Idea: impersonal instruction

Giving a structure/rubric/scaffold for allowing other people the opportunity to question/visualise the origin of their own creativity e.g. a set of instructions.

Some other artists who do similar things:

Sol Lewitt and his instructions for wall drawings, although these are more about leaving behind the means for creativity whereas I would like to explore the metaphysical origin of creativity.

Vito Acconci's Following Piece (1969) exampled in our first lecture. He devised instructions for his work which evolved according to that structure.

Some community arts project I read about a while ago spoke of a woman who left lumps of clay at the doorstep of every home in the suburb she lived in. People were instructed to create something and then return it to her and the resulting works were displayed as a group exhibition.


An article I read The Gaze in the Expanded Field by Norman Bryson (1988) in Vision and Visuality (ed. Hal Foster) the Japanese practice of flung ink painting, Ch'an painting, is exemplar of renouncing control over creativity. Ink is let loose to the universe and falls according to its laws.

Example of Ch'an painting.

In this same article I was introduced to Nishitani, Japanese philosopher who says "an objects presence can be defined only in negative terms... what appears as the object x is only the difference between x and the total surrounding field. Similarly what appears as the 'surrounding field' is only its difference from the object x." (pg. 98). Perhaps creativity may be explained in such a way, an exploration of its absence might help define what it is.

Similarly Shri Shantananda Saraswati (Advaita Vedanta philosopher) said "to begin to be who you are you must come out of what you are not" (school of philosophy coursework). These points of view offer a different way of working: from subtraction or deletion instead of searching. I like this idea, and I want to find/research more artists who work with this.