art

Two dogs

| Henna Timanttimetsä

Art hires bullies and incompetence: my well-educated analysis which is based on experience. Experience is bad which I have been wondering how I am so unlucky, or there truly is something seriously wrong but not enough leverage to make that needed change. Some parties do not look for change in art because stagnant state of things works better for them.

| Henna Timanttimetsä

When one first begins studying sculpting and your teacher is sexist chauvinist, strongly biased male to whom pedagogy seems to be an unknown concept, one gets a pretty good idea of what to expect when one graduates. So it all is educational after all. There are no illusions whatsoever of what lies ahead and how slowly things change in the arts, which hugely relies on tradition, what comes to gender roles, social and career mobility, position and power of institutions and money, what is good art, what can be shown and said. Mostly art looks back so keenly because it likes the male heroes. Needless to say I have argued and questioned a lot at art school and was deeply unliked because of that. Old fashioned are also ways to do business, put up exhibitions, funding, how artists and artistry are seen and treated, how much there is preconception and thinking you know even when you do not know shit. That is of course when you need the consultants. You can always rely on knowledge of a consultant but artist is an underdog if he or she is not well-known and well-networked. What else is there other than self-interest and all one can do is work for only one’s own benefit, why else do it. Business in which one has to be an expert and know a lot there are many doing the work who do not have the needed capabilities: understanding, courage and knowledge, capabilities to spark change, unbiased, only talk is what happens, which does not change anything, just like politicians do.

As curious as it sounds when you start looking at the issue of what kind of people are drawn to business of art, it could not be more clear: it is made to those who strive to win, be best at posing or at least look like they are good at something, mostly the latter. The importance of image cannot be emphasized enough. To work in art you have to have a big ego to stand behind your work, be confident enough to stretch as far as possible with ideas of your own, try out ideas which you believe in and very often only you, fail or succeed, and accepting the result to move on with all the enthusiasm possible. What kinds of results we accept as a community and in what kind of environment we want to work plays a big part of how to choose one’s perspective, on which side to stand and look into the scene where one is to create, be creative. How creative is the art world? What is the scene where art is shown or made to exist and why is it so narrow and unwelcoming? It is not new that narcissism is a regular trait for artists and in the arts in general and need to be admired for one’s position, networks and art must be one thing probably. All want to have the fame, which is one thing essential in art, admiration, grandiose, infinity, eternal art and eternal unforgettable artists, heroes. Artists are admired when they get fame and fortune. Fame is much talked about as it is the gold pot which might be found when one is talented and lucky enough. What is luck, how one gets lucky and what is part of talent there? It is a weird business where money circulates, art gets centered to certain places and artists have to be presented in certain places to have a name, be seen by right people and be noticed within the system. So to be stepped over is not irregular, to be sexually harassed either, minimised, discriminated, talked about in ill manner happens regularly. There are things to be expected but still they strike always as surprise because one wants to believe in kindness and good intentions. Cynicism is the first impression I get, always. It is no wonder, I am always up against a crowd of fanatics who think they know better and are better because art is about finding the truth, being good and admired, and those who are on pedestals think, they have found it and are deserving of their status.

There are those who like to repeat over and over again one idea, imprint it where ever they can because it is theirs and it represents the good they have come up with, themselves, something unchangeable, an era, an -ism, history, tradition, spectacle, experience after which tourists are expected to travel and spend money for. When we starve the idea of art into movable modules that function as branded palaces for money, it is art for money and art for business’ sake. It is tourism that dictates and the tourist is offered an art awe grandiose to witness and experience, remember, photograph, be educated by. An art awe is.., sensation, uplifting, knowledge, learning, the act of looking and feeling the once in a life experience, time to touch, something grand again, special, new or old and spectacular, always bigger and more expensive. To find the spectacular it has to be imported. Interesting is when new art is made it often is made in the marginal and by those who have rebelled the establishment, education, hierarchy and traditions, those who have made the most interesting art and have had the lasting changing impact on art are the dissidents. Always there is a clash and crush necessary for that necessary change to happen. The procedure of producing art is machinery of media coverage, expensiveness, size, names, what catches the eye, mind and heart. To preserve quality and process of the creating progress and the new which can be exciting, cynicism is not good at all.

