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As the terminology “arts thinking” germinated in my mind as a languaging tool to help describe my project, I researched its precedence and usage.  As previously stated, arts thinking as a modality already exists to some extent within the philosophies of art-making, and after a bit of internet archeology, I soon discovered some wonderful articles about “art thinking” written by artist, writer, and educator, Luis Camnitzer.  Luis was born in Germany in 1937 and moved to Uruguay when he was 2, now living and working in New York.  With his initial projects strongly in parallel with the American Conceptualist movement of the 1960s and ‘70s, Luis continues to use media such as sculpture, printed languages, and installation to talk about politics and democracy, activism, colonialism, and capitalism, especially as it relates to Latin America.[1]  I was interested in speaking with Luis, not only because his writings so exactly explained a particular perspective on arts thinking, but also because of his hybridized practice that uses language not only as a descriptive device, but also as a source of content and form itself.

 

I was so fortunate to be introduced to Luis – his writings, and to him in person – by Rachel Weiss, who has known Luis for quite some time.  I conversed formally with Luis, first via email, then over a Skype video call.  In our initial meeting, we talked a bit about Luis’ perspective on arts thinking, which he explains as “a freedom of connections to understand things better.”  Luis explained that he felt it would be best if I came up with a list of questions and he will answer them.  So,  still wanting his involvement, I did just that, and interviewed him formally on Skype a week after.  The following is our interview transcript.

           

 

TRANSCRIPT:

 

Emily Owen: How can artwork make a person see beyond just the object that is in front of them, or to bring a viewer or the audience into a broader conversation?

 

Luis Camnitzer: It depends what conditions you set up.  In 1979 I think, I had a piece in which I put a big sand mountain in the room, and the signage was behind it on the wall.  So people had to move around the mountain, and the signage they read that the mountain was manipulating the viewer to come around to read the signage. The piece was not the mountain, but the sign itself.  So, in that sense I took away the accent from the object, that actually in the space was quite imposing, and made it into a stimulus for something else.  So I shared a manipulation device with the viewer, to make the viewer understand both what the packaged object was showing to draw their own conclusions.  In general, I think that’s what it is.  A lot of artwork is idolistic, you linger on it and you enjoy it and have a sensorial experience, which may or may not transcend the object, and usually that’s geared to possession.  You want to have that.  And that’s really not something that I’m interested in.  I’m interested that you don't need to have it; I don’t mind selling it, but it's a buyer's problem.  What I would want is that process starts between the object and the viewer, and then continues between the viewer and then whatever the viewer then does.  So ultimately, it's really activating the creation of the viewer, not on the subject.  It’s a little bit like what you’re doing in class, when it's a student, you don’t want the student to linger and enjoy what you’re saying, you want the student to start thinking on their own.  And the teacher is a good teacher as long as the teacher is dispensable at some point.  I think the same with the artist, the artist should aim at their own dispensability, not at their own need to continue to exist.

 

EO:  Speaking again about your educational work, for the Under the Same Sun exhibition, you developed a teacher’s guide for thinking about art beyond disciplinary boundaries.  Can you talk a little bit more about how this project came to exist, as an experience and also as an object or tool that could be used by others?

 

LC:  The idea is again that people do not get hooked on the object.  Through a process of art appreciation usually is you look at the object and you stop there, or progressively through the object to look at other things.  I think both are rational and so that’s why I propose to go around the object and see what conditions made the object to exist, and the viewer has to participate, agree or not, with the result for those conditions.

 

EO: Thinking about art as a stimulus for something else, and going around the object, I was interested in your Mediocrity of Beauty show last year [2015] at Alexander Grey Gallery, you were quoted saying “Words are never able to fully convey what one truly thinks: thoughts and feelings are pressed into an alien format, like when poetry tries to imprison poetics in stiltedness. Symmetry worsens this by curtailing the freedom of information.”  Can you talk about what writing or words can do, or maybe what they cannot do?

 

LC:  The essay about beauty was unrelated to the pieces in the show, in the sense it wasn’t written for those pieces, but it was parallel.  The gallery said: “publish it,” which it fine for me.  It would be a mistake to take the objects in the catalog for the illustrations for the text.  The selection of those sentences were really trying to create a very threatening space, devised by somebody extremely paranoid, neurotic, and aggressive.  Actually not liking the audience, so there was a nice way of entering the exhibition.  It was a barrage of ultimately insulting pieces.

 

EO: When we last talked you mentioned different forms of knowledge; can you explain a bit about how art or an artist can navigate between different forms of knowledge?

 

LC:  It goes back to narrative content.  It’s those connections that create a web of knowledge, when you think in terms of a web of knowledge, disciplines stop making sense except for pragmatic reasons.  Not in terms of speculation in thinking, for instance.  So, as an artist I do believe we work primarily with connections with disciplinary categories.

 

EO: Do you see your work as an educator as being ingrained into your artistic practice, or are they separate?

 

LC:  Ultimately I think it’s the same thing.  Just that the product is not a museum piece, but a discussion.  But from my end it’s the same activity.

 

EO: Is there anything else about being an educator that you think is important to bring to the practice of an artist?  Or perhaps vice versa: what can an artist bring to education?

 

LC:  I don’t see a need for separation between educator and artist.  An educator that’s not creative is a bad educator, and an artist that does not deal with education is a bad artist.  It’s one activity, both educational and totally creative.  From the artistic end though, this is a continuous range without interruption.  At one end, you have the artist that is totally free to do whatever comes to mind, has to select it in terms of communication.  The educator has a lot of bureaucracy to deal with, which is an added burden.  So, ideally they meet in the middle, both speculate freely and communicate as needed, and mostly enable the freedom of the subject.