Research Blog

I've found some books about and by Bruce Nauman, Robert Smithson, and Gordon Matta-Clark, and I'm starting to think maybe I'm an idiot because it just seems like a lot of nonsense to me. I'm no philosopher, but I think I should be able to get something out of these books. Of all the books and essays I've looked at, I've found only one about Andy Goldsworthy that has some information that I could understand. I've always enjoyed Goldsworthy's work and am very interested in its subtlety and complex simplicity. The writing about Goldsworthy mentions that his work is often criticized by environmentalists as being too passive. "The thinking goes that if the house is on fire do you make a pretty tower out of chairs?" But I feel more like the idea is that everyone is in the house with matches and gasoline and maybe a pretty tower of chairs will distract them. I feel like this indirect approach is valid and useful to consider. Also I watched Thomas Reidelsheimer's documentary about Goldsworthy, "Rivers and Tides". Here is a clip from that:


In it he talks about his process and ideas about his work. One thing he mentions that I found very interesting was he describes his work as "a way of understanding; Seeing something that was always there, but you were blind to it." He has made me think that I need to be more sensitive to the subtle natural effects and processes in my work, I recently shot my video of me with the water filter and am now thinking I should include imagery of the ripples made by the pitcher, and for my next shoot with the inhaler, I should put some focus on the way the air and mist interconnect. I think nature should be the vehicle of my aesthetics. Something visual and stimulating that can illustrate a small section of the fractal complexities of nature and life.