything change?

Change never comes at once. White male painters following the macho-mythical abstract expressionist credo still seem to sell just fine, and formalist exhibitions will be a thing for decades to come in some form or another, be it by artists of any identity.

And people in leading positions don't give up their power without a fight. Since old institutions are unwilling to change their practices, from hiring to bathroom policies and from curatorial thinking to their relationship with the state, new institutions will pop up, as perhaps could be said was the case with Publics and Museum of Impossible Forms.

The fruits of modernism are still edible. But if we think about the leading critical discourse, the most on-demand artists, or the most talked-about art-related books currently published, then in that realm doing exhibitions today is getting close to proclaiming you're a Cubist. The performance of professionalism today requires you organize a retreat.

In a country like Finland where considerable support for art abound, the community-building in art can result in a group of well-funded (and -meaning) artists creating images of how such an activity might look like, usually for an institution who wants to be seen as Ethical.

Art becomes a rehearsal for life, removed from any other agency than art professionals' need to seem like they're renewing themselves to suit the times. But perhaps this is needed. They are stories and we live from stories.

Many of us might feel disappointed after attending to these social art-gatherings. They are followed by another one, on a different topic, and then again another one, all the while we try to keep our own lives afloat.

We might do less modernist exhibitions, but we still have busy, precarious, and very modern lives. That's how art happens today to the people who live it: through an endless, drowning stream of deadlines and unmissable events. The difference between a retreat and a corporate team-building exercise can seem non-existent at times.

Unfortunately, art will most likely always be exploitative in some way. Artists won't be paid, producers and directors will, or vice versa. Only selected few will succeed, even if the selection criteria changes, and the many left behind should shut their traps and be happy that at least someone is finally getting that extra funding.

There's nothing so ethical and urgent that we artists couldn't turn it into blatant careerism. And you can't really be angry at that. As I said earlier, life is not ideal. Rent is rent. We do what we can, under circumstances we can't fully control. Good intentions vs. needs we can't surpass, all that.

Managing a nuanced perspective on things becomes particularly vexing when you're feeling overwhelmed by the extreme, life-destroying urgency of climate change, for example. You don't want the many shades of truth, but just the one. An artist has gone through these motions only to realize that, say, flying to biennials is bad for the environment and a grueling way to live, too. So they turn their own realization into a dictum and hold everyone up to this standard of their own making.

This is grossly self-centered, and uneven, because everyone has different reasons for doing what they do. We can't force each others as individuals to do things in a different way just because that way fits us and our abilities. Universalism and essentialism are not needed here, either.

Conducting change obviously requires listening, and a cool head. Mostly nothing about the art world caters for such qualities, which is why we have the kinds of lives we do. We are finding ourselves in a paradoxical situation: Artists are engaging in new kinds of thinking in settings that are, at their core, hostile to the idea of sustained attention. Infrastructural change in art couldn't be more urgent: the structure of doing things is in direct violation with what most of us would like to do.

What is perhaps not always understood is the magnitude of such change. Most art institutions think, in Finland at least, that they can go about their business as usual just as long as they cherry-pick a more “diverse” set of artists for their events. But you cannot include people, aggressively marginalized by the state and white patriarchy, into the inner sanctums of art and expect them to not turn around the very structures and ways of doing art. It's not only a matter of who is doing the art, but under what terms, and for what end.

This much is clear to most people working in the lower confines of the art world, where everything isn't about pleasing your donors or Ministry of Culture. But understanding something is not the same as changing it.

Kim Modig: Social Anxiety Matrix #2 (2017)

4. Whose standards?

I argue that, collectively and unconsciously, we still regard the solo exhibition, or the museum group show, or the inclusion to a big biennale, or the star guest visiting your insitution or city, to be the gold standard. The archetypes haven't changed yet. This is why we all still talk about museums and refer to them in titles and texts, although a growing number of us artists work in a way that has little connection to what happens within those walls. When will we cut the cord for good? And can you survive outside?

Everything is still in relation to the old models, or simply just made in the same way but with a different topic, which means that a way of life an exhibition tries to depict is not really meant to enter the building. Think of it like this: Exhibitions about queer art should be presented in a way that is inviting to queer life.

Consider also how European Futurism and Surrealism looked like white boys with rich parents fooling around. Art is how you live. So what would art spaces look like if their very infrastructure would reflect some other lives? What if those spaces wouldn't look like the lives of upper-class people, with designer glass at the museum café, expensive jewelry at sale in the museum shop, and the exhibitions spaces made to look immaculate? But contemporary art has never been about class revolution, but the cementing of its horizontal power structure while adding a new coat of paint on it.

Before depression hits, let us return to the question of reading a show, and to a compound issue, that of subjectivity.

5. Everything affects everything

Do I look at the artwork without any “external” explanation? And is it really a matter of either-or: Either I look at the works only, or I take into account everything else? It's not. Things bleed and stick to each other. I find it impossible to take anything apart from another thing, without at least a thread hanging between them, holding up a connection. You can try it yourself. Imagine a box with a lid and try now to remove the lid.

Is the name of the artist in the title of an exhibition the perfect example of the fact that we are still simple creatures who cannot think in fluid ways about object-subject relations and multiplicity of agencies?

Or, we can think about them, you know, pick up a Karen Barad book and quote it, but we're still seemingly far from such boundless thinking managing to change the way our world works. It's little like the situation above with exhibitions and the much-needed modes of producing and experiencing art.

Even though we know it's not the artist who, in this multi-actor sense, does a show on their own, we still insist on placing the artist's agency above anyone and anything else's. And this is why our whole thinking must change if we want to get rid of the long shadows of modernism and colonialism in art.

