tagged me, so here we go:

RULES:

1. you must post these rules (very, VERY important)
2. answer the questions the tagger set for you in their post, and create ten new questions for the people you tag to answer.
3. you have to choose 10 people to tag and post their icons on your journal.
4. go to their pages and tell them you have tagged her/him.
5. no tag backs
6. no crap in the tagging section about „you are tagged if you're reading this". you legitimately (aka, really, truly, with all honesty) have to tag 10 people.

~Aaymalia'S QUESTIONS:

1. if you were stuck in a room with a cactus, a rubber duck, meatloaf, and a plunger, what would you do with them out of boredom?
i'd make a sculpture by sticking the rubber duck to the cactus, and sell it for insane amounts of money. then id eat the meat loaf (assuming you don't mean meat loaf the singer.), and will then practise throwing the plunger so it sticks to the wall for the remainder of the time.

2. what superpower would you want to have and why?
that's a tough one – so many possibilities! here is an offbeat one: being able to suppress being the object of anyones epistemic activity. why? ultimate stealth!

3. you are walking out of a cafe and see a bunch of flamingos, parrots, lions, and rhinos storming down the streets causing a ruckus, what is your immediate response?
„holy shit!"

4. on a scale of 1 to 10, one being normal and 10 being insane and should be committed, what are you?
how should i know? i think i'm perfectly fine, but i don't have experience myself as a fellow human. maybe they think i am batshit insane. but why would i give a shit about that when i have evidence of being perfectly fine?
my educated guess is 7-ish.

5. who stole the cookies from the cookie jar?
why, i did, of course.

6. if you had to pick three things from your house before a house fire, what would you pick?
arrrrr, desparation! i am such a sucker for my own material culture (read: i own and cherish owning a lot of things – mostly my video game consoles, my books, but also the unique data on my computer), i could not possibly limit myself to three things. i'm glad the cat will get out of the house on her own, though.

7. what are areas in your art that you could perhaps improve in or want to see improvement in?
pretty much everything, to be honest. mostly, i'd like to know more about design and composition, though. economy in painting, and having the guts to head for the gesture instead of „correctness" is a rather close second.

8. what are you doing on December 21st 2012?
i have no idea. probably preparing christmas.

9. do you prefer art that is beautiful or art that conveys a meaning, message, your emotions, etc.?
ah, beautiful question!
for one, art that is beautiful certainly is enough justification. but going a bit deeper, beauty can just as well be linked to what an artwork conveys, not only sheer sensual beauty. i'd wager that in a lot of cases, there is no clear seperation between the two. the cleanest separation i can think of is to appreciate an artwork for the beauty of its craft. if i appreciate the looks of a lady in a painting, am i not either appreciating the craft of the painter, or the lady herself instead of the artwork?
regarding the whole issue of „conveying", i am well divided: i think that art should convey something, i.e. it is the creator's job to try orchestrating his or her audience. however, i find that artwork striving to make a social, political or moral point to be a complete failure. in fact, i think it is completely contradictory to do so. the whole talk of artists bearing a responsibility to society, to better values etc. pp. is something i find stupid, arrogant and plain misguided. for one, i find sociopolitical matters to be too small and irrelevant to say anything general of much value about them. and then, the artwork will be obsolete as soon as the sociopolitical circumstances change. as an artist, that would be a bad job at orchestrating my audience when i rely on them knowing certain things for my artwork to make any sense. art is not moral, social, political, or any other -al, but total.
what i also dislike is allegory. allegory relies on knowing a code to decipher a message (such as what item in a painting means what), without which the artwork doesn't do much. it's laziness on the part of the creator, and also abuse of one's chosen medium: if i use a painting to symbolically convey something (to those initiated in the knowledge of the symbolic code i use) that itself is not visual, then i am paying disrespect to the medium of visual art, to my audience, and – via laziness – also to myself.
the medium should be used for what it can do; painting or drawing should not be shoehorned into being an essay or an aphorism. (the same goes for every other artistic medium: literature, music, film, video games, etcetera). the audience deserves a statement that hits the mark instead of needing them to piece the meaning together like a crossword puzzle. and i should put in the work to solve the problems i have with the means i chose, not take a cheap walkaround.
so, what i want visual artwork to convey is visual things: the „thisness" of a movement, a pose, or an athmosphere (not „the way a foggy landscape makes me think of timelessness and magic", but to actually evoke that feeling in concentrated form when looking at the picture. a direct visual statement instead of a literal, grammatical one!). the interplay, and sensations of shapes, tone and maybe color – celebrating visuality as a means of making impressions upon us. if we are to convey the character, or single characteristics of things, visual arts should convey them by visual means, not by placing pieces of code to be deciphered. visual arts can not do all things, and it does not need to. we can not give such an elaborate account of the workings and turmoils of a person's consciousness as the novelist can do. in exchange, we speak the native vocabulary of the visual senses – we do not need to use words to describe a tree, and how it seems to those who look upon it, we can show it and every viewer will experience it himself, instead of just being told. there is no better or worse between the different mediums, there is just difference.
i like art that doesn't pretend (and inevitably falls flat trying) to be something it isn't, but conveys what it can.
eat this wall of text! hah!

10. do you enjoy talking to my insane self? (Mia)
yesh :3

TAGGING:

(i don't know ten people to tag who haven't been tagged by mia already, so i will have to break the rules a little bit)






MY QUESTIONS FOR THE TAGGED:

1. in your personal art, do you have a specific „thing" (like a common topic, or other leitmotif) or do you just do whatever strikes your fancy?
2. it's easy to be amazed by a flimsy sketch that is full of pure genius. how do you feel about an artwork you find kind of meh, but see that a crazy amount of work must have been put in?
3. do you tend more towards watching the newest biggest movies at the cinema, or watching your own mix of stuff at home/with friends?
4. do you think you have a responsibility as an artist? what kind of responsibility, and for whom?
5. short stories or huge epics with tons of lore?
6. what do you feel is the most important lesson in making the kind of art you do?
7. do you have a non-art-related hobby that has a positive impact on your art?
8. do you fancy something you are „too young" for, like music from before your birth?
9. do you think that science can explain everything?
10. fucking magnets, how do they work?!?

have fun, everyone!