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i want to be an artist? - 24.10.2024
recently, i’ve been re-reading pedagogy of the oppressed, the 1960’s Marxist analysis of pedagogy and oppression dynamics by brazilian scholar Paulo Freire. i read excerpts of it years ago while borrowing my ex’s university lecture print outs and going through the reading lists. studying a music degree, our reading lists were lacking, a few technical handbooks and more of a generalised encouragement to ‘always be making’, rather than digging into researched based practice.
at the time, i was desperate to be an artist. hanging out with performance artists on the weekend and taking in the culture, i wasn’t satisfied with just being a musician, found the label of composer too stuffy and singer songwriter not really accurate, i wanted to be taken seriously. this was further stoked by a conversation at a show one night with one of my ex’s course-mates who told me i ‘couldn’t understand performance or installation art as i wasn’t studying it’ and therefore ‘my opinion on the work didn’t matter’. i took this as a personal challenge, having just been asked to create an installation for a charity event, and began doing performance and installation work as my main practice.
ever since, in core ways, i’ve consistently aspired to the visual and social identity of the artist, a lone creative entity, off in their own corner building new work and whose methods are only known to themself. this image fails at first glance. primarily, i don’t really know what i’m doing. my main talent is in my ability to both learn something quickly and improvise on a theme, so most of my work has no real method. mostly, it is born within community and dialogue with others and the cultures i exist in. much of the last 5 years of my work as been varying levels of pastiche towards works of the new york performance art scene of the 1970’s and 80’s, your Tehching Hsieh’s and Yoko Ono’s, artists of colour making incredibly detailed works, speaking to the time of their creation. my work has often lifted aesthetic ideas from their works but tried to re-contextualise them to the context of my own transness and the culture of the 2020’s. it’s their image i’m trying to capture a glimmer of for myself.
in pedagogy of the oppressed, Freire talks about the aspiration of the oppressed, the coveting of the aesthetics of the oppressor, saying:
"in their alienation, the oppressed want at any cost to resemble the oppressors, to imitate them, to follow them"
re-reading this on the tube, for the first time in maybe 8 years, i felt like parody. dressed in my all black, sleek outfit, a look that could easily pass for performance wear, and with a fresh, artfully designed, art show tote bag on my shoulder from a show i was just coming back from, i realised my alienation. i was still chasing the image of the artist. equally silly, was my prior week long consideration of how i prioritise my life and what i really want. my decision to look for connection, rather than continue working primarily alone. fashion is something dear to me as a core aspect of my sense of self. i carefully curate my aesthetic to say what i want it to say on any given day, if i want to look relaxed or professional, glamourous or studious, its personal to me, but it felt symbolic of the life i was still holding on to, still chasing after.
ironically, i’ve been an artist for years, maybe since i was a teenager but the alienation of my own oppression and the fear of the label of ‘amateur’, left me unable to find peace within that identity. i’ve been rushing to claim something i already have and have had this whole time. the ‘amateur’ primarily describes the ratio of function to enjoyment one applies to their work, in fearing the ‘amateur’, i was fearing the enjoyment of existing as something unique. yes, i am an artist, a professional, a practitioner, but maybe what i really want, is more of the ‘amateur’, finding enjoyment in my work, rather than chasing a false glimmer of something else.
citation and credit -- 20/10/2024citation and credit - 20.10.2024
recently i’ve been thinking about citation and influence, how we credit the ideas, works and people that inspire us. i think we sorely lack a comprehensive and representative language for how we mark the turning points of the creative process.
this is part of my love for the social media and link saving site are.na. developed after the closure of serveral popular link based apps in the late 2000’s, they are one of the few success stories of alternative social media. the beauty of are.na is its placement as both a tool and platform for sharing idea’s. it’s like a repository of citation, a chain of idea’s stretching in every direction, showing all the small things that inform a persons creative process and the people they are in ‘dialogue’ with as part of that. sort of similar to the maps of old islamic manuscripts, organising locations by their proximity and routes to other locations.
