ESSAY ABOUT SELF DOUBT AND ART AS A LANGUAGE
I used to think furniture was great because I like making things
and there are an infinite number of ways to make a chair and it takes a lot of thinking to make a good one.
Last week I went to the Scandinavian furniture fair in Stockholm and as lots of things do, it made me think a lot. And lately when things have made me think too much, I've tried to turn them into writing fodder:
I used to really like furniture. That's definitely what got me into 'design' and in a lot of ways has shaped my identity. I think I'm most happy with myself when I am making something in a workshop, maybe even a far-out unique chair that no one has ever seen before. But then I went and studied product design of all things. And guess what, chairs just weren't good enough anymore.
What's the point of making a chair when war is on fire and the climate is spinning backwards and there are just too many ways to not do what you really want to do! Oh, and don't get me started about what doesn't pay well.
So there I was, all ironic and pearly gazed at the pearly gates of a hyped up furniture convention, wondering what my relationship to a chair is nowadays. Why would anyone do this with the fire and the spinning and all of that? Just a bunch of knobs in knockoff kitchens selling knockoff knobs for real kitchens. What for?
So we wandered all day long seeing the endless sellers of office quiet pods and the smallest designers of far-out unique chairs.
And although my interest barely rose above the color purple, there were a few things that reminded me that there can be 'good' even in a sea of monotonous industry:
1. An exhibition of a named designer's experiemental-work-in-progress-unsellable-object-d'art that felt more genuine than the rest of the displayed objects in the building
2. A Talk by a guy and another guy who the first guy met in a car. He won an award and makes chairs that are very simple, industrial things.
3. The answer he gave to a question I asked him.
These things reminded me of this:
the process is more important than the work.
and to those small designers showing at a convention, if you aren't somehow sharing your thinking alongside your work, no-one will be interested. At the mouth of the exhibition lay a blue lit room stacked triple high with the afore-mentioned experimental objects; not quite sculpture/not quite furniture, but momentarily esteemed by warehouse themed pedestals. It was a room full of objects from the designer's personal collection. Objects that she made as tests or experiments and could not sell, but decided to keep for herself. Upon reflection, this was the museum-esque 'work-in-progress' format my romantic stupor wanted from a weekend dedicated to the pure art of furniture. I guess I didn't really think about it not just being furniture, but a furniture convention. Anyways, over the course of a few hours of walking through miles of mass manufactured mdf permutations on the exact same thing, the amount of thought present in this blue-lit room became clearer. In the aim of mass-manufacturable perfection, the objects I found most important were perfectly value-less in the eyes of any industry. I commend this designer for reminding me of the joy of the process; the series of decisions, risks, mistakes, and experiments that lead to an object of pride.
Beyond the blue room, past the presbyterian snack shop, through the double doors into hall C, lay 70,000 square meters of unadulterated business. Besides the business casual-defended free charcuterie and breath mints, everything in that room represented some finger of a big-ish industry. Among the many goliaths were a hundred or so small designers or studios presenting their work in a similarly lost fashion, each vying to grab the attention of the goop typing design magazines. Fatigued and overwhelmed, we found a seat in the back of the hall in front of a stage. Coincidentally, we sat down just before the start of a talk given by the sole designer of a small Swedish furniture brand admired and collected by the friend sitting on my left. In conversation with another designer he met in a car, he presented the thinking around his business:
make niche things at a small scale in a considered way at a reasonable price. Not everyone will like it, but a few people will and they will keep it forever or sell it on to someone else who will.
At the end of the conversation, I asked him the question that stops me daily:
In the face of a climate disaster, where every object we make "pushes something else off of the table straight into the trash," why do you make things?
looking deeply into my eyes, his answer was something like this:
"I make furniture as a way of disseminating and publishing culture, in the same way that music and painting and all forms of art attempt to. A good chair shows us who we are as a society. I think that's important."
I really appreciated that response. It momentarily lifted me out of the conference's malaise, helping me appreciate my appreciation of certain things as opposed to all things. I think it was the pressure to try and find good everywhere that made me feel a little ingenuine, allowing myself to wander with judgement felt good. It also felt good to hear someone so certain that continued making in an oversaturated world is a useful thing.
I trusted the designer's response to my question. It did, however, make me think about why I might continue to make things. After some thought, and a lot of writing, I believe this is the reason why I might continue to make things in a world with too much 'stuff:'
1. making things is, for me, play. And play makes me feel good.
2. In searching for alternatives to language and modern communication technology, as much of my recent work has explored, I've realized that making art is in itself a language. Sharing things made by my hands is a way for me to communicate ideas ill-suited to the standard mediums of conversation.
again; making stuff is a language.
And finally, this leads me to the reason I've spent so much time trying to write these 1224 words.
I have always been obsessed, in a bad way, with the question "what do I want to do when I grow up?" And somewhere along the line that question got muddled by the horrible question "what do I want to be when I grow up." By most standards I'm pretty much grown up now. And if I were supposed to 'be' something by now, I have failed. And I am coming to terms with the notion that, actually, I don't want to 'be' anything other than Jake. I have put a huge weight on myself to try and be something, and to earn money from being that something.
In spending lots of mental time with this conference through writing, I've reminded myself that its the doing that is the important part of that insane question.
Going forward I will try and remember this:
It is the process through which the art is made that is itself my art