Is there a threshold in having an agency in something? What still counts as influencing a work of art? The line is impossible to draw. I'm thinking of Iggy Lond Malmberg and their solo performance Boner (Baltic Circle, 2014), where Malmberg said something like perhaps we perform Hamlet so often because the crown in the storage of a theater wants us to do so.

Free, individual will is getting to be a thing of the past, and perhaps this mythical freedom has been unfathomable to almost everyone except for the ones who came up with it, ie. the men in charge. So how should we begin to write about shows under this new sun of intra-agencies, where we are constantly pushing and pulling each other unknowingly, blurring the lines that used to separate me from you or from a thing?

It's not new. This stimulating yet confusing problem of multiple agencies simultaneously in play has always existed in our attempts to say something. When you try to express yourself, you end up bringing in so many other things to the forefront. Our bodies emit all kinds of data from smells to affects, and our words and actions carry infinite interpretative possibilities.

Let me return to the question of information from which this text begun. Maybe the exhibition is not at all any worse a communication platform than, for example, talking to another person. To write about an exhibition is to unearth both what I assume the show is trying to say, but also what it's saying regardless its makers' best attempts. This is the case with any human communication.

Here, we need to make a decision. It's up to you whether you want to believe the human, or the artwork, in front of you or not. If you don't, you can read them in the worst possible way. Sometimes that's healthy, sometimes violently cynical.

You could say noise is always there, surrounding the signal. The receptor can, by all means, concentrate on the noise only and deem the message meaningless, or to excavate the signal out from the static and consider its intent. Again, the noise is at times more exciting than what is being communicated, so the choice is not so clear-cut.

In informal art discourse, née bar talk, née the talk that actually molds our attitudes much more than any seminar or book can ever do, we often look for problems in something we've just experienced together. The show was horrible, the talk was sub-par, the event was pointless, the commercial galleries in our home town are all crap. This is how many of us talk (kudos to you if you ever don't!), and this is how we connect. We congregate around faults.

What is it in the structure of our art worlds that make us retort to this conscious amplification of noise and diminishing of signal? I think it's a question worth pondering. Is it the precariousness? That we're all scared for our livelihood and/or legitimization, and so we want to drag other initiatives down to level the playing field?

5. Aftermath: writing?

These, I feel, are the two main trajectories at play in art today: The fundamental change in the very forms of how art is done, experienced and presented (for whom and by who), and secondly, the revolutionary expansion of agency, which will sooner or later change our understanding of authorship and creator-mediator-spectator dynamics.

But all of this is not simply a matter of disseminating information, like I said in the beginning, but of, well, I'd like to leave that part open. I'll end with a rumination on writing.

To understand how those trajectories play out in our practices, we can think of how to write about art today. One tactic could be to think more about who is this for. If this is not for me, what am I doing here? Furthermore, if this thing here leaves me cold, why wouldn't I go somewhere warm? And yet sometimes it might prove wise to test different climates. But for one last time, all these maxims become meaningless in life, where choices are rarely binary. And sometimes there is no choice. You just are somewhere.

I could also propose we start from an understanding that being in the same space with artworks is not a one-sided affair. When entering an exhibition, you might want to ask yourself: Who is this "I" that is hanging out with the exhibition here today and what does this I do to the exhibition, and vice versa?

The chameleon once again faces the choice between a reflexive urge to fuse in with the surroundings, or a Promethean obsession to challenge your environment. You are marking the space with your energy. Is it healing, antagonizing, wobbly, or dry kind of energy?

This unbound and always changing multiplicity is who I am, and it's what an artwork with which I'm spending time, has to deal with too. And how the work conducts that dealing reverberates back to me. I am not only writing criticism about artworks: The works are writing on me.

Published subsequently in Sorbus Gallery's upcoming publication, 2019

SUOMALAISESTA KOKOUSKULTTUURISTA

This one is in Finnish, apologies to non-Finnish speakers!


Kulttuurialan yhdistyksen hallitustyöskentely Suomessa, mustavalkoisen opetusfilmin muodossa:



Kuvio menee yleensä niin että toiminnanjohtaja kertoo mitä tehdään ja hallitus hyväksyy sen sillä kukaan ei ole jaksanut perehtyä mihinkään tai ymmärrä riittävästi kokonaiskuvaa ja budjettia. Puheenjohtaja on paremmin perillä. Hallituksen muiden jäsenten tehtävä on täyttää suomalaisen yhdistyslainsäädännön muodollisuudet, kuten mielenosoittajat jotka muistuttavat kohteliaalla seisoskelullaan että meillä on täällä demokratia ja sananvapaus.



Puheenjohtaja saa palkintonsa näkyvämpänä asemana taidekentällä. Se konkretisoituu säätiöiden ja muiden rahan polttoa harrastavien tahojen ”dinner”-kutsuina. Hän voi halutessaan kirjoittaa kolumnin jossa todetaan että taide vastaa jopa kolmea prosenttia vientituontiBKT-höpömittarilukemasta ja me julkaisimmekin juuri tällaisen numeroiden ryydittämän selvityksen alastamme kuten olemme tehneet joka vuosi mutta huom! taidetta ei tietenkään saa mitata.



Aina on se yksi hallituksen jäsen joka pitää kokouksissa kärttyisiä monologeja lievästi asiaan liittyen. Hänet saadaan tyytyväiseksi muuttamalla joku sanamuoto toimintasuunnitelmaan, tiedotteeseen tai nettisivulle. Tosiasiassa hänelle voisi vain sanoa että minä näen ja kuulen sinut, se riittäisi.



