Dear Sam,
So my first response is NO! Making a play "about sustainability" is not a productive way to make good art. I'm not even sure it's a way to make "inert" art. If a play is a story, or a collection of visual and auditory impressions, or a collective ritual or event of some kind, then pick-a-theme-and-develop-it sure ain't the way to go. I guess Brecht got away with it to a degree, with play-as-demonstration. But don't most writers/composers/artist (Brecht included) start with a quick image, moment, glimpse of memory, sequence of notes, color or line, and begin to play with it? Art as a process of painting yourself into a corner and then figuring a way out? (Or just busting out.) Getting into trouble? Then you guys come along and tell us what it's about.
But I know that's not really what you're talking about. And I think the distinction between "inert" and "ert" art is valuable--though, if we're categorizing, then your point that "in-ert" literally means "un-art" says to me that "inert" art is the opposite of art, which is never comfortable, which is always transgressive in some way--but I guess that's my bias showing.
Back to sustainability:
how to distinguish sustainability
that is unsustainable from unsustainable
unsustainability that is unsustainable
(sounds like a line from Rosencranz & Guildenstern Are Dead--or Donald Rumsfeld)
There's definitely a play or dance or something in that question. So maybe I'm wrong, and you can go from an idea to a piece of art (you can do anything, for crying out loud--no rules). But it has to spark an image. Then you can begin. Then you've got a place to jump away from. As long as the final piece doesn't have to be consistent or obvious or have one clear point of view ("transparent" in the most boring sense). As long as it doesn't become propaganda (inert). As long as I can be Jane Goodall and the monky, as you say.
Got me thinking. Damn you.
Graham
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Dear Graham,
ReplyDeleteYou'll forgive my too eager response, I hope.
You've been tolerant all summer: me addressing
these posts to you & Fine Arts. For me, the beauty
of the post-modern version of bell letters is conversation
& the immediate quality you can't get in refereed publication
or formal institutional documents.
Digressive. Constellational. The possibility of emerging
shared insight right at hand. Local food as the bumper-stickers
say. I like to say it a lot too: local foodback: where it's at.
I was trying to do justice to both the inert and the "ert."
Like appreciating both hot and cold in the ice cream
parlors I want to build in hell.
Inert art (art which is un-art) as reinforcing the values of the
conventions. Ert Art (what you might call genuine art) as
challenging and anti-thetically antagonistically disturbing and
maybe resists my attempts to rationalize it & reduce it
into the common sense & my terms of desire..
I confess: I turn the contrastive images way up to accentuate
the difference (recognizing the incommensurate hostility between
the 2--in this case "art" & "ert"), as prerequisite to the possibility
of seeing the relationship.
Othewise: inert "art" naturally dominates and I conflate,
confuse and collapse a distinction that ends up sustaining the
terms of my inertia. This is natural and makes common sense.
Ertia art (as I have claimed in the past) feels like B.B.Wolf at
the door--and I'm not about to open it not by the hairs on
my chinny chin chins..
This is the problem (for me) steeped in my own sustainabilities:
how can I recognize my unsustainability? Well--the unsustainablities
that I CAN recognize aren't the whole-systemic PROBLEM.
It's like where I can laugh at myself is not "tolerance."
Where I can not--right there's my frontier yet unknown
and what signals the borderline? Ouch, Damnit, OH that hurts.
If any of that makes sense, Graham, I got lucky.
I need help. It's why I rely on sustainable converse
and the kindness of colleagues to be making
some sense of my own.
"It has to spark an image" (gp)
"SPARK" is the key word there--what Paula calls
intellective fire. No bridges, no tolls, no trolls:
SPARKS
Theater! Theater!.
Thanks for your response and ongoing genial-ness.
xxxooo, Sam