Dag iedereen,
De maanden gaan voorbij, het eerste semester is bijna om. Ik ben een taak aan het afwerken die de vorm zal krijgen van een presentatie, waarbij ik al mijn onderzoek van de afgelopen maanden bundelde. Omdat ik een eeuwige drang heb om te delen (met jullie) stuur ik jullie het eerste deel van Things I Don't Understand, How To Behave. Ik ben nog volop aan het schrijven (het moet dinsdag af) en ik vermoed dat het twee of drie delen zal beslaan. Het is in het Engels geschreven, omdat het vak in het Engels is, en ik de meeste boeken in die taal las. Als er iemand is die enkel Nederlands kan, mag je mij altijd mailen, dan vertaal ik het. Je mag mij ook gewoon altijd tout court mailen. Ik heb niet geantwoord op de mails van vorige week omdat ik nogal overweldigd was door alle lieve reacties, maar ik draag ze allemaal mee in mijn hart. Dank jullie wel.
Ik hoop dat jullie dit even interessant vinden als ik. Fijne sinterklaas of Queen Nikkolah, en als je dat niet viert, zondagavond!
Liefde,
Anaïs
De maanden gaan voorbij, het eerste semester is bijna om. Ik ben een taak aan het afwerken die de vorm zal krijgen van een presentatie, waarbij ik al mijn onderzoek van de afgelopen maanden bundelde. Omdat ik een eeuwige drang heb om te delen (met jullie) stuur ik jullie het eerste deel van Things I Don't Understand, How To Behave. Ik ben nog volop aan het schrijven (het moet dinsdag af) en ik vermoed dat het twee of drie delen zal beslaan. Het is in het Engels geschreven, omdat het vak in het Engels is, en ik de meeste boeken in die taal las. Als er iemand is die enkel Nederlands kan, mag je mij altijd mailen, dan vertaal ik het. Je mag mij ook gewoon altijd tout court mailen. Ik heb niet geantwoord op de mails van vorige week omdat ik nogal overweldigd was door alle lieve reacties, maar ik draag ze allemaal mee in mijn hart. Dank jullie wel.
Ik hoop dat jullie dit even interessant vinden als ik. Fijne sinterklaas of Queen Nikkolah, en als je dat niet viert, zondagavond!
Liefde,
Anaïs
Introduction
I’m taking just one seminar this semester, “Things We Don’t Understand” by Mekhitar Garabedian and we had to read several texts to prepare for the class. When I really want to comprehend a text, I make a small scheme. I divide it in the intertitles, and use keywords. It makes a visual representation for me, and a skeleton of the text. Where does it start, where does it go, where does it end?
Is it practical, is it poetic?
Most of the texts were written by Anthony Huberman, a curator and writer based in NYC. He talks about the power of not knowing, about his relationship to information.
One of the texts was called HOW TO BEHAVE BETTER. It stated that a lot of discussions about art is about the why, the what, the when, the who influenced who etc. But rarely about how they behaved.
I’ll give you a short summary.He talks about two categories of artists in the 20th century. In the first half you had the Boxers: the loud, noisy, dangerous artists such as Picasso, who was in an ‘epic’ battle with Matisse. Also Pollock (action painting), Marinetti (futurisme) and Debord (dérive). They made lots of noise, the more attention, the better.
Art History is a constant reaction to what happened previously, and instead of the directness of the Boxers, there rose a more subtle, tactic group of players: the Chess Players. Artists like Marcel Duchamp, and later Tino Seghal. Knowledge is power, the medium is the message, and you know that I know that you know that I know. (It may have struck you that we’ve been talking about men the whole time. It struck me too.)
Nowadays, some artists still embody these models, Olafur Eliasson is very loud, and Dan Vo knows whispering is a better marketing trick than yelling. Huberman heralds a new era: The Age Of Rat and Bear. A name that comes from the swiss artist duo Peter Fischli & David Weiss’s notorious mascots into the wilderness. They don’t go by the phrases, I CAN, I KNOW, but by I CARE. Box and chess are both games with obvious winners. The Age of Rat and Bear is not about winning, it’s an infinite dance.
