World-Building is a viable option

James Kochalka, The Horrible Truth About Comics

I'm filled with ideas lately. Maybe it was the cruise.

Either way, I've been thinking about how I create art lately. After the delightful process of putting together the appetizer-size play RASPBERRY FIZZ, I was struck with two thoughts...

1.) I am one of those folks that is not progressing the culture since I am as guilty as the rest of my generation of making the past a fetish. As outlined in this Kurt Andersen Esquire article.

"For most of the last century, America’s cultural landscape—its fashion, art, music, design, entertainment—changed dramatically every 20 years or so. But these days, even as technological and scientific leaps have continued to revolutionize life, popular style has been stuck on repeat, consuming the past instead of creating the new.

~ from Kurt Andersen's "You Say You Want a Devolution?" Esquire Jan. 2012 

Illustration by James Taylor

 

2.) I have always gone about my art, particularly comics and plays (and improv to a large extent) in a linear fashion. Even when I play with the linear structure, it comes from a basis of story-telling... events happening over time that effect each other. Only recently have I started to think of how open the process of art-making could become if I was creating a space, instead of exploring sequential events over time.

Besides just being aware of the first point, there is not much I can actively do about it.

For the second thought, though, I stumbled upon a great essay by Dylan Horrocks called The Perfect Planet. In it, he talks about "world-building" as another approach to making art. 

Worth a read if you're looking for inspiration, too.