Thursday Thoughts...

“Stop thinking about art works as objects, and start thinking about them as triggers for experiences. (Roy Ascott’s phrase.) That solves a lot of problems: we don’t have to argue whether photographs are art, or whether performances are art, or whether Carl Andre’s bricks or Andrew Serranos’s piss or Little Richard’s ‘Long Tall Sally’ are art, because we say, ‘Art is something that happens, a process, not a quality, and all sorts of things can make it happen.’ … what makes a work of art ‘good’ for you is not something that is already ‘inside’ it, but something that happens inside you — so the value of the work lies in the degree to which it can help you have the kind of experience that you call art.” 

Brian Eno 

OK I accidentally seem to have gone way philosophical by choosing this one, but bear with me!

I oftentimes enjoy somebody who takes a bit of pressure off a difficult or tricky subject.  By suggesting that you stop thinking about art as a something, but rather think about art as an action and a response you get all kind of wonderful things into the box called art.

Each and every one of us responds to an art object in wildly different ways.  Sometimes I am stopped in my tracks, my breath taken away by something, whilst those around me murmur, look at their phone, and waffle on by.

In that sort of moment, its clearly not the thing itself - it is in fact the reaction inside me, which creates the experience I call art. It seems to me this kind of approach can incorporate things like coming across a series of sticks in the ground;  the sun streaming in on dying roses; a white page delicately pierced; peeling painted walls; monks chanting and oh so many more moments of art.

He also summarises it aptly with his closing words "the value of the work lies in the degree to which it can help you have the kind fo experience that you call art."

Here's to making moments like that for others as well...

Time for Change 2015.