Leo - “ I don’t have to make anything to be an artist”.

 

    A very artsy thing to say, but is it true? Usually you have to cook to be a chef, you have to cut people to be a surgeon, and you gotta throw dat ass back if you’re a baddie. Léo Bosi, a young Brazilian creative on the board of LAF&CI, is not exactly wrong. Are there artists that don’t make anything, physical or nonphysical? While there are artists who engage in specific genres, styles, and forms which are easily recognizable, there are also people in the art world whose job it is to understand how to synthesize art and understand its embodiment across all its genres. The art world depends on these individuals: directors, producers, A&R, and curators, to funnel artists to audiences and to each other. While it might not be immediately obvious, these individuals really are artists as well. Perhaps this is what he is referring to. Creative people rely on these artists to cultivate direction, harmony, and success. But wait, these individuals do make things, and their job is very specific…so what are we talking about? Is Léo wrong? Léo’s interview with Somewhere Stage provided a very interesting spring board for a philosophical conversation about the nature of creativity. In this article we develop an awareness of our role in creativity - as spectator, tool, and artist. We then discover how when creatives are not overcome by fear, we can choose to play; to dance between conformity, specificity, and their opposites. Together these ideas help us to effectively communicate our human experience and become powerful authors of our reality. 

 

     More on Léo: “No one knows this: I feel like I can navigate different types of dimensions and sensitivities. I can break out easily from colonized points of view.” In the past couple years he’s dabbled in a little bit of everything; musical theater, music, fashion and is currently taking an experimental dance class. One artistic experience that deeply influenced him was a theater course where he had to act as though he was living in a Neanderthal community. Interactions were simplified because there was only “minor intelligence that [ they ] could use to communicate. Theater is one of the most radical forms of art because you have to be very vulnerable. It was so intense and immersive. I feel like art can transport you to different times, to different points of view...” Léo says they hugged and sang at the end. “All of us felt this huge sense of unity and communion.” Choosing to engage broadly in art because of the variety of human perspective that can be garnered is a mindset of those aforementioned artists who organize large productions or projects with multiple levels. (Even among artists, not every person seeks to gain new understandings.) But while Leo finds himself transported to different points of view, it’s happening because he is creating: acting, making music, dancing. So yes, you do have to make something in order to be an artist. However, Léo’s “false" statement was a comment on the aesthetic of creating, and challenges our assumptions about the what we call “art”. It also intentionally underlines the subconscious mental borders we have around the elements of creativity and who we call an artist.

 

     To continue this conversation we need to understand the boundary between artists, tools, and spectators. Some definitions:

 

Spectators are conscious entities whose reaction to subjective information is significantly less than their passive reception of it affording them less, to little, to no influence on the immediate facade of a “work of art” (on its framework). They also become tools when their output post exposure is purely passive. Funny.

 

Artists are conscious entities which organize a reaction to subjective information within a framework with the use of tools thus - creating - an isolated creative artifact (tangible or elemental) with expressive potential. They are more reactive than passive to subjective information within a framework.

 

Tools are things (tangible or elemental) that do not have a mind of their own (or choice within a framework), and are useful because they have a dependable function. Tools do not interpret information as employed within a framework. Features of a conscious entity can be used as a tool. Such entities (people, animals, AI,…..deities?) can interpret but only do so to the extent allowed within the framework. Their features being used as tools do not interpret. Finally, in the domain of their active interpretation they act as artist. 

 

Art is a reaction to subjective information, knowingly or unknowingly (usually both), codified within a framework making it “a piece of art”. These frameworks excel in relaying complex ideas where direct verbal or written communication fails or is undesired. 

 

     The boundary between artist and artist’s tools is negotiated by the degree to which involvement in a framework includes active interpretation that causes an output within that framework. In these definitions we discover the hybrid nature of the elements involved in art. 

 

     Let’s apply these definitions to some artists. Take the example of an art gallery curator. Their tools are the artists themselves and the artist’s work. They weed through a global non-specificity of people and their creations to negotiate and tell a story with a coherent aesthetic. The nature of this work is the same for A&R, directors, etc. They are artists working with large scale form. For the curator, the artists and art which they arrange are tools only because at the point of their orchestration within an exhibit, they are stationary elements, complete unchanging products. I know what you are thinking: there is the exception of living exhibits where observers and spectators become artists as they engage in manifestly non-stationary and semi-framed presentations. Even in this sense, there still exists by design a framework which imposes limitations. This leads us to theater. 

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     Actors while essentially the tools of a script’s writer also operate through interpretation, using the writer’s text as a guidepost. Therefore, in so much as they actively react to what is written on the page, they are artists. This is why the same play, film, show can take on so many different colors based upon the actors involved, because the actors are “creating something” in every show. Furthermore, when viewing live theater, an audience’s - reaction - can spritz colors onto a performance. These are moments in which the audience’s participation moves beyond solid retroflection and generates output within the art itself. During these moments, the spectators have moved beyond passively receiving a formalized reaction on stage, and find themselves imposing their own interpretation onto the facade of the theatrical framework.

