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.