Wow so it's a bit like speedy gonzalis in here speeding backwards and forwards through time. I see that my challenge here is non-linear thinking I do what I am expected to do rather than what I am expected to do. Why blog post a day? Is it kind of mad and is it a deception. It feels like a deception. On because I want to get ahead of myself. I don't actually want to write a blog post a da. I want to create a consistent voice and platform from where my thoughts can be heard. Is consistency really me and does that keep in line with what I believe? Is it truly authentic. Feel like a kind of lie? Right. And yet at the same time I do want to be productive......I want to share and I wonder where I am going wihth this because it seem to get to the core of ideas or curatorship, representation and actually when we get down to it as true accounts of personal histories.
Yes just incase you hadn't cottened on these ar fucking massive concepts and no I don't have any references to had to help me navigate these muddied and complex waters. Nor do i have a pair of waders. I am however quite brave. So lets see how it goes.....please don't judge me.
I'm definate a non-linear thinker, in fact I think most of us are. How can you think it straight lines when we live on a round planet or even that everything can be sorted on in a simple eqaison. The whole point is thinking it straight lines is one obvious, two theoretical and three hard to impliment and not very human. I am a qualified Life Coach after all. We have been frequently told that you do A, get B and then something comes up before you can fully realise C. That's where I've been most of my life even if it's something as simple and putting the laundry and hanging it out to dry. There are so many variables, so much hidden work, that many of us can only ever guess at in other peoples inner or even out daily lives.
This blog attempts to be kind of indicative of Non-Linear thinking, better known as holistic think, as does my Instagram account by the way. When I started writing, like any kind of writing, maybe a poem when I was maybe 7. You know, I just though you sat down wrote it and it fleeted out perfectly into the world. After fucking all, even children get handed the unnecessary pressure of Mozart - What a cunt. 4 year olds, everywhere, are freaked out by their parents fascination with Mozart and yes there comparing and no most of them do not have access to a piano. For fuck sake. Anyways....
The danger of representation, and it's actually comes up a lot in the theory and the artistic practices of photographers; it's literally the idea of reality.
Are you ready to go deep.....? Go get the dive mask.... Problems with representation don't just start with have we interfered with our subject matter? They actually start with what is the photographer doing there in the first place? Is the photographs consciously or unconsciously pursuing an agenda? The best way that I know to get people tho think about representation is using the quite "if a tree falls in a forest does it still make a sound?" It's about the power of the gaze and interference with the subject. It's an incredibly complex subject matter to get to grips with particularly in a South African context. (Enter stage left post-colonial theory, which I'll discuss somewhere else later.
Yup welcome to my mind....it's fucking hectic in here. (What's more and what I have just realised for the first time, that my experience of education at a Scottish Community College was of a far higher standard than a supposedly world renowned Art's School. Shocking and yet hardly surprising)
When I look at a photograph or any piece of art I first see the image and then I value it on it's aesthetic merits and then I think about who created it and what they created it for? It's a discussion that keeps private views ticking over and round a predetermined track of conversation all night long. The ultimate answer is: Do you like it? If you don't, moving one....However as a trained curator and arts professional for me personally there is this idea that I might admire something for it's unconstructed anti-aesthetic qualities. We enjoy something for what it represents not because it is beautiful or is even well crafted. What the challenge is, is how much of what we show is crafted or constructed and how much of it is what we like to call real - authentic and this can be anything, a person, and Instagram account, a Facebook feed, the media. It's something that I permanently struggle with, especially when we talk in terms of self-development. There is a conflict of what we choose to show and what is actually representative. Human bodies are of course highly representative of this dichotomy. If we want to raise, vibration, frequency energy we need to offer up our realest most authentic selves, unedited. That is essentially why the arts exist as form of personal expression taking us to the next level. That is the basis of the heroes story, abort, retry, fail (about a gizzillion times) and then of course over come. Hit replay.
