today on discipline

We teachers chatted after classes about the girls who were fighting
who I chose not to send to my superior (against the rules, I was reminded)
and tried to talk to, talk through
with no progress
but no punishment for all that pent up bitterness that made them shove each other.

blah, blah, these damn kids. the crazy things they do
and you talk about the dirty things they say, and how you say
"would you think that was appropriate if I told your mother?"
and they stop.

It dawns on me:
you don't
see these kids
as human

and for this minute freeschooling has won me over.

oversexed media meets just-pre-hormonal students after school
and so of course they're going to play around with that language
of course this is of intrigue to them, it is to you, teacher, isn't it?
If we call these words "inappropriate" and try to extract them from school
then school is a place where big things get hidden
and grown ups are the keepers of the big fake machine
who don't have any real information on those real things

and then we're not moving forward, generations aren't passing on what they know
and we are stuck being lucky if we come to re-articulate
that these things we all do are human and not exotic or sell-able or full of shame.
Are you thinking about your actions, really, when you scold a child for using their new words. It made me angry, how the other teachers just nodded. These damn kids. This damn school.

response, or, grasping back that quickly fading passion

In response to the prompt kerry posed for his ahtists friends (last entry):

I have been struggling with this.
It feels like a harking back,
the part of me that has this on the tip of my tongue is fading.
I am petrified it will disappear.

What is art? This makes me stuck.
Some questions I more want to answer:
what could art be?
what is art for?
why should we make it?

Art is naming your own agenda. What will I make? and when and where and why? Lining up your reasons with the practicals of time and space, getting yourself together to make a thing. From this we grow. I see art-making as having an inexhaustible and mostly untapped educational potential. Learning to make art one is proud of is essentially they same thing as learning to be a person you are proud of- to name what you want to achieve, to reach for it, and to find peace in the distance between the reality and the ideal.

There are two products of art: the object and the learning. We have spent forever trying to name what makes the object great, how much it is worth or how it ought to be discussed and ranked. But that learning, that other product, remains unclassified. When I have access to this other product- that is when I know the artist and/or have meaningful access to their process- I find it to be deeply moving. The lessons, the experience, the thrill, the devastation, the satisfaction, the knowledge, the factoids, the feedback that the artist gets as a result of making their creative product is the most moving bundle of intangible something that I can imagine existing, and yet the viewers are usually given very little access to it.

Maybe this does not matter, maybe these beautiful bundles of learning that art makes within its makers are meant to be hidden. If this is true, the language around art ought to shift: artists do not make art for the benefit of society, rather art makes artists for the benefit of society. So we, as artists, have some obligation to push ourselves to make art that will change us. We should lay out projects for ourselves that we are deeply invested in, and we should do them with our everything: brain, heart, body, gut. However we define it, we ought to make things that will inspire us to be better people.

But what about the audience? I am not satisfied with the learning of art being hidden, or even obscured. I want artists not only to strive to make art that moves them, but to try to let others in to what they have learned as much as possible. I am not interested in indirectness, I believe art is challenging enough for the viewer without the artist trying to hold anything back . Art is desperate. Use ever strategy you have: try every angle. every option. use every material. use language. repeat yourself. write an artists statement, a long one aimed at the dumbest people you can imagine. make it so children will get it. Show how you made it. show pictures. hang up your sketches. Put out your journal and a guest book. make your mother sign your guest book. sit next to your artwork and explain it. ask questions, answer questions. try to understand yourself and make yourself understood.

I am self-conscious writing this, because I worry that those who are reading this and know my artwork will laugh a little. Whose artwork or what approach could possibly fufil these desires besides the one I took last year, where the space within which I was grappling with my ideas about myself in the world was framed as the artwork itself. Yes, this continues to be how I think about making art. It's my own ideal. I interpret my own imperative, that art be about learning, as a call to make art that directly addresses big social and ecological issues of the world today. I struggle with work with more oblique subject matter, but I am excited about this struggle. I do not think abstract work, work about aesthetics or work with indirect content is meaningless or irrelevant, but I feel unsatisfied with it: Almost all art work I see makes me yearn for a good explanation of why the work is worth the materials it takes to make it. It is denial to think that people don't see what a work of art is made out of, and so art can never entirely transcend being about what it is made out of.

And yet, those of us who look at art often forget this. We see paintings as being about whatever the image on the painting is of. Casted or carved figures are not about metal or plaster or stone or wood. Videos don't have to be about video. I am frustrated by this, but also stuck: does this mean I think every artist has to reinvent the wheel? There has to be some way to use the conventions of art history to our own ends, to play within the options of particular media and for that to be enough.

