Work Diary, entry 1 (Sunday 10th of March 2024).
Having to make work for my Bachelor degree show. Making work. Working. Work making. Making. Making and doing? Doing is making. Does working = doing? Or doing = working? I don't really know and that is why I find myself in something of a limbo, I'm not sure where to start (making the work) or if I in fact have already started (doing it). I'm thinking a lot about working and that surely must be work, too.
So my idea right now is to map it all out, this thinking, working and doing. And not thinking, never working, and undoing. Because why I make art is exactly to not work. To refuse to participate in "the market", even though it seems like there's a dissonance in my head where I can't credit myself for having thought something great or having general ideas and understandings that I deem to be art, because they do not take the shape as work or object. So it's all encompassing affects and very emotionally complex. I find myself moving from genius to lazy bitch then back to genius then again lazy bitch. The question is then also, lazy how? Lazy because I'm not producing the work in the sense the system (the SYSTEM!) would like, even though my untouched being / my pure soul is about critisizing just that?
All this thinking I'm doing while moving effortlessly of difficultly through the city(s). Biking through the harbour to get to my favorite gentrified spot, getting off my bike then walking around checking out walls to paint later, when it's dark. It's a super windy day today. My home is wiggling from side to side, the movement is shaky and constant. So I'm sitting still typing this but still moving. And the only thing that seems continous for my work recently is that it's always done while moving or by making movements. Which is why I have decided that maybe painting isn't the greatest medium for me after all, even though I love it so and want to eat the paint straight from the tube. So the work should be about moving around. Movement in general. Through differing spaces using various sorts of modes of transportation (rollerskating, taking the bus with no metro, taking the ticket with no use). Painting a picture takes months for me, seing the sights, snapping the pictures, thinking about it, going somewhere else. Then finally at some point I might start the painting just to get distracted by movement again. After months it's finally done and I can post it to my Instagram and get 213 likes. It's good. It's fine. I hate it. I hate everything in a way lately, I hate how it all functions. Going to shows, seeing art critiquing something, yet the piece plays by the critiqued things rules. Why. We have no imagination left. We keep saying that we need to play by the rules of the system in order to challenge it, but what about, the masters tools can never dismantle the masters house?
Exhibit 1.1 shows my left hand holding a card from a tarot-esque card deck my mom got in 2006 or something like that. Many of the cards are now hanging in my bathroom, but because everything is wiggly, they keep on falling down. I like to take it as an omen, the one that falls. Today it was this one with the phrases "Believe in Yourself!" and "See yourself doing well, and you will." The background is two pegasuses, one larger and the other small, indicating guidance, flying in a beautiful cloudy sky with a small rainbow. I love this image because I love wings, clouds and rainbows. And doing. See myself doing well, and I will. Not by doing it but by seeing it.
Exhibit 1.2 shows a small table with 2 books and 2 magazines, a pack of cigarette filtes, an ashtray and a joint. Also jeans-clothed-legs and some furniture and the floor. I can tell you (since I bought/got/stole them) that the 2 books are Produktionsæstetik by Cecilie Ullerup Schmidt, and Bosses by Ghislaine Leung. The two magazines are Sorg og Samfund and DC Magazine.
If I take more pictures today I will come back to edit this post. But otherwise, that's it for now.