Artist, captor of light http://www.words-to-use.com/words/art/

Immorality, the rule, rather than an exception.

| Henna Timanttimetsä

It could be an interesting topic to go through how morals should be and are applied in art. Does high morals or more over lack of have anything to do with the current state of the art world? Current state being rampant sexism, discrimination, favoring of gentrification and institutionalized art and institutionalized look on art, favoring of famous and named artists on the expense of quality, progress, variety and multi-layered culture, on the expense of perspective to different kinds of realities. Art is generally seen as something pure requiring skill and talent, intellect and ability to think outside the box. Art is or should be allowed to push boundaries of proper, art officials and personnel do not take the part of the artist in this. They do not bend moral rules, break the law or do hazy business within art to benefit themselves and institutions which are to serve art and doing so serve the public. To stay on the level of politics where many decisions concerning art projects are made seems to be usual and practices of business are applied to art where artists must behave and act as businessmen, this often means morals of business become morals in art. What does this do to art displayed one can ask, or one way to look at the dilemma is to wonder how big money affects art and the art scene, where the interest lies? Politics and power which stay interested in art as a tool and means of propaganda, art as honey for tourists, tourists bringing income and prosperity. We can be of many opinions about trustworthiness of politicians and art projects connected tightly with political decision-making and aims do not look that pure, intentions stay on surface and art functions like plaster changing nothing there where change is necessary. That is in how deals and projects are dealt with, to decorate. What are the main motives for investing in art and how much those motives matter in the big picture, in the picture of art playing the part adding more than statues and grand museums? History of art is history of power silencing others placing proper ones on pedestal, mostly white males with connections.

What is interesting and impressive aesthetically must it be observed and looked via morals? Why something which is morally right is also right in art? Because art is used as object of power it essentially has to have high morale to stand on and will of its own which cannot be twisted to serve those who use finance and power in society. Morals refers to good and right and immoral is without morals even one without morals is making choices which demand judgment and thinking of how and why. Conflict in art context occurs when it is giving assumptions on art standing firmly on the right and good and therefore those who make art are admirable knowledgeable wise men and women to whom people can turn to and be given comfort, shown beauty and told tales of morally high aims or of low ones. Ethics is one of the most important issues art deals with and when art is not done ethically it loses its credibility. This applies to institutions, to those who work in art and for art, who say art does good and is good for all. Then we can start talking about what is good art, valuable and meaningful art, where lies value in art. It is the same asking what are good deeds and what are bad ones, what is gained with those deeds may tell something of the value of those deeds.

 

Art the language

| Henna Timanttimetsä

Do you speak art? Do you understand art? Do you get and like art talk? Why should art even be a spoken tongue? But it talks, has a voice, tone, presence, ideas and message. To those who are interested message is there to be caught, to resonate with and think about. Then on what kinds of things does it depend how we understand what we see and what we want to see? Do we analyse art via our bias and preconceptions? We have to care about what we see to actually see what it is we see. We have to be alert and open to cultural references, meanings, links, traditions, to philosophical and cultural grounds art and makers spring out. Where is it, who sees it, who is speaking, who speaks about it if anyone, who is given a voice? It is complicated when you start to think about what art is about, why we do art, present it in the ways we do, one particular piece of art is worth lengthy analysis, not to speak of the whole of contemporary visual art. How much of it is about taste, objectification and luxury, about cultural intellectual shifts we experience today, politics, our progress as humans and about continuation to Art History, to institution and conventions of fine art and the tradition of Modern Art.