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     So an artist is a conscious entity whose internal experience and interpretation of information; their reaction, becomes manifest within a framework in real time through the use of tools to form a stationary or non stationary “piece”. It is important to note that an artist doesn’t make, an artist creates. The two are not the same. A printer is not an artist, a person in a sweatshop sewing sleeves onto a shirt according to a pattern is not acting as an artist. The  printer and the factory worker are making, but they are not creating. Both tools and artists make things, but only the artist is actively reacting to information and systematically codifying it. This is part of the reason why an exact replica of a famous painting is not worth the same as the original. One might argue the copy was made but not created, and so the value of the piece as an embodiment of an authentic reaction isn’t present. Apply the same value system to diamonds synthetic vs real.

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     So again, there is no such thing as an artist who doesn’t create anything. There are only abstract frameworks that might lead us to believe so. Couldn’t we argue using this framework that a riot is art then? It’s certainly a reaction to subjective information. But, when we refer to art proper, it is a reaction to subjective information, knowingly or unknowingly (usually both), codified within a framework making it “a piece of art. There’s gotta be a framework. So technically no, a riot is not a piece of art, unless it was designed. It is also usually spontaneous and involves normal direct modes of communication. We would have to then also say that socking someone in the face is art. Again there is no frame work, unless you bust their jaw. But martial arts!?. But ahh, a framework. Now if you are a political entity manufacturing riots within the framework of a goal and society, then yes you are an artist and the riot is art and the people participating are tools. Personally I’d like to think the politician is the tool here but sometimes as we have seen already identifying the tool is complex. So now we understand why Léo, a producer, and the CIA are all technically artists.

 

     Back to Léo’s initial statement, does experiencing art make you a creator, and thus an artist? Having an active reaction to art does make you susceptible to  transformation through the elemental ideas of a creative thing to the degree to which your reaction is expressed in your life afterwards. But this reaction does not take place within an organized framework which is in direct service to the ideas underlying the reaction. Example: I listen to a song about death which reminds me of my dead dog and I cry at work and then have pity sex with my coworker. These reactions were not organized into a framework, so I’m not an artist there regarding. (now if I record the latter and put it on my Only Fans…) 

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     We don’t say that titanium white acrylic paint is an artist, or that a violin is an artist, or that the lines in a script are artists. These are elements and tools for creation which are not experiencing anything (well actually…., that’s another article…) In the engaging with art, whether we submit to influence or resist, we become tools for transformation as the nature of our worldview engenders in our behavior in day to day life. While perhaps in the the totality of existence as a closed system or closed framework you do become art, your reaction to art which is itself subjective information, only itself becomes art, rendering you an artist, if you put it in a framework. Artists share art not only to inform reality but to actually create it, which is why above I mentioned that spectators become tools… Those who operate creatively in the production of life are indeed authors of reality. Perhaps they become, god? “All the world is a stage” indeed. Jimmy came and read his lines but perhaps the reader will actually play a part. (Perhaps they’ll be brave and write a new script). Léo makes things making him an artist, and through his active experience of works of art, he allows himself to be created, and creates himself as art. Underneath the metaphysical, albeit true, speculations there exists spectator, tool, and artist and an often very fluid movement between the three. 

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     At different points we find ourselves as spectator tool and artist. but what can get in the way of being an artist? We have to look at the processes that we undergo to actually create something effectively - not make but create - . Essentially what we will find is that some have to choose to be brave enough to go off on our own  and others need to be brave enough to learn from their community. Finding what’s unique about ourselves through nonconformity and refining our voice by submitting to the techniques of a master and so on. We have to risk being definable by implementing a framework and also allow ourselves to destroy the things that are familiar. Another story from Léo:

 

“At 4 years old I was in an art class [and a boy drew] a good beach [and] everyone [copied] him. I drew my own beach..it was a very ugly beach but at least it was my beach. I think that is my essence to value to authenticity and originality. “

 

     This is a common experience for artists; the desire to pursue one’s own voice by rejecting conformity. Léo’s classmates became makers, while he chose to create. However both conformity and nonconformity are important steps in developing the muscle of creativity. Imitation often provides the foundation for technique, which in turn has the potential to increase the effectiveness of a piece of art in relaying the artist’s message. The same is true of verbal communication, which without syntax becomes ineffective. Grunts can communicate a lot but they can’t build a rocket. Still everyone starts off as a Neanderthal demanding Cheerios before imitating their mother enough to be able to order a hot chocolate on their own from Starbucks. 

