So I got a great explanation from Rachel about what my art practice may be like after I suggested that I haven't been able to express what it is that I'm interested in since I thought it was generosity, but most of those conversations steered towards economies and models where I was possibly more interested in keeping myself feeling present, as if it's normally a struggle to feel like things are real and that I can have conversations with people to the point where both people feel like there's a real moment. But I was having trouble picking apart what it meant to consider what is 'real'.
Here's a transcription of the audio that is here: 1 31 12 12 54 PM
"So you might want to think about the terminology you use to describe the things that you are interested in, so last night we were talking about how you're interested in generosity but generosity doesn't have to deal with honesty or vulnerability, it has a bit more to do with exchange, which you might even be more interested in something a bit more personal than that. So we came up with the word, the 'real', but then we realized you weren't really necessarily interested in the 'real' because that can be conflated into ideas that come through in cliche films like the Matrix in which other people are asleep and only one person sees reality as it really is and it posits that there is one truth to our lives and there is one reality, and for example that could be, right, a nihilistic person trying to get all the religious lemmings to wake up and realize that there is just no existent of god, so you're not interested in that, you're not interested in someone being prophetic for others, you're interested in the complexity of human emotion through experience and relationships. Because you're interested in what makes people vulnerable and where those vulnerabilities come from, so it makes me think of good films where there is a complexity of humanity that is shown, and by complexity I mean that usually there's no morality or one morality that's posited, the characters are not simply good or evil but there is an entangled situation in which you realize literally the nuances of... and often the fact that morality is kind of shit, really in a way, and there is just no right or wrong and that situations are more complex than we often portray them to be. And I think I kind of mentioned how this makes me realize also why I love Anthropology, because it looks at patterns and ways in which our societies create ways of working for us that allow us to survive and how structures allow us to survive, but how structures are also those things that kind of keep us from often expressing those intimate vulnerabilities we have , but when we get vulnerable it's a show of how us acknowledging the chaotic nature and the uncertainties we have about life and our acknowledgement that life is made up of this things that we do repetitiously to survive and to make it in this life and to stay sane. And vulnerability comes down to those moments where we do feel like a lack of control and realize that our structures can fall apart. And those are very beautiful moments where we're honest with ourselves and yet we make choices to be the people we want to be so that we can continue to be vulnerable in a way that we find fulfilling, in a way that allows us to be intimate with others."
"...it's interesting that structure I think is very important to you, and your paintings could about structure, and that you're interested in vulnerability because you're someone who's very aware of the fact that you need particular structures in order to feel normalcy in your life and to feel like your life isn't chaotic or upsetting or depressing or out of control whereas other people those things come more naturally to them. Like, memory or they literally just don't worry about being fulfilled in a way that you have high expectations of life and so you want those things to be immediate. I also think it's why you don't really do drugs. You know what I mean? You don't care to lose yourself, which is what I love about you because you don't seek that kind of escapism in a similar way, you very much so want to know what these things are that confront you. But yeah that goes back to you needing particular types of structure in your everyday life that also makes you interested in generosity but also in these moments of vulnerability and intimacy with others because it's something that's always very immediate to you. And others don't keep those kinds of things so immediate to themselves and I think that might have something to do with their expectations of life and of themselves and just their personalities, but I think you very much have... it's part necessity for you that fuels a desire in others, you need that structure to live your daily life and then you want to experience and have these types of conversations with others to feel fulfilled."
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