Is my art an image? Or the stories I can build around that image? Aura, spectacle and conceptual art

 Trying to write up, make sense of, and record a bunch of things that have been coming together in my head recently. I would say it was a breakthrough but it's too messy ;)

I started this MA because I wanted to make beautiful and compelling images that made people think. As the course has got underway, and I've read and talked and thunk and thought, I've come to a much wider sense of what art is for me: It's the concept and the experience that's the art, the image is just a mechanic. I don't think I want to make art that's defined through images. I think I want to make art that is conceptual and performance based, but mediated through images. Put another way, I think I want to make art that is, in a sense, a 'happening' that's triggered through some image or object, perhaps framed/mediated by it, and perhaps recorded by it... But it's the act that's the art:

    If you burn a flag in protest, is it the flag that's art? Or the ashes? Or the flames?

I'm coming to think it's the flames, and the sweat, and the smoke, and the anger. The ashes are the record. I places the ashes (perhaps in a nice urn, perhaps in something more shocking to draw attention) in a gallery, not because they are 'art', but because they are a proxy for the art - a proxy for the flames and the sweat and the anger. They hold the aura of the flames, the sweat, the anger.

More tangibly, I have spend a lot of time getting some (hopefully nice) designs together for my mental health postcards, but the designs are just designs. I will probably exhibit the (hopefully used) postcards, not because they are art, but because they are a proxy for the spectacle I hope to create around them, the spectacle is the art:

• The pain and effort i put into drawing on my own experiences to create them
• The effort I put into the designs such that they are accessible and usable
• The meetings I hope to have with people who will take them
• The bravery of people to share the cards they have filled in
• The stories those acts of bravery and sharing will tell

By immersing the little bits of printed A6 card in that's rich bath of experiences, I hope they will be patinated with a little bit of the aura, which they can then carry forward to new people, and new encounters. Specifically, I see those bits of A6 printed card as:

• Initiators - they start the process of make the 'real art' because they provide a physical/concrete thing to show/share
• Containers - the format and words on the postcards defines the 'rules' and 'space' in which the art is happening
• Records - the human stories are recorded in the postcards and (potentially) the stories that go with them

My current thinking is that for the interim show, I share:

• Example of completed postcards, perhaps photographed with/by the people to 'use' them
• The postcards themselves with the open invitation to take part
• Myself as a place to have the conversations in the moment

Afterwards, I hope to gather the 'art' by having people show more examples of the postcards, and they become my first substantial 'piece'...