I had an interesting chat with Roz today about magical realism in art. I said that I thought that learning to explore (potentially irrational) personal truths with the same trust as broader truths was one of the biggest things I have learnt on this MA. The fact that I can assert that rather malformed cubes of plaster are corpses and believe (on some level at least) that it is 'true', is new to me.
As we were talking, it struck me that there is a parallel to play here. The plaster cubes are part of 'my art' and are therefore part of 'my game'. Provided I apply the label of 'art', and use it as a boundary to 'contain the irrational', I can make whatever rules I like. If you like my game, you can join in, as long as you follow the 'rules', but if you don't, that's ok, you don't have to.
Maybe some of the power of art is the same as the power of play - it creates a social safe-space to explore different rules, different 'truths', and different ways of being. Perhaps that's why it's so dangerous to authority.
I think a lot of what Tathos has given me is the courage to step into, and embrace, my art 'game': to own it, revel in it, and not be afraid to push my whimsey and self-image into it, like pushing my face into soft clay.
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