wednesday morning post

there always seems to be a challenge to chase around here

so, since i can back from my trip, i find myself constantly asking, "what am i doing?", and an even scarier question "what is worth doing?" i feel like i was constantly stuck between this opposition between social responsibility and self-gratification of art. and i think for a while, this question was resolved, in that i do believe that what i'm doing has a benefit, or at least has the potential to, and also the realization that i probably would be asking myself that same question even if i were in a different field of study. what is really worth doing anyways? there are so many holes in any answer in any field, so maybe i should just leave it as an unanswerable question but also an evolving challenge in my practice.

but i've come back to it. the two long-term projects that i've been working on both have social functions (or at least i like to think they do), and while i believe in them, as an artist i have found them to be incredibly unsatisfying to make. both involves lots of engineering and logistics, and i don't have that sense of satisfaction in their creation. and see, over the summer i had to come to the unavoidable conclusion that the reason why i make art is almost purely for self-gratification, and to sort of justify this, i've been planning projects centralized around the goal of social benefit. and so here i am, in this rut of electrical wires and rulers and t-squares. and while i have been laboring for two months now, i havent been able to create something truly satisfying for me.

and so it all comes full circle: what am i doing?