One of the texts was called HOW TO BEHAVE BETTER. It stated that a lot of discussions about art is about the why, the what, the when, the who influenced who etc. But rarely about how they behaved.
I’ll give you a short summary.He talks about two categories of artists in the 20th century. In the first half you had the Boxers: the loud, noisy, dangerous artists such as Picasso, who was in an ‘epic’ battle with Matisse. Also Pollock (action painting), Marinetti (futurisme) and Debord (dérive). They made lots of noise, the more attention, the better.
Art History is a constant reaction to what happened previously, and instead of the directness of the Boxers, there rose a more subtle, tactic group of players: the Chess Players. Artists like Marcel Duchamp, and later Tino Seghal. Knowledge is power, the medium is the message, and you know that I know that you know that I know. (It may have struck you that we’ve been talking about men the whole time. It struck me too.)
Nowadays, some artists still embody these models, Olafur Eliasson is very loud, and Dan Vo knows whispering is a better marketing trick than yelling. Huberman heralds a new era: The Age Of Rat and Bear. A name that comes from the swiss artist duo Peter Fischli & David Weiss’s notorious mascots into the wilderness. They don’t go by the phrases, I CAN, I KNOW, but by I CARE. Box and chess are both games with obvious winners. The Age of Rat and Bear is not about winning, it’s an infinite dance.
For his course as an exam, we have to talk about our research, linked to one of the subjects we talked about.
I tried to grasp the text as a whole, but my problem with HOW TO BEHAVE BETTER is that it makes my mind wander off completely, into things that seem not related to it at all. I fought it, but it didn’t work. I also don’t think Anthony Huberman would want me to fight it. So I chose the intertitles of the text HOW TO BEHAVE BETTER as a skeleton for the presentation of the research I have been doing these past six months.
I tried to grasp the text as a whole, but my problem with HOW TO BEHAVE BETTER is that it makes my mind wander off completely, into things that seem not related to it at all. I fought it, but it didn’t work. I also don’t think Anthony Huberman would want me to fight it. So I chose the intertitles of the text HOW TO BEHAVE BETTER as a skeleton for the presentation of the research I have been doing these past six months.
Starting off with an introduction, and moving towards Following an idea, Be uncomporary, Remember that you don’t know, Wear your heart on your sleeve, Speak frankly and conclude with Insist on talking face to face. I hope I can offer some kind of insight, maybe a book recommendation, maybe just a small thought. An idea.
Following an Idea
I love reading, I am a very chaotic reader. I start something, and then start another thing, which becomes more relevant, and then I forget the first, but it never leaves my head. All the books live there rent free.
This is the pile of books that I provide housing for. For some reason most of them are blue, and Bluets by Maggie Nelson is my latest purchase. It connects them. Her other book isn’t blue, and that makes perfectly sense to me, because it doesn’t belong to this pile alone. It belongs to my life. It’s a textbook for me, as an artist, as a woman, as a lover, as a writer.
This is the pile of books that I provide housing for. For some reason most of them are blue, and Bluets by Maggie Nelson is my latest purchase. It connects them. Her other book isn’t blue, and that makes perfectly sense to me, because it doesn’t belong to this pile alone. It belongs to my life. It’s a textbook for me, as an artist, as a woman, as a lover, as a writer.
These past years the school has asked us to develop an approach, a way to work, to develop your process. My approach is to skip the latter. I hate sharing it. I am afraid it will never make sense to anyone but myself, which is ridiculous, because why would I want to make sense? (Because I love clarity.)
Now I am forced to share it. I will take you on an associatieve journey through my head, through my research, through my process. You could say it’s a first.
While I was writing my scheme I needed to write ‘historical avant-garde” but I wrote “hysterical avant garde” instead. I wrote it down on another piece of paper. So I guess that this is what it is, my Freudian error called this a “hysterical avant garde”.
Avant quoi? Avant moi.
He would be so pleased.
Now I am forced to share it. I will take you on an associatieve journey through my head, through my research, through my process. You could say it’s a first.
