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roachboy · 01-25-2006, 04:31 PM

who said it was accidental?
art is what other people call the results of a process---i am sure that some folk think i am making art now, but it seems unnecessary. everyone i know who is involved with creative work makes far more stuff than they would show. everyone i know works in one version or another of a series--you get preoccupied with a particular phenomenon or a particular problem technically and for whatever reason you work at it, on it...hopefully, within a given series you would produce some things that you might consider showing to others, and maybe within that some that you would consider releasing into the wider world. those pieces are neither accidental, nor are they inevitable: they constitute a subset of what amount to formalizations of an engagement within the larger context of a process of interacting with a medium. and the question of whether the results that you like enough to release are understood our there as "art" has no definite relation to the processes that go into it, nor any direct relation to the dispositions that might explain why you pursue that process.

on the other hand, having some of your work come to be considered art is not a bad thing--like i said earlier in the thread, such labels make it easier to get access to money and/or to advantageous spaces to perform/show. this funding/venue shift might impact on your work--but it might not as well. there would be no definite relation between the two: just as many folk would be inclined to protect their process and change little except perhaps to be able to live a little easier as would be inclined to take the labels seriously and decide, every time they started working, to say I AM MAKING ART NOW or its equivalent.

all this is the problem of definition: you want stable features. there arent any, apart from the social processes that shape/legitimate the label "art" and the folk who attribute that label.

01-25-2006, 04:31 PM	#42 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	who said it was accidental? art is what other people call the results of a process---i am sure that some folk think i am making art now, but it seems unnecessary. everyone i know who is involved with creative work makes far more stuff than they would show. everyone i know works in one version or another of a series--you get preoccupied with a particular phenomenon or a particular problem technically and for whatever reason you work at it, on it...hopefully, within a given series you would produce some things that you might consider showing to others, and maybe within that some that you would consider releasing into the wider world. those pieces are neither accidental, nor are they inevitable: they constitute a subset of what amount to formalizations of an engagement within the larger context of a process of interacting with a medium. and the question of whether the results that you like enough to release are understood our there as "art" has no definite relation to the processes that go into it, nor any direct relation to the dispositions that might explain why you pursue that process. on the other hand, having some of your work come to be considered art is not a bad thing--like i said earlier in the thread, such labels make it easier to get access to money and/or to advantageous spaces to perform/show. this funding/venue shift might impact on your work--but it might not as well. there would be no definite relation between the two: just as many folk would be inclined to protect their process and change little except perhaps to be able to live a little easier as would be inclined to take the labels seriously and decide, every time they started working, to say I AM MAKING ART NOW or its equivalent. all this is the problem of definition: you want stable features. there arent any, apart from the social processes that shape/legitimate the label "art" and the folk who attribute that label. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite