TTT (The Total Thirst / Time To Think / Try To Taste / Trash Turns to Treasure/ - please create more suggestions) is not a space for arguments and disputes but for gifts, insights, suggestions, visions, desires of ours and perhaps even love if once a penguin will disappear Inside of us.
(In case anybody would like to be removed from the list of this net please send us back three capital letters NWP /not willing to participate.)
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Dear Gia,
here is the text for the Proposal, Eva and me created within the project THE ARTIST AS A MODEL OF CHANGE, Devin helped us finishing it.
"Conventional education makes independent thinking extremely difficult. Conformity leads to mediocrity. To be different from the group or to resist environment is not easy and is often risky as long as we worship success. The urge to be successful, which is the pursuit of reward whether in the material or the in the so-called spiritual sphere, the search for inward or outward security, the desire for comfort - this whole process smothers discontent, puts an end to spontaneity and breeds fear; and fear blocks the intelligent understanding of life. With increasing age, dullness of mind and heart sets in.
-- Jiddu Krishnamurti, The Education and the Significance of life
Dear Speaking Artist,
As participants of the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture we are in engaged in a condensed institutional structure of art.
The society s conventional system of communication is deeply rooted within this institution. By accepting or adopting the conventional methodology within a context of art without questioning and valuing its functions or necessities, we confine openness and limit creativity. The Lecture, the Artist Talk, and the Critique are exploited exclusively in art schools and museums. They have become routine tools for presenting/representing art. This repeated structure feeds the hierarchical relationships and a one-way communication between the faculty and students, rather than allowing open exchanges.
A system exists to secure itself.
While experiencing a constant flow of professional lectures by faculty and visiting artists these past few weeks in Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, we cannot deny witnessing a standard form of presentation that reflects and enforces a current trend in the contemporary art world.
Why does the Artist Talk/lecture notably resemble a corporate presentation? The whole set up for the performative presentation (projector, microphone, lectern, a different eye level between speaker and sitter, etc.) forces the lecturers to protect and defend their work. The professional lecturer has to stand behind the lectern using a microphone to enhance their well-prepared speech while the audience sits quietly in the darkness as an anonymous and passive mass. The lecturer is allowed to support the reproduction of her/his work by talking, describing or explaining' a slideshow.
They must be able to justify, articulate and be fully aware of their work.
They must be able to answer to any possible question.
There is no space for spontaneous reflection or exchange.
There is room to express neither the vulnerability, failure, and struggles of the artistic process nor mutual understanding between the artist and audience.
We hope that the Lecture can be the place of exchanging authentic thoughts and opinions as well as errors. We hope that the Lecture can be another form of performative action to express and share dialogues on art. We hope to see unique and unordinary forms of lecture that break and challenge the norms of conventional presentation.
Why do we always focus on presenting final objects rather than trying to communicate and share our experiences and developments within our artistic-daily-life-
THUS,
We'd like to warmly invite you to a Skinny dip session in Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture with us!
Where artists are naked without feeling shame or necessity to stand behind their work.
Where artists can/ are supported to take a leap and jump into an unknown vulnerability.
Where artists' unidentified and unripe thoughts are genuinely welcomed.
Where artists constantly challenge the language and any conventional boarders within art in order to create an authentic exchange.
THUS,
Let s get all naked with full intention as well as attention,
Let s leave our clothes and armour aside and experiment together accepting and even loving a potential failure.
Because only then, can we avoid the total failure, since not only do we anticipate but also welcome failure.
Florian (floopi@web.de), Eva (isevajung@gmail.com)
Interview of Anna K.E. and Florian Meisenberg for the movie Born in Georgia
Anna
When I moved to the Düsseldorf Academy from Stuttgart I noticed that every class is developed in its character (aesthetically) and every professor tries to adjust student who enter the class towards the aesthetic criteria established in the class. There are classes which are orientated towards architecture; there are classes which have emphasis on narrative and so on. To me the problem always was that professors wish to have one harmonious atmosphere. This harmony seems to me is not a great thing for the students. There are very less controversies within classes and if they exist they are not welcomed
Flo
I think the word harmony within the context Anna describes just secures art processes and even art productions of the students. I have a feeling that beginners in academy feel very insecure. Students don t know what do they want and mostly feel irritated but soon with the time they accept suggestion of the class, its aesthetic orientation and then it s (as Anna mentioned) problematic to build the personal language and personal world.
Anna
What is also important to mention that mostly students see engagement with art as a profession. They say I go to my atelier do my job and come back to home where I have a private life. I see a big problem in dividing art and life. I think one has to breathe art. Art must posses you like a spider catches an insect and fully possesses it.
Flo
Students began to absorb what is established, what is suggested, that gives them feeling of security, to be part of one class part of one body but this is never a search of something new or truth or whatever it is there
Anna
Student becomes a part of whole and he is loosing a chance to conduct his personal fight for self determination.
Anna (anna_k_e@yahoo.de)
Florian (floopi@web.de)
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