I understand that beneath the box labelled ‘name’, I cannot write – who’s asking.
I understand that, to the question: what experience do you have? I cannot write: none whatsoever, take me as I am.
And I understand, I really do, that when they ask about my practise, about my past, about my proposal for the project that another something hundred are also answering I cannot write: who cares? Who cares and I don’t know! I don’t know who I am and what I do and why I do it and why it matters and what, if you ever did, which you won’t, I would do with the weird power you are able to bestow but seemingly never do. I don’t know.
Every application is a reminder of the base fact.
We have no idea what we’re doing here. Why we’re here? Why? And so and so.
I wonder if accountants are expected to present their future accounts. I wonder if teachers, before the board, before the hiring suits, with ancient handkerchief stale in their pocket, are expected to recognise the student – not yet born. That they might notice, might shelter, might recommend a university or obscure novel that would shape the great person in a future decade.
There is a dissonance between the art and the process of allowing the art to be made. I know of many who will simply not stoop so low, who refuse the applications, the grants, who say: if they like it, they will come.
But we cannot all be Van Gogh – in fact, I reckon for every Van Gogh there are several hundred, perhaps thousand, Van Poos.
Van Poos, who are great in many respects, who are making work creative, responsive and present. Van Poos who, if their work was placed beside another in the gallery you might stop for a minute, might take a picture with your iPhone, might call over your date and say: see what they’ve done with the colour, with the form. Did you know they were never discovered in their time? Did you know they died never knowing their work touched people?
But for Van Poos, there is no such instance. There are no romantic obituaries, no laments. You die and the boxes of your work you saved are heaved into the skip by guilty relatives or hungry landlords, clearing room for the next Van Poo to make and pay and shit and die.
For every great man of history, there are millions of others who survive only in the genes they pass on or the plastic they throw away.
And this is okay. This should be okay. Why does it matter that I will be forgotten, we will all be forgotten in the end. The sun explodes, the moon collides with earth.
But art is about being understood. I make something so you will see me, so you will understand that I too, am human, am here – that I love and live and breathe and am terrified.
If I cannot do so because I cannot describe in 2000 characters what I couldn’t to those closest to me, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.
Be quiet? Die and let the earth understand my body as only it can.
Beneath the box labelled name I will give you the one I was first given.
To the question: what experience do you have? I will say: This! And only this!