the project R.S.O.L.
In the week before Christmas 2017, I arrived in my studio around three o'clock. I noticed that the lights in the neighbouring studio where still on, and it occurred to me that it was unusual for my neighbour to still be working. As she usually stopped shortly after noon.
After working and cleaning up, I got ready to leave around 6:30. When I left I saw that the lights in the studio next door were still on. Suddenly I realized something wasn't right and I knocked on my neighbour's door and called her name. Since I got no response, I became afraid to just pull open the door, that was closed from the inside with a rubber band. I decided I needed help. The whole building was empty and dark as usual. So I asked a few neighbours from across the street, who I knew a little bit from their walks with their dog. They walk past my studio several times a day.
Long story short, we opened the door and found my neighbour dead on the floor.
My neighbour was a painter in an un-contemporary way. By this I mean, among other things, that she never switched between media, except for the traditional painting media: oil on canvas and charcoal, or coloured pencils on paper. And sometimes also some graphic media.
She produced many canvases and drawings with the same subject and in much the same way. The development of what we might well call her style, went over a very long period, in very small steps. Spread out over a large number of paintings and drawings. The difference between what she did ten years ago, when I first met her, and what she did lately was only subtle.
When we spoke, which did not happen very often, my neighbour would usually say at one point during such a conversation: I hope I will be able to sell something. It is significant to note here, that she mainly painted half-fictional children's portraits and had no children herself.
This event was the catalyst for me to rename my studio to R.S.O.L. - Room for the Study Of Loneliness - and to start the Faculty of In-humanities. In the preceding period, social, but especially political developments had led me to more or less withdraw from the commercial art world. You could say that at that time, artisthood was politically abolished and was replaced by so-called 'cultural entrepreneurship'. This was 'the crown' on years of social programming and government policy. My last contacts with a gallery owner had led me to retrieve all my work there, on the morning of the day of the opening of my exhibition with that gallery. Among colleagues, who either followed this politically implemented idea of cultural entrepreneurship, or did not (sufficiently) understand this politics and its consequences for artisthood, I had also come to stand alone. My choices were not always understood. This is one of the reasons why I thought the pronunciation 'R-Sol', was so appropriate. (Initially, the abbreviation was pronounced as: R - Sol (with the syllables connected together). Later on, I stopped doing this because it made artists I worked feel uncomfortable.) The artist on the fringes of society, of whom people do not know what she or he does and of whom people do not understand why she or he does that - and who can therefore fall dead in her or his studio, unseen and without being missed by anyone, in a building on the fringes of the city that is nominated to be demolished.
Pascal Gielen (University of Groningen) mentions in his essay 'Artistic praxis and the neoliberalization of the educational space' (Denken in Kunst, eds H. Borgdorff and P. Sonderen, Leiden University Press 2012), four domains in which the artist enters and where she or he relates to. The personal, private space (Gielen calls this the domestic space), the community space (this is the space of all practitioners of (autonomous and contemporary) art), the market (the commercial art world), and the social and political space (Gielen calls this the civil space). In this essay, Gielen argues that an artist must enter all these spaces or domains in order to prevent his work from degenerating into what he calls 'thoughtless tinkering and tampering without (...) accountability,' and 'endless chatter or theorizing without this ever leading to a finished product.' (p. 92 a.w.) As a positive counterpoint, 'both the domestical domain and the sphere of the community,' Gielen also writes, eminently offer the 'room for trial-and-error, for experiment and thus loss - things that the (other) two spaces tolerate much less.'
However, the question is whether Gielen's negative expectations are entirely correct. And whether contemporary art (as a distinct mode of art practice) actually needs commerce (the market) to function. In addition, I think that a work of art can never be understood as a "finished product", as Gielen suggests. Rather, a work of art (at least within and from the perspective of contemporary art - and this as a distinct mode of art practice) is and can never be "finished". I think that a work of art "lasts" in contemporary art, and can be revisited again and again - be re-activated and worked on, as the process of both the artist and the contemplator. After all, it is not without reason that the artist is the first viewer or reader of a work (Paul Ricoeur, Text and Meaning (translation of: Tekst en Betekenis), Ambo, Baarn, 1991, p. 112).
It is important to understand the term praxis or practice, as Gielen puts it in this essay, as a mutual "interpenetration" of theory and action. But it is just as important to see that the practice of autonomous and contemporary art has an ethical dimension too. With Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue, University of Notre Dame Press, Indiana, 2007) I understand a practice as: 'any coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative human activity through which goods internal to that form of activity are realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and partially definitive of, that form of activity, with the result that human powers to achieve excellence, and human conceptions of the ends and goods involved, are systematically extended.' (p. 187 - it is important to understand the concept of 'goods' here, not only as 'products' in a thing-like sense, but also and especially as values and knowledge). The things that are "extrinsic" to a practice in this sense, are those that can also be acquired in a different way than from or through the practice concerned. MacIntyre mentions in that respect, 'goods such as prestige, (social) status and money.'
