ESSAY: Neo-minimalism, Generative Art and the Work of Amy Cheatle
01.28.07An essay I wrote about my wife and artistic collaborator Amy Cheatle as a personal reaction to her recent work.
Neo-minimalism, Generative Art and the Work of Amy Cheatle
by
mark edward grimm
In October of last year I posted a question to the ‘Eugene’ generative arts mailing list with the question: “Could wine and beer making be considered a 'generative art' practice?”
My question was initiated to gather collective information on a topic that both Amy Cheatle and myself have been involved with, beginning with the “ORG” show at Macy Gallery under the arts collaborative name ‘socialmediagroup’, for the past several years. Just recently my artist/partner Amy Cheatle gained part-time employment as an apprentice winemaker in the small, canal-town village of Fairport in upstate western New York. As an artist she had moved rapidly from more traditional approaches to art making such as painting and drawing to more experimental varieties: working in an experimental artist collective that focuses on systems theory, critical theory and environmentalist practices. Work in this area has been expanding within the art discipline over the past few decades, beginning, but not limited to, the land artists of the 1960’s and 1970’s.
At the same time as our installations were occurring, we as artists began experimenting with new forms of art creation that could not specifically be located or displayed in the context of the gallery setting. These ‘artworks’ were instead, a sort of ‘life practice’: they were experiments in living where, as the Situationist Raoul Vanetgem (2003) stated, “tiny adjustment[s] in what is essential has much greater import than a hundred incidental improvements.” (p. 17)
These ‘small improvements’ or simple actions could not be documented to the same degree that a gallery show might eventually materialize into some glorious singular event. In contrast to a gallery ‘show’ of sorts, which in our case only came into being about once a year, the simple changing and manipulation of daily action and activity could potentially be performed several to many dozen times daily. Clothing the body, weeding the garden and even loading the dishwasher could become new artistic mechanisms in which to express and critique oneself as an artist, leading to the eventual emergence of new processes in which to conduct those very same activities. The adjustments are minimal, but the accumulations of minimal processes that evolve over time are, to us, substantial. As Deleuze (1995) tells us, these processes or ‘capacities’ for new conceptual emergences “invent new possibilities of life. Existing not as subject but as a work of art …[presenting] thought as artistry.” (p.95)
Obviously through these processes there is going to be interactions with philosophical concepts and scientific ones that can be monitored, producing variations to create new ‘activities’ and forms. To cite Deleuze & Guattari (1994):
The three thoughts intersect and intertwine but without synthesis or identification. With its concepts, philosophy brings forth events. Art erects monuments with its sensations. Science constructs states of affairs with its functions. (p.199)
And so the problem for us in dealing with the art making process has always been the history of separating the arts from other disciplines, including the activities of the everyday. I must first admit that I take a narrow view of art-making in this essay by classifying and generalizing trends. It would be fair too say that such thoughts and generalizations have formed the basis of our work – we react to what we personally feel and observe. To us, art-making and the scientific and philosophical processes involved in art-making have been slowly replaced by the aesthetics of image making which is immaterial comparatively to the physics of physical processes which our art now partakes. To us, pure image creation contributes to the spectacle where populations can no longer produce but instead are restricted to mere consumption. In this sense the idea of the ‘gallery’ as exhibition space is nothing but a symbol of separation: white, laboratory conditions that isolate a cultural practice from the general population of the outside world.
Obviously, the gallery world has been criticized and critiqued, starting with Marcel Duchamp, by artists since the early 20th century, but rather than a historical perspective I think it is essential as a critical starting point to understand Amy Cheatle’s recent work. It is from this perspective that she has viewed the art world and especially the ‘art market’. Subjectively, the elitism of art as a specialized field always places the working person (blue collar, those in poverty) outside of the specialized processes of art making that have become institutionalized to the degree where image makers have power over image consumers.
This brings us to the question of production. Who controls production? Who produces and who consumes? Recently we have been looking at our family history. Both of our family heritage is rich in English and German immigrants who were material workers, meaning they were a part of micro-economic systems that could be considered relatively autonomous, at least comparatively, to contemporary mega-markets. We discovered our heritage was full of closed-loop communities where production took place under micro-conditions: tailors, beer-makers, food producers and all were gardeners. ‘The garden’ above all, has struck Cheatle’s artistic interest.
Why is ‘the garden’ such a revolutionary idea? As Hakim Bey (1999) stated, “Growing a garden has become - at least potentially - an act of resistance. But it’s not simply an act of refusal. It’s a positive act. Its praxis.” (p.10) It is simple production methods that all can perform, and it is Cheatle’s contention that not only is this a revolutionary act of praxis that exchanges acts of pure consumption for acts of micro-production but it is also an act of art and cultural creation. From these self-processes of material manipulations there is the potentialities for new processes and variations in processes to emerge: each micro-system has potentialities embedded within them for diversity to develop.
