Artists are especially good at seeing the world outside the established systems and structures. This is true because artists build worlds. Therefore we are more aware of what is constructed. What is constructed can be deconstructed. Is it time to deconstruct the industry you are in and see if there is a more efficient, elegant, and even beautiful solution to the problem you are attempting to solve?
It is also something that comes with a lot of psychedelic exploration. Psychedelics melt constructs and allow you to experience life without them for a time. Human constructs seem irrelevant when in the psilocybin mind. Psilocybin is only interested in nature’s structures. This is why it is so profound. We are reminded that we are a piece of a greater whole and a small piece at that.
This refreshed perspective makes it impossible to accept the status quo for more than it is - a temporary construct that could be replaced by a better one.
Sometimes this is a problem. I have often been in the position where I don’t see the reason why this world is separate from that world. I don’t know why a beautiful sculpture, can’t also be fun to move on, good for exercise, lovely to stretch on, describe a profound aspect of nature, and considered collectible art. Each of these worlds has its own rules. The Playground, fitness equipment, high art, science education, and the performing arts are all supposed to be separate. If they bleed together, people in these various worlds don’t like it and will not sell or buy it. There will be no place for it in their constructed world.
Sometimes this way of thinking wins. I applied for an Irvine Foundation grant every year for at least twelve years. I began in the year 2000. Each year I wrote about how science and art could help each other and why, and each year I was turned down. The review committee didn’t believe that a dance company could work with scientists to make great art. The grant manager, who read my proposals year after year and saw my work samples, believed I could do it and that I was doing it successfully because she saw that each year I proposed something, the next year it came back as a work sample. But the review committees were never there the next year - they were compiled fresh each cycle.
I was bringing scientists into the dance studio and I was going to their research sites, then making shows inspired by what I was learning. It was also crucial for the creative teams I was building. I liked to build diverse creative teams of new media artists, costume designers, composers, dancers, circus artists, martial artists, singers, musicians, DJs, fabricators, set designers, software engineers, and sometimes animators. I believed that the creative team would never make a cohesive product (a show in this case) if we were not eating the same diet of information and inspiration. But I didn’t want to simply spoon-feed the creative team what I was learning and have them create from second-hand information or second-hand inspiration. So I created the Capacitor Lab - a monthly think tank of scientists and artists that would meet for six months before creating a new show and new set of sculptures. I usually began with a question or a curiosity and we would all work on it together - using our various disciplines to describe our perspectives. In this way, the projects seemed to create themselves. I only needed to make sure that all the parts fit together smoothly.
So I never did win an Irvine Foundation grant, but I won in the end because the world changed and the world decided that scientists and artists could collaborate successfully and create great and moving art together. Now it is considered an obvious given with an entire category of art called art/science collaboration. What is constructed can be deconstructed.