While I was writing my scheme I needed to write ‘historical avant-garde” but I wrote “hysterical avant garde” instead. I wrote it down on another piece of paper. So I guess that this is what it is, my Freudian error called this a “hysterical avant garde”.
Avant quoi? Avant moi.
He would be so pleased.
Be Uncontemporary
Let’s start at the 70’s. Why? Because the 70’s not only had Stevie Nicks, but also the booming of performance art. Artists like Adrian Piper, Ana Mendieta, Carolee Schneemann… And Mierle Laderman Ukeles. Last year we read a text by her in a class about artist texts, the Maintenance Manifesto.
In HOW TO BEHAVE BETTER Anhtony Huberman said we now live at the start of the Age of Rat and Bear, about the I CARE. But long before, Mierle was doing this. She made entire performances about caring. She was troubled by the fact that for some people she played two different roles: mother and artist. She was a creator of life, of art, but nobody asked her what it was like: bringing a new life into the world, in the form of a small helpless baby. She wrote the manifesto a year after giving birth to her child.
The subject: the difference between development and maintenance. Pure creation is inextricably linked to the masculine side of artistry, while maintenance, such as housekeeping, is attributed to women. But MLU was both; she was a creator and a caregiver.
She created CARE, an exhibition that consisted of three parts: Personal, General and Earth Maintenance. For the personal, she looked for the relationship between being a woman, mother and artist. She cleaned the spaces where she exhibited from top to bottom, did washing performances with clothes, stones and diapers. The work she does is art. In the second part, General, she focuses on the people who maintain. The performance was called 'I Make Maintenance Art One Hour Every Day'. She asked the sanmen, as the sanitary employees of NYC were called by the townsfolk, what part of their job they could categorise as art. She used herself as a medium, giving maintenance staff access to an artistic authority she set out in her manifesto: the opportunity to name what they did.
She talked to the people, listened to their stories and turned those into an exhibition. To this day, she meets the sanmen, and she always shakes hands with them. Photographs are taken of this, and thus a poetic image is made of the literal act - the listening -: by hearing them and shaking hands, she shows her appreciation.
In the third part, she focused on the earth, and suggested cleaning or purifying polluted air and earth.
She called her work Maintenance Art. For her it was the artist, not the art history, not the critics, no one else but the artist who invented what art is, and that’s why she wrote her manifesto.
She cared, and she taught me to care too.
In HOW TO BEHAVE BETTER Anhtony Huberman said we now live at the start of the Age of Rat and Bear, about the I CARE. But long before, Mierle was doing this. She made entire performances about caring. She was troubled by the fact that for some people she played two different roles: mother and artist. She was a creator of life, of art, but nobody asked her what it was like: bringing a new life into the world, in the form of a small helpless baby. She wrote the manifesto a year after giving birth to her child.
The subject: the difference between development and maintenance. Pure creation is inextricably linked to the masculine side of artistry, while maintenance, such as housekeeping, is attributed to women. But MLU was both; she was a creator and a caregiver.
She created CARE, an exhibition that consisted of three parts: Personal, General and Earth Maintenance. For the personal, she looked for the relationship between being a woman, mother and artist. She cleaned the spaces where she exhibited from top to bottom, did washing performances with clothes, stones and diapers. The work she does is art. In the second part, General, she focuses on the people who maintain. The performance was called 'I Make Maintenance Art One Hour Every Day'. She asked the sanmen, as the sanitary employees of NYC were called by the townsfolk, what part of their job they could categorise as art. She used herself as a medium, giving maintenance staff access to an artistic authority she set out in her manifesto: the opportunity to name what they did.
She talked to the people, listened to their stories and turned those into an exhibition. To this day, she meets the sanmen, and she always shakes hands with them. Photographs are taken of this, and thus a poetic image is made of the literal act - the listening -: by hearing them and shaking hands, she shows her appreciation.
In the third part, she focused on the earth, and suggested cleaning or purifying polluted air and earth.
She called her work Maintenance Art. For her it was the artist, not the art history, not the critics, no one else but the artist who invented what art is, and that’s why she wrote her manifesto.
She cared, and she taught me to care too.
