the organism-body of creative work
recently, and by recently i mean these last few years, i’ve been feeling the urge to create and collect work that feels bigger - deliberately interconnected in an ecosystem that make sense — even as my universe itself expands. i drew a diagram to articulate what i mean by that:
components of a creative body, nested eggs
the universe-organism-body: is both contained and porous; boundless and expansive. infinite. all the work i’ve ever created in the past + all the work i’m creating now + all the work i will create in the future is here. in all mediums - even ones that i don’t know yet. the creative impulse (and its unfathomability) lives in the body.
a singular organism in the body: is any collection, with a deliberate curation — however loosely organized. it could be a “book,” or an audio series, or an “exhibition” (whatever that means). while a body is hard to behold all at once, a collection-organism is meant to be experienced as a discrete thing, even if, like a dictionary or a field guide - you don’t necessarily sit down and read it all at once.
a unit of the organism: is like a chapter, with a direct relationship to the organism. this could be organized by time, or place, or mood, or theme - but it has its own logic for being centered around a topic.
a cell in the unit: is a single piece of work. this is a piece of writing, or photograph, or a film, or visual piece.
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making the singular cell = breathing
i spent these last years following spontaneous, daily urges, only creating singular cells - and in many instances, especially as i was constantly traveling, changing environments and languages, creating those singular cells felt like breathing — as in: art was a way of digesting the world, and breathing my own air. i built entire ecosystems this way.
but there comes a point when you want to represent what you’re creating in a way that others (including/especially your past + future self) can understand it. in a way that connects across time, place, and all the lives lived.
side note: this is a direct result of my own creative amnesia — i’ll make work and promptly forget about it after 3 days, then i’ll wake up in the mornings not completely sure who i am, where i am, or where i’m going, feeling like a blob. this gets existential very quickly.
some ongoing questions
how to balance the daily act of creating a singular cell + creating vessel-organisms-collections which hold it?
how to sense into the intention of an organism — without suffocating it with too much structure and over-planning?
what are my current organisms that want to be born?
what are the units which live within it?
what if i approached all of my projects by focusing on how it exists in the super-structure of my artistic universe — by thinking of it as nested in larger collections? — how would it change my work?
the container of nesting organisms
this is very much an ongoing exploration.
i have no answer to any of these questions, but i feel like it’s the right direction for my brain to wander ~~~