Toisinaan pitää kuunnella myös yhdistyksen muita jäseniä. Jäsenpäivään käytetään 615 euroa, se menee cateringiin tai Woltille ja kolmen litran punaviinibokseihin. Jäseniä tulee paikalle neljä, yhdellä heistä on jäänyt toimistolle hanskat niin hoituu sekin samalla. Ruokaa jää yli, se annetaan tukityöllistetylle tupperware-boksissa kotiin vietäväksi. Sovitaan että pitääpä tehdä joku kiva proggis ja että palataan tähän syksymmällä, kaupungilta saisi varmaan tukea kun tämä voisi olla myös nuorille.



Jos on oikein epäkelpo hallitus, niin jäsenet ajavat kokouksissa omia projektejaan läpi ja ne toteutetaan yhdistyksen rahoilla ja toiminnanjohtajan ja muiden palkollisten työajalla. Tämä ei ole ydintoiminnan kannalta niin paheksuttavaa kun voisi luulla, onhan taideyhdistysten tehtävä joka tapauksessa puhaltaa valtiolta ja yksityisiltä tahoilta rahaa omille jäsenilleen. Mutta koska se kuulostaa pahalta, on katsottu parhaaksi kuluttaa 67% tuloista kaupungin keskustan kiinteistövuokriin ja henkilökuntaan. Ja ei saa sanoa tulo vaan varainhankinta tai avustus.



Toisinaan yhdistyksen pitkäaikaiset jäsenet eivät ole löytäneet elämälleen muuta tarkoitusta kuin yhdistyksen perustajajäsenyyden tai wanhan wiisaan roolilla ratsastamisen. Kaikki toiminnanjohtajat vihaavat sydämensä pohjasta vanhoja jäseniä jotka eivät tee mitään, mutta kertovat mitä pitäisi tehdä tai valittavat kaikesta. Heitä kuunnellaan koska toinen osapuoli saa yksipuolisesta keskustelusta rahallisen korvauksen.



Strategiatyö on sitä että keksitään mitä kivoja arvoja me edistettiinkään ja sitten niitä muotoillaan suuhun sopivaksi muutaman kokouksen ajan. Näissä kokouksissa on yleensä paremmat tarjoilut kuin tavallisesti.



Nämä arvot muuttuvat aina aikojen ja rahoittajien toiveiden mukaan. Tänäkin sunnuntaina jonkin pikkuruisen taideyhdistyksen hallitus pohtii miten sisällyttää ihmisoikeudet ja ilmastonmuutoksen vastustaminen toimintasuunnitelmaan, joka muilta osin sisältää kokeellisen sirkuksen yhden päivän festivaalin, seminaarivierailun pj:lle ja Karen Barad -lukupiirin.



Yksi asia ei ajan tuulien mukana heilu: Kaikkien yhdistysten tehtävä on lisätä oman alansa rahoitusosuutta sillä Suomi ei tulisi toimeen ilman taidemuotoa X. Siksi sovitaan tapaamisia ministeriöön ja vuosien työn jälkeen saadaan tuhat euroa lisää rahoitusta kun luvataan ministeriölle että hyppäämme mistä tahansa hulahula-vanteesta läpi kunhan vain osoitatte sormella sitä. Toisinaan joku voi miettiä että ehkä taidekentän tilanne on niin ankea koska me suostumme mihin tahansa jos joku mainitsee sanat rahoitusosuuden lisääminen mutta se on sellaista negatiivisuutta johon meillä ei yksinkertaisesti ole varaa. VOS jotain jotain.



Jos kaaokselle annetaan vähän enemmän tilaa eikä toimintasuunnitelmasta jakseta kovasti välittää, niin pitkin vuotta kehitetään kaikenlaisia hankkeita koska jollakin säätiöllä on haku auki mikroautoilua hyödyntäville hankkeille ja kyllähän me tavallaan ollaan myös mikroautoilijoiden asialla.



Sitten tulee uusi toiminnanjohtaja ja hallitus joka moralisoi aikaisempien kollegoiden töitä hovikelpoisin sanankääntein ja päättää siivota pöydän, sillä nämä mikroautohankkeet ovat tukkineet flown. Tehdään strategiatyötä. Ehkä palkataan halvin mahdollinen graafinen suunnittelija tekemään uusi ilme joka kommunikoi paremmin edistämistyötämme. Google Driveen tai Officeen tehdään kansio jossa lukee ulkopuolisen viestintäammattilaisen suosituksesta Benchmarks eikä kukaan uskalla kysyä että mitä se tarkoittikaan.



Erityisen tärkeää on että pj & tj kokoustavat ihan kaikkien mahdollisten sisaryhdistysten kanssa koska mikään ei ole niin suomalaista taidemaailmaa kuin se että samat ihmiset päättävät keskenään toistensa asioista objektiivisuutta, vertaisarviointia ja asiantuntijuutta performoiden. Kiinnostavampaa kuin taide on taiteen edistäminen ja edustaminen, siitä tulee olo että me ollaan kuulkaa ammattilaisia jotka arvonsa ansaitsevat. Silloin ei myöskään tarvitse miettiä koskettaako tämä edistämämme taide sielujamme vai ei, pakkohan sen on olla arvokasta kun sitä niin edistetään.



