head buzzing and foot stomping

Today has been a 'not making day' and last night i said i would make today .... except i had a meeting which lasted for 2 hours this morning at local council offices to go through paperwork/collect brochures/posters etc. for north yorkshire open studios (first and second weekend in june.)... and only just over 9 weeks away, with oca deadlines the following week (help....but it will all be ok!) It was good being in a new area to network with others and put names to some faces. .... but why on earth am i doing this.... a) because i've chosen to and b) because i think artists should be involved with community and not be totally shut away.
I am trying to keep open studios to the back of my mind whilst I get on with exploratory project. I have already ordered some printed cards of my work, some smaller prints, and some blank cards. There is a lot of art on walls throughout house and i'm not sure if many people visit to buy. I will use this opportunity to build a network of interst and customer contacts for future.

By the time i got home, lunched and did weekly food shop it was 2.30pm., so decided to think around pecha kucha presentation which i will blog about later. Whilst looking through notes, I noticed name of artist Marcus Coates whom Angela had mentioned in an earlier seminar. I watched a couple of clips on him performing on youtube ... a very clever performance artist who obviously loves and communes with animals/spirits. I couldn't work out if his performances were meant to be amusing and/or ironic and whilst some of his audience were laughing, others were watching intensley. I think, without having done further research, that he does fool around but takes his bird man/shamanism seriously and i found it all very interesting.

...and of course the links with marcus coates brought me into contact with the 2009 exhibition altermodern at the tate, of which he was part and  i've posted nicolas bourriand's manifesto into a recent blog..... main points seem to be about multiple times being experienced together in present but not being fixed and events being a wandering course, with multiple realities. And ushering in a new reality, beyond modernism, and leaving behind the negative aspects of post modernity. This theme so reminded me of science 'stuff' i've been trying to get my head around - quantum physics and  behaviour of particles. It's also similar to the plot line in the recent collaborative sci-fi novel of Terry pratchett and ian banks, 'long earth', where people can move betweem parallel earths through time. mmmmmmmmmmm

i also found the article in abstract critical, aftermodern : movement or marketing, by nicholas lambrianou. (previous post) I particularly liked the way i was given questions to think about.

 -Why must we continue to ply the 20th Century’s outdated principles, its tropes, techniques and factures, its cartographic spaces and flat worldview? 

-Why must we follow the rules of Postmodern Art Commerce? Why must we believe and accept that Modernist art, the art preferred by the corporate plutocracy, should set OUR debate, should set the “standards of excellence” for artists today? 

-Why is there so little art, especially abstraction, that directly engages in what it means to be alive, to be human in this, our time, the way Picasso, Matisse, or for that matter Monet and Manet, did in their time? 

-Why do we not innovate instead of transform?

- Why can we not discuss the way we SEE the world using new abstract images, different visions, rather than continue to make familiar recombinations of Modern productions? 

-Why do we not really question the legacy we all so blindly follow? 

-And as Robert Hughes so succinctly put it, why have we not asked these questions of our work?

......so many really good questions to think through ..it will take some time.

I also posted an article on collage,(as i have included collage into my exploratory project0, which i need to read further. On first viewing I don't particularly like much of the work ... i think it looks tacky and just done for the sake of it.......all this recent research, including that on the Cornish artists is creating a problem for me in that i feel pulled in so many directions as an artist today ... i think the questions nicholas lambrianou asks will help, if i come up with my own answers (which seems a bit daunting!) the problem I feel i face is that i relate to many of the modern abstract artists, through both their works and their concerns (perhaps because of my age and the period i was born into) but this era has passed and this work has been made and i don't think it can be repeated; we can't go back ... too much has changed, including 9/11. ... and yet postmodern work just seems empty, often kitch and banal  ... and i often find it really boring! ... oh dear is this my age showing again ....  but i want to create something which is aesthetic (and dare i say beautiful) and worth making ..or i feel i don't want to bother.I suppose this is where the transformation of alchemy comes in, so that out of the crucible comes something more than the elements that went in.....I sit surrounded by my found collage materials-mainly cardboard, and hope this is so.....perhaps i just need to stat away from doing more research ... but i don't want to make something that is just surface design .... but perhaps that's all there is?
........so head buzzing and foot stomping but i feel better for having written it all down.