We can see this when we look at ‘seed savers’ OR heirloom varieties. It is truly unfortunate that the ‘beef-steak’ tomato is what all tomatoes are judged upon. It is often overlooked that each area, each geography and topography has developed its own variety of tomato. These tomatoes are not the products of one singular genetic manipulation in the lab but have emerged over hundreds of years in backyard gardens and community seed exchanges. Such varieties have almost been virtually eliminated by large industrial agro-business, which favor quantity over quality/diversity on all accounts. In light of this, Cheatle’s question has been, how does this affect art and art making practices and processes? Obviously she sees similarities in the trends. ‘The garden’ is not only a symbolic example but also a functional example. As an example, ‘the garden’ could not only be used metaphorically and theoretically but also practically as a cultural tool for education: an artist tool where all could participate in its actions without necessarily having to be specialized in one area or another.
Obviously the garden was one such tool that Cheatle and myself as artists could use – all could participate in its production (adults, children – garden creation transcends all boundaries) and this was not contingent upon any academic, cultural terminology ect. OR otherwise such as the questions “Is it art?” or some equally uninteresting ‘IS’ questions. Whatever it ‘IS’, the one thing we know to be true is that it just ‘DOES’. Something happens and we can think about what happens, why it happens, why it does not happen, or we don’t necessarily have to think anything at all: an opposite to the ‘art establishment’ where everything has to be legitimized in some form, again, generally and subjectively speaking.
And so Amy Cheatle began the experimental endeavor of wine production as art creation. Nothing to be legitimized or rationalized in its aesthetic, cultural or practical effects: it was the processes of ‘DOING’ and how things could be made that formed the basis of the artistic creations. It is through processes that, as the philosopher Gilbert Ryle suggested, ‘learning how’ rather than ‘learning that’ takes place which in turn gives the creator the possibilities to diverge, to branch off in new directions that may not have been visualized prior to the initial creations. Deleuze & Guattari (1987) called this ‘lines of flight’ where a singular instance (the fermenting of wine) has the possibilities for multiple dimensions (multiplicities) and forms to materialize from the same point of reference – no two batches of wine could ever be exactly the same no matter how stringent the system and ingredients used.
It is essential to understand the generative processes involved in the creation of a ‘wine’. We can begin with the term ‘terroir’ which means that local influences (geography, weather patterns, soil quality) are transmitted into the character of the given plant – this being a particular variety of grape vine. Even if the grape vine is genetically identical, depending on where or how the grape is grown, vines growing in separate geographical location can produce a grape with unique properties. It is said that some wine-tasters can tell what side of the road grapes might have been grown even if those grapes are the same genetic breed and are in the same relative location – one side of the road might get different light or have different water run-off for example.
Add variations in grape varieties, genetic makeup, and different ‘strains’ and just out of the diversity of the ‘grape’ many variations in ‘juice’ can result. We not only find this in ‘grapes’ but also in other types of food products, materials such as wood and fiber and any other type of material utilized as a resource. Coffee beans differ compared to the ‘terrior’ that they are grown. It is said that the Normandy cow produces milk that is churned into the best tasting butter on the planet because of the perfect conditions for the growing of the grasses that it eats.
In contrast, industrial agriculture in the United States for instance, does not use the natural ‘terroir’ of a region to allow a diversity of product to emerge based on local systems. Instead it relies on ‘imposing’ its will on a geography in order to produce a homogenous product which stays relatively the same across geographic locations. The soil is manipulated or ‘forced’ to be something that it is not through specific fertilization processes. Where in Native America we once had a very diverse native corn supply filled with special ‘spiritual’ varieties of species and strains, we have yielded to the homogeny of ‘yellow corn’, which we all see now in the grocery store. In addition, genetic manipulation and bio-technology have contributed greatly to this lack of genetic diversity in our food supplies.
Wine, on the other hand, is in the unique position of retaining some of these special properties because the quality of the wine is based on the unique environment in which the grapes are grown and the wine is fermented. It is unique because as an educational and artistic tool it is not hard for a general public to understand that quality is not attached to quantity but instead is directly connected to the factor of diversity and variation as its defining characteristic. It is an exploratory material in which contains in its possibilities, the opportunity for uniqueness to emerge. It is a minimal art form that contains the information for alternatives to potentially exist. It is a ‘generative art’ form, one in which, as Philip Galanter suggested:
[an] art practice where the artist uses a system, such as a set of natural language rules, a computer program, a machine, or other procedural invention, which is set into motion with some degree of autonomy contributing to or resulting in a completed work of art.
But this of course is being contingent upon if one can consider ‘wine making’ art at all.
