Final Assessment Artwork 3
It’s impossible to document nothingness, as it is impossible to encapsulate nothingness with art. You can not represent nothing, and you can not give non-existence form as the very action of formation goes against its original design, or lack thereof.
I want you to know that I am conscious that by announcing that my final art work is nothing, and that this, the very act of explaining my intentions behind why I have presented nothing, is in fact artistic or form like. It is both my intention to tell you why I am presenting nothing as my final work, as well as my perogative to simultaneously discount this artist explanation because this is not art, yet it is artful in that the process I am about to explain, and the choices I have made have helped me come to a better understanding, conceptually, of what nothingness is, even though nothingness cannot ever be.
My intention and choice to refuse to hand a final artwork is an art. I present nothing.
Yet, I continue to explain. If I had my way I wouldn’t write this explanation, and I wouldn’t hand in any final work what so ever. There would be no final artworks, there would be nothing. I wouldn’t announce it, I wouldn’t tell anyone because that is truly nothing as there is non-existence. Still, I continue to reason. So this is art. Non-existence is my artistic material.
Fine, I will explain what I have seen and what I have experienced of this ‘nothing process’ so you can come to know what I have known. To make significant what I have found significant, and help you realise what I have realised. I guess you could say my final ‘artwork’ is performative in nature.
I didn’t turn up for assessment day, not because I didn’t have anything to present, but because nothing was what I was presenting. I have not handed anything in because there is nothing to hand in. I have felt no feelings of remorse to hand anything in because again, there is nothing to hand in. I have spent a long process attempting to document nothingness. I thought I could simply document reflective surfaces, as reflective surfaces haven’t got an individual identity or an individual consciousness. I thought that I could filmed air, that I take photos of voids with no light, and that I could record silence. However, I have found that all of this are incapable of capturing nothingness as the very means of creating, forming, representing or objectifying is to render something as a thing or an object. To produce is to find something, and my goal has been to find nothing.
The ultimate success of this would have been to never, ever hand anything in for the final process. But I would fail the assessment, and possibly fail the course as a non-attempt. I think this explanation is also quite interesting to think about in terms of what is it to complete or finish work in our western education system. That we must produce and show a final product in order to evidence our thinking. As you can see by my process and thinking I know it is impossible to show nothingness. I refuse to also tell you that I am showing you nothingness because that would be besides the point. I want you to know that by explaining this I am fulfilling the requirements of the assessment. I also want you to know on the other hand it was an artistic choice to not hand in anything until 2 minutes before the maximum 14 days penalty under UNSW assessment requirements. I know that I have lost 42% and have failed this assessment. But by handing in something I have failed my own methodology or structure I have placed on myself which is to find nothingness or at the very least formulate it.
“The abstract possibilities opened up by failure are further reinforced by the problems of physically realizing artworks—wrestling with ideas, representation, and object-making. By amplifying both theoretical and practical failure, artists have sought new, unexpected ways of opening up endgame situations, ranging from the ideological shadow of the white cube to unfulfilled promises of political emancipation. Between the two subjective poles of success and failure lies a space of potentially productive operations where paradox rules and dogma is refused.”
To consistently attempt to document nothing and never achiever this documentation of non-existence has lead me to make the artistic choice to do nothing. Yet art by its very nature proposes that you do something, to form and craft something into being. That is the paradox and conflict for me here. I have done nothing and so have failed. I am in a literal state of failure because I have refused to make art, yet I have successfully made nothing. Again, however paradoxically stating that “I have successfully made nothing” is in fact something. So again, I fail.