Contemporary art can be avoided completely in everyday life. It is almost strictly isolated in institutions and galleries as a specific expertise field where hierarchy, finance and knowing people make the rules of this peculiar set where one idle person does not accidentally enter or feel comfortable being in. Reference to temples and palaces is quite accurate. How to learn to speak this language and is it necessary are very relevant questions especially when some of art is meant to be political, game changing, radical and new. How political art is inside a palace which has an entrance fee? Well one can wonder. What can be achieved by isolated snobbish fame hungry scene other than decay and a circle that does not achieve the things it dreams about in the art it likes to present.

Something to say about women in art, in music, in any craft which have been taken over by men usually white men: Creativity by and of women how is it seen or not seen as work and valued or not.

| Henna Timanttimetsä

To begin to analyse topic of creative womanhood, creative women which is always acute, easy to make controversial, scandalous. A topic which is on the nerve still in this time is a thing of puzzle where one has to find the very issue of the dilemma existing, problem and glitch that keeps on making controversy and scare being the obstacle above which we struggle to rise, look objectively and which we tackle to solve. Generation after generation change happens so slowly it begins to look like something that cannot be but an suffocating relic a carved in stone kind of command that we fight against and it just stays like a stain. How unbearably demanding it is to listen and watch the state of denying women from being complete. It is so easy to tell us what women should be doing, look like and what women are for, tell that with threats and ultimatums. Women under, women on their backs, women in the places where women do things women do; this is the kind of way to speak that should be history, the way of instructing and ruling what women are supposed to do, what women are and stand for. How women are treated within society reflects how any kind of difference is treated and welcomed, how strict purity of society kept in the sense of bordering and limiting how people interact, who can and who can’t, who has a say, which laws are in use. What kinds of limits we take seriously and obey, what kind of border crossing is intimidating and seen as wrong. What kinds of things we get punished for and how scared we are to be?

Interesting study on differences between concepts xenophobia and racism, roots and reasons for
http://philpapers.org/archive/KIMXAR.pdf Xenofobia and racism, David Haekwon Kim and Roland R. Sundström

It is interesting to see similarities between racism and misogyny, homophobia and xenophobia, reasoning any kind of discrimination, reasons for brutality and cruelty are very irrational and based on ignorance and need to use power in a violent way, how putting groups of people below is justified and happening without an end.


It is difficult to see things in different ways, from different perspectives, from a view of another, see in new kinds of ways that can be refreshing but weird, that might show something other than what has been repeated for years and years, to see another kind of truth, something one kind of truth is said over and over without much change in sight, without logic, compassion, looking for easy answers is too clear. If there has been change it has been so slow it has been barely visible, barely there or barely existing, hidden: to detect that altering in reality can be exciting, rejuvenating. So what is the scare and reluctance?

Change which is bare, powerful, instant, compulsory and challenging is something we do not wish to witness and experience since it can be too much to take and handle. It is a lot of work to learn and accept, do all over again, begin from scratch, do a total turnover when all we want is comfort and security. Change is something we like to hinder, at least some of us, comfort of old ways of thinking, seeing and doing hold on tight. It is intolerable but necessary, something we need to have in order to have meaning and value. Things that stay the same start stinking, rotting and die. It is difficult to change yourself and your views especially if you are not prepared, not willing, not ready and accepting toward the fact that you do change, like it or not, your body changes, something around you changes all the time. What are the things that do not change? How does one’s mind and brain change in the process of aging, in the process of changing without much say over, no control over one’s physicality? As it seems we let body rule which means the sex we represent dictates what we should be and do in our lives, how we are perceived as humans in comparison to others and in society, what is one’s place is the body we happen to be born in. How to understand change, the inevitability, the scary, the happening and participate?

