On the 29th April 2019 I started Level 7 Advanced. When I received my resource materials I was instructed to read through the materials and listen to the lecture about process on the USB stick. On the Tuesday the 30th, I had my first Skype session with TLC Mentors John and Peter. Another student called Carol was part of the session and I am getting to know her. We needed to read an excerpt by Richard Serra and his verb list.
It was written around 1967-68 by American conceptual artist Richard Serra. It is an instruction manual disguised as an art piece. The list is comprised of verbs in infinitive form. It is a neat compilation of various verbs you can apply to yourself or anything else and turn it into empiric performance piece.
Despite its ambiguousness - all verbs more or less relate to the actions generally applied during an artistic process - such as cutting, mixing, stretching, arranging, covering, expanding, continuing, etcetera. But they are taken out of the context and gathered together seemingly at random. All the verbs in the list describe the processes of giving or changing a form of something. The list mainly deals with such questions as "What are you doing?" and "What you can do?". The whole thing comes from an observations Richard Serra had made while working in his studio. He simply documented what he was doing step by step. He verbalized the way he was dealing with materials and the way he comprehended the very nature of artistic process.
Originally the list was simply a handwritten note - somewhat reminiscent of school dictionary expansion exercises. But later it spawned numerous derivative piece such as "Splashing" or "Scraping Hands". It shows the potency of taking out the words out of actions and transforming them back into actions. And that what makes it so powerful.
"Verb List" exceeds its primary purpose. As a list it is bigger than sum of parts it represents. It is a kaleidoscopic snapshot of an artist's mind in the mode of self-reflection. But it is distanced from the artist's point of view to the sheer abstraction. It is a selection of words designed to convey certain things stripped of its original function. In the list - the words are free from their usual roles. They are just there. It is the mind that puts them here or there depending on chosen context. In that way - the words on the list are like flies trapped on the sticky ribbon flytrap forced to embroil themselves and roll into makeshift cocoons in order to turn into moths that inevitably will be attracted to the fire of the mind (cue Coil).
The list is incredibly flexible. You can bend them any way you want and still you will be within its boundaries. It can serve as a direct instructions or just some boorish tips or you can simply enjoy the way the words sound together. You can make your own list, rearrange the existing sequence, find some obscure relations and construct some imagery or even narrative out of it, you can even scramble the way the words are written. [Source: http://interstellar-superunknown.blogspot.com]
I thought I understood what was being asked so I jumped in the "deep end" by processing (chopping/cutting) flax, stacking bricks, tearing/tossing paper and heating/burning plastic and synthetics materials.
TO CHOP/SLICE
TO HEAT/BURN
The process of heating and burning plastic was intriguing and fun to observe. Heating cause the material to wither, wrinkle, shrivel and retract.
TO STACK
Cornstalks
..and bricks
TO TEAR/TOSS/TUMBLE
The following week, on the 7th we reconvened again on Skype for an hour to discuss the week's artwork. They talked about the principles of art as we know it (drawing, painting, 3D, sculpture etc) and drawing attention to the physics of artwork: gravity, friction, tension etc. We talked about tension in the brick stacking and what causes them to fall.
My WOW moment came when Peter (or was it John?) pointed out my corn stack shadow resembled (is that the term?) a pencil drawing...
That just blew me away!
I guess that how process art work - by accident.
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