Light Cue 23

So I figured I would try that whole conversational blogger thing out, as it seems to be popular with the kids these days. Also I just woke up from a nap, so please bear with me.

I have been thinking about conceptual art recently and for the most part I don’t like it. “But Lucas, you are such a conceptual, intellectual type, why on earth would you not like conceptual art?” Well, because I love art. And I love conceptual thinking. But I find a lot of conceptual art misses the art and lies about the concept.

What the hell does that mean?

Actually I am not so sure but it feels right. And again, I just woke up from a nap.

Let us take one of my favorite conceptual works of art. Erasing De Kooning. I have never seen this work of art. I don’t need to. It actually is conceptual art. The idea, and execution thereof, is the art. The object, ultimately, bears no relation to the work of art. It is after all, a blank piece of paper. My next favorite is 4’33”. But again, the ‘work’ exists only in the past, in that first moment it was performed. After that the art died and only the concept remained.

Concepts are dead. There is nothing wrong with death. It can be quite beautiful. But unlike art, it is not alive. Most conceptual art hits high marks for concept but falls dead on the art. At that point I am bored.

In an essay in Theatre of Essence titled ‘After Grotowski: The end of the impossible Theatre’ Jan Kott describes a happening in which a truly transformative social-sexual event takes place and then a later run of that same piece, where the audience, knowing all the cues, is prepared for a huge orgy and is in no way challenged. There is a fundamental difference between those two events, even though they might follow the exact same script.

I love reading philosophy. Yet it is interesting that that works like Being and Time are lumped together with general criticism as both being Philosophy. One would never, I hope, confuse art with art criticism. Yet when one delves into conceptual art the lines begin to blur. Done well this can be interesting, but more often than not I simply end up bored. And I do not think anything interesting has been added to the conversation.

In California I was involved with a group that threw very high concept dance events in San Francisco. While the event itself was highly conceptual in nature, the music fucking rocked out. There was no esoteric cerebral concept. It was just some bangin’ Breaks.

Afterwards there would often be discussion and criticism of both the concept and the music, but they were two separate conversations. Why? Because they are two separate things. To try and conflate the two misses the entire point.

It was conceptual art, with a sense of fun. A sense of play. Ideas and concepts, rarely, have that play. I like plays. I like having fun. Working on shows I have little interest in working with people who have no sense of fun. People who take themselves so fucking seriously they can not laugh at their own absurdity from time to time. One can do serious work and still have the process be fun.

I’m about as absurd as they get. I’m also tend to be high on the conceptual list as well. In the theatre I don’t care about the concept. I care about staying true to the moment and having fun. The conceptual work is great as a foundation. It is a fun intellectual exercise and as a way of using all those fiddy cent SAT words. But when I am working it is not with the rational linguistic part of my brain that I work. It is the visual and temporal processing centers.

This was true of Brecht, one of the biggest theory geeks ever to grace the theatre. Theory has its place outside the rehearsal. Inside the rehearsal, theory is deadly. The only way to truly engage a work of art on the conceptual and theoretical level is through another work of art. To engage it on the level of theory and criticism is either a book report, or it engages the concept behind the work, and not the work itself.

As Peter Brook says in the Empty Space

To make matters worse there is always a deadly spectator, who for special reasons enjoys a lack of intensity and even a lack of entertainment, such as the scholar who emerges from routine performances of the classics smiling because nothing has distracted him from trying over and confirming his pet theories to himself, whilst reciting his favorite lines under his breath. In his heart he sincerely wants a theatre that is nobler-than-life and he confuses a sort of intellectual satisfaction with the true experience for which he craves. Unfortunately, he lends the weight of his authority to dullness and so the Deadly Theatre goes on its way.