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/12/french-revolution-advertising/418920/

When existence is about hating because it is the way to solve things, maybe learned, maybe the only way to react, it can be the emotion one is grown into, it is the feeling making us and them, me and those others, separation, segregation, discrimination. The way to act when there are no other effective ways to make one’s voice heard, power in the moment of powerlessness or in need to stay in power. Hate is a consuming emotion but it is creation via destruction and low. You can experience the amount of energy emotion uses in you when you are horribly angry, exhausting. Hate tires you up, it wears you out showing no way out other than hurt and causing more hurt, bringing despair and hopelessness but also a strange illusion of power, individual power in how one acts and in making one’s mark via violence, against oneself and others. What to hate? To hate is justified because you have suffered, you have a position that is threatened, you have been treated wrongly, you want to make other people feel the same pain you have felt. To be angry is purifying but it also is when felt on a daily basis eating out strength and creativity when used against others in violent way. How to use one’s anger and rage constructively is what is useful to go through consciously every day as anger is felt and is powerful as there are angering issues nonstop. You hate because you have the right and you have something to lose, something you do not want to share.

https://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/not-a-british-subject-race-and-poetry-in-the-uk/ n his 1962 introduction to The New Poetry, Al Alvarez famously railed against the Movement’s overriding “concept of gentility” — the “belief that life is always more or less orderly, people always more or less polite, their emotions and habits more or less decent and more or less controllable; that God, in short, is more or less good.”

 

End of poetry is end of man. Use of power, power we have, force we do not have and how we claim it, tools in use.

| Henna Timanttimetsä
What kind of power do we have and how we use it is always the very basic issue to discuss and question. Those who have a lot of power may not like being questioned and even less if their power is taken or lessened away from them. Power corrupts has proven to be true, power does weird things to people. It is intoxicating to see how one can move and mold other people and their lives. It gives a self-assurance that one is above for a good reason, is able and capable, potent and noteworthy to have a say over, to rule, to lead, to dictate. How powerful do we feel and what kind of people do we see as weaker than or more than is due to what kind of values we have, what kind of acts are accepted as usage of power in a good way. What is this good kind of power as power has a negative echo? Power of love versus power of lovelessness, power of music vs. power of absolute noise could be interesting oppositions to study and effects of those in people and their behavior, moreover what is accomplished by having power over people since some are those who lead and they have to know how to. What do we want by power is probably the most important issue to look into and how we feel powerful. It depends on so many ’tiny’ details how the power of self builds up so that it is worth paying attention to individually and in a group. Domination, subjugation, segregation, division, bullying, how people are spoken to and how they respond, how we take our place within or are we left outside. Feeling of powerlessness is reason to be concerned because people should have feeling of having certain amount of power, understanding that one can do something to change oneself and situations in life and in society. When we lack this feeling and when a large amount of people have the same inadequacy and negative view to reality that nothing can be done to change things it is a serious matter of concern and deprivation of human value, human condition which should not be as such an oppressive nor oppressed state.
To feel powerful, empowered, is an essential existential human experience. It is like feeling good about yourself, listened to and appreciated. When we do not feel we have power over anything we become desperate, sad, angry, hateful, bitter, or better yet try and find a solution to change the situation. Best way to start is with yourself: what can you do and what do you want to learn to do. How do we come to understand power, find power within and calculate what kind of power we personally possess is valuable and is an interesting conduct of thought, a process and years long experience. Experience of having seen how power is used, what it does, how to get attention, make a reaction, make something wanted happen and repeat the desired act to get the same result or make a chain reaction. Power to heal, to help, to speak, to defend, power to manipulate, power to know and teach. When all action is in use of power of some kind how do we measure power of ours and decide weight of power used? We must have civil understanding of what is good and what is bad, wrong and right. What kind of results our use of personal power has had and what are the things to be corrected. If there are very little results or none at all despite our all constant efforts and push what can be said of power in use or forces one is up against? Are there more factors to be taken into consideration? We can be exhausted by having used our energy in doing something or having been pushed aside or violently handled by authorities or anybody. Power needs tools, force is created by multitude, decision and energy is something one person can have.

We use a lot of power even though we may think we do not. We also deliberately abuse power to become more powerful compared to others to have position, status of a powerful to become memorable and significant, meaningful, rich and noted members of society to live well. We often times don’t have to think about using power, having used power or having power in every day until we do not have it, until we are stepped over, silenced and exploited. When we are to be killed, vanished and doomed to non-existence. To have power begins organically out of making oneself, growing up bigger and learning what one can do, what one can think, think of doing and saying and then putting those ideas into action.

