I had a conversation yesterday that really turned everything on it's head, for me.
There's a few things I'd like to go into.
One, is group-living.
There's something about living with a group where there's no privacy, and you have to share everything, and every nice thing you have is divided into eleven parts.
Lunches have been really hard. There's stress, especially when we're hungry.
I thought I could hold on, because there's only another month left with the group, and then I'll be home. I have daydreams of my own meals again, and getting to eat in peace and quiet, or getting to eat as much as I need, as slowly as I want, etc, etc. But when I really think about it, I don't know if I've been happier, having space to eat alone.
I said that to Caleb, that I knew I could hold out, because I know it's going to end. He said something back that actually shamed me, he said he saw the point was that we could find a solution, as if it wasn't going to end, that we were actually going to try to solve what was going on now.
Maybe the solution isn't sharing everything, and being together all of the time. There's a reason that it's been a difficult thing for people for generations. In some cultures, the men eat first. In some cultures, the women eat first. There are social and cultural traditions around meals, there's manners, there's decorum. And I think this has been something that's always been difficult--so it's not like I want to ignore it, either. Maybe the solution is we share meals some of the time. Maybe we need to have space. But it's also important to ask why it's so difficult.
I've been wanting to write a big piece about this. About what it means to be around people, and why we choose to be around some people and not others. Certain people make us feel certain things, and when we're in a group, we are confronted with all these parts of ourselves, all of these mirrors, all at once. That's really difficult. There's a reason we separate into nuclear families, but that's also created a lot of isolation and difficulty, too. There's a reason I've always wanted to live in a group, and my daydreams about eating with large groups of people are so pressing on my mind.
I've been wanting to write about how confrontation has unraveled a lot of parts of me, too. I was thinking about it when we were sitting around, and I was feeling stress about being with everyone. I realized that a lot of my difficulties have also been released, too. There's something about pressing up against these difficulties with people that has also let something go, inside of me. I am less careful about what I eat, I don't judge it as much. I recognize the shame I've always had with eating, and how I've never wanted to take it upon myself to really feed myself, as if I mean it, as if I am important.
This also came up in a conversation that I had yesterday. Mathijs said that it seemed that whenever things get difficult, I always seem to want to hide myself. I said that I've always been overwhelmed by everything else that is going on in the world, and never able to take care of what I want, as if it's enough for me to just be alive.
This relates to the title of this post. Mathijs asked me if I feel like making art fulfills something in me. I actually didn't know. I don't know. I've always had this idea that I needed to make art, as if I need to prove something. And when I let that go, when I stop identifying with that, then I feel like something is lost, and it felt scary to let that go. When I think about a thesis year, I have an image of blank canvases with some sort of painting, some future project that makes sense, an ideal that would encompass whatever needs to come out when I spend a year contemplating life and producing something, but it never feels like me.
What if I let that go?
This is a really important issue to me.
I got an email from Blake Mason, a person that I met and really admire, who lives in an artist-collective house in Portland, and I met him when he was hosting movie nights in his backyard, and showed a film he made that I loved, The Welcoming Committee. He had found the Classroom Alive project, and was reading about my topic of study, and said it related to what he's been thinking about. He wrote his thesis about out-of-the-box art projects, and came upon Social Practice and fell in love with it.
There's something in me that is curious about social practice. I'm curious about what art means beyond fine art, and I'm curious about the idea that the audience can make anything a piece of art at will, just by changing their perception.
I talked with Mathijs about this yesterday, and he also expressed what I feel. That "art" isn't "art therapy." That there's something about "art" or "fine art" that involves doing things properly, with a respect for the craft, and you really have to devote yourself to it. You are searching for a new form, in order to change perception for everyone.
I was thinking about artists who have taken "art" to different levels, like Sophie Calle, or Marina Abromovic, and Ernesto Pujol.
This is a really rambling post, that I'm going to edit down so that it's actually readable. I know I get in these moods where I have so many questions, and I feel like I don't have enough time to figure them out, and the answer is somewhere outside of me. So I'll let that go.
But I do want to spend time just letting myself have this space, and not try to be anything.
This has brought up a new chapter for me, it feels like. I've always had an image of what it means to create something, and the pressure that I should be obsessed with some work. Sometimes, when I really have to admit it, I don't want to do anything. I want to read books and eat ice cream. Art feels like something outside of me, that I have to conform myself to. But if I go to the deepest parts of myself, any sort of project would really have to come out of the core of me. And I think, also, not be concerned with being ground-breaking, or being anything, but just being me.
Mathijs said I don't give myself credit for the things that I already do. I feel like I have to step away from expecting myself to be an artist. He said that baking bread really well is art, too. These are things I know, but also have this nagging that I want to know what it feels like to write a novel, even though I hate writing groups and bad manuscripts. Like I have to spend all day in a studio doing something, even though I hate being alone. Are these ways that I oppress myself? Do I know the answer, intuitively, about what I want to do in the world? Is that why I've been reading all of these books about freedom?
When I wrote about what I want to do, my answers were things like, have a clean, cozy home. Watch films and grow vegetables and keep chickens and read books about artists and take a sewing class. Why do I feel like art has to be something outside of me?
No comments:
Post a Comment