Well, well, what a turn up for the books; my proposal has been accepted and my work will be shown as part of the London based Anti Design Festival in September. As I still don't seem to have got my head around the idea of making new work yet, I am going to be showing my final university piece , 'The End of Art' and reworking it slightly so it fits the context, but how exciting!
Lately, I have become rather preoccupied with the idea of making new work; for some reason it seems intangible and out of reach- without the constraints of a module specification where does one even start?! If I am writing things down am I writing them for myself or to hand them to someone to check later? Do ideas need to be written down to be validated? Why all the questions and not art? It seems to have been an inescapable and tiresome circle.
I decided to ask Hakim Bey, but without so much as a spark of an idea his ramblings didn't help me much. So I thought I would give Nietzsche a try. Unfortunately my new local library only seems to stock extraordinarily large quantities of Twilight, Maeve Binchy and Point Horror- so Nietzsche has to wait. And thats how I stumbled back across Deleuze and Guattari. Those of you who know me know that 'A Thousand Plateaus', while loved by some (mainly my old housemate Sam) was my nemesis at University. For some, now unfathomable, reason (known colloquially as Sam) I decided to write my biggest essay on this book. I failed. My lecturers at the time said it would be a book I would later return to and use; I laughed and said it would go on the fire. But now, I hate to admit, I have been reading it again, and those two have some interesting things to say. (Damn you Sam!!)
Last night I found myself trying to decide what to buy first; a new sketchbook, 'The Society of the Spectacle' (Debord), or 'Anti Oedipus' (bloody Deleuze). I soon abandoned the idea of buying anything when I got into a chicken and the egg style debate with myself about which one is needed to make work first. (oh by the way while we're on the subject of chickens and eggs scientists have worked out which one did come first). But surely all of this is good; its the beginning of something.
I may have mentioned before that I took part in Arts Admins 'Interference 2010' workshop in June. The self publication made from that week came back on Thursday. 'A is for Action: a glossary for art and activism'. I know that not all of the interferers have managed to see it yet, but it is amazing- well done to everyone who helped make it happen. As we only have 50 copies I very much doubt many of you will ever get to read it, so I thought I would give you a few of my favourite sections;
A: 'Art runs away as soon as someone says its name; it loves to be incognito. Its best moments are when it forgets what it is called.' - Dubuffet
Q: Questioning. 'The question of art is no longer one of aesthetics but of the survival of the planet' - Platform
H: (just because there is a picture of me dressed in a giant hope sandwich board on London Bridge)
and J: 'Just fucking do it."
Its rather funny that I, the woman who wasted three hours trying to work out which form of book to buy first, find the 'J' entry so profound. However, I think I am going to take inspiration from it, stop dawdling and just fucking do it.