Power used over people especially women can go like this: She is stupid, she is crazy, she is arrogant, she is boring, she is weird, she is uninteresting, she is silent, she is distant, she is a jerk, she is religious, she is a believer, she is a nerd, she is an angel, she is kind, she is tacky, she a bad dresser, she is a bad artist, she is invisible, she is untalented, she is quite good, she is incompetent, she is ok, she is old, she is young, she is ugly, she looks wrong, she is a whore, she is unreliable, she is fun, she is tall, she is too short, she wears too much makeup, she dresses like a tart, she is unemployed, she is lazy, she is poor, she is greedy, she is jealous, she is bitter, she is a drunk, she is a drug addict, she is prude, she is rude, she is an exhibitionist, she is pervert

on and on the things given for her to be and she becomes a fabrication by people a person and a tragedy continued by people who hear this story about her and feel better than she is. When these adjectives and characteristics mold her within it is no wonder there is a rejection and an image that is almost impossible to alter because her word is not worthy and she has been seen drunk and badly dressed. It does not make any difference what she says or does when experts have spoken and witnessed her state. In expert society anybody can be an expert who is trained especially. Experts speak in a specific way and are well connected. They have power and they are believed in as they are legitimated by authorities, accomplishments, friends, places and institutions. Their word is trusted until it is proven wrong and expert loses face. Losing face is in expert circles the worst thing that can happen. 

You might also say that she is easy, she is uncomplicated, she is strange, she is vicious, she is bad mouthed, she is black-hearted, she is devious, she is malicious, she is cunning, she is dullSo you see it is not insignificant what you let out of your mouth and how you see other people. Yea there are experts you know.

To fix me? I’m not the problem.

| Henna Timanttimetsä
What is the problem then? That is a dilemma to open up, psychological, intellectual, cultural and social. As long as there are people who are garbage in the eyes of others, those others who are considered the elite and superior there is a problem. When there are people who do not have the understanding of what a human can be and could be. When thought is what human should be and is supposed to be there is a problem. When there are those worthy of rescuing and those who are not, those who rescue when it is them who should be rescued. When there is complete lack of understanding what other human being is all about, when there is no desire to get to know that other person but stay interested in yourself only and what you can get. There is a problem.
When there are people who are air, who are nothing, not important, who in this thought climate can be treated as such, as nothing. They disappear, get killed, stigmatized, stalked, pushed away, discriminated against because they are not interesting, valuable, they are not given a chance, there is a fucking problem.
After having blamed myself that I have done something wrong, that there is something wrong with me and having developed a self-loathing which became unbearable I understood it is not me who hates in the end. It is I who is hated for being who I am. I am not supposed to hate myself, it is the worst thing I can do. I must not hate at all because I have to give something else. It is unbearable to be invisible and nothing when you clearly are not. To understand you are not the problem but a fix and solution is a new beginning and new way to see yourself, not via other people, not depended on other people’s acceptance and liking. You have to learn to find out what you can be yourself. It is a heavy task especially if you are left alone to do it. I am not completely alone but a very solitary soldier anyhow.

To think why society exists, state has citizens and society is for them

| Henna Timanttimetsä

If art is seen as mechanical part of society with duty to fill, money to make with, interior to decorate, glory to have by there will be those who will oppose it, artists who will challenge such system of good and bad, winners and losers, rich and poor, laborers and profit makers. An artist as someone who has to make art to fit the system is selling cheap, to fill in requirements given to make art suitable there will be something left out, unseen and forgotten. Why people do art, why there is need for art, what kind of art do we want to make and to what kind of need does it answer, who defines what is art and who is the artist. These questions will be asked over and over again as there is a system that makes it compulsory to find the grande artist, value art as possession, as there is system that makes profit via art often without the artist. Sometimes it seems art is valued but artists are not as people who also need to be paid for their work. In capitalism we do not live to make charity, to make other people rich, give value to institutions, cities and countries.

LUX express

| Henna Timanttimetsä

 

bag and balls of clay