A few times in my life I have seen artwork that speaks directly to my experience as a human being: emotions, sensations, knowledge, worries, or that is in itself an experience that is so unique or moving that it demands to be processed and integrated in to my life afterwards. Most of the time I enjoy art, though, it is via the knowledge I have been given as a student or art and art history. I have the language and the chronology, the recognition, that allows me to access what a work of art is trying to accomplish. It is accessed through the particular privileges of my own life. As trained artists and fortunate, educated people there is a great temptation to use this knowledge set as the launching point for our artwork, and to some extent it is inevitable. I believe that we have an obligation to be conscious of this trend, and to at the very least be able to name how our work is derived from the social/historical construction of art we have inherited and embraced.

I believe that we should try to make art that allows the audience in, that does not assume the viewer has any codebook of art to help them access it, and that makes some acknowlegement of the unnamed learning-product, in the conventional object-product. Doing this requires an acceptance that the mission is impossible, because no one will ever get as much from your work as you do. Maybe so many hold themselves at an arms length from their own work because they are afraid that if they eliminated this distance, they would have to confront the reality that they cannot be fully understood. better not to try. Making art is selfish- it will never do as much for any other person as it does for you. Any potential for giving to others by making artwork is secondary: it lies in the search to make them understand all that you have gotten from your work. You will never achieve this mission, but I believe we should still really try.

prompt from him for us

"I have been wanting to know what really is going on when we make art and when we look at art. What is going on in our heads? What are our rules for making? What are your most dogmatic guidelines? What things make you cringe? What do you think is immoral when it comes to art making? What will you never ever do? What should art do and why? Why do you believe any of this?

An example of one of my own dogmatic rules is that I think installation should always be about architecture, hence why I make pieces about architecture. I believe that historically architecture is the foundation of installation; Kurt Schwitter's Merz Bau was a room, not a piece on a pedestal. I recall Zak laughing at the idea of art that makes money. That is one of "his rules," maybe (I don't want to speak for him). This is what I want to get at.

I imagine that our responses will disagree more than agree. At least I hope so, but we should remember to not take these responses too personally either. Though I have this dogmatic rule of "installation must address architecture," it certainly is not the only means I judge an installation with. I'd imagine that we are both open minded people, but I want to see the side of us that is close-minded.

I see these responses as being the antithesis of artist statements we may have written. I see the artist statement as addressing internal issues (i.e.- "I use only car parts when making pieces because my father was a mechanic, and being witness to this blah blah blah), whereas these I see as being about external factors. For example, "I use car parts in my work because I want to appeal to an unrepresented-in-galleries working class public blah blah blah." As we get more into it, sure, we might find that these two things are more close together than they are far apart, yet here we are making that very distinction.

Make these as long as you like. I am ready to read pages and pages."

anger

He threw a punch when he was called a sissy
for claiming that the capture-the-flag teams were unfair.
It flew in the air, missed the face by a yard.

Obvious revelation of the day:
Rage is real.
And not just that, but close to the surface.
If this long-haired child, sweet and smart
with gentle wise parents
who once burst in to tears so hard
when there was no more vegan pizza.
could react with all his raw sincerity by throwing a punch.

Both boys were upset, but when I asked them what happened
were brimming with apologies.
"I-was-just-upset-I-didn't-want-to-hurt-him-I-had-no-intention-to-he's-my-friend"
I told them both it would probably mean a lot
to the other to apologize.
and I didn't even follow them to witness, when they approached each other.

The teams were unfair, he was right.
we watched the good team cream the bad team,
and he quickly joined the next round

honesty like a free school 8 year old
I guess does not mean moving beyond getting mad
but rather learning how to let rage flow through and out of you, and to move on.

what about esoteric?

First improv dance class in almost a year, I left with the word "esoterica" rattling around my brain. I thought I made it up, but the dictionary said its real.


Es-o-te-ric-a. Things understood or meant by a select few.
"a" from the latin, a pluralizing suffix.
esoterica
curiosa
judaica

knew I would remember this body esoterica, but I surprised myself with how intensely- skill sets, cues, silent language. First half of class, paired with someone much more learned, I was nervous to prove myself. relieved when I recognized esoterica cues, but nervous to use them, to be seen as a by-the-rules-beginner. In this method: if I lean this way you are supposed to roll that way. why? you don't have to, but it works, thats why.

Second set: partner much less studied than me. We end up a mess, he misses all the cues, but I am much more excited.

What is the use of this cultivated knowledge, related on itself? Art is like that, too, the taught understanding of how things are supposed to be looked at, what certain choices are meant to mean.

I spend spare moments today thinking about this- what do I do with self-generated creative languages, histories? Art languages, dance traditions, pedagogies. Is it okay to be a dabbler, to take a little bit of traditions and synthesize in to my own? is this creative or non-commital?

I am not in general a seeker of moderation, but I think this question breaks my rule.