tittuping with Interality

Hi all and thanks Ali for inviting me to join! Let me first say Ali I support your proposal for an ongoing network of outgoing and incoming "UCCAeans" with connectivity in mind not only for spontaneous discussion/debate but for post-course productive ideas... shows, joint artworks, ways of creating presence etc. I say this first, because from my experience I do feel that post MA/MFA, people tend to disappear into their "new" or "former" lives?! And second, because I believe that the direct links, networking, contacts, friends you make in your course should be used to trigger pathways for professional, meaningful opportunities in the otherwise tough battle of (I think it was Hatem who said) 'art practice despite the institutions, bureaucracy, pretence and all' and (what Ali implied) "the industrialisation of art". The "great black hole of desire" Ali is the market machine. My comment on this is that this art industry is perpetuating a "cathedral"...despite the promising mission statements of many institutions of the "democratisation of the arts" (particularly over the turn of the millennium), these are still ruled by exclusivity, bureaucracies and formal selection processes based on the established idea of what constitutes western art, value systems and judgements. But I do not want to look at this as negation (as a cliche of absence, passivity or enslavement by the system) but as affirmation, of taking positive action - and that's when perhaps one becomes a real "master" (though it is never consistently easy and you can spend your life trying). But maybe out of this networking, valuable, creative ways of liberating oneself from the "slave" (be it the one within us or outside us, be it "fear", the insatiable "desire machine", doubt, pretence, bureaucracy..) can happen through repositioning one's practice within the realities of the artworld and determine what role one wants to play in this on one's own or with others. Perhaps Interality can be about turning the realities of the artworld inside out...

You see, I've been trying to catch the main threads of the blog and various points struck me...particularly Sarah's (dare I call it introspective) question on what the course does to one's practice? I think it makes you ask exactly the questions you are asking Sarah. Perhaps the course "undoes" you more than it "does" you. I think it "problematises" one as an artist, and in that sense it reincarnates or metamorphoses one's practice. I think there are variations on the intensity of this transformation... for some it is revolutionary, for others it is reactionary - there are different forms of resistence. Either way continuation takes place, which hopefully will lead to "improvement". I think the MA/MFA is quite a rite of passage and repositioning one's soul is not without pain or exaltation, depending on your view. Once again, perhaps Interality can be about this internalising, turning ourselves inside out...

So there are two things being problematised here: the interior and exterior, which eventually become linked.
One is the personal soulsearching repositioning in the duration of the course: what is my practice about?? how will my practice change, improve, transform??
The other is that of the artworld: what are the realities of the artworld?? and what will my role as an artist in this be??

So, Interality is perhaps also Exterality (don't look it up in the dictionary, it's not there!)

ok, I enjoyed tittuping with some thoughts from the very high temperatures of the Med.
I fly to France this weekend for a few days to take part in Femmes d'Europe a Saint Tropez and then to England soon after when I'll look forward to seeing you all again very soon!

ruth