Cross-dilettante? Dromo-amateur?
One of the my main purposes on writing this text about freelance and dilettantism is to create an hybrid concept between two ideas. The first idea is represented by the attitudes of dilettantism and amateurism without pejorative connotations. The second idea is to incorporate the aspect of movement on it, to make the dilettante being moved by the need or urgency of traveling, cross-dilettante, a nomadic version of the amateur who has the addiction of becoming otherness, being a constant outsider, dromo-amateur.
There is indeed a slight difference between dilettante and amateur. This is why I don´t like the term PRO-AM (professional amateurism). This term does not really embrace the emergency of a new profil of worker, it is obsolete because still deals with the notion of expertise instead of specificity. The notion of PRO–AM brings together both crucial points: pursuing an activity for the love of it while it sets a professional standard with dedication and commitment. Most popular Pro-am activities are gardening and DIY (do it yourself home improvement projects) Most of them are still sedentary domestic practices, sports, arts, photography, acting, singing, playing an instrument. The term Pro-Am still keeps the duality working time - leisure time and the practice to be improved is being maintained as the one and only for many years. On the contrary, I am characterizing on this text a profile of dilettante that has the need of becoming otherness after certain proficiency level, this is why the term Pro-Am doesn't really cover the whole range of my demands and on the other hand there is not anymore a difference between leisure time and working time. I am not interested in the Pro-am that dedicates his life to one single activity. My characterization of a cross-dilettante implies the need of moving from one area to another one without trying to become expert fitting into the frame of work dictated by the notion of hwat does it mean to be professional .
For this reason I would like to use hybrid words such as cross-dilettante or dromo-amateur. The term cross pollination has become a trend since transversality is one of the key words to understand the contemporary world. However I find that cross-pollination really brings in the core of my interest. A specialist is someone who creates centers and organize around them a stable domain where the certainty of knowing makes them feel safe, knowing that they know. This corresponds to certain idea of authority and power relations in the field of knowledge: the specialist will understand the domain as its empire, a territory which dominion is exerted. In the contrary, the cross-dilettante doesn't create a system and either aims to totalize the multiplicity but rather deals with multiplicity of parts and fragments in a patch way like. The attempt of the dromo-amateur functions as an insect that transfers the pollen from one flower to another allowing the fertilization. Communicating vessels like a train that allows the communication between different landscapes. The cross-dilettante stimulates influence among diverse elements, it is the one who has the agility to move across, to mix up and fertilize but also becoming a pirate, stealing knowledge and working as a virus producing contagions and interferences. A dilettante works as an interface that drills holes allowing the transpiration between systems to happen and therefore permitting the possibility for interchanges. Transversality is the condition of possibility for promiscuous affairs. The loyalty to the trip, to the adventure, to the experience is more important than staying safe in one domain.
The skill that belongs to the dromo-amateurs and cross-dilettantes is the ability of transversality, becoming insect that carries the pollen between different systems but also the ability of infiltration becoming spy and stealing the knowledge. Infiltration is transpiration. What makes a dromo-amateur to be specific is the skill of cross-pollination and to become foreigner on one´s own domain. Like a journey man, a person with the ability on spreading new practices and knowledge between companies (trainees and apprentices). Disciplines and areas of knowledge, for the sake of development, demand to be interpreted from a different discipline. The skill of bringing disciplines together doesn´t need to be a voluntary response or come out of a plan or strategy. The different areas of knowledge will affect each other independently the will. The experiences on one discipline will inevitably affect the way another different one is treated, this is not a choice. It´s a matter of fact that methods, habits, knowledge, tricks will be exported from one domain to another one. In this sense Marcel Proust understood art as a dilettante´s game. Art makes possible to go out of oneself in order to find out how others see reality in a different way as one does.
The route or course of the experience of a cross-dilettante doesn't respond to any career planning, is just the consequence of the encounter of randomness and necessities, the intersection between the fortuitous and inevitable. The cross-dilettante as the adventurer does not need a plan but rather keep on moving based on a real desire, staying at the momentum while applying the set of skills to overcome obstacles. Jumping is another action-image that helps to understand the movement quality required on the experience of cross-pollination. The ability to perform a sudden unexpected leap across pathways accordingly to certain dexterity on improvisation. The condition of synesthesia reveals how jumping across pathways is connected with the involuntary. Synesthesia is a cross sensory or cross-modal perception, a neurologically based condition in which stimulation of one cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second cognitive pathway. There is a leap or jump across pathways, characteristic of a dilettante. The fact of being an involuntary process reveals that a dilettante, an amateur, a pirate does not need necessarily to have a plan or a strategy because they function with tactics because they are more appropriated to deal with the fortuitous of life.