Idealism and the grounding of imagination

Here's some writing from 11 months ago, never posted:

I have this idealistic view of my unrealized "community arts space", a multi-functional venue for inter-disciplinary arts & a few extra functions added in, such as an independent boutique and a creative restaurant-cum-neighborhood bar.  I believe there were also supposed to be spare rooms for any bands passing through to stay the night in a hostel-ish atmosphere.  We'd all be a happy family, practicing and talking about arts all day long, and from that would emerge innumerable community benefits.  This is not to say that I find these things no longer interesting or unattainable (I hope), but that I have been instructed by the many people who answered an informal survey recently, spurred by a research project for my post-grad program here in London, about where real creativity happens in the States.

I come from some amount of bias here, as I have spent the past 3 years in a governmental cultural organization, which felt as though the limits and rules that governed artistic product would never end.  Personally, I felt little creative contribution to society, though I worked with artists every day.  So I think, "Certainly the opposite of this must be the cradle of creativity."  (See above imagined formula.)  

That's about me.  Where reality comes in is in your responses - Burning Man was a favorite of course as a creative haven, but also forward thinking bona-fide institutions that were cited multiple times, not small shoe-string cultural centers.  In fact, people wrote specifically that these community centers were not that creative or artistically sound - and this is the case in texts that I have read in my course as well - amateur and community arts have great social benefits and contribute important support to the arts scene as a whole, but complex visions are carried out in a professional, highly constructed atmosphere.

It PAINS me to say this.  I have realized in the past month my knee-jerk counter-culture leanings.  F*** the system and administrators placing importance on THIS and not THAT.  I like THAT, again sometimes blindly.  And I still think there is value there.  But then what is my goal with founding this cultural center?  Social good, or ground-breaking creativity.  I don't want to choose.

We need to create more space, just as institutions do, for non-professional artists to have time and can be supported in thinking about all of the implications of their art, which I think is what creates the real impact in these institutions that have been cited.  From the moment you walk in the door, the whole experience tells you that creative thought and effort permeate the process and the product.  The implications of "community" are contrary to this unfortunately - differing levels of time, resources, experience, hence the uneven or lower quality experience.  It's a fine line balancing these two - open exchange and concentrated effort.  A line which I hope to walk in the years to come, and I hope to hear from you each time you encounter it.

Games People Play

I learned 2 games tonight at the Victoria Miro Gallery.  Both of these games are for 2 people to play.  Courtesy of Siobhan Davies Dance.

NSEW

1. Stand facing your partner

2. Establish (agree on) the 4 cardinal directions: North, South, East, West

2. Join hands, with one person (only) crossing hands, so that your right hand is holding their right hand.

3. Choose a "leading arm" for each person (they must be different).

4. At random, pull with your leading arm and walk in one direction.  Your partner must correctly identify that direction (verbally) as quickly as possible by saying "North", "South", "East" or "West".

5. Either partner can change direction at any time.

6. Continue until extreme dizziness makes playing impossible.

YESNO

1. Face your partner

2. Begin nodding or shaking your head

3. Your partner must say out loud "Yes" or "No" according to your motion, without changing their nodding or shaking

4. Either partner can change at any time, and the other must identify it as quickly as possible

They were hilarious, but no one was laughing?  That's because it was Art.

More pics on Flickr.

School of Everything

There's a new school that teaches Tai-chi, Motorcycle maintenance, and jazz improvisation, anywhere in the world, for free or paid, whichever happens to be your circumstance.  So go out and learn or teach something, or both!

Luckily for my dissertation, it seems people would like to be more musical:

PS - in all of the subjects that I "teach", there are far more teachers than learners.  Isn't that curious?  Do we all just want to share knowledge, but not absorb anything?  Hmmm....

PPS - see comments for a note from one of the founders of SoE!

um.

