Who is Anna Sanderson?
Anna Sanderson was born 1970 in Auckland. She studied at Elam School of Fine Arts and gained BFA/BA. In 1995 she began journalistic art criticism. In 1998 she left New Zealand and lived in Melbourne, Rotterdam and New York, whilst developing an experimental writing practice that she describes as a mix of unfocused research and observational study. She studied a Masters in creative writing at Victoria University, Wellington. Brainpark is a non-fiction work that integrates her writing material from the previous few years.
The question of engagement…
These excerpts from Brainpark are sort of anti-theoretical , matter-of-fact documentations of facets of Sanderson’s experiences. The idea of forming and re-forming of a perceived image that occurs when Sanderson talks about the way she views Rembrandt’s painting of a woman, can be used to allude to the way that the artist thinks and perceives an image can be different according to the connections that they already have from experience.
Sanderson presents her experience as self-reflection; a gathering of experience. This experience is submitted to me as a kind of test space; an example of Sanderson working in a state of praxis, where she is bringing ideas into being without having any very clear intentions.
This lack of intention could be said to create a reaction like that of a trickster as explained by Natalie Robertson: a suspension of disbelief is created by the frankness of the writer; by the turning of her writing in unforeseen ways. (Sanderson develops a description about others doing sex work before frankly admitting that she too, did sex work.)
Jean Fisher says, “It is worth noting that the trickster tale is a performed narrative which does not itself offer explanation, but something that the listener can reflect upon.” She quotes Walter Benjamin: “The reader, by interpretation, is able to achieve an amplitude that the information lacks ”.
Where meaning is not given, the viewer slips, like a trickster, into a space of uncertainty. This provokes improvisation. Fisher makes another important point when she says that in the case of the artist he or she must return from this place of inspiration in order to put insight into good use.
Sanderson discourages the viewer from coherently interpreting her experiences; but rather presents her writing as a work in progress. In an article called “Saying and Doing”, Robert Storr conveys the importance for artists to match theory and praxis (engagement in activity) in their art, by making art out of experience. Theory to him is a “probe not an answer and never a substitute for praxis”.
How we decide to take action is up to us; as Thomas Hirschhhorn says, “Sometimes one sentence you select may be enough”.
PS. sorry guys i cant get footnotes to show up properly... forgive me :)
[1] "Anna Sanderson | 2008 New Generation." The Arts Foundation of New Zealand. Web. 10 Sept. 2009.
[2] Brainpark from Anna Sanderson, Brainpark, Wellington: Victoria University Perss, 2006, pp9-16;p15
[3]Ibid;p12-13
[4] Fisher, Jean. "Storying Art (The Everyday Life of Tricky Practices)." Art Criticism 16.1 (2001): 12-24;14
[5] Walter Benjamin quoted in Ibid; p14
[6]Ibid;p18
[7]Ibid;p14
[8] "Magazine | Archive | Saying & Doing." Frieze. Web. 15 Sept. 2009.
[9] Thomas Hirschhorn interview with Hans Ulrich Orbist, Thomas Boutoux ed., Hans
Ulrich Orbist: Interviews volume 1, Milan: Charta, 2003, pp393-400;p399
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