conversations through practice: art, community, and the spaces we share

As human beings, to be creative is like breathing, I don't think we can get away from it. We have to build something, make music, tell stories, learn songs, cook food, paint, draw, dance, create social situations, solve problems. Creativity is hardwired and unstoppable.  

For the past 7 years or so, since deciding I was going to use my self proclaimed creativity to try and make a living, I've been worrying about my creative practice.  What is it I do, what is the point of it, is it art, am I going to get any more work after this project is done.  In my practice I am always standing one foot either side of an invisible line between wanting to do my own thing and wanting to work with others, and recently I have been trying to get my head around ideas and personal frustrations in my practice when it comes to autonomy vs collaboration, the individual vs the collective.  

I have also spent too much time wondering if I call myself an artist at all. Maybe a sculptor feels like a better fit, a maker is too vague, and when I try on the old socially engaged artist hat, more often than not I just get met with a blank stare and head scratch when I catch myself in the mirror.

I think that's the thing about having a practice, it is sometimes hard to define, and when you are in the earlier years of your career, you worry about it way too much. Anyway, I think the point I am trying to get to is that we shouldn’t worry too much, because worrying is often what prevents us from doing. 

I am building a sauna with a friend and collaborator.  It’s an “art” project, and I was worrying about it.  How to build it, what it looks like, will it be hot enough, where is the “art” and so on.  Then I stopped worrying, picked up some wood, started building and through the process I have started to resolve a few more things in my head. 

I think that's the thing, through the creative act, whatever your practice may be, it is the doing that allows you to understand your own questions. 

I like to create space through my practice.  Space which allows folk to come together.  Be together. Do something together. It's a space - which feels to me - harder to find in the digital, ticktock, instagram and 24hr rolling news lives that we live. It is space which encourages conversation, and the chance to learn, change, grow, understand.  It is space to ask questions about our world and how we want to live.  

I started to describe my practice quietly to myself as someone who creates Social Sculpture.  That was all fine until I muttered it out loud one day, and instantly started worrying that folk would think I was comparing my practice to Joseph Beuys and his ideas of “Social Sculpture”. Had I inadvertently set myself up for a fall, or have ideas above my station? 

In my worry, I went down a Joseph Beuys rabbit hole for the first time since art school, and found a quote which I love -

Every man is a plastic artist who must determine things for himself.
Joseph Beuys

The quote had me thinking about autonomy, the individual, Social Sculpture and some of the many questions I had been running over in my head for quite a while.  It also got me thinking about this hardwired and unstoppable creativity that I think we have as human beings. 

Is it our autonomy which allows us to create meaning in our individual lives according to our values, and is it our individual creativity that allows us to shape and transform the lives we live together? …or maybe, our collective creativity means meaningful change can happen when we are able to come together.

Suddenly a few more pieces of my personal practice related jigsaw were coming together for me.

My own notions of social sculpture which I had initially used to help me understand my practice, have felt a bit loaded and fraught with danger after my subsequent dive down the Beuys rabbit hole, but it has helped me understand more about what I do even if I still don't know how to define my practice or what to call myself.

We are living in an era where we go from one social or ecological crisis to the other without time to catch a breath. AI and Tech are changing the way we live forever. Increasingly, social interaction is through a screen, and rather than come together to share and understand and communicate and grow, we attack and criticize online or think we don't have anything worthy of saying, so we keep quiet and hide. And perhaps the Beuys rabbit hole has become an important adventure in my practice and life—to remind me that what Beuys teaches us is that we are all artists and creative individuals, and through our interactions and social and creative engagement with the world, we can determine the type of societies we want to live in and each contribute to the collective creation of a better world.

Maybe art isn’t just about the object or the outcome—it’s about the connections we build, the spaces we create, and the conversations that shape how we live together.

As for my question of is it art? Who knows, maybe it will come in the living of our lives, by planting an oak tree, debating politics over coffee, coming together around the dinner table, or meeting your friend to have a sauna. Maybe art is just the start of a conversation.