中華鍋のハムスター（Hamster ｉｎ Wok）

Sometimes I Dream I Can Step

Fear, trust and alcohol

Fear, trust and alcohol

Reposted from www.intelligentnaivety.com

For cultural entrepreneurs, social interactions are not necessarily just a means to an end but represent a source of power and a greater potential for success in their own right. Entrepreneurs in the ‘new’ industries, Rifkin argues, are motivated by being “universally connected so as to affect and shape human consciousness itself.” Baron and Markman argue that this social capital and social skills can enhance an entrepreneur’s success. A high level of social capital, built on a favourable reputation, relevant previous experience, and direct personal contacts, can assist entrepreneurs in gaining access to key potential stakeholders. Once that access is gained, four social skills – social perception, impression management, persuasion and social influence, and social adaptability – can influence the quality of these interactions, and help them reap important benefits.

The power of interaction derives from its ability to facilitate compassionate support, plus strategies for managing risk and making decisions. This adds a personal or social dimension to innovation, reflecting the importance of emotions in the cultural and creative industries. By being able to share experiences and strategies, cultural entrepreneurs create an ‘imagined community’, which Banks notes is united by a mutual narrative and emotional disclosure around their choices to move away from traditional careers.

SHARING THE FEAR

Such networks help individuals in the creative industries to manage, for example, the huge fear of failure which Storey and Sykes highlight. The lifestyles of cultural entrepreneurs’ further give them resources to manage or offset the economic and cultural risks found in the sector. For example, blurring work and leisure can be a strategy for getting to know the market, and pick up new opportunities for work.

Some entrepreneurs, for example, speak of a camaraderie aspect to sharing a financial risk, even if it goes wrong: “You’ve got two people, you’ve got two incomes, you can throw money at a wall…but it doesn’t matter: ‘I’ve just wasted three grand!’ ‘So have I!’ ‘Okay – let’s stay in for three years!’ – you’ve got that as well.” Collaborators are useful for making decisions and experiencing the turbulence of implementing an idea: “It’s quite difficult to make decisions all on your own sometimes…It’s just nice to have someone to share it and experience it with.”

TRUST

The strategies outlined above can only work if there is a shared trust between agents. According to Banks, trust plays a large role in negotiations and interactions, often offsetting more formal forms and structures of protection. For Leadbeater, “the more you can depend on people you can trust, the less risk you take. So it’s easier to take risks when you have relationships with a range of people you can depend upon…” Trust is a vital ‘lubricant’ for knowledge creation: “people share and act on ideas when they trust one another.”
Yet, whilst demand for trust has risen, traditional sources of supply (class, community, family, religion) have declined. Many cultural entrepreneurs have therefore developed their own strategies for establishing this necessary trust: they all emphasised the importance of genuine, personalised relationships. One referred to the importance of being able to “speak to clients as a human being rather than having a client/customer relationship.” Another echoed this: “they’re all people at the end of the day.”

A familiar, but often underrated, factor in achieving this familiarity is the considerable role of alcohol in facilitating these networks. Every interviewee referred to having professional discussions over a drink, in part reflecting the perceived benefits of disinhibition for idea generation. This personalisation of professional business relations reflects the blurred line for cultural entrepreneurs between work and leisure, and allows the necessary development of trust. From such trust relationships, the cultural entrepreneur can develop support mechanisms, an increased understanding of alternative views and situations, and the flexible opportunity to collaborate on areas of mutual interest.

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And the award goes to...

Many of you got an email from me last fall about your favorite creative spaces/places.  You might be interested to know the results...

The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis had the most enthusiastic responses.  So keep your eye on what they're up to.  Plus their website is pretty, take a look:

Walker Art Center

A coincidence that one of my favorite jazz trios originated in Minneapolis?  I think not.

