17
"I am into creating ecosystems for artists and their ideas to thrive in.
Everything inside the ecosystem affects everything else. Ecosystems aren’t neutral; they have their biases and weather systems. But a rich ecosystem has niches for different things and fosters diversity. One way to create a cultural ecosystem is to support projects that multiple artists can present work in and respond to. The Sea Nymph is a good example. It was an ambitious installation dreamed up by Josh, but we invited dozens of other people to develop programming in and around it: workshops on knot-tying, traditional sea songs and sea shanties, all kinds of poetic and literary events, and a pirate movie shot by children. And in general, bringing lots of different artists into contact with each other always feels generative, even if it’s more about adjacency than creating formal collaborations. I try to bring the Machine Project biome of aesthetics, signage, ways of working, and community of artists wherever we go. For The Platinum Collection, my goal was to bring enough Machine Project objects and artists, props and practices, to create a context for our actions and activities, so that, as any species new to a habitat, we would thrive, repopulate, and slowly transform the surroundings.
There’s a model for art education where you go alone into a room (the studio) and try to come out a couple of years later with something nobody has seen before. I think that is the complete opposite of how interesting ideas happen. Compelling art comes from artist talking to artists and from people making things together. Even when working by ourselves we are in conversation with a community, a history, a legacy, a lineage."
excerpt from Machine Project THE PLATINUM COLLECTION
By MARK ALLEN, CHARLOTTE COTTON and RACHEL SELIGMAN
"I am into creating ecosystems for artists and their ideas to thrive in.
Everything inside the ecosystem affects everything else. Ecosystems aren’t neutral; they have their biases and weather systems. But a rich ecosystem has niches for different things and fosters diversity. One way to create a cultural ecosystem is to support projects that multiple artists can present work in and respond to. The Sea Nymph is a good example. It was an ambitious installation dreamed up by Josh, but we invited dozens of other people to develop programming in and around it: workshops on knot-tying, traditional sea songs and sea shanties, all kinds of poetic and literary events, and a pirate movie shot by children. And in general, bringing lots of different artists into contact with each other always feels generative, even if it’s more about adjacency than creating formal collaborations. I try to bring the Machine Project biome of aesthetics, signage, ways of working, and community of artists wherever we go. For The Platinum Collection, my goal was to bring enough Machine Project objects and artists, props and practices, to create a context for our actions and activities, so that, as any species new to a habitat, we would thrive, repopulate, and slowly transform the surroundings.
There’s a model for art education where you go alone into a room (the studio) and try to come out a couple of years later with something nobody has seen before. I think that is the complete opposite of how interesting ideas happen. Compelling art comes from artist talking to artists and from people making things together. Even when working by ourselves we are in conversation with a community, a history, a legacy, a lineage."
excerpt from Machine Project THE PLATINUM COLLECTION
By MARK ALLEN, CHARLOTTE COTTON and RACHEL SELIGMAN
No comments:
Post a Comment