fig1. excerpt of "Map of Arabia" from the Book of Roads and Kingdoms
fig2 screenshot of the are.na connections tab.
despite the impression given by art shows, artist interviews and the commercial culture of the artistic creative, nothing happens in a vacuum. i feel the biggest influence on my work is the moments of conversing with friends, lovers, acquaintances and strangers, not necessarily just the moments of bouncing ideas for works off of people, but even the smaller conversations. how we are feeling recently, what we’ve done and the texture of the current season.
besides thanks sections and the more formalised editor and reader processes of creditation, we lack a comprehensive way of marking these conversations. giving them the weight they deserve in the creative process. rebuilding my website and revisiting old works i’m realising my own failings in this. hours of conversations lost, with no trace of the lines that informed my early practice other than those given the authority of formalised creditation.
talking with my partner in bed one morning, i was brought back to thinking about what it must have been like when updates in citation allowed people to credit the web materials they wanted to reference or the websites they’d been influenced by. i wonder where that next leap will come. whether it’ll include a more informal structure of creditation. an allowance for the connections made in community with others.
protest touches -- 27/09/2024protest touches - 27.09.2024
Curiosity - at a Palestine / Lebanon protest, me and my partner had two encounters that sparked an interesting confluence. One was with a friend of my partners, she’d just had a long term break up and we had a long chat about the difficulties of transitional time. How everything can feel so in flux and flimsy in those moments. We said this having both had break ups from 7 year relationships prior to finding each other. It felt healing.
The other came at a curious moment. After having read June Jordans - Apologies To All The People In Lebanon together, we took a moment to contemplate and cry. Musing over the age of the poem, how long this has all gone on for and how overwhelmingly cruel the events of the past week have been, alongside the consideration that I guess this past week was just a slight uptick in what had already been a cruel century, post the Balfour declaration of 1917 and all that it has since wrought.
After a while we kissed deeply, embracing both the shared sadness of it and the love in finding someone to share the sadness of it with, who aligns with the need to act instead of just sitting in passivity by the wayside. Not a moment after, a man approached us. He seemed sad somewhat, lost and disheartened. Carrying a handwritten placard with slogan about Lebanon, he began asking us how long we’d been coming to the protests. Then he asked if we’d been chanting ceasefire all that time, before stopping and asking what its changed, what good the chants and calls for an end to this genocide has really done. We spoke to him for a bit, about the need for hope, the need to say these things and not just believe but know they will come true if you keep acting and keep speaking them into existence.
Eventually he left, but as we dispersed from the protest to get some food before heading home, we were both struck with the why. Why approach us, why ask us, why out of everyone there, us? And so soon after we had kissed. I think there can be many interpretations but I wish to pick at one for the moment. Maybe the one I had also given him for the need for hope. The need for symbols and gestures of love and resistance in the world, even during hard times. The need for representations of the vulnerability and hope that comes with love, even when standing at the opposition of cruel and oppressive regimes. Even while being told if we don’t disperse by 8pm we could be arrested.
This feels grandiose and indulgent to say about my own intimate relationship, but maybe that makes it more important to admit to feeling. A relationship thats also re-built my own notions of hope in the world at large. One that has made me feel strong enough and brave enough to risk arrest, go to the dicer protests and actions, that I previously only had the courage to do due to disregard for my own well being and safety. Now I feel brave enough to thread the needle of both opposition but also the fear that comes with it. That if it feels too much I can clutch her hand tight and feel the warmth of that shared courage we carry between us.
Maybe thats what the man saw when he asked us why we have hope. Because seeing the potential of something in someone else can give permission for you to freely pursue it yourself. Its maybe a bit of a fantasy but one that feels more harmful to doubt then to keep close. Maybe its important to express your love loudly, instead of it feeling like an imposition maybe it can feel like a permission.