Jos ry-larppaus on päätetty viedä ns mestaritasolle, niin hallitus asettaa erilaisia työryhmiä. Kaikkien helpoin tapa päättää jokin asia on perustaa työryhmä tai valiokunta, joka esittelee ideansa hallitukselle joka taas haluaa kahvinousuissaan puuttua asiaan. Sitten tätä esittelyä ja selvitystä ja kommentointia voidaan jatkaa niin kauan kuin roolipeli maistuu. Useimmille se maittaa 1-2 hallituskautta sillä elämä on lopulta kovin lyhyt.



Tärkeintä on että aikuisille taiteilijoille järjestetään jokin toimistotyön ja siten normaalin elämän mieleen tuova tila johon kokoontua töiden jälkeen jotteivät he koko ajan pyörisi ylihintaisilla studioillaan miettimässä että miksi minä valitsin taidealan.



Yhdistysten keskeinen tehtävä onkin estää hallituksen jäsenten sosiaalista syrjäytymistä omasta viiteryhmästään. Aikuiset eivät voi sanoa ääneen että haluan olla ihmisten seurassa ja kaipaan hyväksyntää enkä oikein muutenkaan tiedä onko tekemisissäni mitään järkeä. Siksi on päätetty perustaa yhdistyksiä (ja työpaikkoja) jotta näistä tunteista ei koskaan tarvitsisi puhua suoraan. On aina helpompaa asettaa työryhmä kuin kysyä läheiseltään että haluaisitko viettää kanssani aikaa.

Back At The Desk, 2018, digital image

Kirjoittaja on toiminut useissa hallituksissa sekä työskennellyt toiminnanjohtajana. Hän istuu parhaillaan Teatteri- ja mediatyöntekijöiden liiton ja Suomen valo-, ääni- ja videosuunnittelijoiden hallituksissa ja pitää toisinaan kärttyisiä monologeja saadakseen huomiota.

GO DIRECT YOURSELF

Directors in theatre - why are they there?

Recently, a theatre play titled Turkka kuolee had its premiere here in Finland, surrounded by considerable hype. It's based on the writings and interviews of people who were in the orbit of one of Finland's most sadistic and notorious theatre directors. As much as I learned from listening to those stories, I found myself hoping the creators of the play would've looked into the root of the problem, which is the education offered in Theatre Academy and the ideological basis for the role of a director.

People, especially journalists, like to wonder out loud how it was possible for one person to acquire such unchecked power. It's like asking how Trump can do all those horrible things. The answer is simple: the system was designed that way. We simply trust that elected people or art school professors wouldn't take advantage of their position. Put differently, we sort of rely on luck. But to paraphrase the infamous Jenny Holzer line, abuse of power should come as no surprise. 

The laws and regulations also restrict what should and can be tolerated at any workplace. But sadly, more often than not, making theatre with a group of people is more akin to hypnosis or religious cult than a day at the office (but then, isn't all work like that?). Without dwelling too much on the theoretical or spiritual root of theatre, the need to believe takes in not only the audience of a play but its makers too. 

There's a way of talking, taking place between theatre professionals honing together an upcoming piece, that I haven't witnessed anywhere else. Every gesture, scene, object, word, is forced to carry extra meaning, which gives for an especially pompous rhetoric. 

All the stage actions and tryouts during a rehearsal can be analysed endlessly, usually to prove yourself to the director (something sound/light/set/costume/etc designers are inclined to do) who then decides whether your interpretation is correct. A great deal of belief in telepathy is needed to convey the ideas of a director into reverberant sound effects, dramatic backlight, epochal dresses, or the quivering movements of an actor. Or, if you zoom out a little, the day-to-day operations of a theatre house at large.

All of this is ideal breeding ground for sectarian autosuggestion. What follows is paranoia: am I not part of the in-group? What are the director, dramaturg, and video designer rattling on over there? What if I'm not deep enough, like my co-actor who everyone says transcends the script?

People have vastly different experiences from working in theatre, too, of course. What I'm aiming at here is some sort of generic idea that seems to always lurk in the background when people do theatre. It's the relative of the ghost that keeps appearing when paintings are hung: are these worth something? What if the painter really is talented? Am I not getting it? Is this image very deep but I'm not?

Almost all the major theatrical productions I've worked in, or rehearsals I've visited, have included shouting, belittling, and/or other behavior gone entirely unredeemed save for the "you know I'm under a lot of pressure" hail mary muttered as an afterthought during a break. This behaviour is almost solely coming from the representatives of one profession alone: directors. And usually no one wants to stand up to them. This will all be over soon, they are just having a bad day, it's nothing serious, we're all tired today, we tell ourselves.

But why do we have directors in the first place? Surely there is no god-given blueprint for how theatre must be done? Having said that, it's worthwhile to remember our theatrical tradition was founded by a society of men who favored slavery and strict hierarchies (OK I have no business lecturing anyone on Ancient Greece, so take this with a barrel of salt).

When I was studying sound design in Theatre Academy, in Helsinki, I constantly wondered why actors and designers needed someone to tell them what to do. You have the text in front of you, the stage is there, don't you wanna figure it all out on your own or with your friends?

And how is it possible that we still buy the line, often repeated by our professors in the academy, that you can't really do theatre without someone in charge? During my time (2003-2009) there were of course collectives or (a word I prefer over the former one) working groups making works without a director, but these were always dismissed in school as "experimental", "fringe", "artistic", and thus not Real Theatre.

In my decade of being an artist, I've never had the need for a director personally, as in I've never worked on a performance or whatever and thought if only there was someone here giving me stage directions and texting me in the middle of the night with notes. I haven't really seen any basis for their existence, ever. 

