artist researcher

Artist Researcher (clarified)

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The most important thing you will read today is "See it Again, Say it Again: The Artist as Researcher—Introduction" by Janneke Wesseling. I have finally ordered my copy of the book. 

A few things to know if you don't have time to read the introduction:

  • Art research is produced when simultaneously thinking and making
  • Art research must yield insight about art in a broad sense, not just personal insight
  • Artists researchers talk primarily about production and thought processes of the work
  • Artist researchers do not operate within a cultural expectation of biennals, large museums, galleries or art journals. They are enveloped in the realm of academia

I will finally begin rewriting my artist statement, hopefully reposted by the end of July (here I am, promising). Reading this introduction has given me the correct cornerstone and I am incredibly excited for the months to come.

Air

in

I've suffered from "artist's block" since October 2013 (over 6 months strong). I made work to make work, stuffed my face with Deleuze and Breaking Bad, hiding and running and ignoring.

All actions as "away" and not "toward."

Easing back into spring semester proved a mountain of forgiveness and I was not ready to walk through blinding snow a second time. My teeth held so much disappointment, jealousy, greediness and arrogance, and yet the spiritual high came anyway, the love flooded me anyway.

Caught between sprinting and holding, giving in versus giving up, I fought my way through.  I was asked if I hit a brick wall in a project and there was no way through it, what would happen?

I knew I had to make a map. It was time enough to set the ideology in total motion, to forget studio work isn't necessarily rewarded immediately. I set up an impermanent workshop, falling back in love with moving hands instead of holding wrists to cope. I grasped wrong ideas and faltered breaths, dropping the failures once I learned from them. I grew. I encompassed the wall and allowed it to fuel my actions, toward.

Toward the ideology I began to know, letting go of superimposed pre-set labels of What. I am knowing How, translating it into a new What. I am making a manifesto and not a conspiracy theory. I am an artist researcher, hold the hyphen and quotation marks.

This is the true thing I know I am called to do.