Tathos, Tomgos, Passion and Detachment, finding a balance in my 2nd year

 It's been a while since Tathos and Tomgos have staged a takeover of this blog, but they remain useful tools - they serve a bunch of uses so far:

• As ways to think of the type of thinking I want to develop more (Tathos) vs my old approach to problem solving (Tomgos)
• Of ways to deliberately approach problems from different points of view - what would Tathos say? What would Tomgos say? What would Tathos say that Tomgos would say? Trying to characterise their characterisation of each other is an interesting piece of mental gymnastics that is made much easier by personifying them!
• They create distance that allows me to say things more easily than I can say them in my own voice, especially when it allows me to say things I don't necessarily believe
• They are a small venture into the idea of projecting art through a lens - a person, a story, an object

So far I have tended to think of them in quite 'classical' terms - their names are parodies of the greek ideas of pathos and logos. In that way, they typical represent 'Emotional-led Tom' and 'Logic-led Tom'. 

However, I was reflecting recently on 'passion' and 'detachment' in my practice, by which I broadly mean:

• "Passion": My tendency to make art that is driven by feelings, and that is characterised by direct experience. This mode is visceral, honest, direct.
• "Detachment": My tendency to make art that is driven by logic, and that is characterised by reflection and generalisation. This mode is cool, rich, nuanced.

It struck me that these ideas map quite well to Tathos and Tomgos. 

I think a lot of my work pre-MA was a more detached style - it was restrained and understated and dealt with broad human experiences. Carolyn's death and the 1st year of the MA drove me to reject a lot of the logic (and identity) of my old life, and my work took on a more 'passionate' style marked though by some chaos and violence. 

Recently I have been trying to let Tathos (passion) lead, and Tomgos (detachment) guide. I think this is starting to yield some good results. I think for my second year I want to work on getting this balance right. I think it HAS to be a balance - I think the current approach is a good one, but I want to apply this new-found understanding (or perceived understanding!) more deliberately. I want to try to apply it through the entire process of art making. I need both the passion for the authenticity and the detachment for the depth.

My taste in general is towards detachment, I love things that are understated, especially when describing potentially terrible things. I want to use passion to fuel my creativity, but detachment to curate it. I want to do more with less. I also want to apply the principle that the art is in squeezing the nut - it's not about creating a 'puzzle', it's about creating something closer to a zen koan - a puzzle that cannot be solved, but which can act as source for reflection, contemplation, a generator of questions and insights, not answers. A nut that can be squeezed hard but which will not break!

Art is not in the cracking of the nut, it's in the squeezing

 And it's definitely not the nut itself!

Pain and Acceptance - digital artwork in Blender using my full body scan

 In parallel to my research paper, and as a bit of light-relief initially, I've been working on the following image:

I'm calling it "Pain and Acceptance" for obvious reasons, although you can play with "who is pain and who is acceptance". Although I'm pleased with the final image, it was mostly a technical exercise. It started as an 'experiment', in emitters, that rapidly became a experiment in learning the "Repeat Zone" in geometry nodes... God, the evenings I wasted... But not wasted as I learnt a tonne... I really need to get a colorimeter so I can be sure my screen is calibrated - the writing on the wall is probably too obvious on some people's screens, and barely visible on others'....

Working on the "Pink Performance" videos made me suddenly wake up to LIGHT, and it's potential! My initial lighting happened to be quite chiaroscuro so I lent into this. I've just read "An Air of History: Joseph Wright's and Robert Boyle's Air Pump Narratives" as recommended by the Christabel Harley, the guest lecturer. I found the paper fascinating, and the idea of the vanitas fascinating too. Given that Wright of Derby was also a bit of a chiaroscuro fan too, I thought it would be really cool if I could incorporate a vanitas of my own. Interestingly, this became a battle between meaning (which wanted a vanitas in there) and aesthetics (which couldn't add one without spoiling the focus and impact).

Initially I tried to let Tathos lead and just added it, floating unexplained with a skull reflected in the sphere:

Unfortunately, it just looked hammy and confusing, and distracted from the faces. 

In my head, the scene was in an abandoned or damaged house, a powerful symbol, so I added that in, and tried to experiment with adding a candle (another vanitas symbol) and converting the sphere to a light bulb:

I liked the idea, but I couldn't get the candle to back off and let the faces be the focus, despite reducing it to only a few watts of power, and making it's light almost green... So in the end I accepted that image didn't want to go that way, and slowly evolved the piece to the final form above.

