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interesting, valentina: first let me say that sometimes i find my tone is far more severe in posts than i had any idea was the case when i was writing them. i might write something as a way of goofing around only to find that when i look at it later all that goofing around stuff has gone away, disappeared, ffft....i dont think there is much to be done about it (cant bring myself to use those goofy emoticons--they annoy me--cant do it...) so there we are.
it's not that i think intention unimportant--i just dont think you can know about it really. so i dont see how it can function as a criterion for defining art vs. non-art. it seems to me a speculative category. for example [[putting side questions that might arise about what i am doing]] i dont really know what my intent is when i do music. it is more a way of thinking in itself than it is an object that i can have a relation toward. and i dont approach playing with specific motives (if i can avoid it) beyond constraints that might be in play (compositional or situational, it comes to the same thing)--but then again, the medium i work in is particular, as they all are--but it is the one i know about, so if i am going to ry to talk about this kind of question, i have to refer to it (you cant see me cringing about this. you can fill in the cringe-image of your choice and so make this more performantive-like)
things get more complicated when you move to trying to figure out what a given work might "mean"--usually people try to revert to infotainment about the biography of the person who made the piece to explain something about it--and i think that this kind of information does explain some things--but not everything--and so biography is not the ultimate context.
if by intent you mean motivation to be engaged with a process at all, i still dont know...people engage with a craft/art process for all kinds of reasons--maybe an escape from the drudgery of everyday life, a way of feeling for a while llike they get out of themselves, dissolve their bodies or connect with their bodies--for me it playing music is as much a meditation practice as anything else--so even at this level, i dont see a particular kind of intent operating--more a wide band of motives with no way to choose between them. maybe some folk get involved with making stuff because it operates for them as a mode of social distinction--maybe it is a political thing---maybe it is a function of a kind of immediate affinity with an instrument or medium....all are possible, all would be legit, and i cant see how to move from even this description of possible motivations to a coherent type of motivation that may unite them, such that you could use it to define art.
i guess you could hypothetically make a list and compare the elements and derive commonalities that way--but the results would be the result of induction---you wouldnt be able to say anything on that basis about how anyone might be motivated to engage with making things.
the way we are coming at this question is a bit funny because of the question posed in the op: so the discussion keeps getting pulled toward the question of defining art. i dont think there is anything essential about a piece/work that makes it art--i think it is a social distinction. if you were to see, say, karen findley who may do a strip act in a performance art context, is it art or no? posing that question would seem to me part of the point. and it is only interesting because the question is open. and remains open.
i got to run--the animals making art thing could be interesting, but i need more time to think/write anything about it.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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