it is what it does
posted by: Rebecca Conroy 30th July 2009Week two has commenced with a gentle twist of the surgeon’s knife, casting a fluorescent light on ‘the artists approach to their conceptual material’. No more holding hands with each other building trust through sensorial exercises designed to activate their peripheral vision and emotional memory. This week has plunged straight into peeling back the layers to expose the naked self - the artist as person.
The artist who works with multiple materials and disciplines and cross art form collaboration, is the mongrel of the art world. Driven by ideas, the hybrid interdisciplinary artist is a conceptual nightmare for those who insist on categories. So what then of the cross art form collaborator, specific to the music festival site? What do you call that? (We shall invent new words and pictures for the show and tell on Wednesday)
This blog is an occasion for dabbling and doodling in the semantic delights of this form, the artists have been encouraged (nay, insisted upon) to write about their experiences at this arts lab (read: art camp), and self interrogate their methods and madness. All of this leading to increased volume and pitch around discussions and dialogue, which can only lead to increased volumes of money and opportunities to pitch. That we like.
The splendid art lab is unique to the contemporary art making community. The lab form has had previous incarnations, each time it is reinterpreted within the context of its purpose.
The purpose of this lab is to critically bring together ‘the artist as collaborator’ and to critically weave an interrogation of the site, the audience and the art form; to straddle the site/the audience/the cross art form through a series of sometimes cryptic tasks and perhaps extreme left of field provocations that may not make sense to the purpose of the art lab at the time.
At the time the artist could be on her way to a big idea or lost and messy and disorientated by the miasma of pokes and prods; left ruminating and puzzled. Obfuscated. Or champing at the bit, bucking the system, needing to run wild with the brumbies. Or the wallabies. Bouncing around feeling the enzymes of a new idea infect the rest of the group. Or maybe wandering quietly away to reflect on where they may be. Wonder where we may be going.
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