Monday, February 25, 2013

real


M
MA
MAG
MAGI
MAGIC
MAGIC I
MAGIC IS
MAGIC IS N
MAGIC IS NO
MAGIC IS NOT
MAGIC IS NOT R
MAGIC IS NOT RE
MAGIC IS NOT REAL
MAGIC IS NOT REALI
MAGIC IS NOT REALIT
MAGIC IS NOT REALITY
MAGIC IS NOT REALITY B
MAGIC IS NOT REALITY BU
MAGIC IS NOT REALITY BUT
MAGIC IS NOT REALITY BUT W
MAGIC IS NOT REALITY BUT WE
MAGIC IS NOT REALITY BUT WE S
MAGIC IS NOT REALITY BUT WE SIN
MAGIC IS NOT REALITY BUT WE SING
MAGIC IS NOT REALITY BUT WE SING F
MAGIC IS NOT REALITY BUT WE SING FO
MAGIC IS NOT REALITY BUT WE SING FOR
MAGIC IS NOT REALITY BUT WE SING FOR S
MAGIC IS NOT REALITY BUT WE SIGN FOR SO
MAGIC IS NOT REALITY BUT WE SING FOR SOM
MAGIC IS NOT REALITY BUT WE SING FOR SOME
MAGIC IS NOT REALITY BUT WE SING FOR SOME D
MAGIC IS NOT REALITY BUT WE SING FOR SOME DI
MAGIC IS NOT REALITY BUT WE SING FOR SOME DIS
MAGIC IS NOT REALITY BUT WE SING FOR SOME DIST
MAGIC IS NOT REALITY BUT WE SING FOR SOME DISTA
MAGIC IS NOT REALITY BUT WE SING FOR SOME DISTAN
MAGIC IS NOT REALITY BUT WE SING FOR SOME DISTANT
MAGIC IS NOT REALITY BUT WE SING FOR SOME DISTANT S
MAGIC IS NOT REALITY BUT WE SING FOR SOME DISTANT SH
MAGIC IS NOT REALITY BUT WE SING FOR SOME DISTANT SHO
MAGIC IS NOT REALITY BUT WE SING FOR SOME DISTANT SHOR
MAGIC IS NOT REALITY BUT WE SING FOR SOME DISTANT SHORE




[I'm writing again, and it feels damn good--
a few new poems also up on the website.
copyright 2013 Benjamin Gardner]

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

arrangements

"...Diogenes Laertius, author of the hugely influential Lives of Eminent Philosophers from the third century AD, tells a fascinating story of Thales, usually considered to be the first philosopher.

     He held that there was no difference between life and death.  'Why then,' said one, 'do you not die?'
     'Because,' said he, 'there is no difference.'

To be a philosopher, then, is to learn how to die; it is to being to cultivate the appropriate attitude towards death.  As Marcus Aurelius writes, it is one of 'the noblest functions of reason to know whether it is time to walk out of the world or not.'  Unknowing and uncertain, the philosopher walks."

Simon Critchley,  The Book of Dead Philosophers


As an artist I am constantly searching for books that encourage my work; this might be in the sense of simply encouraging me to work through an idea in the studio, directly on paper or in 3-D; or it might be something that inspires thinking, processing, and observation of my surroundings in a new way.  Though there are glimpses of this in art writing--and good writing is certainly more prevalent with more access to art writing through blogs and social networking--I am typically left uninspired by art-specific texts.  I feel guilty saying it, but we need more and better writing concerning art and the ideas associated with it--beyond criticism and history, we need more solid and understandable theoretical writings about art that provide a structure for studio artists.


I can vividly recall meeting the painter Derrick Buisch during undergraduate studies and looking for any sort of recommendations in terms of texts.  I worked in the library and had access to copies of texts that my painting professor had on reserve at the library all of the time.  I think I explicitly asked Derrick him what art books he was reading--and he told me that he didn't really read art books.  He preferred books like Italo Calvino's  Six Memos for the Next Millennium and Bachelard's The Poetics of Space.  Since that point in 1999 or so, my outlook on what texts support my studio practice drastically changed.  It had opened up to a daunting range of texts and ideas that was fueled by graduate school.  I am admittedly not a good reader, but I need to have access to books and their ideas and at least have an understanding of what a book could contribute to, and books and texts are at the absolute foundation of my studio practice.  Nothing would get done without them.