I used to be more nuanced about this for the sake of some sort of perceived civility, as in "of course there are many ways to do art and being led by a director is one possible way and I'm sure it's a good thing." I'm tired of saying that. I've been doing this now long enough that I can say this with at least some sort of experience: directors should for most parts be a thing of the past, or at best a marginal profession.

Everyone has ideas. Anyone can tell other people what to do. A director is validated through the labor of others. Yes, you can do beautiful things from that position: you can make other people shine and help them find their strength, you can see what's going on in the stage and where the problems in the dramaturgy might lie, you can handle all outside pressure, you can bring people together to achieve something. But we could all do that to each other. There's absolutely no need to institutionalise this role. For all its issues of abuse, ie. its dangers, the directorial model should be a marginal mode of working, not the primary one.

Here's a more black-and-white way of stating it: If you wanna help a group of actors and designers, then help, but don't take credit for it. If directors would be called assistants and paid accordingly I wouldn't have any beef -or I would, because I don't believe in that sort of hierarchical justice either, and I'm not here to punish anyone by turning competitive workplace games against them.

Don't tell me what to do

In June, I was visiting a workshop that consisted mostly of dancers. I talked about my survival strategies in art and shared my stories. We were talking about our experiences in the field when one of the participants said this thing that left a lasting impact on me. The way they said it was matter-of-fact, yet kind, and very reflective. "I don't understand why a choreographer should tell me what I must do with my body." 

There you have it. What does it say about our values, ethics, and worldview, that we have created a system in which one person (typically/historically a masculine man) tells others (typically feminine people, plus less-paid staff and technicians, latter being usually working-class men) what they should do? 

I get having someone in charge makes sense during a catastrophe or, say, surgery. There are situations where having a director for a play is appreciated, perhaps when one works with a group that benefits greatly from overall guidance, say, with children. In general, I can see it also comes useful in a factory, or a battle, too. But why have we copied this system into art, which is a fun human act that can literally be anything? 

Why settle on the most uninspiring model, even or especially so because it's the one that "drives home the results"? Why should making films or theatre be modelled after military regiment or industrial labor? 

You could say that if artists do not want to work with directors they can go and do what they want. That's cute, but the funding of stage arts here in Finland is based on established theatres getting most of the money so they can pay salaries. The financial system in arts upholds the traditional hierarchy of labor. If that's not enough, the unions will make sure this system stays intact. So really we're married with this system, and only way to bring it down is to tore it apart on all levels, from education to funding. 

Full disclosure: I am sitting on the board of Trade Union for Theatre and Media Finland, which is funny since I strongly oppose this static division of labor in arts. That being said, I'm always interested to hear other views, and one reason for my joining the board was to understand theatrical work better from inside a system that protects this division. Another reason is to be able to slide in a discussion about basic income, but that's another discussion.

Where does this anti-director hyperbole leads into? 

Of course, you can't make "Apocalypse: Now" if you don't have unchecked power and you're not on a narcissistic bent fuelled by drugs or whatnot to turn the world onto your own image. Is the world worse off without works of art that only an unhinged director can produce? 

These works are very important to a lot of other people, but take stock: do you find it impossible to think you would've loved something else if those works would have not existed? There's no need to stop loving those works, but there's also no need to repeat the formula that created these masterpieces of megalomania and resulted in abuse in so many cases. Why make art with a tool that's bound to hurt someone?

We all understand that works of art are, in a fundamental sense, of both equal and incomparable value: a short poem is not less or more meaningful than a 2-hour symphonic composition. As a society, we want to archive the big, popular, well-known works, as well as the so-called folk art that's meaningful for a given community. 

Furthermore, if we would cease to produce, for example, video art, we would do something else. Art as phenomenon wouldn't really lose or gain anything by video art's extinction. In terms of art's meaningfulness, there are no better or worse ways of making art. You can create great things by a multitude of ways that are in no way tied to any material pre-requisites.

The issues we should consider are the conditions in which artistic labor takes place. Who has access, who decides on this access, how are people or other living beings treated within a given production, just to name a few possible and very real concerns. 

These are tricky issues, because such concerns are also endemic to controlling artistic expression as a by-product of advancing much-needed workers' rights. This is precisely what unions do, even when they don't want to -by fighting for substantial pay, they end up reinforcing certain ways of working as fundamental to artistic practices. 

This leads to a situation where people are being educated in a theatre school to become actors, set designers, sound designers, directors, and so on. A production becomes something where everyone sticks to these roles and learns to speak as the representative of their profession. 

Additionally, this is why I've found it hard to defend certain core contemporary issues in art, from more funding for arts, to artists' associations' demands for more professional conditions for their members. I absolutely understand and respect these needs and have fought for them, but more and more, I see them reinforcing a hierarchical system where being an artist is a prized position instead of a fundamental right and a source of joy, and where artistic work is being kept in a petty, middle-class zone of harmless symbolic decor by placing artists in the creative class. 

But if I'd utter such things, I'd rub backs with some questionable people and political parties who are doing what they can to privatise the cultural sector and get rid of any kind of subsidies for artists. 

Directors keep on being directors

What happened with this one sadistic director in the past decades in Finland is not an exception to the rule. I've heard similar stories multiple times, and the accused of these stories are currently running city theatres, holding professorships, and acting as respected members of their artistic communities. I've heard people explain away the sexual misconducts of their actor peers as "actors simply being that way". My designer friends in theatre take constant shit in the form of slurs, shouting and now-I'm-your-friend-now-I'm-your-boss type of erratic, arbitrary behavior models when they work for directors. People who sign off are oftentimes cast either as privileged, preppy, or weak.

