APRIL’S (slightly delayed) DIGESTIF
Scroll down for recommendations & an extra prompt
In April’s Art & Flash we looked at the work of Francesca Woodman, an American photographer best known for black and white images, of herself or female models posed in abandoned spaces.
In the light of the publication of A Machine-Shaped Hand, a piece of ‘creative’ writing produced using AI, I wanted to feature an artist who would prompt us to think - Why did this person, this fellow human being, create what they did? How does knowing about their life change how I feel about their work? What is it that drives a person to create a piece of art? What were they thinking and feeling? You could rightly say that most, if not all artists prompt these questions. But, Woodman’s struggle to achieve recognition during her lifetime, her early death by suicide at 22 and her manipulation of technology, photography in this case, I felt, made her work an appropriate choice for this month’s session.
In her article about A Machine-Shaped Hand Jeanette Winterson wrote that -‘We feel. Machines do not feel, but they can be taught what feeling feels like. That’s what we get in this story.’ This left me wondering why we would want to do this and to what ends. When human beings are already creating art and literature that helps us to understand ourselves and each other better, that comforts and inspires us, what benefit is there in teaching machines what it feels like to feel? More importantly, what is lost when we are offered a piece of art or literature that has not grown out of lived experience?
In her short life Woodman created a body of work that is both beautiful and unsettling. Work that holds a mirror up to our humanness, the experience of being flesh and blood and heart existing in built environments, spaces echoing with others’ stories. She did not need to be taught how it feels to feel.
If you’re interested in finding out more about Woodman’s life and work, click here.
Extra Writing Prompt
Many thanks to Beth Sherman for drawing my attention to the photograph below. Francesca Woodman staged most of her photographs indoors, often in run-down, abandoned buildings. So it was exciting to see this image and ponder what might have inspired her to choose a sandy beach as the setting for this image.
Prompt: Something that usually takes place inside takes place outside
Recommendations
Avicii – I'm Tim
This is a documentary about Tim Bergling also known as DJ Avicii. Like Woodman, Bergling struggled with mental ill health and ended his life at a young age. Unlike Woodman he became hugely successful during his lifetime. The film is a poignant reflection on Tim’s life, the pressures of fame and how it impacted his health and creative ambitions.
Book of Delights by Ross Gay
Woodman and Bergling both struggled with their mental health, but I’m not here to push the troupe of the tortured genius, the idea that to be truly gifted, for your art to be meaningful you must be deeply troubled. So, here is a recommendation that celebrates the very human ability to delight and find magic in the world, at the same time as holding a torch to the difficulties of living in it.
You can also listen to Ross Gay on the On Being podcast. His episode On The Insistence of Joy is a wonderful celebration of joy as a radical act, a reminder that finding joy is a vital act of resistance and a source of great power.
