How do people manage to find time to get bored..? These days are just never long enough. I want to write a few proposals and chase up opportunities and contacts that have come my way in the last month or two… And it always seems to be evening and too late when I have time..
Who sneaks all the time?
I am quite enjoying invidulating my work at the cathedral, at least once a day I find myself in an unexpected conversation which I just wouldn’t like to have missed. I hope a few more people come to see the work.
Spending a fair amount of time handing out my information leaflets to passer-by pensioners and Japanese who are equally baffled by the somewhat too small type-face that I used.. Or the language.. I would like a couple of funding type persons to come and have a look, and fall in love with the work, or me, either way, as long as it would lead to funded opportunities to make more work, to make more work for this project, to make new, other work, to just make work. Actually it would be good to meet some more artists/dancers/thinkers/doers.. People to make work with.. The isolation of this project has been tiering especially in the 2 weeks before it went up and the time leading up to the private view..
Did I say: I wish making work would be paid.. I work pretty hard. I would like to work more.
There is definitely the question: Who am I making work for? Who is the art for, and what purpose does it serve..? Is it a selfgratifying exercise, would that even be a bad thing? Does an artist have to be useful to other people, is this a responsibility that is expected of other people? Why would it/ should it then of the artist, who probably isn’t even paid..?
If I am honest I am making work for people with inspiration. What their precise background is isn’t of importance. But I really do need an inspired audience. I couldn’t pretend any other truth than that. My art isn’t going to exactly change the world. Most people’s art really won’t do that. But I have small contributions to make to the dialogue between people.. One wouldn’t expect, one shouldn’t expect that every act a writer takes, a philosopher or scientist, will necessarily change the world. But each thorough endeavour is worthwhile in it’s own right and an inspiration to anyone who cares to take the time to engage..
So I am not under any illusion that a majority of council flat tenants will enjoy or even tollerate my work, but I was once a council flat tenant (as a child and teenager) and when a friend took me to a gallery, for what was then my first time, it left an amazing impression on me. It opened my eyes to more than the art works on display but fitted in snuggly with the experience of having an enlightened Latin teacher who tought less latin but more philosophy and thought.. It also connected with my growing enjoyment of reading "Die Zeit" a german newspaper that transported me into another world, one of words and thoughts and possible futures..
So perhaps my work may just be the tiny experience that adhers to someone’s mind ready to pop back up and connect to another beautiful experience which in combination change life.. For someone.
For some time I struggled with art, the necessity, the use, the indulgence… But now I feel a sense of purpose and am not particularly interested in continuing the inward directed sense of distress and questioning that probably leads to more inaction than action. Art is very useful, but it takes some inspiration to understand that. Of course there are some art forms and expressions of which the ‘use’ is more easily identifyable, but I think my work comes in as a form of visual philosophy…
