As I am currently obliged to give my thoughts on the autumn term constellation module again please allow me to be blunt. Autumn’s constellation module was a colossal waste of time. It wasn’t all terrible, the segment “how to we see the world” which discussed schemas and how our environment informs what we see was extremely illuminating, but the rest of it was rubbish. Most of it was not even focused on Art. I don’t care what word games you play, a pile of leaves in the woods is not Art. A protest in a shopping mall is not Art. People walking on a sand dune is not Art. ”But John?” I hear you say: “how do you define Art, then?” To which I respond: “I don’t. I reject your notion that social engineering or activism can be defined as Art through scientific sophistry. To try to define Art is to kill it, and to try make Art based on your definitions is to make rubbish and then to expect to be paid for it. Art is not a scientific law that can be studied, it is the moment of Zen when the archer releases the arrow. A good archer doesn’t need words to technically prove he has hit the target. That’s what the arrow is for. Just as a good archer is not defined by the words he uses, but by his work, so is an Artist. Even this is too strict and too concrete a definition to be of any actual use. Please never bother me with this again.”
As for the other things covered in term one, having made it clear that Art was , at best, a tangential interest, I have to say most of the course felt like soap boxing. A programme designed more for the indoctrination of liberal ideologies than to reach about self-expression. While I have no issues with environmentalism, or critiquing corporate culture, the fact that activist efforts to push these ideals were presented as Art (despite not being so) does reveal a clear agenda. “Art” representing a more conservative outlook was either not shown or simply does not exist. Either way, no modern Art that conflicted with the lecturers’ views was presented to us. Some of our reading material also had a heavy political bias. The essay “In Freefall” is little more than a sustained attack on Western Culture from a woman whose nation has plenty of blood on its own hands.
Where my patience with the course ran out was the segment “who is other?” the reading for which was little more than a checklist of modern identity politics talking points, presenting women, non-whites and non-heterosexuals as victims by the mere act of existing. Anyone who is straight, white and male is automatically living a life of luxury. This I genuinely do object to on an ideological level. I won’t turn this into a debate, but I feel that I have been quite successfully “othered” for most of my life despite, if not in some cases because of, being straight, white and male. The proposed reading didn’t even seem to attempt to talk about Art using the loosest interpretation of that word. Thankfully on the day of the lecture I was ill and could not attend, which is good because I fear I would have lost my temper. The University system in the west is in some quarters seen as a joke, little more than a liberal indoctrination ground and money scam. This isn’t the first time the system has managed to live up to that stereotype. During my foundation year one of our lecturers used his position firstly to decry the supposed patriarchy and secondly to make us watch Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth, and never got round to talking about Art.
But the system can be better than this. Most of the Art teachers I have had have been sincere and qualified. The animation staff here at Cardiff Met are a fine group, but it seems constellation could be renamed “indoctrination”. I would like to point out one of the segments questioning what our responsibility as Artists to the wider world is seemed only to exist to encourage the idea that we should be activists first and Artists – third perhaps.
If my arguments make no impact, perhaps the staff should consider whether they would have approved if rather than showing us “an Inconvenient Truth” our foundation leader had instead read aloud from “The Art of the Deal” . Using your platform as an Art teacher to push personal politics is dishonest, regardless of where you fall on the political spectrum.
I will say, though, the segment “What About Pleasure?” while still built on the idea that I dislike, that Art needs to be justified, did give me some interesting things to think about. The comparison between the two types of pleasure defined by Nietzsche has stuck with me.
Constellation in the spring term has been trying. Despite all my efforts I wasn’t able to get my head around the proposed research method, using the online articles catalogue. I was eventually allowed to study via printed books, which suited me better. I can honestly say I’ve never put this much effort into reading in my life, but I fear I burned out rather quickly. I hope what I have acquired will prove to be enough. At the least, I was able to read about subjects that interested me, which was a nice change. I don’t really feel the unstructured environment (exacerbated later by the pandemic) is the best in which to study. They seem to want you to study in a particular way, show your workings in a particular way, and come to conclusions in a particular way, but they don’t tell you this. It feels like being asked to build a house when you have no knowledge of masonry, and not even knowing what sort of house the client wants. Building blindly and just hoping that what you make will satisfy. I still say this time would be better spent just letting me make animation.
John's Learning Journal 