No More Bins
by Heidi Eigenkind
“…I don’t know what art is at all. I have no idea.”
Laurie Anderson, January 18, 2012, “Q”, CBC Radio, interview by Jian Gomeshii i.
I, like Laurie Anderson, have no clear idea what art is. And this is not usually a problem. Not until someone raises the art versus craft issue and declares something along the lines that some potholders are just potholders. The last time this happened, I responded by describing an experience I had in 1982 in a West Berlin ethnographic museum. It involved a small, slender, antique Chinese vase with a celadon crackle gaze.
I don’t think my example was a very effective way of addressing the problem. A vase is not a potholder and anything placed in an expensive glass case and meticulously labelled by some professional is obviously as close to art as makes no difference. But I was compelled to say something. After all, I use craft based techniques in my practice and have a deep-seated aversion to binary structures. So I talked about how this vase offered me a sense of transcendence in spite of the troubling political and historical context of the museum that housed it. German colonialism, Nazi looting, the donation of some rich patron— it’s a safe bet that its provenance would not have been a pleasant tale. Nonetheless, I sat in front of it for a portion of every day of my stay in Berlin. And the vase helped me face my own mixed feelings about visiting my father’s Fatherland—what this museum really represented and the ethical consequences of my ethnic identity.
Of course, I agree that every potholder is not art. Just as some art isn’t. But the need to discuss exactly what constitutes art is something I fundamentally do not want to participate in. My downright stubbornness on this issue stems from the same place as my complete disinterest in the old theological debate, apocryphal or not, as to how many angels can dance on the head of apin, or the old 1980s conundrum as to whether I am first a woman or a feminist. Laurie Anderson again: “And I don’t think it’s so great to put, [to] make these bins that people have to fit themselves in”.
What matters most for me is the quality of my engagement with whatever I encounter. And that quality isn’t dependent on my being offered a positive, easy or palatable experience. It includes materials and creations that challenge, disturb and offend me. The Chinese vase was a lovely object. But it wasn’t just eye candy, and I didn’t care whether or not its original owner had seen it as a mundane repository for whatever blooming sprig was at hand, or treasured it as an exceptional creation. What it offered me was a sense of history, place and being that included hideousness and beauty. It didn’t let me avoid the nastiness of privilege (my own included) or plunder or the consequences of hatred. It gave me a place to sit and be, and believe that craft and art matter, and that history isn’t destiny. A potholder encased in glass and artfully lit might have done the same.
The other night someone told me of a postcard she had received from a friend. It was an image ofa tear-drop-shaped wall piece made out of found objects: potholders in fact. The woman describing the postcard couldn’t remember the name of the artist who had produced this piece and she didn’t especially like potholders. But she liked the idea that a collection of potholders could become something she found fascinating. So maybe potholders aren’t the issue and maybe we can lay to rest the question of whether something is or isn’t art. Maybe we can decide not to worry about bins or definitions and concentrate on “the freedom of making … imaginative, crazy things that don’t have categories,” which is what Laurie Anderson said she lives for. It sounds great to me.
Heidi Eigenkind is a craft-based artist who lives in Winnipeg and tries to avoid putting either herself or others in bins of any ilk.
i. All quotes are from this interview. Laurie Andersen is an American performance artist, composer and musician who has a background in sculpture.