Rushed, delirious thoughts in response to <a href=" http://www.thisisliveart.co.uk/prof_dev/diy/diy9_stacy_makishi.html” target=”_blank”>this call out.

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I used to be a hardcore Christian and it weighed very heavily on my mind. I am now an atheist but working on the Brautigan Book Club project, I have been meeting a lot of interesting people and ideas have been flying around about there being something ‘magical’ in the air. I am interested in/believe in the concept of creating (activated) space inside each person/audience member. I was looking at the questions in the link:

“Can art stimulate belief? Can spirituality radicalize art practice? Is it the aim of both art and spirituality to ‘deepen the mystery’?”

and I have had an immediate plethora of reactions to them, which is a great sign.

Some ideas and questions in a rush:

I feel caught between not wanting to seem like a hippy, believing in the power of people, but am drawn to the mysterious workings of emergence theory – how can the whole really become greater than the sum of its parts? It does seem like a magical energy, but I don’t consider myself to be spiritual at all and have a snobbish attitude towards it. I think I believe that art should stimulate, and stimulating belief is a great idea, but I feel strongly that it should activate a belief in onesself/humanity (as opposed to an Outside Other).

I rage against people not taking me or my work seriously. I try to make my work as accessible as possible but this idea of generating ‘mystery’ is an interesting one – does mystery mean inaccessibility? I don’t think so. But accessible is sometimes a dirty word. One question is, if something is free, why do then not place a value on it? Art should be entirely accessible and by this, I mean people should not be scared of art being ‘not for them’.

Spirituality stimulating art? Hm. Well, an eye on the larger scheme of things should absolutely feed into art as it should feed into (daily) life.

What do you think?