Twok and other loaded terms...

Twok can speak well enough for themselves... they made their second appearance on Sunday Arts today. Nice sound.

We were eating dinner with one eye on Sunday Arts and through the haze of a nice bottle of white white, somehow this insight from William Kentridge managed to stick:

William Kentridge (WK): It was fortunate that I was so bad. If I'd be been only a little bit bad, I might have just had a miserable life as a failed actor, always getting just bad reviews and not quite understanding why.

But I'd stopped drawing before I went to theatre school, I'd given up being an artist.

My mantra to myself was 'you do not have the right to be an artist'.

Virginia Trioli (VT): Was that something so exalted in your mind?

WK: I suppose it was exalted or you felt that you had to have something to say if you were going to do it. I didn't think I did... and... I still don't think I do.

And... At a certain point, a friend of mine said 'well... you understand, you are now unemployable. You're too old to get a job, no one is going to give you a job. You've messed around for too many years. Either make a success at what you are doing or give up but don't think you are going to do anything different.'

So then I suddenly said 'alright, I suppose that means that I am an ......... artist'.

VT: Did that come as a relief?

WK: It kind of did. It took me until I was suppose 35 or 30 before I would write 'artist' in sort of visa applications or occupations. Before that I would just write 'technician'.

Whilst looking for a Twok segment I feel into the quagmire that it PMS (Postmodern Stress). This is a nice, simple insight into the movement of our time.



I was looking for some gallery crawls the other day and discovered the pre-YouTube world of Gallery Beat TV. There is an interesting docu called Guest of Cindy Sherman which looks at the key protaganist of said show's relationship with Cindy Sherman and the broader concepts it entailed.