From this understanding of the practice of contemporary and autonomous art, "the market" is a domain that belongs to what is extrinsic to the practice. Therefore, I think an artist can do without that domain. She or he focuses primarily on the translocal and transhistorical community of practitioners, and allows this to form the standards which her or his practice (theory and action combined) meets and which it jointly shapes. (Indeed, contemporary art practice is now also historical - why and how is a question for the Faculty, among others, to elaborate, this essay is not the place for that.) That this human activity has a place, historically, socially and also economically, in society - and therefore is also political - is evident. The practitioners are part of the civil space, and relate to it in their work and as a person. For example, under the current adage of cultural entrepreneurship, it is in part a political act to practice autonomous art. (How and why is again a question for a different place and time to elaborate.)
R.S.O.L. is no longer just my studio and the house of the Faculty of In-humanities, but also a space where the practice takes place as a common goal of practitioners, a project space. At the time of this writing, several presentations have already taken place in R.S.O.L. Like the Faculty, R.S.O.L. is both a work of art and an actual art space - in the case of the Faculty, an actual faculty (albeit independent of an institutionalized university or school).
The vision of R.S.O.L. as an art space is described on the webpage of the R.S.O.L. website, which remains part of my personal website. In it I state that R.S.O.L. as a cultural enterprise is situated in the margins of the current commercial art world. By keeping the website part of my personal website, I show that R.S.O.L. is and remains part of my own artisthood. Within R.S.O.L. it is all about the practice and the practitioners. It is mainly financed by donations and only partly by sales. Consciously, R.S.O.L. keeps away from the high administrative burdens and conditions of state funds. These burdens are too high for independently working artists and R.S.O.L. is also deliberately too far removed from the political policy for and from the state funds.
This makes R.S.O.L. also a work of art, and each of its activities re-activate that work of art. It is a work that is ongoing, that is never 'finished'. It is more or less 'invisible' from the outside. It is not aimed at a wide audience, but at committed practitioners of the practice. Every time it opens, it is a performance. A piece that is performed even when there is no direct audience present. In this way, R.S.O.L. acquires insights and knowledge from its functioning, as any other work of art. Waiting silently and alone to see if someone comes to have a look, and on some days close the room without having had any visitors. People that ignore it, on the street, in the social media, in the translocal art world, while the work being done there is done extremely serious and conscientious. This is all part of how R.S.O.L. works, as a work of art and as an actual art space.
1-1-2021
After working and cleaning up, I got ready to leave around 6:30. When I left I saw that the lights in the studio next door were still on. Suddenly I realized something wasn't right and I knocked on my neighbour's door and called her name. Since I got no response, I became afraid to just pull open the door, that was closed from the inside with a rubber band. I decided I needed help. The whole building was empty and dark as usual. So I asked a few neighbours from across the street, who I knew a little bit from their walks with their dog. They walk past my studio several times a day.
Long story short, we opened the door and found my neighbour dead on the floor.
My neighbour was a painter in an un-contemporary way. By this I mean, among other things, that she never switched between media, except for the traditional painting media: oil on canvas and charcoal, or coloured pencils on paper. And sometimes also some graphic media.
She produced many canvases and drawings with the same subject and in much the same way. The development of what we might well call her style, went over a very long period, in very small steps. Spread out over a large number of paintings and drawings. The difference between what she did ten years ago, when I first met her, and what she did lately was only subtle.
When we spoke, which did not happen very often, my neighbour would usually say at one point during such a conversation: I hope I will be able to sell something. It is significant to note here, that she mainly painted half-fictional children's portraits and had no children herself.
This event was the catalyst for me to rename my studio to R.S.O.L. - Room for the Study Of Loneliness - and to start the Faculty of In-humanities. In the preceding period, social, but especially political developments had led me to more or less withdraw from the commercial art world. You could say that at that time, artisthood was politically abolished and was replaced by so-called 'cultural entrepreneurship'. This was 'the crown' on years of social programming and government policy. My last contacts with a gallery owner had led me to retrieve all my work there, on the morning of the day of the opening of my exhibition with that gallery. Among colleagues, who either followed this politically implemented idea of cultural entrepreneurship, or did not (sufficiently) understand this politics and its consequences for artisthood, I had also come to stand alone. My choices were not always understood. This is one of the reasons why I thought the pronunciation 'R-Sol', was so appropriate. (Initially, the abbreviation was pronounced as: R - Sol (with the syllables connected together). Later on, I stopped doing this because it made artists I worked feel uncomfortable.) The artist on the fringes of society, of whom people do not know what she or he does and of whom people do not understand why she or he does that - and who can therefore fall dead in her or his studio, unseen and without being missed by anyone, in a building on the fringes of the city that is nominated to be demolished.
