What possibilities for political transformation can be opened up through imagination, fantasy, and art? Can the left create instrumental change or is the game rigged? This week artist and writer Jacob Wren considers these questions, as well as ideas about the artist as political activist and the balance between egoism and conciliation in collaborative projects.
“Sometimes I think that the secret ingredient in art is art. Another thing that has come to the forefront of my mind over the years is how little room for art there is in art; how much of the structural and institutional ways of thinking in and around art keep out what I think of as art. For me art has to be something where you don’t know everything about it when you start. What I’m trying to do when I make work […] is discover something that I’m not entirely able to articulate.” – Jacob Wren
Wren, Jacob, Polyamorous Love Song, Toronto: Book Thug, 2014.
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What possibilities for political transformation can be opened up through imagination, fantasy, and art? Can the left create instrumental change or is the game rigged? This week artist and writer Jacob Wren considers these questions, as well as ideas about the artist as political activist and the balance between egoism and conciliation in collaborative projects.
“Sometimes I think that the secret ingredient in art is art. Another thing that has come to the forefront of my mind over the years is how little room for art there is in art; how much of the structural and institutional ways of thinking in and around art keep out what I think of as art. For me art has to be something where you don’t know everything about it when you start. What I’m trying to do when I make work […] is discover something that I’m not entirely able to articulate.” – Jacob Wren
Wren, Jacob, Polyamorous Love Song, Toronto: Book Thug, 2014.
Fan Fiction, Art Writing (The Secret Ingredient - 29/01/14)
The Secret Ingredient
53 minutes 21 seconds
10 years ago
Fan Fiction, Art Writing (The Secret Ingredient - 29/01/14)
This week we dig into writing and artists. We first introduce a hand-written letter to co-host Alissa from artist Pablo Helguera and discuss how the handwritten letter can tug at one’s heartstrings and trigger our imagination. We examine the work of Helen Reed, artist and editor of Art Criticism and Other Short Stories, in which Reed as gathered artists and writers together to write fan fiction on other artworks and their makers. The work is a playful approach to critical writing about art work, as many writings (particularly in the Canadian context) do not engage with the works content in a critical way. We see examples of fan fiction about Bas Jan Ader and Canadian artist Kent Monkman’s elegant alter-ego Miss Chief Eagle Testickle. We finish by looking at Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan’s work in Bedtime Stories for the Edge of the World, reworking traditional bedtime stories to be more queer and feminist. Artists are finding narratives and reintroducing them to us for an embodied response. How can short stories and letters approach art in a new way?
Dempsey, Shawna, and Lorri Millan. Bedtime Stories for the Edge of the World. Winnipeg, Manitoba: Arbeiter Ring Publishing, 2013. 144.
Reed, Helen. Art Criticism and Other Short Stories. Portland: Self Published, 2011.
The Secret Ingredient
What possibilities for political transformation can be opened up through imagination, fantasy, and art? Can the left create instrumental change or is the game rigged? This week artist and writer Jacob Wren considers these questions, as well as ideas about the artist as political activist and the balance between egoism and conciliation in collaborative projects.
“Sometimes I think that the secret ingredient in art is art. Another thing that has come to the forefront of my mind over the years is how little room for art there is in art; how much of the structural and institutional ways of thinking in and around art keep out what I think of as art. For me art has to be something where you don’t know everything about it when you start. What I’m trying to do when I make work […] is discover something that I’m not entirely able to articulate.” – Jacob Wren
Wren, Jacob, Polyamorous Love Song, Toronto: Book Thug, 2014.