AIR Symposium: The Arts as creative Catalyst
Using the Arts as Stimulus to creativity, why haven’t we done a better job in areas outside the arts?
AIR Symposium, University of Maryland, College Park, 2007.
If you ever have a chance to hear or participate in any event where any one of these characters will be, drop everything and go. Laurie Anderson, Russell Banks, Liz Lerman, Walter Dallas and Joe Goode are generous, powerful, insightful, generators in the kind of art world that reminds me why I chose to be an artist.
Panel Moderator, Michael Collier questions in brackets.
Russell offered a biochemical allegory of a chemical reaction where the artist as catalyst, accelerates the creative reaction, but is not consumed in the process. Describing the university as a “largely parasitic institutional environment” (oh I wish I could write like that!) He warns that we must as artists remain free agents and know the stance of the institution that employs us but not identify with their aims and the goals. He conclude that he was lucky, that his school was willing to have an outsider in their midst.
Laurie related a story of an early experience of an elementary school art teacher who operated outside the classroom bells that herded people in and out of rooms, a transgressor who was all pumped up about orange, simple moments of personal seeing and expression, out of bounds..
Walter spoke of his early experience watching the garbage men in his town, laughing and finding joy with each other, the mysteries of new language in multi-cultural environment and wanting to carry these mysteries and joy into what ever he did, have a good time making a difference..
Liz described the challenge from her family to be an activist, in the world, deciding that after absorbing classicism that she would break away from it, that dance was an art that was somehow, not being used right. She wanted to find a way that honored the history of ballet but that was more inclusive movement, a story about her experience of researching in the financial world to build a narrative.. And how pleased people were that the arts were taking an interest in finance as something creative!
Joe described his work as coming from the felt experience, time.. Passion, that the goal is to create it so that someone else can feel it... to make himself transparent to share it
Russell: Teaching writers to find the consciousness to read the way a writer writes to create the out of body experience of what he called ‘controlled hallucination”. This makes it possible to begin to talk about inducing this experience in others.
Laurie: “What is stopping you from finding the space of your own creativity? Start transgressing now, give up hope of fruition, make an awful drawing, notice the rules you are breaking... begin to see creativity is an inexhaustible source of energy
Walter: instead of ‘park and bark’, use the process to find what you know inside already works, stay with it a little longer, find the real moment in felt experience, the pathway of delight
overcoming it?
Our society infantilizes fear instead of seeing it as an opportunity... a source of energy, a highly alert state of presence. Use the energy.
overcoming blocks...fix it later, find the heart of the work in the re-visioning process, let go of wanting to know too soon what it will be
ignore the career, do the work
let the ideas find you, notice what comes your way
trust that what you need is there already
fall into the space of fear and use it
give up the obsessive search for closure
It is not possible for me to give this writing the full breadth of the symposium. It was not always possible to write every thing just as it was spoken. I tried to capture as many of their words as they spoke in the moment. I didn’t want to miss anything while writing, so I wrote when they took a breath (Hah!) Or paused... The generosity in the spirit of the collaboration of the panel gave full mind and presence to addressing the questions in the personal experience of their respective practices.
I am revived. I feel able to stay in my job at the college.
AIR Symposium, University of Maryland, College Park, 2007.
If you ever have a chance to hear or participate in any event where any one of these characters will be, drop everything and go. Laurie Anderson, Russell Banks, Liz Lerman, Walter Dallas and Joe Goode are generous, powerful, insightful, generators in the kind of art world that reminds me why I chose to be an artist.
Panel Moderator, Michael Collier questions in brackets.
Russell offered a biochemical allegory of a chemical reaction where the artist as catalyst, accelerates the creative reaction, but is not consumed in the process. Describing the university as a “largely parasitic institutional environment” (oh I wish I could write like that!) He warns that we must as artists remain free agents and know the stance of the institution that employs us but not identify with their aims and the goals. He conclude that he was lucky, that his school was willing to have an outsider in their midst.
Laurie related a story of an early experience of an elementary school art teacher who operated outside the classroom bells that herded people in and out of rooms, a transgressor who was all pumped up about orange, simple moments of personal seeing and expression, out of bounds..
Walter spoke of his early experience watching the garbage men in his town, laughing and finding joy with each other, the mysteries of new language in multi-cultural environment and wanting to carry these mysteries and joy into what ever he did, have a good time making a difference..
Liz described the challenge from her family to be an activist, in the world, deciding that after absorbing classicism that she would break away from it, that dance was an art that was somehow, not being used right. She wanted to find a way that honored the history of ballet but that was more inclusive movement, a story about her experience of researching in the financial world to build a narrative.. And how pleased people were that the arts were taking an interest in finance as something creative!
Joe described his work as coming from the felt experience, time.. Passion, that the goal is to create it so that someone else can feel it... to make himself transparent to share it
Russell: Teaching writers to find the consciousness to read the way a writer writes to create the out of body experience of what he called ‘controlled hallucination”. This makes it possible to begin to talk about inducing this experience in others.
Laurie: “What is stopping you from finding the space of your own creativity? Start transgressing now, give up hope of fruition, make an awful drawing, notice the rules you are breaking... begin to see creativity is an inexhaustible source of energy
Walter: instead of ‘park and bark’, use the process to find what you know inside already works, stay with it a little longer, find the real moment in felt experience, the pathway of delight
Our society infantilizes fear instead of seeing it as an opportunity... a source of energy, a highly alert state of presence. Use the energy.
overcoming blocks...fix it later, find the heart of the work in the re-visioning process, let go of wanting to know too soon what it will be
ignore the career, do the work
let the ideas find you, notice what comes your way
trust that what you need is there already
fall into the space of fear and use it
give up the obsessive search for closure
It is not possible for me to give this writing the full breadth of the symposium. It was not always possible to write every thing just as it was spoken. I tried to capture as many of their words as they spoke in the moment. I didn’t want to miss anything while writing, so I wrote when they took a breath (Hah!) Or paused... The generosity in the spirit of the collaboration of the panel gave full mind and presence to addressing the questions in the personal experience of their respective practices.
I am revived. I feel able to stay in my job at the college.
posted by wipper at 9:14 AM
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