(no subject)

[kradeelav]

GOOD NEWS this week finally started to shape up ... it's still pretty grueling in terms amount of obligations to do (sending all of the last doujin shipments and other stuff), but it's the last big week for a while and already i'm in a far, far better place mentally than two weeks ago. do i dare credit part of that with starting a radiant dawn run. :P


so i've been talking to EFF-recommended legal advisors about Stuff to do in advance in regarding to art and obscenity and personal websites and all of that. some of you know this, i am debating on posting a more lengthy post on that later when it's finished.

and in a pile of the really good advice that i was given about actionable items to do with one's personal site (if you post NSFW), is to have a fleshed out artist's statement that talks about the "why" of what you do with art, that way absolute worst case scenario you get your ass hauled up into court, you've got a little more of an artist's defense to go off on than trolling or shock art for the sake of shock (in the eyes of a legal court who might have reason to take your stuff in the most bad faith possible way).

and on one hand, okay, writing an artistic statement, been there, i guess i can wrangle together something better than my very tongue in cheek 'fuck authority' one lol.

but on the other hand....

the longer i think about it, the more wrong that starts to feel.

i've talked about this before obliquely here in this zine -- that the reason i got online was to get away from inherent assumptions people made about me (mostly physically but else-wise too). to be somebody else with a truly blank slate and to explore things in fiction / talk about topics with no real consenquence. 

and it just... the more i think about it, the more an artist's statement that seeks to explain [why specifically i draw certian kink / dead dove art in defense ] the more ... slightly lowkey violating that feels, to explain the Stuff i'm trying to get away from, especially if i'm being forced to say it under duress. it's one thing if i explain life circumstances to a friend in private or oblique hints in art; there's a sense of earned trust there.

but it just ...

feels self defeating in the weirdest hollowest sense if i'm forced to loop back around to why i escaped it all to begin with?

and it's not even about me and my experiences specifically, it feels .... so wrong to the spirit of the (dead) internet i grew up with. information wants to be free. the idea of having to defend basic-ass art was so... foreign. that was the land of stupid physical laws. here in this digital home we all snuck away to, we were all well and truly free in the mind in a way that was astoundingly, staggeringly beautiful, and so rare in human history.

(I've been thinking a lot lately how much my heart aches that 'information wants to be free' is such a morbidly ironic line, these days. i really did believe that, for the longest time. still do, but falteringly.) 


but hell, maybe that zine's my artist's statement. i don't really care to revisit it and it's aged remarkably well. 

Comments

[ellerean]

I am also running through Radiant Dawn, so it's definitely a mood-booster :D

What ever happened to "art for art's sake?" Why do we need to defend art, like it's this dirty secret? I mean, sure, we could all come up with our reasons to why we create. (Mostly escapism, I imagine.) But like you said, it's one thing to discuss that with friends but another on this bigger scale.

I don't know, I'm with you there... it just puts as bad taste in my mouth.

[kradeelav]

<3 soooo glad RD's treating you well too :D

and absolutely, it's just pictures at the end of the day, to varying degrees of tastefulness. i feel like old fandom's stance on squicks was remarkably ahead of its time.

[synecdoches]

When you started talking about an artist's statement, the Box Of Doom zine is the first thing that came to my mind, not your FAQ page. I think it says what needs to be said. I'm definitely not a lawyer, though. I'm glad you're in touch with actual lawyers.

There's this idea that art must be worth something in order to justify spending any time making it. It must be marketable, palatable, respectable, important to someone other than the artist. Even outside the lens of being a freak (I love being a freak) it seems engineered to crush the spirit of any would-be artist. Because if you have to make what other people want, not what you want, why bother making it? And if it has to be respectable, palatable, high-quality, etc, why bother exploring anything new? And then it connects back to being a freak-- of course the powers that be don't want us to explore new things. Don't question, don't challenge anything. Art for art's sake is inherently a confrontational idea under capitalism, because art and exploration and subversion are a threat to systems of power.

all this to say: I love and appreciate freaks who keep being freaks in the face of all this. I hope you can keep stable as the pendulum swings.

[synecdoches]

you deserve to make what you want without having to add a thousand caveats.

[kradeelav]

replying to your other comment in a hot second but i hope you know this meant so much to me at the time i printed it out and had it taped to my laptop. really helped me when it needed to. <3

[kradeelav]

A picture says a thousand words (and more), as the line goes - honestly, since you felt the same with 'Box of Doom', that's almost certinally what I'll link to. <3 thank you for being so reassuring when I needed it.

[karel]

>> the more ... slightly lowkey violating that feels, to explain the Stuff i'm trying to get away from

You know it's got that same vibe as like... must be x level of traumatized to make art about y topics and have a therapist's signoff and blah blah and it's like man. Nobody owes anyone that. It's shit.

[kradeelav]

amennn to that, gosh. sometimes privacy is so, so nice.

[halcyonstars]

yeah I dislike the idea of artist statements ironically for the same reason I dislike alt-text evangelism -- it forces the artist to make canonical interpretations of their own work, when the lack of offering a canon is in of itself a valid creative expression.

that said i think the best way to approach the idea of an 'artist statement' is on the same condescending dry level as a viewer disclaimer, a formal acknowledgement or statement of the obvious to cover your ass and move on (ala "this is a work of fiction, any real world similarities to events or persons is strictly coincidental" or "events or actions taken in the story do not reflect the real world politics of the creators", etc).

[kradeelav]

100% with those reasons also being a factor with me too, with the alt text - totally get the importance of accessibility, but boy does it exceptionally narrow nuance/interpretation of the artistic work just by it being what it is.

i like your added text as a disclaimer! totally going to rewrite a chunk of the FAQ with that in there as well as the main front page and be satisfied with that.

[lukadian]

I think it may feel so viscerally wrong is because it sometimes feels the same way, in my experience, as it did to write massive disclaimer tyoe oages trying to cover all the potential bases of offense anyone could take with my clearly marked and labeled mature work and it felt like I was putting myself on trial sort of, preemptively going on the defensive to explain myself, my work, my intents to those who would not have them in the first place, who would assume the worst about me and my work and not really *Care* what I had to say, regardless of if I said it or not. It felt like an exercise in defeat or admitting there was something inherently “wrong” with the kind of art I made and the stories I wanted to tell.

[kradeelav]

gosh, putting yourself on trial is exactly the feeling that it felt, when trying to wrangle some kind of artist's statement at least for that purpose -- trying to introduce the whole body of creative vulnerability in advance for the worst faith angle possible is just a recipe for us old internet heads to skedaddle away and find the closest hole to hide. but yeah, it feels too close to bowing down ahead of time to power's whims. thank you for your comment, you are felt. <3