Comment/respond to your favorite passage from Ian Wallace’s The Idea of the University.
You are encouraged to create a work which can take any form of your choice.
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Reflections on Art in times of Exception
Comment/respond to your favorite passage from Ian Wallace’s The Idea of the University.
You are encouraged to create a work which can take any form of your choice.
You must be logged in to post a comment.
The idea of the university and the art world coenciding is interesting to me because it separates an entire population from another. Those who do not fall into the discourse of the intellectual world don’t seem to have a place in the discussion. The role of the intellect brings value to the other intellects and their role, however, those who do not attend university or participate in the art world are left out of participating in this community of the artist, the intellectual, and the university; but somehow, they still play a role. How and where does the rest of the population fit in to contributing to this value we place on the intellectual structure?
I’d like to think about film photography as a medium for art-making in relation to Wallace’s piece & the Idea of the university. I have this strong desire to sell my DSLR camera because I don’t think I believe in it anymore as a tool for the sort of exploration I want to explore. I think there might be an end to DSLR imagery. I mean, that is very flat in it’s virtuality. Maybe it’s the nature of film – seemingly less versatile, but somehow much more dynamic and discursive. I feel like something is missing in digital imagery that film embodies. I think I’m dancing around with this idea a lot recently and have yet to attempt to express it in words. I know that I will be working with film this term and will try to bring some in this week to explore within this context. BLEH! Maybe I didn’t say anything at all haha
“Such a false idealization does not only apply to the situation of the university. It also share affinity with the originally and totalizing idea of ‘art’.”
When I read this passage, it makes me think of another quote from a book I’ve been reading about drawing. It says “Drawing has often been associated with a struggle for freedom. The white walls of an art gallery echo those of a prison cell, and these artists draw their way out of the seclusion of the art world.” – from “Walk The Line”
When I think of “university” or “art”, it often gives an idealized sense, which everything is perfect, professional, and academic. It takes away the human part away from life, which everything is not perfect. Even though after years of studying, I still can’t figure out what I should or could do in my life. I learned lots of theories and knowledge, but every time when I start doing art, I always feel that there is lack of skills. My ideas are limited by not having enough of skills and experience. So I didn’t feel I have the freedom to do art, to do what I really want to do.
How do we validate our artwork outside of university’s box? We discussed how we have to think outside of the box, and not just focus on making good conceptual art and stick layers of theories behind it to make it ‘validate’ to the audience. But what is validation really? We don’t need validation, we need to earn a voice. Our artwork and our art world needs a voice, a spirit, and a soul. We talked about our role as students in the university and our steps toward learning how to be an artist in the community and not just in the university. How do we earn a voice? How to legitimize it within the community? I think that making the community not only to appreciate the artworks and the art world but also giving them more information and historical background and teaching them will lead to the ‘others’ in hearing our voices and we accomplish to earn a voice.
As an art student living at this time, we need to earn a voice and talk to the people of our community. University should help us learn how to make sense of the world and to communicate it in a right way to the people around us. We are responsible for the community that we live in. How does it feel to be student at this time? How to be an artist in the community? While we are in this bubble of university for a short period we should extend beyond the theories and dry information that is provided to us. For this term, I will focus on performance art as my main project to communicate with the people of my community.
As an University student, we need to provide what we learn to the community. We should use our voices and our actions to create something for our community.
I think lots of people do not really understand what is the purpose behind our artworks. So we have to make our artworks easy to understand, that can make people enjoy with our artworks and feel connect to their life. As an art student we can not just apply those theories we learn from the class or from the books to our artworks. We should create something that everyone can easily understand and create something that can conform to our culture and so on.
Through out the reading, I was questioning that how it is possible for us to break (or go against) the “false” idealization of the university or of the art, which shows the fact that we’ve already recognized(or as acknowledged) its falseness… What are we really trying to shatter or problematize? The platonic ideals? a little remnants of it? or falseness of them (> if yes, can we see shattering of the false ideals as equal to the construction of ideals?) ? or leaving the notion behind, are we trying to take only their physical influence in our everyday life?… It is, though, sure that idea and reality impact one another as necessary or/and sufficient condition. I personally think that art is somewhere between them, between idea and reality, and artist as the one who chooses or decides where the line of the two would be drawn….