And it's not that you couldn't ask other people to help you in the actualisation of your artistic idea. Of course you can and quite often you should. I've worked as an assistant, stagehand, designer, co-creator, and in other such roles successfully and I've enjoyed a bunch of those experiences. 

I'm not saying, either, that a directorship is some cursed profession that turns you instantly into a monster. But how come we let this system stay afloat when it's entirely based on luck, ie. let's hope this director is nice and doesn't abuse their power? 

Afterword

Perhaps the idea of a director is tragically tied to the idea of infinite growth. We can always do bigger, greater things! More cowbell! More everything! Push it to the limit! When I think of the sickening projects I've been in where the director tried to "save" the piece by demanding we work longer days, rehearse more, do more of everything, this theory does feel right to me. 

What kind of worldview we are feeding with such a method of making art?

***

Lastly, I am sending much love to all my dear friends who are directors. I'm not against you, I just needed to say my piece. This is not a closed text, it's too full of holes for that, but a conversation starter, if anything. If you're a director and felt a sting, remember you are more than your assigned role. We all are.

Image description: the author, wearing blue pants and a shirt and sneakers, lying on the floor of an almost empty stage, with a coffee mug close to their body. From documentation shot by Christopher Hewitt. New Performance Nights, Tehdas Teatteri, Turku, 2016.

Willing it: On Elina Minn's "Hydra"

Image: A plate of vegan sushi that has nothing to do with the article. From Makimaki, Münster.

A dozen or so people are sitting in a rehearsal room in Theatre Academy, Helsinki. I'm here to experience a performance of which I didn't read a line of information beforehand. I simply wanted to see what a friend of mine is doing nowadays. As usual, I'll try to find that out by going to see them work.

Hydra, which premiered on the 5th of June, is dubbed in the handout text as a "speculative fiction about future bodies", which I can attest to is true. Hydra is directed, written, and performed by Elina Minn, and realised together with a group of artists and designers, who are all sitting in the ring with us.

One of them is Markus Lindén, perhaps one of the most adventurous sound designers I know. Every time I go see a performance they are part of (which I have done all too seldom), I am expecting to be taken to a ride, and I was not disappointed this time either. 

If somebody would turn a theatre festival into a catalogue raisonné of Markus' works, it'd be pretty amazing; to trace that one journey. I say this also because I am saddened by the amount of work we all do, only to see all these performances disappear without anyone tying them together onto their many histories and lineages. To borrow a sound-related concept, we don't generally need more premieres, we need longer sustain times.

After the performance, upon walking up to say hi to Markus, who looked exceptionally focused behind their gear, I noticed that the trance-y, percussion-led techno we've been listening to post-performance was not them jamming on their computer, as I've thought, but a Youtube clip of a Finnish DJ playing. I found it extremely hilarious and spot-on. It works so why not.

Elina Minn, whom I've known from early 2010's onwards when we both lived in Turku, addresses us wearing an octopus-shaped, funny-looking hat, courtesy of designer Pauliina Sjöberg who also acts as a guide of sorts, along with set designer Eeti Piiroinen, whose holistic vision has stayed in my head ever since. It might be the first instance of me longing to return to a set, like a tourist, unless Half-Life 2 counts as a stage.

The way Elina wears the octopus hat could be best described as uncanny yet mundane, as if the world has permanently given up on obsessing over reason. This, to me, might be the undercurrent of their artistic practice. The funniness of the hat is the sort that makes you grin like you're at a party surrounded by people alien to you & have no idea what's going on, but decide to nonchalantly enjoy it nevertheless. 

Elina's presence is very calming, even grounding at times. To be precise, it isn't them addressing us sitting in the room, but a hybrid life form from the future who was just borrowing Elina's body for the occasion. Before long, we are escorted to another room to try out inter-cellular existence in groups of threes.

The second room is strikingly beautiful. I immediately begin to hope the school's technicians would never take down the set. This is what a space for radical learning must look like. What on other days passes as a lecture room had been transformed into something magnificent and powerful, yet calming and approachable, like a yoga center doubling as martial arts training site for queer resistance. 

With its printed stone patterns covering the sides of small, makeshift water basins, the pale-shaped drapes and exercise mats, the place reminds me of the post-internet epoch. It was actually pretty great in terms of aesthetic appeal. And now, after everyone has stopped caring about day-glo installations combining Nike shoes, Axe spray, and climbing gear, we get to enjoy the aesthetic without the sickening sarcasm and the all-encompassing twin shadow of self-importance and self-hatred, emanating from the very real need to be successful.

Seven or so years ago, Elina was my link to the Anglo-European post-internet art scene that lurked in Facebook groups, Berlin, hard drives of displaced artists endlessly uploading visual tropes online which then more successful Western artists could exploit for profit, and artist-run, DIY galleries. 

I saw Elina perform for the first time in Stockholm, at a gallery of the aforementioned type. The place was called Detroit (I will chance it and guess that the space had nothing to do with Detroit). In there, they gave a hilarious monologue in front of an anxious, young art crowd. It was about a Seinfeld episode titled The Marine Biologist in which Jerry claims falsely that George is what the title says.

Fast forward to 2018, and I'm being gently touched and taken care of two other audience members -or just people, really, since the performance is as practical and no-bullshit as attending a yoga class. As they feel around my legs, hair, arms, and torso, they both feel very careful and concentrated. I've long forgotten this is art I'm experiencing here. 

Next to us, on a suede cushion pile, there's a text by Donna Haraway available for reading and an iPad with headphones, should one of us participants feel like not doing the group exercises. As with everything in Hydra, this option is explained to us in a perfect balance of dignity and muted mirth.

