How I disappear

Sometimes I don’t ask to disappear. But weeks like today, I disappear despite my intentions.

I disappear into books, into the library. At home, I disappear mostly into Google searches. Next, I want to disappear into my emails. Because I want to write someone else beyond myself. My hours are on the computer, searching horoscopes for company, library searches for pregnant yoga, specifically for the books that have pictures of other women in them. It would be closer to being in a yoga group. When I go to the library, I skip the machines where I can scan the barcodes on my own. I choose to bother the students working at the counter. I realize, I just want some human contact. It’s not a question of whether I am desperate or not. I’ve already realized that I want to talk to people. My most exciting moments of the week are going to lecture, where I can sit and listen to my Anthropology professor speak partially to me. I’m one of the two hundred girls sitting, listening.

artistic credibility

I started out with this video, planning to glorify my identity as an artist with interview quotes and attention from the authorities in the art world. They could be art critics, BBC narrators, curators or other artists who are established, or even the elite audiences who frequent high-profile art shows (I had trouble finding art critics for my video, because they mostly express themselves with text or speaking within tight art communities). I was attempting to produce myself as an artist, not in the same way as pop stars, but maybe closer to General Idea’s glorification of themselves as glamourous artists. I wanted art authorities to say my name. It should be as simple as that, right? I could show my credibility as an artist simply by referral and association. My plan was to build a faux credibility by take existing interviews and other footage of art authorities walking through museums, etc. The end product would be an illusion of my work’s importance and my importance as an artist that would be composed of clips of the assumed factual – the documentary and its interviews. As I collected footage of art authorities, I discovered the gaps in my idea. Most of the dialogue talked specifically about the artist or the work’s contribution to the art world, the specific questions, assumptions or energies around the work. I thought I could simply substitute the artist’s name and work with my own, but the problem is still there: the speakers in the video represent the viewers who would need a reason to accept my work beside the art canons. I thought my video was going to show the politics of artistic fame, but instead, my work is merely an artifact of culture (or whatever it’s classified as) when presented strictly through referral and association. General Idea said that they were not concerned with producing great art. Instead, they focused on being famous artists, where their work did not matter: “we wanted to be artists and we knew that if we were famous and glamourous we could say we were artists and we would be. We never felt we had to produce great art to be great artists. We knew great art did not bring glamour and fame.” For this video, we are not solely looking for glamour and fame, since the authorities are talking about great work. Producing my credibility by pretending that my work is the great work they are talking about is empty. Instead, in this video I am attempting to push the viewer to ask: What makes the transition and difference between great art, and recognized great art, if great at all? Can artwork exist without audience or meaning? How does meaning get filtered through art authorities?