#artistswriting

This weekend I attended the first part of a two-day writing course, run by Akerman Daly and hosted by UH Galleries. Attendees were asked to bring three books with them that contained writing that appealed to them or had impacted on them in some way. We were also asked to prepare an excerpt to read. I brought If on A Winter’s Night A Traveller by Italo Calvino, Relational Aesthetics by Nicolas Bourriaud and Formless by Yves Alain Bois and Rosalind Krauss. 

Fascinating discussion occurred throughout the morning session. I have summarised my notes as follows:

A lot of people struggle to write Artist’s statements and feel that ‘art speak’ can be pompous and inaccessible. Language can be a barrier.

It can be challenging to know where the boundaries lie in writing. Is poetry acceptable? Can humour be used? When? There is sometimes a tension between clarity/directness and playfulness/creativity. It was agreed that there are no rules, however critique and editing form a vital part of the process.

Artists have a responsibility to talk and write about their work. "Words and writing through the ears, visuals through the eyes.”- John Thompson. The two areas seem antithetical/schizophrenic. They create a tension which can be problematic but which needs to be navigated.

The space you need to publish your work may not be where you want it to be. Work in the way you need to and find the space for your work. Think of artistic texts as permissions. Find examples to support the way you want to write.

As an artist you need to have a strong identity. An awareness of context, voice and style are crucial.

With reference to Rebecca Solnitt’s A Field Guide to Getting Lost- how does one write like that without walking across fields? Writing is about more than sitting down with a strong coffee and a laptop. Experiences can and should seep in to your writing.

Audience is important. The first audience is yourself. Who else are you speaking to?

What is attention? How can attention be focused through a bombardment of information?

I chose to bring Calvino’s If on A Winter’s Night A Traveller with me because it was the first book I read that challenged the way I thought about the action/process and experience of reading and writing. It made me realise the power of the author to play with their assumed responsibility to tell a story. The book describes a man trying to read a book entitled If on A Winter’s Night A Traveller and the author flips between chapters of the book, and the life of the reader, who keeps being interrupted. The story is disjointed and doesn't reach a conclusion. The author continually plays with the boundary between fiction and reality.

I chose to bring Bois and Krauss’ Formless: A User’s Guide for its aesthetic quality and layout. The book explores post war avant garde art and modern art theory and is categorised into a series of chapters which are arranged in alphabetical order with pictures. The book appeals to me not just for its content and aesthetic, but also because it is easy to navigate and dip in and out of, enabling the digestion of academic theoretical writing in short bursts.

I chose to bring Bourriaud’s Relational Aesthetics as it has been instrumental in changing my view on approaching and making art. The book introduces a series of artists/works who use relationship with the viewer/context/environment as a fundamental communication tool. Rather than exhibiting sterile artefacts, meaning is created in collaboration with the viewer/audience. I read aloud the following quote:

Form and others' gaze If, as Serge Daney writes, "all form is a face looking at us", what does a form become when it is plunged into the dimension of dialogue? What is a form that is essentially relational? It seems worth while to discuss this question by taking Daney's formula as a point of reference, precisely because of its ambivalence: as forms are looking at us, how are we to look at them?

Form is most often defined as an outline contrasting with a content. But modernist aesthetics talks about "formal beauty" by referring to a sort of (con)fusion between style and content, and an inventive compatibility of the former with the latter. We judge a work through its plastic or visual form. The most common criticism to do with new artistic practices consists, moreover, in denying them any "formal effectiveness", or in singling out their shortcomings in the "formal resolution". In observing contemporary artistic practices, we ought to talk of "formations" rather than "forms". Unlike an object that is closed in on itself by the intervention of a style and a signature, present-day art shows that form only exists in the encounter and in the dynamic relationship enjoyed by an artistic proposition with other formations, artistic or otherwise. (Bourriaud, 1998, p.20)

The idea of ‘formations rather than forms’ is important to my practice. I often focus on process and on striving for some sort of transformation within the work. A colleague observed that the link between my three texts is the use of categorisation/rich description/titles as a way of breaking down big ideas. My blog, and particularly the visual essays I am developing support this idea and i would agree that I find categorisation a useful way to break down and understand my broad practice and interests. A poetic use of language also links these texts and likewise poetic sensibilities feature in the creation of my work.

I will now work towards creating two texts that will be edited/critiqued by Akerman Daly. The first will be a piece of writing about my art practice and the second will be a short piece of creative writing, inspired by “formations” rather than “forms”.

BOIS, Y & KRAUSS, R Formless, A User’s Guide, New York: Zone Books

BOURRIAUD, N. (1998) Relational Aesthetics. Dijon: Les Presse Du Reel.