Yesterday’s Domes

The Object of Study

I’m intermittently reading Art Practice as Research (2005) by Graeme Sullivan. It’s giving me a much-needed context for the thinking I’m doing at the moment, and is making me ask myself more coherent questions. During the Enlightenment art was seen as a research practice on a par with science:

[...] artistic practice mirrored the mindful activity of these times. For instance, the study of anatomy saw the artist-as-analyst at work in much the same way as the rational philosopher where “dissection interrogated the inert body by violently laying it bare – much like the deductive dismembering of a coherent thought by a syllogism” (Stafford 1996, pp. 36-7). So art was a visual tool for recording. (p.9)

In my last two abortive and confused posts I wondered about the relationship between (spurious) auto-psychoanalysis and the content of my work. I have had in mind that it is my own psychology that I’m researching through my artwork. This seems to tie me in bundles. I think it’s worthwhile keeping in mind that my artwork isn’t necessarily working that close to the bone. Inevitably my own brain comes into it, but that doesn’t mean it’s about my own brain.

In my imaginary future retrospective view of my work there’s no reason to assume I’ll be the star of the show. My work will be. So there’s no reason to assume my imaginary future viewers will be looking at the work to answer questions about me. Of course they won’t be! Of course artwork isn’t about biography! My artwork might be talking about art, about language, about silence, about repetition … about a hundred brilliant things, so why do I keep thinking it has to all be about me, a small and paltry and confused subject?

Ludicrous Analysis

And now it strikes me that I’m doing something ludicrous by trying to consciously listen out for unconscious brain-workings, and to work them in to my conscious working, as though that’ll help. I must stop this nonsense. I know I’m using words I don’t know the meaning of from probably outdated psychoanalysis. I should probably at the very least define my own terms.

But trying to second-guess my brain’s ulterior motives is a silly enterprise all over. Better would be to not write anything until I’ve done something I can write about, so that the writing doesn’t continue to be the thing I’m doing.

My terrible secret is that this blog constitutes practically all the artwork I’m doing. It should be about it, but I’m not doing anything except thinking.

Finishedness and Autobiography

It occurred to me just now that my allowing imperfections in finished work might have something to do with the view I have of myself as the work’s maker. It strikes me that I consider my role to be very central – my artwork is all about me, about letting myself show, and means I overstate the presence of myself in my work.

I can’t stand it when people generalize about artists and describe certain arty characteristics that are meant to apply to them all. It goes hand in hand with the mystification and dizzy celebration of the artist’s research and decision-making process. And I’m concerned that that’s just what I’m doing when I allow the scrappiness of my handiwork or my concentration span to come through – even in work that would ideally be highly finished and neat. Deep down I must be filing all my work as Examples Of The Brain-Work Of Tamarin.

This is both a bad thing, because it permits me to be lazy, and a thing to be worked with, because it seems like it’s a primary thing that’s in my brain to be listened to.

Or will this help?

I sat down to do just what I’d said in my last post, writing and drawing out all my past projects on little intentionally nerdy revision cards, and it seemed completely pointless and, worst, BORING. I’m a great believer in the power of brains to tell you what’s right, and when a brain is bored, it should be doing something more exciting, especially when I’m trying to use my brain to specifically creative ends.

I need to be focusing on the new things not the old things. There are a few things I have never documented together, things I say or do or think or make, which perhaps would be a new thing if I put them together. I’ll try that.

I’m calling these two posts ‘will this help?’ to refer to the way I try to collect things. A sentence or an idea might appear and I think, I’ll keep that, it might help. I have the feeling, and I’m sure it’s quite a standard feeling, that all the ideas I have add (more or less effectively or interestingly) to a single ongoing concern. And because I want to get closer to that concern and understand what it is, I want to collect up all the ideas I ever have and collate them and identify themes, drifts, patterns. When I’ve got all the patterns I’ll be able to see what my project is. I think that’s the rationale behind Major Retrospective Exhibitions too.

Joking aside though, that is what I hope for my artwork, I don’t expect any single piece to do all the work but rather for all the pieces together to make up some final, completed (by my death) suggestion. So in some respects all the pieces do all the work.

So the project of my artwork is to show. To show the things inside my mind, which is just another human mind, but human minds are great things, and if I can focus mine and receive it, it would be useful to show that.

Will this help?

I want to begin the project with a phase of research into recent work, to regroup my thoughts and ideas so that they’re all present and active again. I don’t want to prescribe what I make next but rather remind myself that there definitely was something going on in the first place.

I spend a lot of time combing through old work to try and get to the bottom of what I’m doing – finding themes or concerns or preferences. It’s very heavily tied to the diary work I do about myself, in which I do a similar thing. And it’s pretty much to the same end, as my work is of course quite thickly connected to what I write about.

I use this research in two ways. Firstly, and most straightforwardly, it gives me a more focussed idea of the kind of further reading and research that might be helpful. Secondly, having all my recent projects together in front of me reminds me of past concerns, which I can then mentally file under ’secondary reading’. I find this way I’m able to return to my current ‘unschooled’ thoughts in a more informed way. This is a strategy I use when I feel like I’ve had a break from work for some time, or when I’m getting confused about my practice. So it’s fair in situations like these to refer to ‘current thoughts’ as distinct from past thoughts that contributed to past artwork.

There’s a phrase I always remember from a discussion of translation strategies: ‘better a live sparrow than a stuffed eagle’. The work I’ve already done, however careful or intelligent or successful, is past work and can’t be brought back to life, and making new work that’s already dead will end up theoretical and dry, with my heart not in it. A live sparrow is what I should aim to make – real, new work that is based on something slight, and that I might not quite understand, but it has the stuff f real life in it, which is more complex and more direct and intelligent than anything I could consciously coach into existence.

And so in many ways there’s no need for me to ever go back to past artwork, because my practice will inevitably form a cohesive body because it comes from a single brain, and because since it comes directly from a live brain, it will be strong if I’m careful. But it’s a process that helps me when I get stuck or when I need to evaluate what I’m doing, and I also think it compounds the potential of my work by making it thicker. I feel like it’s a process that speeds things up and makes my work more productive, as though it will all get clearer faster this way.