To be honest, every idea that crossed my mind I had doubts about and
thought it was a waste of time. When I started to think about why I
would do a project or what was the meaning of it I just never came up
with a reason. At first I had wanted to do an installation but what
purpose would it serve? It would lie on the border line of being there
just because it was just interesting or it would be FOT. People devote
so much time into something like and installation when it may not serve a
meaning at all. This also applies to why do people live life? They work
so hard on trying to be successful and stay alive, devoting all efforts
to being the best when in the end death reaches all of us. The basic
question that crosses my mind is if all of this effort is worth it? A
artist that I use to mentor had a Buddhist idea for a project I was
helping on. She had spent around a year making collages on a huge roll
of paper demonstrating how girls have expectations to be like models in
magazines. It took so much work to cut glue then arrange on this roll of
paper that was longer then the room. One week when I walked into the
studio I heard a paper shredder and walked into the room seeing the huge
roll of paper being shredded up. The point of the project was to show
how art can be amazing and everyone admires it but instantly when it
became shredded, it lost the value it meant in people. If someone where
to see it they would instantly think it was trash even though it was the
same art work if it was whole. but her practice was to put so much
effort into something but having the ability to make all that effort
worthless in a sense was what she had wanted to do.
Therefore for
my individual project i had thought of doing a painting each day on a
large canvas. That feeling when you have so many little insignificant
scenes that you want to paint but their value doesn't extend to becoming a full on painting.
On this large canvas I would paint small paintings that I feel like
painting that day and make it into one large artwork. then maybe I would
practice the Buddhist practice and find a way to shred all of the
effort and learn that not everything has to have a meaning. This might
be a fear I have now that i realize it. The fear of making something
without a meaning or sense of worth. This fear is what I hope to
overcome this quater through my individual project.
I think it's quite interesting what that girl did. To have the ability to put an immense amount of effort into something and watch it be destroyed in a matter of seconds. Don't get me wrong- that doesn't even have to have a bad connotation to it. It's an extremely grave and fearless thing having the ability to watch something you worked so hard on, torn to pieces.
ReplyDeleteIt shows that one has to get through the smaller things in order to move onto greater things. That the little things are exactly what they sound like- little things. That they are the building blocks of something larger.
Meaning... jeez, this is a hard one to address. You really opened up a can of worms here, because... well, the basic problem is that meaning is relative rather than absolute.
ReplyDeleteIn other words, something has meaning if you decide it has meaning.
We play a game with ourselves called denial. We go through life because, by using denial, we can add meaning to something that pretty much appears to have none.
Meaning isn't "there." We make it. We make it because it is useful to us to have meaning, it's a pragmatic act for us, to care about something. To give it meaning.
Meaning is what keeps us from going crazy because we know someday we're going to die. This knowledge, that we die, this is what animals don't have. No worries! And therefore, no art!