A-OK 1 Editorial

“language is the house of being”

~Martin Heidegger

We live in our language and we live and we create in accordance with the words we use. In this issue I challenge artists to deep dive, to describe, through responding to questions, their practices and their journey towards be-coming, and becoming artists.

Omitting these words, as so often happens, has ethical and political dimensions. It ignores the long hours of soul searching, the nebulous dance between intention, creation and skill, the reading, the questioning and hesitation, the personal quest, the engagement with practicalities of making. It hides the labour. It allows the description of artists in a generic manner often confusing all artists with entertainers. There are very good reasons why entertainment is an important contribution to our world. Yet in hiding the diverse nature of artistic labour, all artists may be characterised in generic terms and as excess, as peripheral.and the conversation can swing to questioning the utility of art as it butts against the raw edge of capitalism.

Here are conversations with artists recording their utterances and their creative grammar.

Alison Kennedy