Sometimes I have these really coherent dreams where it seems it's somehow important to take reasonably seriously the information or ideas that are discussed within the scenarios. Last night's was one of those where I woke up going "Where did that come from?"
It came from a weirdness where I went swimming with an old friend who was somewhat depressed, which I knew why, but wasn't interested in telling him straight out, but was because he was suffering living a life he thought he was supposed to as opposed to one he felt from the heart... so he was living a constructed self as opposed to his real self... but it's really hear nor there and I just suggested we go for a swim and at the swim place, which was pools, the interesting things happened.
There was like two pools and after a dip in the big kinda normal one I decided to go do some jumping into the little but deeper pool but I was told by the residents, who were all Maori or Pacific Islanders, that it was not worth doing... but I did it anyways.
And it wasn't worth it as the water surface had a surface tension that was really high and it was somehow a whole lot harder and more viscous and it turns out that a few guys needed it this way to do their tricks. I then argued, with the locals, that it wasn't fair to hold this whole other pool in a condition that only suited a few. The locals argued back that I was being racist and didn't like that these few individuals could do something and make use of something I couldn't. I said it wasn't a racist argument at all and that the point for me was that special conditions allowed a few to use resources that could be used by many. At this point one of the workers came on my side and supported my arguments saying that he indeed saw the reasonableness of my arguments but also saw the benefits of the few being held as special and being an encouragement to the many. I was encouraged by this and offered it was the special conditions that were at fault here and whilst being encouraging in the skills shown by the few where also dis-encouraging in a real sense by creating a threshold it was harder and harder for the unskilled to attain.
Then I woke up thinking wow... that's deep man. I knew exactly what it all meant but also felt somewhat daunted by the extra depth of the information offered within the arguments. Now I don't have any idea where this sort of stuff comes from, be it me or some other reality I have no idea about but it always feels like it's from something deeper and more knowledgeable than me, even if it from a deeper and more knowledgeable me, I feel a certain obligation to bring this understanding to more people. It could be in places like this or it could be in normal conversations.
So I've had ideas like this in the past and don't really pay them to much attention but in this case it may be time to address such in more depth. I remember back a few years ago when I was doing some stuff down at fresh gallery here in Otara where I'd end up in arguments where my point was that any artist is there for his community and not for the art establishment because most of the artists argued that they needed to win over the establishment, and be accepted, before they could bring their art back to the community... which I thought was ludicrous and basically self aggrandisment parading as art.
It' never worked and it will never work when battling the establishment and the only outcome there ever is that the practitioners become the establishment. The new artists that come through don't then see art as something that benefits their community as something they can bring to that community but as a career in which they must spend years gaining accreditation as opposed to a set of skills already grounded in the community in a sometimes naive way that can be widened and encouraged amongst greater numbers.
And it's special conditions that create this divide.
And it's often in the form of positive discrimination that these special conditions are applied. But don't get me wrong... or do, it's your choice after all, I'm not disenfranchised from the positive uses of positive discrimination and see them as a fair and equitable way to redistribute wealth but I do think more attention needs to be paid to the uses of positive discrimination when all it does is create new elites where the conditions of entry become so high only a few can hope to attain them.
I was talking yesterday to several people who wanted to know about my own artworks which were on display at the Titirangi markets. One of the things I hold high is being approachable and in this I mean not only being at markets but also such things as using commonly available materials and using tools that require skills built up over time. The anti thesis of this is this newish tendency to use digital tools and manual labourers to create art: this creates a special condition of required investment that raises the threshold of most people being able to see themselves capable of doing such things.
The only special condition I apply to my own art is one of time and this is simply because people must make that decision to use that resource themselves with the required sacrifice on their own part. Everybody has the resource of time at their disposal even while they might use the argument that they sacrifice time to obtain money so that they can buy time later... that's just silly.
I see far too much art out there that either relies on gender, racial or physical difference being of paramount importance or of some specialised knowledge and acquired intellectual difference which is then held up high by these special conditions and all it seems to do in the long run is re-establish an eliteism as opposed to widening and encouraging more engagement in the arts... in everyday life.
Not that everybody needs to or wants to be arty... that's not the point either, simply that societies that have alot of art going on always seem to simply be calmer and more confident about who they are.
I kinda found this with my year around potters and clay. There seemed to be far too much emphasis on the profundities of glaze technology, which required specialisation of knowledge, and the simple realities of being able to create forms with clay... but that's another story.
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