Supplemental thoughts about this piece, and why it has remained an unrealized project
A few months ago, I had a studio visit with a faculty member of the residency I was attending at the Banff Centre in Canada. He gave me some very poignant advice (I extend my thanks), which is to be wary of paranoia – to make sure I have some sort of relief or exit from the critiques I pose. To set the context, it was one of the final days of the six-week residency, during which I struggled to produce work I was satisfied with. Everyday, I attempted to make a video performance that would pertain to my practice, which I have typically described as being
“…generated out of a complex understanding of human-environmental exchange and articulates the notion of human malleability. My recent work investigates the threshold of human adaptability as we assimilate to perpetually shifting social, political and technological ecologies with hegemonic agendas. Mostly working with performance, I use my body as a direct conduit through which I question the extent of cultural conditioning as it functions in tandem with instinctual behavior. I consider my work an evolving, in-process catalogue of responses to, or negotiations within, the increasingly prescriptive environments we inhabit…”
Everyday after attempting to perform, I scrutinized the videos with extreme disapproval, and retreated to the library to read theory. Having recently received my master’s from a program that heavily relies on theoretical text to bolster its mission statement as a contemporary, research-based degree program, this was not an unfamiliar activity. But having had one-year’s distance from daily engagement with this academic discourse, I felt sorely estranged from the material: post-socio-political-and/or-economical-capitalization, and other general forces to be considered for discussion. The vocabulary was familiar, but I felt an inappropriate irreverence towards it. I couldn’t, and still can’t identify (or maybe confess) the exact source of my desire to possibly poke fun at the elaborate, institutional language. Because on occasion, I employ it myself. And because actually, I sometimes agree with what’s being presented by an author providing a critique of contemporary “conditions.” But there was an absurd ring to the repetition of certain words or phrases like post-capitalism, immaterial labor, knowledge production and commodification. The usage seemed superfluous and a desperate call for legitimization. Admittedly, this interpretation was partly due to my concern with the imminent situation that my own artistic knowledge production was lacking, which was being cyclically aggravated by the fact that I wasn’t able to locate the same kind of discourse in my own work at the time. And so in my frustration, I took a particularly verbose article from a journal, and began to circle every buzzword or phrase that pinpointed a trend in critical language. Earlier in the residency, I had used the letterpress to make a stack of simple prints with one of two words on small white cards: serious and professional.1 I took these extracted words from the journal, and wrote them on a few of the cards, posing them as content requirements for producing work as a professional and serious artist. The remainder of the cards were less serious in their critique of what it means to be a professional and serious artist. (For example: “Six years ago I started to wear my glasses again so people would take me more SERIOUS -ly.”)
To get back to the point, during the studio visit I learned that the word accumulation pinned to my wall was only half of a potential piece. The other half, I was advised, would be to provide an exit from this almost tongue-in-cheek display. Not only do I need to climb into the problem to analyze it, but I need to climb out of it as well. And vice versa. When you get in too deep, or in this case risk being taken too seriously, without the possibility of creating distance from the subject matter and suggesting an alternative mode of action, you’ve failed to make the critique. It instead presents itself as an instance of paranoia. I was grateful for the warning, and the external reminder that indeed, I was at the threshold of dangerous territory, that of unproductive cynicism. Should I discover a counterpart to transform the cynicism, and the confidence that I can accurately appropriate the language without being expelled from the discipline I’ve chosen, I might decide to un-unrealize. But for the time being, I’ve decided to remain my own critic on this one.
1Actually, I had printed cards with a third word, “appropriate.” On one of the cards, the sentence read: “context defines appropriate.” Based on this sentence, the faculty member and I decided “appropriate” was not necessary to include in this collection.
Sarah Witt, 2012
Supplemental thoughts about this piece, and why it has remained an unrealized project
A few months ago, I had a studio visit with a faculty member of the residency I was attending at the Banff Centre in Canada. He gave me some very poignant advice (I extend my thanks), which is to be wary of paranoia – to make sure I have some sort of relief or exit from the critiques I pose. To set the context, it was one of the final days of the six-week residency, during which I struggled to produce work I was satisfied with. Everyday, I attempted to make a video performance that would pertain to my practice, which I have typically described as being
“…generated out of a complex understanding of human-environmental exchange and articulates the notion of human malleability. My recent work investigates the threshold of human adaptability as we assimilate to perpetually shifting social, political and technological ecologies with hegemonic agendas. Mostly working with performance, I use my body as a direct conduit through which I question the extent of cultural conditioning as it functions in tandem with instinctual behavior. I consider my work an evolving, in-process catalogue of responses to, or negotiations within, the increasingly prescriptive environments we inhabit…”
Everyday after attempting to perform, I scrutinized the videos with extreme disapproval, and retreated to the library to read theory. Having recently received my master’s from a program that heavily relies on theoretical text to bolster its mission statement as a contemporary, research-based degree program, this was not an unfamiliar activity. But having had one-year’s distance from daily engagement with this academic discourse, I felt sorely estranged from the material: post-socio-political-and/or-economical-capitalization, and other general forces to be considered for discussion. The vocabulary was familiar, but I felt an inappropriate irreverence towards it. I couldn’t, and still can’t identify (or maybe confess) the exact source of my desire to possibly poke fun at the elaborate, institutional language. Because on occasion, I employ it myself. And because actually, I sometimes agree with what’s being presented by an author providing a critique of contemporary “conditions.” But there was an absurd ring to the repetition of certain words or phrases like post-capitalism, immaterial labor, knowledge production and commodification. The usage seemed superfluous and a desperate call for legitimization. Admittedly, this interpretation was partly due to my concern with the imminent situation that my own artistic knowledge production was lacking, which was being cyclically aggravated by the fact that I wasn’t able to locate the same kind of discourse in my own work at the time. And so in my frustration, I took a particularly verbose article from a journal, and began to circle every buzzword or phrase that pinpointed a trend in critical language. Earlier in the residency, I had used the letterpress to make a stack of simple prints with one of two words on small white cards: serious and professional.1 I took these extracted words from the journal, and wrote them on a few of the cards, posing them as content requirements for producing work as a professional and serious artist. The remainder of the cards were less serious in their critique of what it means to be a professional and serious artist. (For example: “Six years ago I started to wear my glasses again so people would take me more SERIOUS -ly.”)
To get back to the point, during the studio visit I learned that the word accumulation pinned to my wall was only half of a potential piece. The other half, I was advised, would be to provide an exit from this almost tongue-in-cheek display. Not only do I need to climb into the problem to analyze it, but I need to climb out of it as well. And vice versa. When you get in too deep, or in this case risk being taken too seriously, without the possibility of creating distance from the subject matter and suggesting an alternative mode of action, you’ve failed to make the critique. It instead presents itself as an instance of paranoia. I was grateful for the warning, and the external reminder that indeed, I was at the threshold of dangerous territory, that of unproductive cynicism. Should I discover a counterpart to transform the cynicism, and the confidence that I can accurately appropriate the language without being expelled from the discipline I’ve chosen, I might decide to un-unrealize. But for the time being, I’ve decided to remain my own critic on this one.
1Actually, I had printed cards with a third word, “appropriate.” On one of the cards, the sentence read: “context defines appropriate.” Based on this sentence, the faculty member and I decided “appropriate” was not necessary to include in this collection.
Sarah Witt, 2012