Nothing in this space seems symbolic: everything is real, which makes the exercise -an attempt to feel the similarities between sea sponges and the cells in our bodies, so as to get an understanding of the future where species are all but hybrid- feel like a walk in the park. This is normal, this is how we spend our time. Cut the bullshit and co-exist. 

I can't overstate how much I appreciated the care which was put into making Hydra a kind experience, and how giving it was, instead of draining one of energy, which usually happens when I'm expected to just forgo social power dynamics during a performance and convince myself to be equal with the artists and other audience members as if by a wave of a magic wand.

After the performance, or the exercise, is done, we talk about our experiences within the group of three of which I had been part. It seems we all enjoyed it. There would've been ways to communicate mixed feelings during the haptic exercise (which once again were offered in a very clear way), but none of us did so, which of course doesn't mean everyone felt OK in the end. I did have a feeling everyone found it exciting yet soothing. 

We keep talking for a bit, say hi to friends, drink some homemade kombucha offered to us by the working group, and leave. On the way home, I become more aware of my body in relation to the world and its many layers and materials.

At home, I look for a recording I made of Minn's performance in Stockholm back then. I do find the file, but the audio quality is weak. You can barely hear what is being said. There's lots of nervous, knowing cackling. Somebody is shouting from another room. I can recognise the laughs of people I used to know. 

On the recording, Elina seems jumpy, just like anyone who is sort of riffing on a subject and wants to keep their bit more or less informal. The piece is only 6 minutes long. The performance consists of Elina going through the content of the episode. It's entertaining to hear the storyline explained, as it's arguably one of the most memorable Seinfeld episodes.

In the episode, George says: "So I started to walk into the water. I won't lie to you, boys, I was terrified! But I pressed on – and as I made my way past the breakers, a strange calm came over me. I don't know if it was divine intervention or the kinship of all living things, but I tell you, Jerry, at that moment – I was a Marine Biologist!" 

Elina recites this passage to the audience, along with some information about the production of the episode, available in its Wikipedia page. Minn draws a connection from George's epiphany to how it feels like to be an artist: You simply just believe in the fact you're an artist. Elina says thank you. Everyone claps enthusiastically. 

Indie pop of the day begins to blast from the speakers in the gallery space, which leads to my recording clipping. People chat intensively. The distortion of the recording makes it seem like it's the 70's and I'm listening to my parents having a good time.

What has changed since Stockholm? On the other hand, we're back in the water, attempting to understand sea creatures, while trying to expand the notion of what we can be. But we're not pretending we have a job. Who wants to work anyway when we can rest together, as we did in the Hydra performance.

What has stayed the same is that art is still seen as being about a kierkegaardian leap of faith. Ultimately, it works if I believe in it. But this time around, in Hydra, the transformation was real and not a comic relief. I left the performance changed. No one laughed knowingly;  most of us smiled in understanding.

After reading an article by Minn about ecosomatic practices, published in the Mustarinda online magazine, I realise how my fleeting experience is far from the deep knowledge they've reached with these methods (that I haven't explained at all here). 

The article is an interview of somatic activist Satu Palokangas who teaches and does research on ecosomatics. Palokangas explains how ecosomatic thinking and practice for them is "asking about yourself in relation to ecological, social, and political events, which are highly acute. How do these events affect us mentally?"*

Later on in the article, Elina describes how "my body is the most intimate part of nature", which, along with the final line uttered by Minn in Hydra, "Lastly, we will practice an important future civic skill: resting", are lines I want to keep with me. They are now my lifelines.

*all translations from the Mustarinda article and the performance by me.

YOUR COLLEAGUES ARE THE PROBLEM

If there's a rule I think applies to all creative work, it's this one: don't be part of a scene. 

If you do, or you're being put into one because you're X or live in Y or whatever, you shouldn't be the one who affirms their beliefs. We all need affirmation, but consider if that's something you want to deliver & what's the price you pay for labouring away on it.

No one who's in a scene would ever say a bad thing about it (publicly). Its practitioners will tell you how dismissing a whole medium is such a lame opinion, and how you should check out this or that artist. 

They say these things because they need to say that. Their justification for their practice stems from the practice itself which is a somewhat problematic point of departure for any kind of creative endeavour. Obviously there are situations where you need to conserve a practice, but for the sake of argument etc.

The people running an artists' association need to be into all the nauseating art done in the name of the genre or medium they are representing. Artists following the doctrine of the day will always be lumped together in group shows with other such artists, which in itself makes it harder to make anything worthwhile since you're now stuck making sure your work doesn't say anything that's outside the norm.

A lot of it has to do with reputation. You want to make sure people take you seriously. Serious behaviour is being highly regulated, as our understanding of truth is dependent on us taking each other seriously enough to trust one another, something I derived from philosopher Gloria Origgi. (Here's a nice podcast about their latest book.) Reputation is an avatar you tend to with your life.

Reputation leads pretty quickly into informal consolidation of acceptable gestures: How to say things, and what things. We check each other to see what passes today.

This leads to every musical sub-genre producing infinite amount of identical tracks. It explains why we always already know what we're gonna see when there's an exhibition done under a given topical theme. And it lends itself to understanding why the most visible artists are all raving about the same cultural objects, from books to TV shows.

You could say that's a good thing: It's delightful to see art that reflects its times. And it kinda is. That's how you'll know what's going on. But there are so many other ways to feel the tremors of the day. Like by living today? Maybe we should make sure everyone can do that?

