A current work that I am just drafting has brought me to think about community and how the internet is changing our sense of community. Not just through social networking sites but also through online petitions that raise awarness of individuals plights on a global scale. Sites such as change.org and Avaaz.org allow us to stand up for others based on principles rather than location. We can be vitually present and passively active.
I’ve been putting a lot of time into following the story of Ai Weiwei lately and it’s having quite an impact on my practice. It’s only recently that I have started to become really aware of the freedoms we have as artists in the west, especially here in the Uk.
It’s easy to get hung up on things like relevance and signifcance and stuff like ‘crap, do I have anything to say?’ but in the UK we are lucky, we have the freedom to make stuff regardless of content and context. We have the freedom as artist to do, say and make pretty much anything we want.
The act of making is itself an active voice of the greatest freedom.
Heres a quote from Ai Weiwei on blogging.
“Yes, the blog is really new territory. It’s such a wonderful thing. You can talk immediately to people you don’t know. You don’t know their background and they don’t know your background. It’s like going on the street and finding a lady on a street corner. You talk directly to her. And then you start fighting, or making love.”
I am a visual artist currently living and working in Brighton.