-shoehorning theory is eliminating or severely hindering (from my perspective) our ability to have conversations emerge organically from our work in some cases
-in response to “how do we earn a voice?”: how did the university earn its voice? What gives it more validity or value? Because in my experience, it devalues its students and their voices. From the perspective of a sexual violence survivor, the university is a complete and utter joke. From my perspective, I am appalled that the university continues to have more of a voice than I do, while touting that it is listening and remaining silent and “impartial” where we need a voice and justice.
-on validation: validation as a capitalist tool, it is currency, it is assigning value to work, it is necessitating an exchange (a capitalist exchange). It would be interesting to me (though perhaps impossible to imagine a system entirely devoid and opposed to the one I currently exist in) to imagine a system that doesn’t necessitate exchange. And rather for the creation of art to be a place for expression and conversation alone, reflection, without requiring an assigned value and an “equal” and “fair” exchange to take place. The ideas of “equal” and “fair” are skewed in a capiltaist system because they often devalue or entirely exclude certain groups (racialized, gendered, ableist, classist).
-on the short clip/article we skimmed on John Berger: as soon as I saw the word “humanist” I got stuck. For me, this, especially in the context of someone claiming to be critical of culture, means that they’re not truly engaging beyond a superficial level. It means they don’t truly want to engage in what oppression is or in the work of fostering equality. This to me denotes a willful ignorance or a passive dismissal of what oppression actually is. I could just as easily be making generalized assumptions based on this identifier, but experience has taught me that many people who use this word as opposed to “feminist” as an identifier are more peacocking than actually engaging in dismantling oppressive systems. They use it as a away of garnering attention for how “enlightened” they are than actually doing the work.
The false idealizations of ‘university’ and ‘art’ are difficult to come to terms with, especially as we are a group of university students studying…art. I agree with Wallace’s comparison of the two terms as bourgeois ideals, however, I think the ‘university’ has the ability to change. The idea of ‘art’ and all the information/history/tropes/references it contains can not be changed. For example, art movements/periods have always been a reaction to what has come before it…therefore, the history/ideals/opinions are needed for that new movement to have any validation. As art students, today, it is our task to find and create that new trajectory of ‘art.’ We cannot escape the bourgeios ideals because of the inherent characteristics of self-reflexivity and contradiction in ‘art’. Even when art attempts to subvert or refuse the past, the ideals being subverted is automatically reaffirmed by the act of subverting.
Last class during our discussion, there were many comments made about how here at UBC, visual arts classes tended to be very discussion-based, and that we were not out creating works of art. Many agreed that we felt like we didn’t have time to create because of the load of assignments and readings; we didn’t have time to talk to our community because we were so tired. I do agree that as an visual art student in this university, I actually don’t feel like one, because I haven’t been creating my own works as much as I have been writing essays and doing readings. However, at the same time, are we not the ones who chose to be here? Maybe some people are here because they had no other choice; but otherwise, didn’t we have the choice to go to an art school? If we really, really wanted to be creating art, then wouldn’t we be doing so already? We may be tired, and we may have less time after all our other school work – but if someone really wanted to do something, I don’t think there would be anything to stop them from doing so. To be honest sometimes when I create art for classes, I think more about the due dates and balance my time out with other classwork that I’m not actually creating things that I truly want to, and I’m just creating for the sake of grades. Which connects to the discussion we had with validation. I don’t want to think that art should be validated, because I think art should be free – simply just expressing things we feel; but at the same time, I think art is only art because it is validated by the audience that it is art, or someone (even myself) labeled it as art. And being an art student in an university makes it inevitable that our art is validated through grades..and I guess that is what we signed up for.
University is such a place providing the maximized liberty to our students. We can criticize/praise all phenomenon in the form of art, no matter in relation with politics or sensitive topics. Art is always playing as a voice from artists ourselves, however, after graduating and completely joining into the society, those artworks touching the government’s bottom line are not allowed to be in display, which is in some aspect opposite to the artistic spirit we learnt in university. Art is such a communication tool of the artist with community, which belongs to the artist himself/herself, and should not be affected by thoughts from bourgeoisie.
Artists always give me a image of a group of educated rebels. They rebel the common, plain, simple, human being issues. All their art works are based on their knowledge of art and skills. The comprehension of art is the base of art works and it stimulates artists’ creation. This idea also influences my approach to value a work. The background of an artist is critical to his or her works’ value. If a person, who is unknown and uneducated, does an abstract painting like Picasso’s, I might think its value is quite little. So, in my views, “university” is just like a guarantee of art. It sounds a bit ridiculous but quite true sometimes.
But what if you had no idea? Could you still experience an artwork without the B.F.A. credentials?