I worry about art a lot. That’s a stupid thing to say, because art doesn’t need my help, and I probably can’t do much to change where art is going. Art is facet of human society, and as such, a living part of history. It’s like disease or government or comedy. As long as humanity exists, it’ll be there in some form. But still, I worry.
When you really dig into it, art is anything that human beings make for no reason or purpose. It is a frivolous thing that isn’t absolutely necessary for survival, but for whatever reason, it’s like human civilization’s nervous tic. You can inject reason or purpose into art, and sometime it’s a means to make money. But essentially, art is the pointless flourish hidden in everything around us.
Art is like a thin layer of unnecessary flair applied to everything, no matter how utilitarian or spartan it might attempt to be. It’s the reason we don’t all wear grey jumpsuits, the reason food isn’t a colorless mush, and the reason not all text in written in the same font. Art is something we don’t need for any apparent reason, but it’s something we’re compelled to create and proliferate on some primordial level... So clearly we do need it.
A lot of people think of “art” as a bad word. Maybe it reminds them of insufferable condescending intellectuals in black turtlenecks with no senses of humor. Maybe it conjures the thought of unrecognizable objects or images that don’t depict anything, but which get sold for thousands of dollars because one of the turtleneck people made up a bunch of horseshit about what the object or image was meant to depict. Maybe I’m just projecting, and those are my own problems with art, and turtlenecks.
Since I was little, I’ve loved making art, and my teachers and family encouraged me. Art school seemed like an inevitability, but once I finally made it there, I found myself miserable. I felt like what I was making didn’t count as “art”, and before long, I found myself pursuing a career in “entertainment” instead.
Entertainment is a little bit like Art. It’s like Art’s richer, more popular cousin from a town over, who likes to pretend there’s no relation. But I get it, Entertainment just wants to have fun and get invited to parties. Meanwhile, Art has a tendency to be condescending, embarrassing, antisocial and otherwise not a lot of fun if you don’t know it very well. But wanna know a secret? Art is entertainment, and entertainment is also art.
Why can’t art be more entertaining? Why can’t entertainment be treated like art? These are questions that make me worry. Couple that with an audience that seems increasingly less interested in finding entertainment that’s new and unfamiliar, and algorithms that streamline the very process of discovering new kinds of media, and it feels like even mainstream entertainment is having its rough edges sanded down.
I love loud, stupid entertainment that serves as nothing else than escapism. I’ve made a career obsessing over the latest blockbuster genre fare because I love it. I firmly believe that even the most soulless commercial behemoth designed by a committee has artistic value that can be appreciated on more than one level, so it breaks my heart when subjecting a multimillion dollar production to any kind of criticism is seen as a blasphemous and destructive act of snobbery.
More and more, I feel like “Well, I liked it” is the mantra of the lazy, the unimaginative, and the complacent. Yes, but why did you like it? What would have made you like it more? Even if you liked it, what didn’t you like about it? Entertainment shouldn’t be a pass/fail, and thinking critically about something isn’t going to harm it. A meal is more enjoyable if you ask what’s in it and savor each bite, rather than noisily inhaling it like a dimwitted golden retriever.
I also love breathy, whimsical, pretentious art that’s too up its own ass to care if anyone appreciates it or even understands it. I will quietly peruse a museum exhibition, leaning in closely to examine the informative placards, and nodding because I knew what some of the words meant. It’s good to take things seriously, sometimes... but I also firmly believe that it’s okay to crack jokes about art.
A few years ago, a shitty old man in a beret shot me a scornful look for poking fun at a Vermeer painting. I was livid. Fuck me for having fun at the museum, right? Saying that a four-hundred-year-old portrait behind bulletproof glass looks like a shitty MySpace photo isn’t going to cause it to burst into flames, you pompous fart.
I love to create my own “art,” for lack of a better word. I really don’t like calling it that, because I make it to entertain people, and there’s that stigma about art being serious, or meaningful in some deep, intellectual way. I think that scares people off.
I think a lot of people also don’t know how to be entertained by art that they don’t recognize from an existing franchise or intellectual property or brand. It’s the same timid attitude that keeps chain restaurants in business, the security of a known quantity. With food, I get it, but with art, it’s embarrassing how safe some people play it. Too many incredibly talented artists on the internet are forced to tether themselves to someone else’s creations to gain any traction or attention. Fanart is still art, and can be incredible, and it can get people hired, but it’s also very safe. The information age should have ushered in a generation of pop-cultural explorers, but instead, a lot of people seem to stay in the shallow end of the pool, only ordering their entertainment media from the kids menu.
This is why we’ve created Weird Heat. Why are we calling it that? Well, creativity is a kind of Weird Heat. This inextinguishable compulsion to make things, even when they don’t make total sense or serve a practical purpose. Laughter is also a Weird Heat. It’s our spontaneous organic reaction to a sheer absence of logic. Thinking is a Weird Heat, too, since you’ve got all those synapses firing, which is something I can’t really make sense of. Meanwhile, none of us would be here without the Weird Heat of human procreation, which is gross and bizarre but most people seem to enjoy it. Plus, Weird Heat just sounds cool, like a detective show about space aliens trying to make sense of mundane human crimes.
Anyway, we’ve created Weird Heat as place for us to put the things/stuff/work/content we’re compelled to create, but don’t know how to describe, headline, or label. You know, like this rambling manifesto about creative frustration in the age of memes and Cinematic Universes.
If you think Weird Heat sounds pompous and pretentious, that’s okay. Feel free to make fun of it. Art is pretty stupid when you stop and think about it.
If you’re still not entirely sure what Weird Heat is, that’s also okay. We’re still trying to figure that out ourselves.
Anyway, I drew a skull. Check it out:
Max Scoville
February 7th, 2018
Oakland, CA
2087
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