Black Bucket Essays
Volume 1, Essay 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
Mike Dax Iacovone
This is the democratization of art, in the scariest and most wonderful way. Chin pushes his art into uncomfortable corners, and derelict locations. He utilizes nomadic tribes and video games. If he can take such liberties, and push boundaries of art, he’s making more room for everybody behind him. I say ‘everybody’ instead of every ‘artist’ because that is exactly the result. The closer we get to the notion that any action and any result can be art, the closer we get to anybody being an artist.
If growing hyperaccumulator plants to clean up heavy metals and toxins can be art, then the way is paved for community activists to be artists. If employing software engineers to create video games about nomadic tribes can be art, then programmers and software developers can leap the archaic benchmarks of the art pedigree of BFAs/MFAs and become artists without the years of study. And isn’t that scary? And isn’t that wonderful?
Because isn’t it tacitly understood that artists need to pay their dues before they can label themselves as such? Art school, and/or the equivalent in years of toiling in a room covered in paint or sawdust, stitches, scars and rough callused hands - isn’t that how we paid our dues? Wasn’t that a requirement? If all it takes is an idea and the organizational skills to follow through with it then why did it take so long to get here? If we can accept an artist like Chin, and consider his actions, and embrace the consequences, couldn’t that same impetus influence the layman to react in similar faculties? If someone reads about his action, and follows suit to clean up toxic soil by planting hyperaccumulators, wouldn’t it be imperative to consider that as an artistic action as well?
Chin’s quote can and should leave ripples into the art community. The pool that we are wading in is becoming both wider and more shallow.
Volume 1, Essay 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
Mike Dax Iacovone
This is the democratization of art, in the scariest and most wonderful way. Chin pushes his art into uncomfortable corners, and derelict locations. He utilizes nomadic tribes and video games. If he can take such liberties, and push boundaries of art, he’s making more room for everybody behind him. I say ‘everybody’ instead of every ‘artist’ because that is exactly the result. The closer we get to the notion that any action and any result can be art, the closer we get to anybody being an artist.
If growing hyperaccumulator plants to clean up heavy metals and toxins can be art, then the way is paved for community activists to be artists. If employing software engineers to create video games about nomadic tribes can be art, then programmers and software developers can leap the archaic benchmarks of the art pedigree of BFAs/MFAs and become artists without the years of study. And isn’t that scary? And isn’t that wonderful?
Because isn’t it tacitly understood that artists need to pay their dues before they can label themselves as such? Art school, and/or the equivalent in years of toiling in a room covered in paint or sawdust, stitches, scars and rough callused hands - isn’t that how we paid our dues? Wasn’t that a requirement? If all it takes is an idea and the organizational skills to follow through with it then why did it take so long to get here? If we can accept an artist like Chin, and consider his actions, and embrace the consequences, couldn’t that same impetus influence the layman to react in similar faculties? If someone reads about his action, and follows suit to clean up toxic soil by planting hyperaccumulators, wouldn’t it be imperative to consider that as an artistic action as well?
Chin’s quote can and should leave ripples into the art community. The pool that we are wading in is becoming both wider and more shallow.
