Saturday, July 02, 2016
Questlove and Tom Sachs: "Creativity Is the Enemy"
The Creators Project: When two artist-powerhouses come together for a conversation, the last thing you'd expect is for the main theme to veer into something akin to denouncing creativity altogether. But that was exactly what happened on June 16 when the Brooklyn Museum had Questlove and Tom Sachs over for an informal, but very public chat.
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The thing that really interested me about this article was the question about is it more important to pushed the envelope in the creative world and take risks in your creations that might not succeed or continue to create works that are sure to be successful in order to maintain income in order to make payroll. My opinion on this topic is somewhere in the middle. On the side of creativity, I believe that it is important to be constantly striving to make new works that can change an individual’s perspective on a topic or change the industry you work in by making new creative works that develop the industry. But on the side of economic I also believe that it is important to be able to support yourself and the employees that work for you. If that means making pieces of work that are safer and will guarantee income, that’s what you have to do some times. My solution to this is you hire less and then take the creative risks and if the risks pay off and you know that you can support your employees financially, then you can hire more while still taking those creative risks. If no one ever takes risk there will never be change and development in the creative world.
I was very intrigued about the contrast between artistic creativity and artistic discipline in this article. It's something I've had discussions about at my school, and it can be very difficult to find that fine line where you're structuring yourself, but you're also remaining a true "artist." I think the perfect example of this balance is theatre. Theatre is wildly creative, but as we know from being on production teams, a lot of technical aspects need to go into making the production actually work. You can be as creative as you want, but if you don't have lights you're going to be running around in the dark. You can have a beautiful painted set piece, but if it's not at all relevant to the plot of your show, it's going to confuse the audience and they won't pick up your message at all. Even more important, you can have a beautiful set piece, but if it's not built correctly, it can fall down and kill someone. After doing a few shows as a stage manager, I've realized that artistic talents might not even get a show together if it weren't for the SM reminding them of the time and making sure their needs are communicated to other departments. But at the same time, the artistic talents themselves need to have inner discipline, not just rely on the production team to guide them. I did a little bit of acting training, and sometimes I would come into the studio and not want to warm up because I was feeling lazy, but I had to because I knew that if I didn't, I wouldn't be ready to work and I wouldn't be able to make art in the first place. I think this discussion is so compelling because artists and creative people are viewed as such loose spirits that do whatever "comes to them in the moment," and in some cases this is applicable, but at the same time I've learned more discipline through art than anywhere else.
I personally disagree with this standpoint. While incremental change is necessary if the game plan of your work is to follow a theme and build off of it, it removes the possibility for innovation. There is a difference between the newness and artistic experimentation in a trilogy than is in starting a new book series for example. Sometimes the complete change is not only welcome but completely needed. Failure can also result from trying too hard to remain at the root of old projects as well; take for example the new books of the Harry Potter series that focus on America. Several people have turned against the series that the once adored because in the process of trying to mesh old concepts of the story with a new place and time, she ended up using people as costumes and offending several fans in the process. Of course this comes from the standpoint of someone who doesn't have several people depending on them for their jobs. In cases like music, genre and general sound need the stability that initially captured their fans. However in places like theater, newness is needed and looked forward to in order to have people coming back.
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