Where my conflict/challenges come into play is that if we are using social media as a platform to elevate, shouldn't it also be authentic and as part of that act as a historical representation. I mean were all those wellness coaches or whatever the fuck they might be feeling permanently fabulous with there beautifully constructed sets or homes. Those aren't there to create authenticity they are there for entertainment. I mean people actually have fucking props and shit. I can actually talk you through the process of elevating through objects. What many life coaches are doing is actually hitting your aspiration buttons hard. It's advertising. If we are really well an healthy, we don't need fuck all to feel good about ourselves, so why promote material based happiness. Just saying. It isn't true spiritual growth. It seeks to represent and agenda or projecting wellness. Whether wellness is or actually isn't there. True fucking story and you know what it borders on propaganda. However we do have to attempt to manifest what we actually want in order to be happy. Life coaches and wellness professionals will concede to being flawed and as part of there brand they will be encouraged to be vulnerable and examine there own shit, few will be able to understand what they are actually projecting on a higher vibrational aesthetic level, as well as this they aren't me and that comes down to ideas of curatorship.
Now, Curatorship; firstly very few people have actually studied this. It's incredibly niche, so much so that when I went to study The History of Modern Art and Design. I don't think there were any official qualifications in the subject and most curatorial practice models were wrapped up in Museum and Art Gallery Management Post-Graduate courses. I was very fortunate to find a course that studied curatorship at an undergraduate level. Just so that you, the reader, understand how rare that is my course work was evaluated as at the same level of a master student because the course hadn't as of yet figured out way to break theories of representation down enough that it worked well at undergraduate level, most of us went home everyday with head aches and some very dense reading. There aren't many light theorists.....suggestions?
So....Modern Curatorship and Collection Management for the public interest, is in essence the study of representation. Where we don't just pick things because they are blue. A private gallery might however and that may well be why we might state that someone is a Gallerist or Exhibition Manager or Gallery Manager, rather than a Curator. Curators deal with far more complex questions and should be interested in how there choices impact on how we and future generations interpret living history. Has your mind been blown yet? We look and try to understand things from the questions of the future and often have to act to counter the omissions and perspectives of the past. Yet at the same time take responsibility for and critically evaluate the biases in the things that we choose to represent, collect or uphold. in the now!!! In often cases the way in which we might approach doing that is a creative act in and of itself. Being a Curator we often have the radical responsibility of forcing change by providing new perspectives. That is why when we use the term curator we must be careful to understand it's true meaning and implications. For me it's actually kind of embarrassing to meet people that coin themselves as curators cause well they think it's just picking stuff. Of course theses days due to the work of curators and other professionals, as a society many of us are beginning to take far more seriously our ethical responsibilities as makers and buyers.
So when we take all of this into consideration it can often be hard for me to produce in a non-mindful way, as I continually think about how I present interpret my work, even if it is just me in a historical context. Yes imagine that, it can be crushing. It's kind of like Life Coaching for future society.
So what the fuck has all this got to do with blogging and a non-linear thinking?
My main concern is that as an artist/creative that I want to present myself in the best and most accessible expressions of myself as a curator, and as a coach or more accurately a Life Doula I want to portray the most authentic version of myself. More importantly I want to embody the idea of authentic progress. Especially for creative people we so often are lead to believe that other people who already have a profile or an offering started out perfect that they just happened to get Instagram right straight off the bat. For years I never fully understood the artistic process that for every masterpiece there was a thousand sketches for every book there was 100 drafts. I used to to think that people actually sat down and wrote obituaries on the day people died Can you believe it!!!! I didn't realise the newspapers all over the country were already producing death sweeps or that whole apartments were rented out for journalist a years in advance in wait of historic moments. People don't just get it right. They plan to get it right, they create to get clarity when they start out with non-linear thinkings. All the workings in process. That's where we are as humans. Embrace the flawsome.
The Life Doula -Radical Curator, Birthing Change and Art In-Action
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