Akakdemie-X, Christopher Williams

[[akademie-X]], [[Christopher Williams]]

  • Lesson 35 - No Plexiglas, No Electricity, No Humour; or Love is Colder Than Death, page 36

  • PAYING ATTENTION TO OTHERS - Pay attention to what other artists are doing. It gets harder and harder as the amount of art being produced keeps growing, but it’s super important to know what your colleagues are up to. To be able to think about the present historically, you have to look at as much as you can right now. There’s a more social aspect to it as well, which is that, if you expect people to pay attention to your work, you need to pay attention to theirs… artists such as John Baldessari and Ed Ruscha continue to go to galleries every month, getting to know younger artists and constantly looking at other people’s work.

  • It’s important to absorb as much information as possible but then to think through your materials.

Akademie-X, Christopher Williams

  • Lesson 35 - No Plexiglas, No Electricity, No Humour; or Love is Colder Than Death

  • So many young artists I meet don't seem to have understood that they're going to spend their whole lives as artists. They're in a hurry because they feel that if they're not a success right out of the gate they're going to be a lifelong failure. I encourage you to think in a much longer arc, to take it easy and do it for the long haul - not to have a preconceived idea of what success is in relation to a durational framework. Some artists are successful early on, others later. Sometimes students also have misconceptions about what success is, mistaking the social aspects associated with success for actually making a successful artwork. To have a gallery, to have a big studio and to make money isn't necessarily to make good art. Don't confuse those two things.

  • I encourage you to think more historically and consider what your contribution to art could be, not about what your art practice can bring you in terms of material things.

  • I don't like to stand behind the camera or in front of the camera; I like to stand beside the camera. I figured out pretty early on - or I came up with the idea - that the camera is actually not the only agent involved in the production of meaning. There are also chemical designers, optical designers and industrial designers. There are economic and social issues. So I try to move around the photographic programme and occupy different positions at different times. Even though I didn't' get assignments in art school, I do treat myself like a commercial photographer: I give myself assignments. I become a product photographer, or I become a photojournalist, and I pick a subject as though it were a journalistic assignment.