I originally gave a version of this talk to the MA Contemporary Art Practice Program at the Royal College of Art in 2021. I’ve adapted some sections of this text for the current year. Side Quests I want to start by summarizing a few of the conversations that I've had with my students this past semester and to put this into perspective for myself as well. We often framed the pandemic as an interruption to both education and artistic practice — which seems to imply that there is some type of final context for our work. In many cases, this feeling was due to the lack of a senior show that had to be put online. Additionally, studio resources like power tools and printers became unavailable. Many projects were half finished and had to abruptly change course.
This is genuinely inspiring in how plain and true the insights are.
It's true as creatives we often have some mythic idea of the pinnacle of our production being to land in a museum, or institutionally validated, when those institutions are also impermanent. Sometimes they are even far more fragile than the conditions we are in and authentically responding to.
This is genuinely inspiring in how plain and true the insights are.
It's true as creatives we often have some mythic idea of the pinnacle of our production being to land in a museum, or institutionally validated, when those institutions are also impermanent. Sometimes they are even far more fragile than the conditions we are in and authentically responding to.