Some other favorite places were:

Burning Man

The Getty Museum

Art Institute of Chicago

Rubalad, Williamsburg

World Beats Center, San Diego

Tiberino Sculpture Museum, Philly

Double Edge Theater, MA

La Pena, San Francisco

Gallery 110, Provo

Sego Art Center, Provo

Architectural Association, London

Institute of Contemporary Arts, London

Tohono Chul Park, Tucson

Epic cafe, Tucson

Eastern Shore Art Center, Fairhope, AL

Nothing about this survey was scientific or accurate.  But I really enjoyed reading the responses!  And I'm going to try to work them in to my studies this year...

Any others?  Discuss.

London shows update

I'm borrowing a tradition from my most rabid concert-going DC friend.  Putting together a well-researched list of the greatest London shows for the next 2-3 months.  I wonder if I'll keep this up once classes start again...

12.1 Animal Collective @ Koko, £16 (may be sold out??)

25.1 The Wilders (alt-country) @ Luminaire, £10

26.1 Lonely Dear (Swedish folky-pop) @ St-Giles-in-the-Fields, £12

29.1 The Streets @ Brixton Academy, £19.50

12.2 Simian Mobile Disco @ Koko, £14.30

20.2 The Walkmen @ Scala, £15

22-24.2 Fleet Foxes @ Roundhouse, £16.50 - will sell out!

24.2 Metronomy @ Koko, £12.34 - WSO!

I'm (obviously) being selective, but even so I'm sure I'm missing hundreds more, tell me what they are!  Hit me up if you want a concert buddy.

Fritz Haeg

Written, but not finished, shortly after the Frieze Art Fair in October:

Over the last 3 days, I have actually been paid by the Frieze Art Fair to hand out flyers with Sharon Hayes' writings on them for half an hour, taking part in an art that is new to me and people watching simultaneously, which at one of the world's best-known art fairs is payment in itself. In addition, I have 4 days free admission to the fair to spend as I see fit. There is the dizzying international kaleidoscope of art to take in of course, but also artist talks, which I went to tonight given by Fritz Haeg.

The description of the talk advertised topics of "populist projects, insular bohemia, activist art, passive entertainment, networked communication, broadcast media, social strategies, systems of isolation and potential roles for today's artist in a fractured society." The authors of this description hit about 98% of my personal buzzwords, so I made time for it at 5pm on a Saturday (despite still recovering from revelries of the previous night...) Having sat through weeks of English lecturers who like enunciating, Fritz was a gay male of the refreshingly West-coast plain-spoken variety.

I found myself concentrating on some of the thoughts I've been having about America, counter-culture, political behavior around art while Fritz reviewed the ideological associations in his own projects and art-making. He opened his lecture with an electoral map of America after the 2004 election (see great swath of red spilled in between blue coasts). Twice he made the remark that it is important for artists to have a forum that is contained within and informed by a certain culture and standards of the discipline, but that acculturation means nothing if the artist doesn't step outside (and in to the "red"...) and work in a larger context.

A little background :
"Like a system of crop rotation, Fritz Haeg works between his architecture and design practice Fritz Haeg Studio (though the currently preferred clients are animals), the happenings and gatherings of Sundown Salon (now schoolhouse), the ecology initiatives of Gardenlab (including Edible Estates), and other various combinations of building, designing, gardening, exhibiting, dancing, organizing and talking." Yeah, of course he can do all of those things successfully. Build a home for beavers in a art gallery on Monday, found a commune in rural Mexico on Tuesday. (http://www.fritzhaeg.com/studio/projects/planb.html)

At the end of the talk I introduced myself and asked him to what degree he wanted his works to bring about change. He said it was actually more about "telling stories", ie the artistic content than its functional use in society. I enjoyed the stories, but my question came out of wondering if this cross-pollination of disciplines and subject matter was actually intelligible. But it's about how the stories are interwoven, not so much the moral.

After the talk I thought it more significant that I didn't quite know what to make of the advertised description, other than I was intrigued. How can these topics come together coherently? So it's not reality, maybe you can't always answer the question "What's the point?" But that is the great accomplishment of art, connecting ideas & bits of information that could only be linked in an imaginary space.