I have been corresponding with my friend Jeff recently about the implications of this post from a little while ago. He brought up a good argument that in light of how the post was written makes a lot of sense. Essentially his contention came with my use of the the word thought, or rather the necessity of “thinking” in art. His reading of my words came down to me espousing the pre-thinking of a work through to its conclusion without variance. In this sense I wholeheartedly agree with him.
Because, he points out, the accidental or the “mistake” is one of the greatest elements of the creative process. When a plan for a work is set in motion and some rupture or other occurs that breaks the flow and redirects the work into another direction the artist must be able to respond to this situation or the work begins to falter. Not only do I think this is good, I think it necessary. At the same time it means thinking through the whole meaning of a work such that when those moments arise, the challenge can be met.
Thinking need not be an abstract intellectual pursuit either. I use the word thinking in a broad sense here as a reasoned awareness towards the work. After all, I have been violently accused of being unthinking in the past because of my belief in the importance of action before theory. Becasue theory must be grounded in practice. The former derived from the latter.
One of my favorite artists is John Cage whose work centers around the unknown, the accident. His works allows for accidents to occur within a clearly designed and well thought out framework. In so doing he allows for random ruptures to occur, while at the same time intelligently thinking through the entirety of the work.
Randomness is something I not only enjoy but encourage in my own process. Although much of my training had to do with figuring through every detail of a design, I like to construct my light plots such that there is a lot of flexibility in them. During the process for any play some preconceived notion is going to fail. It just happens. That is the nature of the work itself. By allowing for sufficient movement within a predetermined structure, when these moments inevitably happen, they can be responded to quickly and intelligently rather than causing the entire process to break down.
Making space for the inevitability of accidents allows a work to grow in response to its environment. It makes the whole thing dynamic and expansive in a very necessary way. How these allowances are made and what happens when accidents arise necessitates a strong visionary thinking artist to best craft the situation to enhance the work as a whole.
