In theory, this is going to be an interesting short bit of writing. I spotted a tweet recently which said something along the lines of “I’m having a hard time making my work fit to the theories in my head.”

It seems to me, that artists are now expected to process, contextualise, place and evaluate what they have made before they’ve even made it. But what you’re doing, if you’re putting theory before making, is putting the cart before the horse – a cart laden with books.

How many times have you gone into a gallery and been handed a still warm, photocopied rationale for the works laid out in front of you? “You’ll need to read this before you look at the work, otherwise it won’t make sense at all”.

Anything that needs to be accompanied by 6 sides of A4 in 10pt type, in order to ‘understand’ it, just plain ‘aint working.

Likewise, I don’t need to have seen a particular film, read a particular book or seen another show before I take a look. I bring my experience to the work, and hey, if that’s different to yours, we both might learn something.

Maybe we’re not supposed to know what it is we’re doing? What if there’s nothing to understand?

If you’re not careful, all you’ll end up with is an illustration.

It’s not that the theory gets tacked on at the end, it’s that taking a more intuitive approach yields far more interesting results. The theory stuff is probably in there, maybe it’s not, but try not to think about it.

# Music # – Fades in. 

Music sourced from the Free Music Archive – freemusicarchive.org

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