Thursday, January 22, 2009

The thinker and the witness (or the small lie)



Through me the Blue Meetings received today an invitation from The Blue House to make part of the Stijdelijke Museum’s program during the coming month of February. My first reaction was positive, but I couldn’t decide alone without speaking with my friend Roe about this. It was urgent to make an extra Blue Meeting to discuss the implications of this invitation. So we did.
Regarding this problem, I believe that everything depends how the project is presented. But before that, we need to think how the invitation is formulated: who is inviting for what? And, to understand if these two agents are coherent with the work, we need also to be conscious about the project itself. Just then we can give a negative, a positive or an open respond to the invitation.
Blue Meetings are a conversation between Roe and me. It exists because two persons come together in a specific moment of time with the predisposition to have an exchange of ideas. We are both Blue House members and this project could just exist in such conceptual context. Personally I experience The Blue House as an art project that aims to put in question the established format of art institutions (and the institution in general), bringing a new notion based on porosity and organic growth. This is why it is possible to do there such a project, where the only link is the pure conceptual idea of an abstract “mind home”.
I believe that art comes from necessity. For me this project appears from an urgent need of discussion as a repeated practice in The Blue House. I believe that for Roe it emerges from a wish of developing his thoughts out of this abstract space that is The Blue House.
These meetings do not exist without the presence or the conscientious absence (that is also presence) of one of their beginners. And the minimal connection with The Blue House gives a context to it. It is a subtle project where a tiny modification makes a big difference. Parallel to this, we invite other friends that we think pertinent to join our discussions. This pertinence can arise from a rational and/or emotional reason.
We did not accept the invitation.