Kitty Finer is an ‘artist and entertainer’, who visited Bath Spa University – I participated with other students in a workshop ran by Kitty.
Kitty is drawn to music, live scenes, and becoming a part of the art. She is hugely inspired by Allan Kaprow, who taught that ‘A Happening’, was influenced by a social event, and the importance of observing everyday life.
Previous to the workshop, we were asked to view and take notes of Kaprow’s video, ‘how to make a happening’, whereby he listed the many ways art is made, but purely the fact that art is not made from imagination, it is made by engaging in real activities, embracing real experiences; which proved almost controversial when, as a group, we began to discuss this in the first exercise of our workshop. We discussed the types of art we all made, and, how we are inspired to make our work.
Notes taken during the discussion:
- We as humans observe everyday life
- Compartmentalise activities
- Life outside of arts practice is just as important as the practice?
- REAL things rather than the head
- We as artists, are adding to an ongoing conversation within art
- Tell own stories // we have ways to tell them
- Store ‘things’ as an archive, literally, or physically/mentally
- ‘Everyday life’ – photographic journalists of social media
This last point, about, us, as artists, having the lens at hand, wether it be camera, or smartphone, was what drove the activity for the group after our discussion. Kitty was intrigued to hear that many of us post our work on social media, and we use it regularly. Interestingly, I spoke of how some of my written poetry, I have used my phone notes to document, as we live in a day and age, where this is more accessible to us than pen and paper. We have new ways of archiving, and documenting our experiences.
We were asked to create essentially a ‘story’, and document this. Some in the group used phones to take images, one member of the group spoke of how he had a conversation with his phone, capturing so with the front camera of the phone facing the mirror, and the phone ‘speaking’ of his insecurities. Myself and two others, actually spoke of how we split up a fight, another member, took a photo of a woman in a lift and said she spoke to her, randomly, completely in Welsh. The point was not even necessarily creating a real moment, but how we can capture things so quickly, and how easy it is to make a happening, we do it everyday without realising.
Many of the factors brought up in this workshop I felt that I could relate to. The idea of making or experiencing a ‘happening’. Not making art as it previously were in past decades, based on imagination, to me, this is not real. Rather, creating work based on the things, events, people around us. Questioning what art really is.
Caitlin Jackson 