Interestingly this image did a couple more things related to my process:

• It made me realise that my work goes through a double-hump - there's peak-ugly, fairly early on, which is about hammering out meaning and composition, and then there's death-by-a-thousand-cuts at the end when I have to hammer out a million small details before I can consider it done
• This image sort of epitomises the work that I have been doing to-date that focuses on my own experience of grief and direct showing, often quite angry, it sort of says "Look at this, LOOK, this happened to me, this hurt so bad, don't tell me the world is not bitter", but I think I need to move beyond this - to accept my pain and use it as a springboard to more universal works that beg questions more gently - I think "A Month in my Head" (the wax heads) is a good initial example of this - it professes to be a record of my mental health, but is more of a gentle parody and problematises our obsession with recording and analysing our mental health

Project Art Through A Persona, and time for a new way of thinking?

 I was digging around in the topic of art as play, (not in a sandpit-y way, more in a this-ditch-needs-to-be-finished-by-this-evening sort of a way) and I came across an article about art presented as a puppet show. The article itself appeared to be the script, but presumably it was intended to watched. I love the idea!

The idea of using a 'persona' to mediate the article was really interesting to me. It reminded me of the way that Tathos and Tomgos help to mediate some of these blog posts. They can say things that I couldn't say directly, but I think the way they look at things forces a different mode of analysis - their personalities and proclivities highlight and draw out aspects of the material that mine wouldn't.

I feel like I need to apply this to art somehow, and I feel like doing so might bring some sort of breakthrough... I guess doing so would be play within play, but might also enable me to make things that wouldn't be comfortable/possible/natural for me to make myself - I could make as someone who isn't (very) atheist, I could make as someone who had never seen death, I could make as someone who lived alone, I could make as an otter, or a tree... I could make as a million things I have never been - other selves. I could do that implicitly - present the end result, or I could (perhaps more comfortably and interestingly) do so explicitly - I could craft whole stories or worlds around objects relating to things that never happened, but are themselves allegories for things that did, or might.

In general I feel poised on the edge of some sort of breakthrough, or at least, major step forward, but I can't rationalise it. I care only about rationalising it in the hope of shaking it free. I think a massive walk would help, but I can't make the time. I also feel the research paper is really NOT helping at all. Far from feeding my reflection, it seems to be clogging it up. Perhaps I'm too 'young' for it? A lot of the tools we are being given are to force more mature students out of ruts they are in... But right now I can't even imagine how to get stuck in a rut. 

I think my 'breakthrough' might relate to:

• Moving beyond the anger in my art - the wild urge to 'punish' the viewer by making them confront the bitter reality of life seems to be fading... Weirdly "Pain and Acceptance" (see later post) has helped a lot
• Move away from art that concerns myself directly - I had a realisation early on in my Study Statement that I can make art about my experience, and I can make art that's bigger than that, and I feel the need to start making that transition. This came up in my crit with the DCS and reminded me that perhaps the time is now.
• Coming out of the above, make art that is more delicate, more intricate, more beautiful - a lot of the work I have made to date has an angry aesthetic, but it's not my natural aesthetic - I don't find it 'beautiful' as such
• A lot of my per-MA work focused on nature, and I want to bring that back

I think a lot of this relates to the End of Year Show - I think it shocked me because it forced me to think about my work through someone else's eyes - I realised what seems special and magical to me, might look mundane and half-arsed through someone else's eyes. It forced me to try harder... Even harder... Which might be why I was pissed off!

New Research Topic: Art as Ludic Play

 After a lot of wandering, literal and metaphorical, I think I have a new topic that I'm excited about. It's a natural evolution of my old topic but feels more motivating to me because:

• I care more about the idea of exploring the nature of art
• It feels more original (I can't find anything really written on this already)
• It feels a bit controversial
• It's a stretch for me
• It came naturally out of my reading

I've been exploring the idea of play in art for a while, and that lead to exploring play as art... But reading Homo Ludens has really led me to wonder if all  art is play. Moreover, I wonder if making art is play, but viewing art is play too? I think I can apocryphally convince myself that art is play, the 'fun' bit will be finding references that meaningfully support the arguments... And deciding what that MEANS, does it pass the 'so what' test? I'm currently trying to find material that relates to the structure of play and show how it maps across to the art world.

It might all be bobbins, and I'm probably going to end up with a very wobbly structure, but it's a lot more fun than just running with the herd.

A Month in my Head Finished

 The laser cut mount board turned up, but needless to say, it was very scorched.. I'd forgotten that was a thing... I wonder if it is a thing or whether cheaper laser cutting services don't bother to tune the laser settings? It seems odd to offer cream mount board knowing that it will turn out as cream-with-brown-scorch-marks mount board... Anyway, the world as it is, I painted it with some left over cream paint and mostly got rid of the problem. I think fixed up the damaged boxes, and mounted them in place:

I'm really happy with it. I think the aesthetic works well for me - intricate, monochrome, precise. I made a video and posted it to Insta, and I guess I'm done for now.

I did look at labels, but mocking up a single label using a sticky label quickly made me think they were a bad idea - too much.

