03.19.09 kulturnatib

Consuming art

I was just on the phone with an art supplier. They are five hours away by car. One would think that here, for a major city – Canada's capital, no less -- art supplies should not be difficult to come by.

They, actually, are not. The major art suppliers do have branch stores here as do some of the more specialized, non-Mall shops.

But what I need is not what is considered a traditional art supply. In this sense it is specialized. Yet, in the usual sense it is rather common; wherever there are Chinese or Asian restaurants or groceries, which there are quite a number here even if the local Chinatown is not as big or as prominent as in other major metropolis.

Still, what I'm looking for is to have this common after-meal delicacy customized to make it a component, a major one, of an art work for an upcoming exhibit.

I'm looking for custom-made fortune cookies or to have custom fortune cookies made.

They will be part of an installation/performance art piece that is my contribution to an exhibit called Transcontinental Divide.

The installation will be some kind of Zen Buddhist altar and the performance will be by the guests to or viewers of the show who will be encouraged to partake of the cookies that will be served in the altar in order for them to fully appreciate the artwork.

The more perceptive amongst you will immediately realize that fully appreciating the work crucially involves getting into the cookie, breaking it open perhaps, and retrieving the slip of paper that will contain one's fortune or its directions for realizing the same.

Except that this will not be regular fortunes. Thus the need for customizing. They will be koan like directions. There is neither space nor time here to get into what koans are except to say that they are riddle-like sayings used in Zen Buddhism to aid in attaining enlightenment.

Yet, they are not riddles in the usual logical-rational sense. They, indeed, appear nonsensical. But they are supposed to lead to the instantaneous, intuitive grasp of non-dual reality.

At least that's what I take these directions to be though a Zen Buddhist might legitimately beg to disagree.

They are provided by an artist in Vancouver, our counterpart in this exchange exhibit, whose idea or intentions for the artwork we are at complete liberty to interpret or implement the way we understand them to be. We are, in fact, as free as to reject entirely the other artist's idea or directions and come up with our own artwork provided that it refers to the rejection.

That is not an option for me. Rejection is not necessary. In fact, as soon as I saw (the text wasn't just simple letters but had a visual or graphic design element to it) or read the instructions, I immediately knew what to do. The rest of the work is a matter of a little tweaking here and there.

This work is about the consumption of art, of how it is to consume art, of how art can even be art at all. These are some of the knotty questions that bedevil art and artists today and ever since art has been accorded its very own soapbox.

Eating is a very basic if primitive form of consumption. It is also high art. I have no problem with both. Like cake, I can have art and eat it, too. Only this time it won't be cake but cookies.