joygantic: Caution: Art in Progress

Lately a large portion of my brain has been busy thinking about work, which is a good thing. As a company we're trying to figure out how to implement our plan and this results in me staring at whiteboards and notebooks scribbling ideas and drawing pictures. There are multiple puzzles to sort out, decisions to be made, and things to create. It's where I want to be.

In parallel, there is a pocket of my brain fermenting ideas about art. At work I'm creating something useful; I also long to create things that are useless. Not valueless, but useless as in "has no use" and most importantly "can't be bought or sold."

This ferment has been sparked in part by watching Beyond Black Rock. In the last couple of weeks I've watched it four times: by myself, with Dia, with Trevor, Sara and Dia, and with my Mom. This last viewing was unexpected and very special. We watched it late on Christmas Eve after everyone else had gone to sleep. And mom got it. She got it in a way that stories and pictures and rambling accounts didn't previously convey. (I don't think I'd recommend the film to anyone who hasn't been to Burning Man and is thinking of going since I think you should just carry a blank slate into the event, but for Burners: go see it. Of course having just written that I'll contradict myself since I think the odds are greater than zero that I'll find a way to get my parents out to the desert at some point.)

The personal message to me from the film was: "Mark, get your ass in gear, start the wheels turning, if you wait until May to spring into action art will slip through your fingers." I've been dreaming art: structures, installations, billowy things, lights, moods. Lisa's been dreaming too and ever since she responded to my threat back in the Fall we've been irregularly trading emails, talking about joining forces to do something.

But what? It's too early to tell but there are a few things I do know. I don't want to make something that's a joke. Or ironic. Or shocking for the sake of being shocking. There's enough of that already. I don't want to pour energy into something funny. Something playful is fine. It's not that I think that approach is crap or that I'm above it. I just don't want to go down that path. It's probably the biggest reasons I stalled on the whole Live Wrong project. After deciding that the trademark threats were toothless I didn't take action to move the project forward and I'm figuring out that the reason is that I don't want to pour my precious time into a hack, particularly one that involves money changing hands.

I want to make something that is beautiful. Something that make people pause for a bit. Something that has an intimate depth as opposed to just a surface. Something that has whatever meaning you bring to it. Something without a punchline. Something useless.