The World As It Is

 Sometimes when I walk, random phrases will drift into my brain, unbidden, and usually drift out again. I don't generally pay much attention, although sometimes I'll be struck by something that sounds good, but I usually forget it again. I guess it's day dreaming...  However, the phrase "the world as it is" keeps drifting into my head, so persistently that I wonder why. 

I think it comes (probably paraphrased) originally from a book of eastern philosophy called "Truth and Actuality", that my dad had next to his bed for years in the (incorrect) belief that he would eventually read it. The first pages talk about the world as we perceive it, verses the world as we believe it to be, verses the world as it actually is. The implication, as I understand it, being that we can't possibly know the world as it actually is, because we have to filter everything through our senses, and our beliefs. What, in fact, would the world as it actually 'is' even mean? 

Now that I know it's online, I should really read that book...

In the context of my day-dreaming, it seems to represent a sort of 'sigh' against life as we expect it to be. The "world as it is" is the world stripped of all our preconceptions of what it "should be". It's harsh, but also comforting - it's not trying to be anything... it just is. It is, I guess, a sort of emotional surrender, an acceptance for a moment of what is, verses what should be, an spiritual moment of relaxation.

I feel like I want to portray the world as it is in my art - beautiful, stripped of meaning, stripped of expectation. But what would doing so mean? Is that the exact wrong question to ask? It's clearly a fool's errand, but I think maybe (for me) art is about running fools errands, about trying with all your heart to do something that makes no sense, that cannot be done, and seeing what happens as a result.

Perhaps?

Problematising, critical thinking, and round manhole covers

A biography of Pope.L said he 'problematised' race, work, and sex. I wondered what that actually meant so I looked it up and it's really interesting! 

I assumed it meant effectively to make complaint about... It's funny how the word 'problem' has so many negative connotations nowadays, especially in business. Making something a problem is seen as complaining about something trivial. Actually, I guess it literally means to formulate something in a way that it can be solved.

From my understanding, to 'problematise' something is a critical thinking technique whereby you take something 'commonly understood' and reframe it as a problem to be solved, to effectively question it from scratch. E.g. I could problematise cat ownership (my cat just jumped on the bed) by starting to ask questions like "why do we have cats?" "who owns who?" "do cats want to live with humans?" "who gets to decide who can have a cat, and why?" "why cats, why not other animals?" etc etc A way to approach is, according to Wikipedia, is to put quotes around the thing you want to explore e.g. Picasso was a great artist -> Picasso was a 'great artist'. The questions start to pour in....

I am really interested in critical thinking - I feel like it's something I've often done (people compliment and complain about my 'questioning everything'). Interestingly, I think it's what we tested for in Google with the "General Cognitive Ability" interviews that I always seemed to get lumbered with - those funny interviews that the press loved to report on - the aim of them wasn't actually to see if candidates knew why manhole covers were round, but rather to see how candidates approached problem solving, especially assumptions. Actually problematising was encouraged at Google, especially in the heady post-IPO times when I joined - often with amazing results ("How do I delete back-up tapes I can't access" - hint, what does 'delete' actually MEAN here) and sometimes less amazing results ("Why are email, chat, and documents all separate things?")

Reflecting on reflecting on the CSM Show

I've been reflecting on my blog post written after the CSM Show. I don't think it was unkind, but it was perhaps unfair. I think it was worthwhile learning from the art I saw, but I think the distinction between a 'show' and an 'exhibition' was lost on me, and I think I probably lost out as a result - rather than going expecting to critic the art, I should have gone with an open mind, curiosity, and a bit more generosity of spirit! I could have enjoyed their triumphant moment with them, had fun, and learned more about other people's experience of art, instead I moped around and made a fool of myself.

Reflections coming out of the last 24 hours (which have been difficult at times):

• Everyone has to make their own art - setting out to make 'good art' is a fallacy - you make the art that you make, and you learn, but the aim is to make the art that you think is 'right', not to make art that other people expect. Conversely, you have to see everyone's art as you find it - as a good friend said "when I see art I think is bad, I go and find some other art to look at, can't you do that?"
• As JK said, it's hard to untangle the art from the artist. I see now that dismissing art is like dismissing people, it's sad and destructive
• There is no universal truth in art and that is terrible and also wonderful - as someone with a 'science' background, it's terrifying, and that's why I wanted to (and still want to) do this MA
• If you are talking to the artist, questions are the most wonderful things. One of the best bosses I had taught me that. You could say "I find the colours garish" or you could say "Why did you choose those colours?", in the second case, you both win - you learn something new, they maybe learn something about themselves. In the first case, everyone looses - you state something you already knew, and they think you are a twat

But:

• It is valid to have opinions about what art you want to make and not make
• It is valuable to seek feedback but not always valuable to act on it
• It is valuable to share your opinion when it is sought
• It is valuable to have opinions about other people's art, but only for your own purposes - people will make art that isn't the art you want to make. This is a useful way to learn about the art you DO want to make, it is not a reason to consider their art 'bad'