H8ters
I don’t want this to sound the wrong way. I am confident in my work, but this is not why I feel motivated to post this.
I NEED REAL CRITIQUE. Otherwise the whole process of sharing my ideas is a WASTE. I am getting very frustrated. I am insulted that no one steps up to the plate, are my ideas weak and you can’t even muster the energy to give feedback? THEN TELL ME THAT. Where are the people who don’t share my taste, I want to find you and talk to you. Where are the people who don’t care about the things I care about, I want to find you and talk to you. Where are the people who don’t like me personally or professionally, I want to find you and talk to YOU.
Because as much as I love the positive comments, that gives me NOTHING. I don’t need APPROVAL. Right now, where I am at, I would do things the way I want no matter what as long as my decisions were educated. But I can’t see things from outside myself, and that is what I need.
I CRAVE THE H8. I THIRST FOR THE HATERADE.
I see this masochist impulse in plenty of students R.It’s so old-fashioned. I’m not sure that the old school reamming you long for is so valid these days.
Perhaps the critique of your work is in the work that someone else makes….the work that shows yours up….that totally makes it seem irrelevant.
Perhaps the apathy of those around you can be shaped and structured to greater ends. I don’t know. But pleading for the hate seems as sad-sack as begging for love. Either way it puts you in a reactive position. Looking over ones shoulder like any slave asking the master “Is this alright? Am I doing okay?” The only active mode is in making your work, experimenting….keeping your nose to the grindstone.
This in itself is very helpful. However, I feel differently about the purpose of an audience (for whom aesthetic/concept/etc can never always translate) and the purpose of a group of my peers, who have awareness of my concept and practice from the get-go. I don’t think the approval-slave formula quite covers it. Does that make sense? The fact that I am (as part of the school structure) made to share my process, not just my piece, in very formal way in some way makes me feel entitled to get more in return. Because although it may be “old-school” that IS how many of my classes are run.
I think seeing others work through the eyes my own work in mind is an approach I haven’t fully committed to, and should. And as per becoming reactionary, I see no fault in the possibility of making reactionary art while investing in an institution that enforces the critique format. To believe myself higher than that I think would be a boldly sophomoric choice.
And hell sure, I’ve got a little masochist in me.
