The_waiting_game.cda

Update.mp3

I've updated my website and reiterated my artist talk since my last post. I've started a more formalised blog at a-n - to get myself out there, even though it feels like I'm writing off into the void most of the time. That's the way I like it, though, because I find it more unsettling to suddenly have someone comment out of the blue. I have a habit of keeping myself to myself, which makes me an easy target at work. This is why I like working for myself (even though the current work is not classed as work in 'time is money' standards). 

Conditional support.mp3

I feel pressure now, because my family have started supporting me in this endeavour to study further, and I reassured them that in order to do that, I need my full attention on research instead of diffusing some towards looking for work. Part of me is bullshitting some promised result that I don't really know for certain, but is glamorised one day as a boldness to take risks. 

I feel pressure to produce the result that validates their support. This is probably how I'd likely feel if I get funding one day.

The academic who can freely do their research is a myth - because they'll probably be under stress from funding bodies to produce results. Publish or perish is popular in academia, and it's the same as artists who feel the implicit need to show work in galleries, or we'd fade into obscurity. It's not glamorous as a lived experience.

The walk of fame.mp3

I made a new diagram called 'The walk of fame'. 

Tom and Jerry chase sequence.mp3

The diagram was a drawing I did in my research notebook. I added the same line from my previous diagram of a commercial art gallery model. There are parallels between artists/curators/researchers and showbiz. A small percentage of artists are in the limelight and can be recognised as a figurehead of a movement or group. Looking from the place of envy, they're most likely sponsored and can use that funding to do what they want, whereas the majority of artists who weren't at the right place at the right time, or had the energy to schmooze with the right people, have to compete for scraps. I'm facing the thought of potentially having bursary support for my practice from my own donations to that same organisation. Feels like a Tom and Jerry sketch.

Maybe I'm being too cynical... but I am seeing a closed system of money that's supposedly moving, but it's the same money from the same people. This is just a microcosm...it's all different social circles of the same problem

I've also noticed that the critical time for artists is after their first major show or some achievement. This is the same for child actors, who, after a series ends or a really high-profile film comes out, something similar happens. Some quit, go off the rails, or forever chase after that moment. I recently watched a documentary on child-actors and many of the stars, once they've grown up, have problems, and are dealing with not being the star anymore. I think it's the same with artists, as those who have grown up where all the adults around said they make really good art, and it becomes a tragedy with time. I think calling it narcissism is missing the point and puts the blame on individual people, rather than looking at the structure that's causing it.

The imaginary-legitimacy arrow was originally from Lacan's concept of the imaginary and symbolic order, and it worked as a continuum intersecting the art, curation, and research spheres. But I don't want to make it niche.

Being in pain (maybe it's existential angst, I'm not sure).mp3

Sometimes I'm in pain because I feel like I'm a loser for showing up on a personal project which might not even amount to anything (and from my family, friends' and governmental perspective, I'm currently unemployed - it doesn't matter if I have a plan, the future isn't now). Even if it turns out successful, the emotional hardship would be forgotten about amidst the nostalgia of the 'good old days', when the future looks back on this time. I think the good thing about having a fixed contract job is that I'm able to use the money as a shield from thinking about the dark truths of humanity, even though there's an itch of introspection we can't scratch. I'm going to find my moral support from reading about Kafka.

I have this thing of only finding comfort in reading about dead writers, artists, and theorists; I don't seek solace in my friends and family like a regular person. When I try to find solace in a living person, I'd get unsatisfied with where the conversation is heading because it's usually surface solutions like find a job in somewhere you like etc. - it's missing the point completely.