From Theory to Practice: Negotiating the Contemporary

DRAFT: To work contemporarily is not to abandon tradition, but to become conscious of what one inherits, what one questions, and why each formal decision matters now.

Theory becomes useful only when it changes decisions.

• What does this idea require me to do differently?

Start with the question, not the object.

Form and concept have to negotiate with each other.

• Form without concept becomes technically accomplished but intellectually thin.

• Concept without form becomes an idea that may be better expressed as an essay.

• The concept should pressure the form, and the form should complicate the concept

Material carries meaning.

Contemporary practice includes research, revision and doubt.

• Contemporary practice involves: research → making → failure → reconsideration → material discovery → conceptual change → remaking.

My position within contemporary art.