Once the grapes are grown and harvested, which are processes of their own generative identification, the grapes, to simplify, are turned into ‘juice’. Each juice will have its own characteristics and therefore will give rise to a wine containing its own characteristics. The fermentation and manipulation of the ‘juice’ is its own personal process that each ‘wine maker’ decides upon. Each winemaker has their own set of rules and processes to create their own unique blend, even if the ingredients are the same a wine maker can manipulate the processes involved to where the final result is completely different. Through morphogenetic processes, the ‘phase space’ of results is full of possibilities. The philosopher Manuel Delanda (2002) might define a ‘phase space’ as a “space of possibilities” (p.10)and ‘morphogenetic as the dynamic and divergent processes that gave rise to those possibilities. In wine, these generative processes ‘evolve’ the wine beginning with the winemakers choices.
In addition to wine additives that can give a ‘wine’ specific properties (such as adding ‘oak’ or other flavor manipulatives), ‘yeast’ is the ‘spark’ that ignites the fermentation and synthesis giving wine a resulting uniqueness. Yeast is a heterogeneous element in itself. Traditionally, wild yeast could be colleted in the air and used in an assortment of food creations from bread making to beer making and of course wine fermentation. Populations soon realized that different yeast could be used in different ways and that the type of yeast strain used in the production of alcoholic beverages would drastically change the resulting liquid. In contemporary wine making practices, wine makers are not restricted anymore to local yeasts although some vintages stay as local as possible to create a truly ‘local’ terroir wine. Many winemakers, including ‘home winemaking’ winemakers such as Amy Cheatle, can choose from any yeast variety that they might find compatible with there wine. Again there is no ‘right’ answer and many variations are possible.
This can be a complicated process but once the yeast is added to the wine the generative capacities take hold and the fermentation process begins, the artists hand initiate the process but once the process has been initiated is then beyond there control (other that slight tweaking that are possible here and there). The wine becomes and autonomous entity, a living organism. The yeast is a single cellular organism. Its only job is to eat sugars. There are many sugars in the provided juice and as the yeast eats the sugar its byproduct OR excrement is alcohol. All different yeasts consume and process the sugars into alcohol differently contributing to the diversity of taste as an outcome of different yeasts. The yeast will consume and consume until there is no sugar left and the yeast die in there own excrement/alcohol OR the winemaker kills the yeast and stops the process.
There are several processes that can be done before bottling such as filtration, secondary fermentation etc. that I will not cover here. After bottling, the wine continues to complexify and change – its stays ‘alive’ and slowly evolves over-time, sometimes even becoming something that it had not started as. It becomes a ‘line of becoming’ that has no end point but continues on its life cycle until the wine is either drank Or the wine ‘goes bad’ in the bottle and becomes undrinkable as ‘vinegar’ both of which are continuations of processes.
A line of becoming is not defined by points that it connects, or by points that compose it; on the contrary, it passes between points, it comes up through the middle…a line of becoming is neither beginning nor end, departure nor arrival, origin nor destination… A line of becoming has only a middle. (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987 ,p.293)
Wine rests in this ‘middle’. Art rests in this ‘middle’. Culture rests in this ‘middle’. Wine, such as art and culture, are always in a state of ‘becoming’. There is no real ‘end’ or ‘end product’. Wine can not end even after it is drank by participants because it always will become something else: thoughts as a byproduct of inebriation, morning sickness, appetite, love, physical sensations etc. There is no real ‘end’ or ‘end product’ in art. It is easy to pretend that the final ‘piece’ ends on the wall but it is only a middle stage in its life – the processes in its creation are just as OR even more relevant than its display. And wine, as in art, will always have an end-cycle where they will die, ceasing to be what they were in their original form but instead taking on new forms and giving new possibilities for becomings to emerge. (Ibid)
This is why I think Amy Cheatle’s work is so important and relevant, not just and an exercise in generative process, but also as an artwork. Wine processes posses possibilities in becoming something else: becoming thoughts, becoming addiction, becoming culture. It is neo-minimalist work at its middle, choosing to use activity as a material to create and allow variants on processes to develop. Small adjustments have much larger consequences. Art, in Amy Cheatle’s sense, becomes micro forces contributing to greater wholes rather than end products of individuals.
Bibliography
Bey, H. (1999). Avante-Gardening: Ecological Struggle In the City and the World. Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia
Delanda, M. (2002). Intensive Science & Virtual Philosophy. London: Continuum
Deleuze, G. (1995). Negotiations. New York: Columbia University Press.
Deleuze, G. & Guattari F. (1987). A Thousand Plateus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press
Deleuze, G. & Guattari F. (1994). What is Philosophy?. New York: Columbia University Press.
Galanter, P. (2003). What is Generative Art? Complexity Theory as a Context for Art Theory from http://www.philipgalanter.com/academics/index.htm accessed 23-5-05.
Ryle, G. (1984). The Concept of Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Vanetgem, R. (2003). The Revolution of Everyday Life. London: Rebel Press.
No trackback:
Trackback link:
Please enable javascript to generate a trackback url