Manifesto on the Rain Part III: Populism

I’m not very fond of the word esoteric. It tastes like old coffee and roundtable discussions with art professors who were painters when they were 22 but decided against art-making and turned to purist academia. I don’t think there are many things that are truly esoteric – that is, something intended to only be understood by a select group of people. James Joyce’s Ulysses comes to mind as being a very, very difficult to comprehend and difficult to approach novel. But I still think it is approachable. It demands a lot of time and energy, but to call it truly esoteric is denying the universality of the written word. Contexts are unavoidable, of course. A paper written by a botanist for other botanists might not be inherently comprehendible. But (if written correctly) it is approachable in the right way. But this is with regards to papers.

Art making, I believe, is a populist thing. Art is informed by human experience. And no human experience is invalid. And therein lies a central philosophy of mine with regards to art-making: it should be accessible, it should be simple, it should exist at a human level.

My definition of accessibility might not be a universal one. I come from a contemporary music background, where accessibility is seen (in some small circles) as a swearword. It may be the optimist and romantic in me, but I think art is (and should be) universally accessible. Open-mindedness is perhaps the biggest individual factor here.

My medium – performance – can often be seen as esoteric and uninviting, as pretentious and hierarchical. You have to be in on the joke, or otherwise you are stupid and uncultured. And certainly, some performance is conceived of in this way. And such is the public antagonism toward performance art, modern dance, modern art, and mediums that delve into abstraction. But it seems like an awful negative way of looking at something as beautiful and important as art.

But to focus my argument a bit more: I think performance is the most universal medium. I believe that nothing is more human, more accessible, than one person perfuming for another. All pretenses are abandoned, all ideas of virtuosity left at the door (although virtuosity certainly has a place).

While I can understand why some may view performance as pretentious, I think it may well just be the universal art form. I believe in the power of connection through the body – the “irreducible medium” of performance, to borrow from Martha Wilson. I believe in the power of the shared experience of the body. I am drawn to situations where anyone can be an art maker, where talent or predisposition or age or ability does not inhibit one’s inclusion in the age-old tradition of making stuff that has meaning. I believe in the power of simplicity and collaboration, the power of openness and realness.

I do not believe that anyone needs any context before experiencing a work of art. I believe that simply the context of being human is enough.