My rant about the Biennale

The Sydney Biennale is on at the moment. There are 20 artists at the NSW Art Gallery, and I had swung by and had a quick look the weekend they opened, but let me say I was less than impressed. But last night, a Wednesday (and also the 1 year anniversary of my heart getting smashed to bits, but never mind), I took advantage of the late night opening of the gallery to swing by and do the tour.

I have been spoiled by Philorum and really missed my opportunity to respond to each work for 3 minutes, so I will put a bit of my rant here. I will focus on two women (there are 14 women among the 20) both of whom use embroidery quite prominently in their art.

There were four works by Kei Takemura, but I will focus on 2. In one, she is reponding to the fact that now that she lives outside of Japan, when she goes back she is very aware that it is an earthquake zone, even though the inhabitants seem to repress this fact. To preserve in memory the apartment of a friend, she drew her recollection of it nearly life-sized in pencil on one wall, and then overlay a gauzy sheet where she had embroidered in white all the objects she remembered from the kitchen -- wooden spoon, tea kettle, bowls, etc. Opposite this work was a glass case along the far wall that held little objects coccooned in silk cases. The guide explained that these were things she had found at friends' houses that were broken. She bound them up in silk so that they could be together again -- silk lasts for 100 years, so it is strong and could bind the things back together. The things were mostly kitchen objects like beautiful antique tea cups, wine glasses, plates, one wooden spoon, but there was also a little toy that had been wrapped in colourful silk threads and put back in its little wooden box. This piece didn't do anything for me the first time I went by, but this time, hearing the explanation, I thought it was quite sad and beautiful. Having moved house so frequently and recently, having thought hard recently about why I keep things and my sentimental nature (hey, if anyone needs a 1971 Jaguar...), and being someone who has recurring nightmares about having to pack all my childhood things in time for an imminent flight, the impulse behind the work really spoke to me. All these little lovely broken but treasured things in their little white shrouds were very sad and beautiful, futile but treasured and preserved.

The other embroiderer just pissed me off. Her name is Ghada Amer, she is originally from Egypt but now lives in the US, and is such a US feminist artist. She does big square canvasses and it's hard to make out what they're of at first. They are line drawings based on images of women taken from pornography. Great. The images repeat in a pattern like a tapestry -- so, line drawing = women are empty, repetition = the women are commodities and industrialised. Yawn. One in particular pissed me off. Overtop of the multi-coloured images of women there were what looked like Pollock-like splatters of paint. But if you looked closely, all the splatters were embroidered. Painstakingly embroidered. Sure, embroidery and tapestry and textile work is more traditionally a female medium (although the other artist, Kei Takemura, learned embroidery from her father who was a national master of it). But to claim Pollock's activity painting back for the feminine in such an anal way, it just seemed such an angry gesture. More angry than Pollack deserves (and he was a complete jerk to women, ended up killing one of them in his car he was such a jerk). It didn't show an adquate appreciation of what he and his peers contributed to art. I thought it was unfair, and cynical and mean and too angry.

But then, this probably just reflects my biases. I'm a midwestern Episcopalian left-leaning voter. Pornography does not affect me in the slightest, I find it boring and mundane and physical and not at all taboo or interesting or having anything to do with what people essentially are, which is things that can reason and talk and vote. And I am a Modernist and so mid-20th C. art seems to me to be all the art that anyone ever needs, ever. If you'd like to go have a look, the show is on until 27 August.

http://www.bos2006.com/

Meaning of Life

Last Wednesday and Thursday I met up with the Philosophers again and the talk was mostly of freedom ("Should drugs be legalised" on Wednesday and John Stuart Mill's On Liberty on Thursday). But Friday night I was with my friends Ian and Gail and talk turned to the meaning of life. We were discussing whether it is better to have a plan or not.

I have always been more comfortable with very firm plans, clear goals, and a solid path mapped out to get to it. That's why I stayed in school for so long -- exams, classes, degrees, and even tenure-track careers are like riding on a train, you just sign on and go, the route has all been mapped out for you by someone else. And any deviation from the tracks is a waste of time and effort. (For the past few years though I have been experiencing the down side of this way of living, when your plan gets destroyed through no fault of your own, you have no plan, no one has given you anything to do with your future, you can't tell a waste of time from not, and you feel your life is absurd and meaningless.)

Ian understood why people need goals, but thought it was important when a goal gets taken away to take some time to recover your identity.

Gail disagreed with me more strongly. She thinks it's best to live life by making the most of opportunities as they come along. The up side of this is that you are less often disappointed, more often discover unexpected joys, and can learn and do amazing new things in time.

(I can't remember all of Ian's position, but I remember that his was between Gail's and mine. When I talk to him next I can ask him for more details and come back and fill this in further.)

Then Saturday I had a Philorum Dialectic with John B. We walked around Darling Harbour because he had to catch a boat at about 4. It was an unexpectedly nice day after a week of solid rain. The meaning of life topic came up again, and I outlined the three views held by myself, Ian and Gail. John B came down on the other side of Gail, even more improvisational and opportunistic. He said, "If you are going to be an artist, you need to be able to play. You need to be able to put a stroke on the canvas, and then stand back and look at it, and then put another stroke." If you want to be an artist, right? I said something to defend the goal-oriented life, not arguing in favor of it, mind, just saying that if one wanted to argue for it, they might want to emphasize focus and not wasting time. "But the purpose of life is to play!" John B declared.

We were on a footbridge over the water, and the sun was shining so bright that I had taken my coat off and was holding my hand up to shield my eyes. And his statement was just like that bright sunlight. It made me smile, more of a broad grin. The purpose of life is to play. I hadn't been even considering that point of view, I'm always so tortured about what I am going to achieve and if I'm working hard enough toward it and if I'm going to be able to do enough of value before I die to justify myself. The purpose of life is to play! It might be not to achieve worthy things but to collect experiences for myself.

The weather has again been rainy and overcast since then, but not inside of me.

postscript: The result of spending my Sunday pursuing this new philosophy was that I went on a great walk around Redfern and went to some really groovy antique shops, but Monday morning none of my errands were done (groceries, laundry, bill paying, mail, cleaning), and so I've been staying up late and was late to work today getting them all done. So, the philosopher who lives her life in pursuit of play still has to spend some frontloaded time doing her errands. How do you manage it, John B?