Conversational crossroads

Mapping my hybrid life on a personal, passion level involves drawings, notations, and novel writing. The stuff I do daily. When it connects with others, like in conversation with the 10 cultural innovators I'll be talking to on Feb 28 as part of Dialogue2010 at expat+HAREM, it becomes multi-dimensional, an elixir of dynamic change and inspiration. In talking about abandoning the map to live more fully, dialogue becomes art.

Anastasia Ashman, expat+HAREM producer, identifies a crucial element of what happens when identity is fluid, when location, desire, and being in the present are invited to shape a meaningful life: "a wider orbit around the inner me" is allowed to emerge. That is what I hope will be explored in Dialogue2010: unearthing the things we need to let go of in order to move forward, blurring our boundaries, and developing our own idiosyncratic centers of balance.

As the first inception of Art is Dialogue, I invite you to join in the twitter chat #dialogue2010, or add a comment, and listen to the podcast when it's made live this spring.

Reinventing the artist

Much like others go on pilgrimages to sacred places, art has been for me an act of searching. It has been a vehicle to describe the sensation of being a receiver of information and vision. It has given me an identity as part of a tribe of curious people asking questions visually. It has been a philosophy for processing stimulation, unraveling identity, and understanding the past.

What I didn’t expect as an artist is that I would leave the art world. 

And reenter by asking questions about what art really is.

Conversation is just part of Art is Dialogue. It is also an inkling that the rules for artists have changed while old models are still being employed. It is an invitation to consider the artist as being part of larger spheres of science, psychology, domesticity, entrepreneurship, travel and language.

Art is Dialogue gives credence to Jean Houston’s visionary idea that everyone has the potential to be a “social artist” as much as Mark Rothko’s exploration of art being divine and a location for spirituality.

Has art ever changed you? If so, was it the art itself, the space in which it was shown, or perhaps the place you were at in your life at that moment?

Art is Dialogue

Unveiling a spark, a five-year-in-the-making idea that started out as the tiniest flicker. Out of art + nesting. Out of blurry boundaries. Now an invitation for you to explore along with me:

Art is Dialogue, a series of dynamic conversations hosted online on curated topics where art is in the exchange of ideas.

Through the alchemy of discourse, Art is Dialogue facilitates new perspectives and useable knowledge for multifaceted lives.

The questions change. The locations change. The premise does not:

The separate identities of artist, curator, and critic are merging. Artists are now scientists, teachers, philosophers, parents, authors, and engineers. Curating is done by artist-led initiatives, sparked by gathering of individuals meeting for conversation online, over dinner, or coffee. Critics are artists of word and vision. Art is conversation, the grouping of images, objects, people, and location around meaningful topics. Art is in the words we speak, ignited by the chemistry of language.

Contemporary living and art making requires multiplicities, engagement with life in dynamic ways, crafting identities that resonate across geography. Freed from the wall, art craves non-specific locales, driven by new vocabulary and a glossary of terms that represents the intricacies of life today. Being present is critical.

The definition of an artist has changed. The studio is you.

Interested in joining in on a conversation? Care to host a talk? Follow Art is Dialogue on Twitter for updates (freshly hatched as of today, Jan/12/10, so expect more soon!).
More information forthcoming on the inaugural collaboration with expat+HAREM this year while Istanbul is the 2010 European Capital of Culture.