The Blasé Attitude vs. Get A Studio! The theory of work

The flaneur, the slacker, and the lazy...let's take a walk...OR, Why Virginia Woolf was right about getting a room of your own.

Robert Smithson, "A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic, New Jersey,"
Daniel Buren, "What is a studio?,"
Max Weber, "Asceticism and the Spirit of Capitalism"
Jean Baudrillard, "Ethic Labour, Aesthetic Play,"
Jan Vanwoert, "Exhaustion and Exuberance: Ways to Defy the Pressure to Perform"



"A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic, New Jersey"
The focus that Robert Smithson hopes to unravel in his photographic and written journey into the heart of his hometown Passaic, New Jersey is one of the effects that time and history play within our perception of aesthetic sensibility.
"Time turns metaphors into things, and stacks them up in cold rooms, or places them in the celestial playgrounds of the suburbs."
Smithson speaks of his present day Passaic as a "ravaged present that almost appears to be part of the past." That the eternal city of Rome lives on in the burnt out shells of suburbia wasteland. Stripped of its grandeur, its aesthetic, its sacred monuments and mirrored back on itself the historical is twisted and demented into the polluted steams, worn parking lots, and unused sandboxes. The quote from the text that baffles and delights me most is where Smithson talks about this idea of the future...
"I am convinced that the future is lost somewhere in the dumps of the non-historical past..."
Does he mean that, in the end, the monuments of our past glorious cities are not what shape our future but in the junk beside the road? "In the false mirror of our rejected dreams." In the past over, the ugly and grotesque that within time is transformed into a metaphor of what lies behind us and what exists before us?

"What is Studio?"
The idea that the Studio and Museum/Gallery are in conflict with one another while also acting as the crutch that either supports itself upon is an interesting one and what I believe to be the core argument for Daniel Buren in "What is Studio." I guess deep down this realization is one that I can relate to and that I understand, but before this reading had never given great thought to. The studio is vital to artistic practice because it is a private place where personal struggle, history, thought, etc can manifest unscathed (or seemingly so) by the outside institution of the Museum, the prejudiced eye of the public. It is not until the artist voluntarily welcomes the public until its sacred space does it become a place of consumption and distribution. This talk of the studio space and its function within the grand sphere of artistic success got me thinking about the photographers studio; what is it? Where is it? Is a photographers studio always a room? The darkroom? The digital lab? Is it where I store my prints? To me a studio is somewhere where creativity is unhinged and where reality blurs into the "mirror of our rejected dreams" that Smithson speaks of. After much thought I decided that my own personal photographic studio exists within a particular person, my niece Juliana, who I have been photographing for 6 years now. It is interesting to consider that when exhibiting my work that I am in fact opening her up into the world public opinion and consumer culture. This is something that I have come to realize that I really need to understand and grapple with in order to be aware of the weight of this realization.

I digress...

"Exhaustion and Exuberance: Ways to Defy the Pressure to Perform"
Cutting to Jan Vanwoert's essay on performance and exhaustion, I am struck dumb by the resonance that Jan Vanwoert's words have upon me in my present state. I almost feel that this text was written specifically for me, specifically for now. Within the realm of academia the pressure to perform is unabashed, demanded of you openly between students and teachers alike. The expectations of academia are structured set for a specific amount of production and information to be generated within the course of a week, a class, a year. I feel utterly exhausted and berated with this structure of performance that I have constructed for myself in response to what I feel those who are there to teach me are expectant of me and my work. I know that over the course of three weeks I better have at least 9 rolls of 12 frames exposed and 12+ prints on the wall when my critique week rolls around. I better know right then and there what it is I took away from last critique and how I applied that to the images I'm showing for this critique. What are you interested in? Who inspires you? Why should we care? Make us care. What is in this images? Make a choice. Sometimes I feel as though I perform so much I've lost complete sight of what it is I was trying to say in the first place or even myself. I've gotten so used to and so good at performing I'm not quite sure if I really know myself beyond the performer any longer. I know it is said to "not make photographs for critique," but how else would they have me do it and would that satisfy?

I am finished writing. I am exhausted and too tired to perform. I can't because I can, I can because I care.