Black Bucket Essays
Volume 1, Issue 1
“The survival of my own ideas may not be as important as a condition I might create for others’ ideas to be realized. ”
- Mel Chin
Elena Volkova
To further question the condition upon which ideas survive, I would like to rephrase Mel Chin’s quote: The condition of my own ideas depends on the survival of the ideas of others.
The survival of one’s own ideas is not as relevant as the context within which these ideas exist and flourish. It is a universal condition, and does not belong to individuality, but to humanity. Artists are preoccupied with originality. There is a self-inflicted pressure to be original and to produce works that are unique, eccentric, magnificent, or, in other words, different from anything that has been created previously. In our quest for, and obsession with originality, we lose the essence of what originality truly is: reinvention of tradition. Original work not only creates conditions for other ideas to be realized, but also dwells on the previous ideas of others.
It is absolutely impossible to have new ideas or create a work of art that is totally unique. When reading a literary work of art, we do not question its originality, but rather tie our experience with it to what we already know. A perceptive viewer is also guided by apperception: bringing memory and previous experiences in the act of perceiving. It is the relationship between what we know and what we see that makes the work either more or less engaging for the viewers, not the newness of it. On the contrary, we tend to dismiss any artwork that does not contain a trace of something familiar to us; and, it is the reinterpretation of the familiar that makes us respond to a work of art.
Volume 1, Issue 1
“The survival of my own ideas may not be as important as a condition I might create for others’ ideas to be realized. ”
- Mel Chin
Elena Volkova
To further question the condition upon which ideas survive, I would like to rephrase Mel Chin’s quote: The condition of my own ideas depends on the survival of the ideas of others.
The survival of one’s own ideas is not as relevant as the context within which these ideas exist and flourish. It is a universal condition, and does not belong to individuality, but to humanity. Artists are preoccupied with originality. There is a self-inflicted pressure to be original and to produce works that are unique, eccentric, magnificent, or, in other words, different from anything that has been created previously. In our quest for, and obsession with originality, we lose the essence of what originality truly is: reinvention of tradition. Original work not only creates conditions for other ideas to be realized, but also dwells on the previous ideas of others.
It is absolutely impossible to have new ideas or create a work of art that is totally unique. When reading a literary work of art, we do not question its originality, but rather tie our experience with it to what we already know. A perceptive viewer is also guided by apperception: bringing memory and previous experiences in the act of perceiving. It is the relationship between what we know and what we see that makes the work either more or less engaging for the viewers, not the newness of it. On the contrary, we tend to dismiss any artwork that does not contain a trace of something familiar to us; and, it is the reinterpretation of the familiar that makes us respond to a work of art.