Art mirroring its times is the trope by which vanilla art becomes histrionic: it's the stuff that's most exciting for future researchers who try to decipher a time long gone. It's just extremely rare that those historical works would carry any ideas worth exploring. I can still remember how it felt to be shoved tedious Dadaist art down my throat without anyone explaining why those works should mean anything to us anymore, other than that they "reflected the tumult and promise of the new century." I must add that being forced to attend an intonarumori concert should be a police matter.

image description: venn diagram showing how very few artists do groundbreaking work while adhering to given ideals.
Courtesy of my Instagram.

Is art pointless then?

Doing art is selfish. Reconciling for this fact with political flag-waving will never produce anything I want to see. Exciting ideas do not equal nice ideas. 

I haven't seen almost any art or entertainment that truly grabs me and infiltrates my worldview, my attitudes, my way of being in the world, while serving the goals of a given community. Although when that happens it's profoundly moving. But in most cases, if anyone cares about most cases, the creation of resonating work requires some sense of disengagement. 

This doesn't dictate what you should do as a citizen, by any means. This is not some backhanded way of defending inexcusable bad-boy behaviour in art, or saying artists must be narcissistic assholes by design. What I'm after here is charting my own experiences as a spectator, without mixing the artist and the work.  

If you feel that making art is pointless and you should spend your time helping others, you're probably right. All the culture we produce as a civilisation is based on plunder and exploitation. That same plunder makes possible both ice hockey matches and critical performance art. And doing the latter doesn't make the imbalance tip back. It doesn't mean we should give up, either, only sober up, and be real about the effects and ineffects of our activities.

Can you name a useful idea from the past 20 years that originated in art and become widespread? I couldn't come up with anything. Then, I'm not too educated or experienced. Still, I have never witnessed any proof that ideas in art done in my time would have traveled into the mainstream, or almost into any other realm, save for fringe parts of humanist studies. Maybe they have and we'll notice it later. 

And maybe, in general, it's better to see yourself as part of a grey mass than as some key individual who will save us with their latest art project. The fact that art is so drastically rooted in the personality of a singular artist is one of its key obstacles in inflicting any kind of change.

I've stopped going to art-related talks and lectures with pressing political themes in their titles. Those conversations are exactly what art anyways is: artists talking to each other, with an affirmation-hungry, educated audience watching from the sides. 

Lastly: there are, of course, artists deeply embedded in community work. I don't think it's a stretch to say they're doing that although they're artists, not because of it, as such work goes against the fabric of the art world. You could change those foundations, possibly. But then we're back at institutional critique as I wrote earlier.

INTERLUDE: badmouthing

Here's some paranoid subtweeting for you all: I could name people from the Helsinki scene who, if they'd read this, would chuckle and think "oh my god Kimmo is so clueless have they not heard about this-and-this Soviet-era art movement in Eastern Europe that, really, was so bold and transgressive." No, I haven't. No-one else has, either. I can see how unearthing such stories can be empowering and exciting. I love reading about that stuff. But make no mistake, no one outside our circle of colleagues will learn about it.

What do we experience?

Art has changed me tremendously but it has never taught me anything. That change has taken place in a hard-to-map, structural, even molecular level. My outlook has changed. 

You could say it's particularly interesting when artists tackle real-world subjects with poetic license, or meld art with science. But why would I want to listen to an artist talk about science? Like, what, you completed a PhD on the flight over here? 

I do want to see the foundations of Western scientific knowledge being interrogated, but I have very little hope that we'll get anywhere with that by curating group exhibitions about epistemologies.

It's just that I hear all this talk about all these issues, and all these names of authors being thrown in the air (season 2014-2018: Karen Barad, more on that here), but no one seems to catch them when they fall. I've been chasing that space of reflection literally all my life. I really wanna talk about the experience of coming together and what happens there. 

But the situation of art as a site of knowledge is rotten at the core: someone is always getting paid or advancing their career by organising the event or being vocal. The agency is always hijacked before it is set. So I've given up.

What happened there at the event at the gallery you just went to? Did you really experience intra-agency or was it just a mess of materials splattered across the space that everyone tried their best not to touch? Do I feel closer to other species after imagining I'm an amoeba for the duration of a performance, or could it be that such cognitive transformation would take hundreds of years? 

As we all know, it's way more complicated than the snapshot I'm giving to you here. I admire shows that make me face this problem in an inspiring way, like this show did.

Obviously, if an art event about co-existing with plants makes you feel the things you wanna feel, that's amazing, and I'm genuinely happy for you. It just hasn't happened to me yet. 

I have good reason to believe a lot of people silently feel the way I do. We are not getting anything out of this apart from learning to signal we sort of get it. Hence art is like social media: I am afraid I won't get the references if I step out. But maybe talking without reference anxiety is a goal worth pursuing?

Nice people

Scene-cultivation and reference nit-picking will only hold us down and demand we follow the party line. Of course no one really demands anything because we're all nice people with manners. But no seriously, your colleagues are the problem. Hanging out with other artists makes you produce the kind of work that you think people would like to hang out with. 

I'm too scared and tired of trying to disagree in public so I'd rather withdraw and do my work in stealth mode and deliver the goods when the time comes. When you can afford to choose it, being aside has nothing to do with a romantic loner pose. It's a strategic move.

***

Lastly, I wanna thank everyone who has read my blog posts and commented IRL or online. I would not do anything without those fleeting moments of affirmation and exchange of ideas. Here are top 5 most popular posts so far (note: only one exhibition review made the cut)

image description: with 1775 page views, this blog post has been most popular so far.