January 6, 2007: Jonas Mekas, John Kilduff, beautiful restrictions

If question and answer sessions at art lectures were football games, "How would you describe your creative process?" would be the most popular play of all time.
The "correct" answers to this question usually summarize how and where artist get their ideas, and explain the technical details of how these ideas are executed. This model of creative production assumes that conception and creation are essentially the same thing, which is unrealistic. I have never heard someone describe how, after coming up with the next great idea, they sat on it for five years before doing anything. If creation is beautiful, then creative roadblocks must not be worth mentioning.
Jonas Mekas and John Kilduff (of Lets Paint TV), two of my favorite artists from 2006, have turned this impasse between creation and conception into art. The results are strange and wonderful.



Jonas Mekas is "the godfather of American avant-garde cinema," and the founding member of the institution where I work. His work is diaristic, and he is perhaps best-known for his portrayals of 1960's and 70's counterculture (featuring John Lennon, Andy Warhol, Allen Ginsberg etc). Refusing to be relegated to the past, he has made a promise to make one film a day, available for free online, for the entire year of 2007. Highly reccomended.
Mekas switched from film to video some time ago, but in an interview on WPS1, he describes how film forced him to shoot in the short, tiny bursts that have come to define his aesthetic. I was struck by this insight; film-making can be arduous and costly, and film-makers are constantly confronted with failure. Real creativity knows no restrictions, though, and Jonas Mekas is as good an example of this as any. Content must dictate process, and there is never a good excuse for not making something.



John Kilduff's show, "Let's Paint, Exercise and Make Blended Drinks TV", is the ultimate test of idea and execution. A painter by trade, Kilduff has come to internet fame through this phenomenal cable access show, which has him painting while exercising and making blended drinks, along with any number of other activities. Here is one of his videos. Seeing is believing.
Kilduff explains that painting while running on a treadmill erases the "the primary stumbling block that prevents most people from expressing themselves on canvas, the fear of making mistakes". In a literal sense, it is difficult to dilly dally with your art when you are creating things while running on a treadmill, blending drinks, or preparing a chicken.