Running on Light Feet.
From: Hot Pants in a Cold, Cold World: Works 1987-2007, Artspace & Clouds, Auckland, 2008, pp6-21.
Meg Cranston Interviewed by Nico Israel.
Who is Meg Cranston?
Meg Cranston (b.1960) studied anthropology because she thought at the time that it was the “super umbrella under which all things were possible”[1]. Afterwards she gained a MFA at California Institute of the Arts and became a practicing artist. She now lives in California and works across the fields of sculpture, painting, performance and writing.
Cranston positions herself against conceptualism’s suspicion of images and representation, her reaction to Joseph Kosuth’s negative critique of Hockney’s drawing being “what does the sensual world mean to him?”
To Cranston, everything is representation. Human experience is a key aspect of her practice, with much of her work involving self-presentation and showing the sameness in human experience, or the “sameness across pictures”. Human relationship and reaction is important in her interactive performances.
“I don’t think you can say that the world we see and experience is a big bunch of nothing and that there’s a truer, better world that has no representation. That’s Christianity”
Cranston’s statement seems to link Christianity to conceptualism’s undervaluation of the sensual world. If Cranston saw Christianity as being a faith based on a book of God’s word, her idea that Christianity believes in a truer, better world with no representation could be drawn from what she sees in the early conceptualists; seeing text as more virtuous than image. Cranston seems to be attributing conceptualism’s preference of word over image and consequent “numbness” to the sensual world to the Christian belief in a written word and therefore making assumptions about the nature of the Christian faith.
The creation and reading of representation is linked with experience and knowledge. The Bible says that “Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face”[2] suggesting truths are there that cannot see, and therefore can not be represented from our experience. There is a difference between representation being linked with knowledge and experience, and truth and reality. Perhaps we can fully represent our knowledge and experience, we can fully represent reality, but we can only partially represent the truth.
What is the reality in Christian terms?
The bible says the reality is found in Christ[3]. Christ was born a human being, but he was also said to be the son of God. The Christian faith is drawn from the life experiences and teachings of this man. The Bible says Christ came to be the mediator of a new covenant, and that Christ died so that believers would be freed from sin.[4]
Based on these very basic biblical ideas, I don’t believe any Christian could justify that the world that we see and experience is a big bunch of nothing when the very person they base their faith on (the person that half of the Bible is written about) was completely seen and experienced by those who wrote about him.
I do think that Cranston made quite a few off the cuff remarks in the interview and I like your remarks about Meg Cranstons take on Christianity. You explain Cranstons misinterpretation of Christianity really well.
ReplyDeleteYour focus and take on the preference of using text over image in the work of Conceptual artists is an interesting one.However I would question such a preference as not being one based on an idea of the virtuoisty of text over image or a 'numbness' to the sensual world, as rather an awareness of it and the nature of individual experience that it produces.Seeing language as a more democratic way to communicate an art idea then, perhaps such a preference for the use of language or text is a move towards an art that is "a presentation as opposed to an imposition" (Weiner:2004) - one that exists as an attempt to activate viewers and allow them the opportunity for an individual response and reception to a work independent of an imaged work in which artistic decisions and control over set variables are evident and viewer access or response to such are somewhat restricted.
ReplyDeleteWeiner.L, " Having Been Said: Writings and interviews of Lawrence Weiner 1968 - 2003", Gerti Fietzek & Gregor Stein (eds.), [translations by Brian Currid..et..al..],Ostfildem; Hatje Cantz, 2004
I agree that Cranston simplifies and polarises Christian conceptions of the present life and the afterlife. However, I do find tenuous similarities between what she says and an interpretation from novelist and essayist Marilynne Robinson that 'the business of the world [is] a parable... engrossing, and full of the highest order of meaning, but in itself a fairly negligible thing' (Robinson 9). Cranston seems to put weight in the perceived transient quality of this world but it seems quite uncharitable and problematic to interpret it as meaning 'a big bunch of nothing'.
ReplyDeleteRobinson, Marilynne. The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought. New York: Mariner Books, 2000.