christopher robbins blog | contemporary myth-making

Reading a Deborah Fisher post on art workers and art thinkers, I came upon this line, which captures something I know, but somehow selectively forget: “who on earth honestly believes that making is not thinking?”.

It leads me to this: “If you end up with precisely what you proposed, then you are not thinking when you work”. I have never had a problem with artists hiring workers (well, not since I starting making, anyway – that modernist bastion), but when I think about the thinking part of making, and how much projects develop as they are made (it almost seems redundant put that way), I wonder what art-thinkers-hiring-workers lose by not making their art. Or, what they gain by relinquishing that step to another, if done thoughtfully, and with a respecting relationship between the two.

Carmen Montoya once told me that a mentor of hers said “it is important to have a stage (or maybe it was a part) in your work in which you give the control away to another person.” Of course, giving the control of my work away to someone else (preferably a stranger – as in lookin’ for a ride) has become my latest unintentional prejudice: if it doesn’t make you lose control, then it’s just an object. I feel guilt as I start to sculpt strange little objects derived from the debacle of Nauru, because they don’t do anything.

I realize I am now thinking aloud. Those space cookies must be kicking in (decided they needed to be eaten in the name of cleaning out the refrigerator).

Anyways.

• There is removing the thinking from the making by paying someone else to do it and demanding that they meet the exact specifications of your model, no questions asked.
• There is giving the thinking part of making to another person, or sharing it with them. Discussing decisions.
• There is involving others in the thinking part of making by involving them unwittingly (here help me paddle this boat) and then making that part be the art.

And now, getting queasy as I realize this is a “here is my opninion on an already over-talked and anyways unanswerable question ” post, I wonder what Koon’s train hung upside-down over the LACMA could gain in the making process. Some would say nothing, because there is no thinking to be done. (Whew! “And in the lowest depth, a lower depth” Damn, friend, I can’t wait to see big train choo-chooing in the sky down at me!). Or Tara Donavon’s plastic cups. Clearly there are decisions to be made, at least.

Some works’ meaning depends on who makes it: Rachelle Beaudoin’s Cheer!Shorts would not lose their meaning if she had paid someone else to wear those shorts with slutty things like “UNUSALLY WET PUSSY” and “COCK SUCKING QUEEN” printed on the butt, but it’s meaning would certainly change.

Muddled, but such as my mind.

And then i realize that this post has focused on “making” when Deborah’s spoke about “working.” When does the thinking stop and the working begin? You ever gonna get done with all that thinking and get down to some work?