So my mind is starting down the course that ends in a thesis – a required academic project that could be viewed as representative of all seven years of my art education, or, as I like to think about it, a report on where I happen to be in my creative process when I’m showing said thesis. I’m struggling with what this is going to be.
A year or two ago I was sure I wanted to make a film, but I don’t think I ever knew what for, or what about. Now I have a ton of questions about art, about what to do with myself, about what kind of time I should actually put into this project, and about all the bureaucracy that spirals around it in academia. This blog is supposed to help me figure this out, and perhaps it is in its own, subtle way. So far I’ve got some very broad ideas and a bunch of projects that need to be re-visited. Here are a couple of kernels I’ve been working with:
Contemporary culture’s relationship with technology, communications, and space: This is an idea I’ve been working in for a while, but frankly is becoming less interesting.
Death, art, and cultural understanding of either or both: This is broad and challenging, and new, but something I think a lot about. I have written previous posts about my interest in the conversations around death, not in a morbid way. In fact, that’s exactly the curiosity I have about the whole thing: that line where morbid fascination and serious contemplation meet.
Who is okay to tell about what, and why? When does telling others about an experience with death become self-indulgent and whiny, as opposed to reflective? Can we have a conversation about the ‘facts of death’ so to speak, outside of science and outside of emotion? I’ve had a few, and they are really interesting, but our culture at large seems to avoid the issue unless it is completely romanticized or amplified by an event on the scale of September 11th. Maybe is this interesting to me because death makes a good, dramatic story no matter what. I’d like to think not, but hmm…
My next steps are to read some books about death and culture. I hope to avoid anything that looks too much at the skull-and-hood kind of understanding of death – as the dark grim-reaper that reduces us all to skeletons – in hopes of finding some interesting ideas about what it means to experience death, and how our current culture is actually dealing with it.
These are the main ideas floating around in my head. They’re mere seeds at this point, and they both need some serious digging into. Maybe it’s time I get started…
July 13, 2006 at 9:53 pm
i’ve always thought that it is pretty interesting that other cultures value death just as much as they value life and are much more open about it and celebrate it whereas the “american” culture, i guess you could call it, doesn’t so much as devalue it, but hides it i guess. it could be interesting if you researched that – other cultures that is, and their approach. maybe brought that to the foreground or to attention. it may be shockingly discomforting to some, or not shocking at how discomforting it can be. whatever, i’m just blabbing my mouth.
July 13, 2006 at 11:30 pm
First, thanks for the comment. Second, that is definitely information that falls into this trajectory of thinking. While my focus is on American culture, because it is the culture i know, it seems only reasonable to compare and contrast it to other cultures. I’ve got some books i need to read here soon and hopefully I can add more to this conversation.
January 18, 2007 at 6:37 pm
i love your gardens!