One of Art's functions is to connect. Artist to audience, individual to community, idea to experience, you get the picture. This is why when there is funding for the arts it is often related to this aspect of community building, bringing people together through shared experience. This is also why I love cooking, and dinner parties. That we are social animals is an old saw, that our world enriched through sharing is one also, but seems to bear repeating.
There is even a (much debated) branch of contemporary art practice called Relational Art, postulated in the book Relational Aesthetics by Nicolas Bourriaud. This was first elucidated to me by Michael Flaherty when he came through Seattle with his Bicycle Rehabilitation Project at Soil.
Much of Monique's work involves connecting the dots, on many levels. I'll let her tell you about her work if she feels like discussing it, but at the very least, inviting Mary and Jason and I to participate in part of her residency is a natural part of how she approaches this aspect of her practice. This applies to the whole New Riddles and Constellations series she's been doing, of which this is the 4th incarnation. By inviting artists and a variety of other people to inhabit the same event/space she aims to create something that is if not greater than the sun if its parts at the very least it is a well-made gumbo.
Next Saturday afternoon's program opens this process up to the local community by inviting people to come by with an ingredient of some sort, throwing it all into a huge pot, making soup and sharing it.
After thinking about what I can do here that is connected to this place and my experience of it, and realizing that some of the new ideas that I brought with me would probably be more complicated than I'd be able to deliver on, I propose a series of photographic still lifes. Specifically I want to continue to build on what I began wrestling with in earnest while at Elsewhere. (More on that later). I admit that I have been reluctant to do this because, to put it bluntly, I don't want to go to a new situation and do the same dam thing every time. The irony is that I am just as conflicted about going to a new situation and trying to do some clever thing that has nothing to do with what is really in front of me. The photographs I took at Elsewhere had a very personal, autobiographical quality to them. Focusing on the fact that being here isn't about me proved to be the key to unlocking my dilemma.
By using items that I find here in the region, I am going to see if I can create still lifes that both allow me to explore the very Dutch tradition of Stilleven as well as allow me to talk about and acknowledge some of the people and encounters I experience while here. Furthermore, in the spirit of Monique's "Good Neighbor Soup" I will invite people I meet as well as people in the community in general to give me items that they think might be interesting to photograph or that represents them or the region in some way. We'll see what happens...
4.18.2008
Friday, Friday
Today I rode a bike. I don't think anyone thought I was actually Dutch, but I sure felt Dutch pedaling along the bike path, spiraling around those turn-abouts and generally freezing. First stop: Thrift Store! They still hadn't replaced the bare shelves, but I was reassured that the worst was over. A few more turns of the wheel and I felt completely empowered to get around town. More cheese (this time with caraway) and some relatively cheap wine at the discount store and it was time to head home.
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