On ABC Radio in 2007 Frank Browning spoke about the opening of a new creative space dedicated to experimental collaboration between artists and scientists. Le Laboratoire is a ‘place where scientists and artists undertake....experiments’ that ‘show the processes behind artistic creation and scientific exploration’.
It is the ‘brainchild’ of David Edwards, a professor of biomedical technology. When he spoke to both his art and science colleagues at Harvard he noticed that there was a common story in that ‘scientists hid their passion for art’ and ‘artists their curiosity for science’. Edwards wrote a book about why the ‘wall between art and science needs to be torn down’, the sentiment of which I absolutely agree with, especially as this wall has only been put up in the last 500 years.
But as a fairly equally balanced left/right brain individual this is ringing some bells. As a younger person I had a scientific brain but also did well at art. There had to be a choice, so art it was, but I never left my analytical mind in the paintbox. There are quite a lot of projects going on around the world at present in the quest to restore the once beautiful marriage between art and science, one of which is C.R.A.S.H, the organisation of Collaborative Research in Art, Science and Humanity at Curtin where I am doing my doctorate.
Le Laboratoire’s current, quite fascinating, project is Le Whif, which is the ‘art of eating chocolate without the calories’. It's ‘a new approach to eating by breathing. It's also a new approach to exhibiting art by exhibiting the creative process itself’. This all sounds innocent enough and ideologically I have no problem with it, however….. it’s here that I want to put my two cents worth in.
The speakers engaged in a discussion that is common lately: the trend whereby contemporary audiences are not simply content to just look at art, nor do they just want to understand it, they want to understand the process behind it. At first this sounds innocent enough but honestly, makes me feel quite violated. Tell me, in which other professional arena are people subject to this kind of scrutiny? And why are artists considered public property? Isn’t it enough to bare one’s soul in prose, paint or dance without having one’s creative spirit put under the public microscope? It sounds like scientific rigour is dominating over art, and dominance of either party is not a good basis for any marriage. Why is it even necessary for an audience to understand how an artist’s mind works? Oh, that's right, the dominance of the patriarchy and its preference for rationality and tearing everything asunder strikes again.
There may be a couple of reasons audiences are asking for more, one of which places some of the blame on artists themselves but is a direct result of the head-fuck mentality that has been driving the arts for a couple of decades now (no apologies to any 'conceptual artists' who might be reading this) Art has become quite inaccessible to many people who don’t have the educational background in a very specific field with which to understand it. The joke is that there is often very little to really understand, it’s just smoke and mirrors. The public probably feels, quite justifiably, ripped off, rejected and obsolete in the relationship, and they want a way back in.
The other reason, and the one I think is more concerning, is that many individuals don’t know how to be creative themselves. The need to be intravenously hooked into the creative drip-line is driven by the soul, it is archetypal - a lack of it manifests in vampirish behaviour as society sucks the life-blood from its artists.
The work-of-art is an intentional link between creator and consumer, but also acts as a necessary barrier to preserve the artist. The work speaks for the artist. If understanding the creative process is now such an all-consuming need for audiences, then maybe we need to look for other solutions, one of which might be to support the restoration of the creative impulse to every individual, not simply cannibalise art practitioners.
image: Co-dependancy, Frantom, pen drawing
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/artworks/stories/2010/2897601.htm
http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=17691836