I still find books outside of the spectrum of art books to be incredibly interesting.  One reason for fewer theoretical/metaphysical books on contemporary art might be because of our reliance, as a profession, on interdisciplinary studies--making it difficult to produce books that are simultaneously narrow in focus and applicable to many different people's studio practice.

My newest book discovery is The Book of Dead Philosophers by Simon Critchley.  It is a book entirely posed as recounting the deaths of famous philosophers which is oddly humorous, witty, and intelligent. What is perhaps most important about this book to my studio practice are the ideas of how we deal with death, both in society, as an idea, and what is a result of these dealings.  It led me to three simply stated questions that relate to other ideas presented in this blog, translating what I've read so far from the book into an art-based line of questioning:

1)  As an act of contribution to culture, does art making memorialize the artist?
2)  Is art making, then, an act of defying death?  (I'm thinking here of Joyce, who reportedly wanted to write a book so complex it would take many lifetimes for it to be 'solved', giving him a sort of immortality.)
3)  Can this give meaning to art making that transcends the commodification of it?

Certainly all culture and its contributions can be commodified, but I am wondering if its supreme purpose might exceed any meaning given to it because of its commodification.  I.e. is an artwork as a memorial of an artist its most important trait, and commodification (or its value, or its place in museums) purely coincidence?

More to come...stay tuned.




Tuesday, February 5, 2013

The Sleeping Ghosts

Though I've wanted to keep school out of the content of this blog as much as possible, undoubtedly things are going to sneak in; I've forgotten how much teaching permeates one's ideas and thinking during the semester (that is, until one has to rebel against it for the sake of sanity).  Most of these ideas will be cloaked in studio practice but they undoubtedly have origins or links to the classroom.

I've revisited Locke's Memory Theory of personal identity and it has some interesting implications on studio practice.  I actually am reading it anew, I think, as I was introduced to it by a philosopher named John Perry.  Locke's theory can be written out as the following:

A is the same person as B if and only if A can remember having an experience of B's.

As simple as that sounds, and as most of us would agree with it in the sense that personal identity is difficult to define and claim having without the aid of memory, it still offers complex insight into being an artist and making work over time.  We often consider that artists work with the concept of identity; but I'd like to call attention to the fact that it is a crutch of poorly expressed ideas in art.  Philosophy has puzzled over how to define the A/B of Locke's theory, and as far as contemporary art is concerned, I would assert that we can take it as a representation of the artist.

Now, I am in no way thinking that this solves the conundrum of personal identity in a philosophical sense, but artists as makers have the benefit of physical remnants of their memories; not in totality, but in the sense that I do not remember making work in undergraduate studies but that artwork still exists and poses my identity in some form.  Surely non-artists have physical remnants--an individual purchases a car, for example, and wakes up the next morning remembering that he purchased the car and thereby establishing his identity in a philosophical sense--but as artists most of us have work built up from years of work.  I have a room in my basement that is full of this identity establishing objects that have built up over the last 10 years of making things and paintings.  All in one place it is quite profound--even to me, alone, with no one else looking.

I remember reading an article by Morton Feldman talking about a studio visit with Philip Guston, and describing the paintings, as they walked out of the room, as sleeping giants.  I think I understand what I Feldman was getting at, but when I go into the basement to add more work to the room of past acts I think of them as sleeping ghosts; they exist in my mind, phenomenally, and establish my past and my identity without being on view or exhibited.  Stacked, they have a collective power that demands that I continue to feed it with more and more work!

Identity is the totality of the art world; even artists that work to remove evidence of the hand are still exerting their identity into their work.  Different artists may use parts of the concept of identity in their work which is different from others, and maybe certain artists emphasize a specific part of identity in a way that they should talk about the work as involving identity, but in truthfulness, identity is the structure for everything that an artist does.  Using it is also as nefarious as stating that your work is about nature; but identity should be the given that we all rely on.

I think I may switch paths to more creative writing for the next post...more to come.
Current reading, listening, and watching has involved:
From A to X by John Berger
Dark Holler, Smithsonian Folkways
Jiro Dreams of Sushi
etc...
new studio work also posted on the website.  More always on its way.