Thursday, March 02, 2006
The urgency of my practice
There has been allot of thinking and thinking and thinking over the last few days. To the point that I feel I have thought myself into a corner. The cause of this is trying to write a press release for my show here - which leads to contemplation of the difficulty of trying to explain my practise -
At an interview for a place at an internationally prestigious art program in Amsterdam a few years ago I was asked the question "what is the urgency of your practise?" My response then, as now, is that I find it hard to understand the question.
I feel like taking the person who asked the question to the window and showing them the world, if you could, showing the largeness of the world and the many great urgencies that occupy people's lives and asking if they feel art could answer that. “Do you mean that kind of urgency?” I want to ask.
The oddness of it was that I felt I was being asked how my work was going to change the world. But the question was in a different context.
I am interested in the fact that we do art because it is a cultural thing. Imagine asking someone “what is the urgency of using your knife and fork like that?” I guess the discussion would become interesting if the person who you asked happened to have done their PhD in table etiquette. They would be able to tell you why, and what it meant to do this, in certain contexts, and what it would mean to do it differently.
At an interview for a place at an internationally prestigious art program in Amsterdam a few years ago I was asked the question "what is the urgency of your practise?" My response then, as now, is that I find it hard to understand the question.
I feel like taking the person who asked the question to the window and showing them the world, if you could, showing the largeness of the world and the many great urgencies that occupy people's lives and asking if they feel art could answer that. “Do you mean that kind of urgency?” I want to ask.
The oddness of it was that I felt I was being asked how my work was going to change the world. But the question was in a different context.
I am interested in the fact that we do art because it is a cultural thing. Imagine asking someone “what is the urgency of using your knife and fork like that?” I guess the discussion would become interesting if the person who you asked happened to have done their PhD in table etiquette. They would be able to tell you why, and what it meant to do this, in certain contexts, and what it would mean to do it differently.
Labels: the netherlands, thesis
# posted by amcqu : 1:19 am