Pascal Gielen (University of Groningen) mentions in his essay 'Artistic praxis and the neoliberalization of the educational space' (Denken in Kunst, eds H. Borgdorff and P. Sonderen, Leiden University Press 2012), four domains in which the artist enters and where she or he relates to. The personal, private space (Gielen calls this the domestic space), the community space (this is the space of all practitioners of (autonomous and contemporary) art), the market (the commercial art world), and the social and political space (Gielen calls this the civil space). In this essay, Gielen argues that an artist must enter all these spaces or domains in order to prevent his work from degenerating into what he calls 'thoughtless tinkering and tampering without (...) accountability,' and 'endless chatter or theorizing without this ever leading to a finished product.' (p. 92 a.w.) As a positive counterpoint, 'both the domestical domain and the sphere of the community,' Gielen also writes, eminently offer the 'room for trial-and-error, for experiment and thus loss - things that the (other) two spaces tolerate much less.'
However, the question is whether Gielen's negative expectations are entirely correct. And whether contemporary art (as a distinct mode of art practice) actually needs commerce (the market) to function. In addition, I think that a work of art can never be understood as a "finished product", as Gielen suggests. Rather, a work of art (at least within and from the perspective of contemporary art - and this as a distinct mode of art practice) is and can never be "finished". I think that a work of art "lasts" in contemporary art, and can be revisited again and again - be re-activated and worked on, as the process of both the artist and the contemplator. After all, it is not without reason that the artist is the first viewer or reader of a work (Paul Ricoeur, Text and Meaning (translation of: Tekst en Betekenis), Ambo, Baarn, 1991, p. 112).
It is important to understand the term praxis or practice, as Gielen puts it in this essay, as a mutual "interpenetration" of theory and action. But it is just as important to see that the practice of autonomous and contemporary art has an ethical dimension too. With Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue, University of Notre Dame Press, Indiana, 2007) I understand a practice as: 'any coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative human activity through which goods internal to that form of activity are realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and partially definitive of, that form of activity, with the result that human powers to achieve excellence, and human conceptions of the ends and goods involved, are systematically extended.' (p. 187 - it is important to understand the concept of 'goods' here, not only as 'products' in a thing-like sense, but also and especially as values and knowledge). The things that are "extrinsic" to a practice in this sense, are those that can also be acquired in a different way than from or through the practice concerned. MacIntyre mentions in that respect, 'goods such as prestige, (social) status and money.'
From this understanding of the practice of contemporary and autonomous art, "the market" is a domain that belongs to what is extrinsic to the practice. Therefore, I think an artist can do without that domain. She or he focuses primarily on the translocal and transhistorical community of practitioners, and allows this to form the standards which her or his practice (theory and action combined) meets and which it jointly shapes. (Indeed, contemporary art practice is now also historical - why and how is a question for the Faculty, among others, to elaborate, this essay is not the place for that.) That this human activity has a place, historically, socially and also economically, in society - and therefore is also political - is evident. The practitioners are part of the civil space, and relate to it in their work and as a person. For example, under the current adage of cultural entrepreneurship, it is in part a political act to practice autonomous art. (How and why is again a question for a different place and time to elaborate.)
R.S.O.L. is no longer just my studio and the house of the Faculty of In-humanities, but also a space where the practice takes place as a common goal of practitioners, a project space. At the time of this writing, several presentations have already taken place in R.S.O.L. Like the Faculty, R.S.O.L. is both a work of art and an actual art space - in the case of the Faculty, an actual faculty (albeit independent of an institutionalized university or school).
The vision of R.S.O.L. as an art space is described on the webpage of the R.S.O.L. website, which remains part of my personal website. In it I state that R.S.O.L. as a cultural enterprise is situated in the margins of the current commercial art world. By keeping the website part of my personal website, I show that R.S.O.L. is and remains part of my own artisthood. Within R.S.O.L. it is all about the practice and the practitioners. It is mainly financed by donations and only partly by sales. Consciously, R.S.O.L. keeps away from the high administrative burdens and conditions of state funds. These burdens are too high for independently working artists and R.S.O.L. is also deliberately too far removed from the political policy for and from the state funds.
This makes R.S.O.L. also a work of art, and each of its activities re-activate that work of art. It is a work that is ongoing, that is never 'finished'. It is more or less 'invisible' from the outside. It is not aimed at a wide audience, but at committed practitioners of the practice. Every time it opens, it is a performance. A piece that is performed even when there is no direct audience present. In this way, R.S.O.L. acquires insights and knowledge from its functioning, as any other work of art. Waiting silently and alone to see if someone comes to have a look, and on some days close the room without having had any visitors. People that ignore it, on the street, in the social media, in the translocal art world, while the work being done there is done extremely serious and conscientious. This is all part of how R.S.O.L. works, as a work of art and as an actual art space.
1-1-2021