 

Léo also told somewhere stage that “All [ his ] life [ he’s ] been struggling to be original.” 

 

     The irony in the statement is the simple fact that there is only one Léo. What this really is a deeply embedded imposter syndrome where the self invalidates its own experience. Léo: “I felt that I’m not enough. But at the same time I have so much to offer. I feel misunderstood in many ways. I compare myself a lot to people.” The feeling of insufficiency and comparison underlines these ideas wherein the quest for authenticity is really a fight to affirm the actuality of self through a staunch constant friction with the external world. Artists do this in two ways; conforming to things that reflect their identity, and not conforming to things that don’t. One of Léo’s main tools as was mentioned earlier is his ability to detach at will. He’s been doing it since he was 4. “ I can break out easily from colonized points of view.” Fascinatingly enough the decolonization of self of all thoughts and ideas which are foreign to our actual bodies might result in clinical stupidity. It’s frequently quoted that an interaction loop is needed for the intellectual maturation of children. The very networks of reality need to be wired in some way for there to be a usable framework to begin functioning and interacting within the physical world. Is interpretation possible without “colonization”, without being fed a pre-existing dataset? Well everything is information and you can’t create an idea from nothing (ex nihilo). Actually, it’s the the nature of the goals which are manufactured through life experiences and imagination, and handed down as culture, and in the arts voice or style, which shift and create different identities and of course, art. As Léo wisely mentioned, he uses detachment to “navigate creativity.” Our opening statement is beginning to make more sense now. “[not having] to make anything to be an artist” is really about a global self awareness where one understands that there is strength in being able to shift between being a  spectator, a tool, and an artist. It’s also a sort of transcendent metaphysical way of saying that broadly people are art because they are influenced by the world. 

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     In order to navigate other peoples authenticity and our own, there are seasons where we need to become undefined and deconstruct. Remaining undefined and deconstruction are paths towards deeper understanding and observation. If you take a part a car engine, you will probably have a better understanding of how it works. “Decolonization” probably points towards a more inclusive reality, because understanding the creative engine of others might lead to an acceptance of their frameworks. There is also a technique element involved in being able to actively choose your reality, or participate and then check out of different realities. This brings us back to the producer or art curator. This is similar to the creative methodology of actors. There is often a discovery and deconstruction process that actors undergo when unwrapping new characters. They discover more about the self and the world of the other often resulting in a higher version of themselves.

 

   The truth is, that if we remain in either extreme, in either conformity or non-conformity we often lose our creative potential. It’s kind of like that person with a thousand friends who doesn’t know who they are vs that person who has no relationships and thinks they know themselves. As people we have origins and we have destinations and to get to our higher self we gotta understand how we came to where we currently are and develop the independent resilience to forge our unique path. A mature artist sees the value in copying the beach of the master, as well as the importance of drawing their own beach. What gets the way of several artists successfully embarking on this path is when they choose to always be a follower, or choose complete isolation. Artists do this because they are afraid. “I don’t have to make anything to be an artist” can translate to “I don’t have to be defined to be creative.” Or “I don’t have to create definition to participate”. And maybe better yet, “I don’t want to risk judgement”. When we choose to be defined, people can hold our framework against another’s. 

 

    Sometimes remaining in this space of anti-definition comes from the fear of losing a unique perspective that we can’t articulate yet but we know is there. But having reference points, places to start from, is a very positive thing. And the reference point doesn’t have to be where you stay. It’s like having roommates before having a house of your own. Just ask a mixing engineer what a reference track is. Or a designer what a mood board is. Look at your Pinterest. The absence of definition isn’t freedom, acknowledging that we have the choice to discover and define ourselves or even redefine and expand ourselves is a freedom. Furthermore power, which follows this freedom, is found in the bravery it takes to create, with definition, and risk judgement and further speculation of the merits of one’s identity. As artists, it is a great strategy to oscillate between these two poles, decolonization and ambiguity in order to discover ourselves, and definition, where we reach for something and risk judgement. Sometimes we draw our own beach because we are finding our own style, and sometimes we submit to the insight of a master to help perfect and clarify the elements of our own voice. We look to established residencies in the arts to understand what it means to have a home, we leave because we are ready to build one. - Not always in that order, and neither is this always true because these are the arts. There is someone somewhere doing something some how that renders everything or nearly so what I have said complete shit. Be certain of it. -

 

     Léo Bosi, just joined the board of creatives for the Los Angeles Fashion & Community Initiative early in September - perhaps one of his first official home bases artistically. As noted earlier producer, artistic entrepreneurs, impresarios and the like always have this multi-dimensional artistry and perspective about them. Léo is intellectually wise, and definitely in control. His artistic independence of mind is like a great cloud of water waiting to touch desert ground. When it does what will he be? Defined? Probably more than that, probably powerful.