Why do I love film? Reason 1.
siiiigh
i should be working right now.
• stuff i made
• to-watch
• to-do
• where does
• Ask
• Submit notbeingconstructive
• stuff i made
• to-watch
• to-do
• where does
• Ask
• Submit notbeingconstructive
This year’s Contemporary Art Forum: Art at Large: Artmaking in the Long View is upon us, starting with a keynote conversation tomorrow, May 2 at 6 p.m. This session features art historian and critic Terry Smith in conversation with curator France Morin. To give you an idea about the topics that these two renowned figures will discuss, we have included below a few questions and answers from a questionnaire that both Smith and Morin answered in preparation for the event.
Artists often engage in multi-year projects that, at the time when they are initiated, are unclear to them what they are; years later these artists may retroactively claim them as intentional artworks. Does intentionality at the beginning of a particular process matter? Why or why not?
France Morin: I embarked on this idea of a multi-year project during my tenure as senior curator of the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York from 1989 to 1994. I saw these three projects mentioned below as one large question: How or can artists be agents for social change? The intentionality was clear from the onset and I believe it matters. […] Among the projects I conceived with my team of curators at the New Museum was a series of three provocative exhibitions that investigated changing social, cultural, and political boundaries through the lens of contemporary art […]This series developed from the premise that contemporary artists have the potential to stand alongside scientists, economists, and representatives of other disciplines to meaningfully examine critical discourses […]. But I gradually realized that to take this process to its logical conclusion, it would be necessary to move beyond the paradigm of the exhibition format itself to search for new ways of rooting artistic and curatorial practice more deeply in lived experience.
I proceeded to move in this direction as I began to imagine what would become The Quiet in the Land’s first project: a collaboration between the Shakers of Sabbathday Lake, Maine, the only active Shaker community in the world, and 10 artists. I ultimately decided, however, that to develop this project, I needed to work completely outside of the “white cube”: I left the New Museum and struck out on my own. […]
Is there a question you would like to pose to the other participants in this forum?
Terry Smith: How do the kinds of time sought after by contemporary artists arise from the volatile adjacency of different kinds of time in the world today, the coincidence of which have come to define contemporary life in all of its diversity across an increasingly fragile planet? How might the kinds of time found by contemporary artists give us the kinds of connectivity we need now, the connectivities necessary to overcome deadly differentiation and to build planetary consciousness?
Reserve your ticket to the keynote session on May 2 to hear more from Smith and Morin, and to learn how their perspectives on Art in the Long View overlap and challenge one another. If you can’t join us in person, tune in to our Live Stream and Live Tweeting of the event, using #artatlarge!
Sometimes you just happen to find a random picture, like this one as example. It’s from Wong Kar-Wai’s movie Days of Bein Wild including the beautiful Cinematography from Christopher Doyle. The first thing that comes into my mind is, what would I do at this moment? Now - completely taken out of the context. I’m starting to think about a story, without a reason I create something; out of an image. Shouldn’t be strange for most of you people. Some start to jump out of the train, some don’t. Some just want to go back to their seats and enjoy the view, some don’t. By asking someone, what would he or she do in this moment, I know I wouldn’t be able to understand this person at all, but if I’d get only one answer from a person who had read this text or thought to him or herself that this picture is beautiful - I would know that I have initiated something in someones mind, so that new thoughts are going to be born.
A Little Omniscience Goes A Long Way - Thomas Davis
| Satan, with a flutter of his mighty wings, descends upon a cloud where God is reclining. | |
| SATAN: | How's it going? |
| GOD (yawning): | Perfectly, as usual. |
| SATAN: | And your new creatures on earth--how are they? |
| GOD: | Just fine. Eve's asleep under the apple tree, curled up on her right side, dreaming of flowers. Adam is sitting up, squinting at the sun, scratching his nose with his left index finger, trying to decide what he wants to do this morning. What he wants to do is take a walk in the garden. In a moment he will. |
| SATAN: | And you know all that without looking. |
| GOD: | Of course. I arranged it all to happen that way. |
| SATAN: | Isn't it boring to know everything that will ever happen? This morning I saw two solar systems collide and explode in a tremendous cataclysm. The explosion must have lasted, oh, ten minutes. It was lovely and, for me, quite unexpected. I can't imagine life without surprises. It's surprises that keep me going. In a manner of speaking, of course. |
| GOD: | Foreknowledge is the price you pay for creation and control. You can't have everything. |
| SATAN: | Boredom is the secret sadness of God. An interesting thought. |
| GOD: | To you, maybe. |
| SATAN: | Your only sadness, I hope. |
“Sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think, I’m not going to make it, but you laugh inside—remembering all the times you’ve felt that way.”
— Charles Bukowski (via likeafieldmouse)
