10 May 2009
Richard and I are preparing for the new swim circle project. We intend to start after we are back from Berlin in June. We continue to discuss elements of the work we will do at each tarn without being too prescriptive thereby damping spontaneity. I find this aspect of planning similar to when I was making series of paintings. The important question was always – how to approach each new piece of work without trying to replicate the last? Repetition is to be avoided; otherwise one becomes a copier, even of oneself.
Such an approach, in order to be truly innovative within the constraints of one’s own practice, itself set within its own strands of art history and practice involving all previous and contemporary relevant artists, demands a clarity of personal thought and communication with one’s co-worker.
So, in practice, Richard and I need to share our ideas and plan what we can, but remain prepared to respond to the moment and break from our plan if necessary. This demands a sustained focus on the task and the concepts that inform it. It also demands physical preparation for the climbing and swimming and technical preparation in terms of the equipment we take with us.
Psychologically, it means that we establish a framework for the project, and then hold focus on the shared here-and-now responses and creativity of each event. It’s where the Apollonian meets the Dionysian.
Apollo: the dream state or the wish to create order, principle of individuation, plastic (visual) arts, beauty, clarity, stint to formed boundaries, individuality, celebration of appearance/illusion, human beings as artists (or media of art's manifestation), self-control, perfection, exhaustion of possibilities, creation.
Dionysus: chaos, intoxication, celebration of nature, instinctual, intuitive, pertaining to the sensation of pleasure or pain, individuality dissolved and hence destroyed, wholeness of existence, orgiastic passion, dissolution of all boundaries, excess, human being(s) as the work and glorification of art, destruction.
Paul
