One thing I think is critical to this project and to our own production is increasing creative challenges in our own work, and being open to look at those open spaces that exist in production, whether it be material or in tempo. I was in an opening tonight at a poor show in Holland and one thing someone asked me was why the work was so dull.

It reminded me of a student I had once who brought in a drawing, he was very talented and knew it. The drawing was very strong but one part of it looked weak. I asked what happened, he said he was tired. I told him that if you want others to give a damn about what you make, you have to actually give a damn.

The work in the show here was like the person had barely worked, if your bored, we will be bored. Another artist there and I concluded that good artists challenge themselves. Amongst colleagues here, I like that I am called out on various issues, and made to think about them in the work. Nothing is solved with non-speaking.

To move forward we must have interaction, move to new levels, questions need to be asked, theories gutted, and established comfort zones abolished. This striving to new platforms can only help create value in the works.

New levels can demand more work. Love, Death, Life, Soul. They appear to be something like basic elements (LO/DET/LIF/SO) . Sometimes it appears that all the marketing, writing, showing, and ego become a big wet blanket that dulls vision and sound.

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So, if this blog is to get the ball rolling on this project, I thought I’d kick it off by posting a text from a project I recently did with Mary Lewandowski, from Rochester, NY. We’re both in our early 30’s and have been trying to figure out how to work at a pace that allows for a good amount of production without ignoring whole parts of our lives, to work in a balance. That email discussion turned into a small booklet, the Production Tempo Manifesto. Given the focus of the upcoming residency, I am curious what your reactions will be to this, so please, shread away!

If any of you are interested, I would be happy to send out some copies your way for distribution- the booklet also contains related drawings and an appendix of related and non-related issues.

Production Tempo Manifesto

Notes from the Production Tempo Advisory Board:

1. We present this: a highly condensed document posing guidelines towards an improved Personal Production. The compact size is not meant to suggest quick or easy personal change; rather, this is a document for the ages. Take your time.
2. We define Productivity as a State of Active Inquiry. Inquiry is an identity’s commitment to intensive involvement in the input, output and digestion of cultural, natural and interpersonal objects and events pertinent to that identity.
3. We Demand Quality.

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Production Tempo Manifesto is crucial for this day and age. Art must necessarily be conscious of production/time ratio, lest individual efforts become shaped and/or marred by imposed values. Caffeine-fueled economy asserts a hypertrophied ideal about necessary production rates. Any developing artist, sensitive from the get-go, may be subject to dubious sense of worth when measuring self-ability to be productive within a larger scheme.

Production Tempo Manifesto presents a kind of judgment. Production Tempo Manifesto is something of a feel-good enterprise. Production Tempo Manifesto may mostly appeal to the mid-life crisis set. Production Tempo Manifesto will feel irrelevant to the young, whose naturally relentless energy has swayed our cultural identity. Production Tempo Manifesto is an assertion of worth beyond youth. Production Tempo Manifesto is embrace of the little deaths that are daily neglected in lives.

Production Tempo Manifesto is cultural conservationist. Production Tempo Manifesto wants a fully functioning system, blood flow to all parts, rich and deep bodies of work. Production Tempo Manifesto is asserted towards general health. Corruption of all bodies is insidious and perpetual in a world built around ease. Production suffers by the hand of ease when it is unrelieved by strain or effort. Challenge has been stripped from our daily efforts. Technology allows for a brand of mastery that permits a realization of the most immediate urges. Struggle is eliminated. Dollar-store gadgets quickly lose their edge and carpet the landscape. This is our landscape.

The Production Tempo Manifesto is a simple prescription for quality. The rules of Production Tempo are guidelines for the productive individual plagued by an out-of-sync sensation.

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Production Tempo Manifesto rule 1 – Distinguish between the following activity states – Input, Output, and Digestion. Consider how each is crucial to the scope of personal production and observe occurrence, flux and interplay of each state in your own living patterns. Observe self-judgments regarding time spent in each state, including reflexive comparisons. Determine source of judgments. Disregard judgments. Take a break. Revise. Tweak. (See: Body Response Awareness in the Appendix.)

Production Tempo Manifesto rule 2 – Be attentive to the larger structure of your life. Determination of correct Production Tempo will happen only with accordance with awareness of the rest of your life. Though your production may be of ultimate importance, balance within the whole is crucial. Indeed, it must be noted that Production Tempo patterns can reveal themselves in any quantity or responsive rhythm – hours, weeks, seasons, time of day, weather, blood sugar, or holidays. Only vigilance will make these personal allegiances apparent.

Production Tempo Manifesto rule 3 - Accept your own tempo as your own. This requires intimate knowledge of the previously described processes, as well as intimate knowledge of your internal motivation. Take time to identify your Production Motives. Only modify attitudes that promote panic and/or dread. In practice, these pursuits will aid in sense of when and how to accelerate and decelerate Tempo for the benefit of personal Production.

Production Tempo Manifesto rule 4 – “Tempo” is not to be used as an excuse for laziness or neglect. Nothing in the Manifesto is to be taken as a reason for lack of motivation or work ethic; the Manifesto must be used to hone art production process into a finely tuned machine that involves less mystery and more self-knowledge.

Production Tempo Manifesto rule 5 – Production tempo must exist fully outside the marketplace of jobs, sales and awards. Money, while important to securing life necessities, is at best a “boring premise”. Intertwining the failures and successes of money making with motivations of art production is bound to have dubious results, whatever the degree of achievement. This also means that while your friends and family will (naturally) measure your seriousness and success by external signifiers, your Production Tempo’s immediate rewards are for yourself.

In this way, Production Tempo is a closed system.

Production Tempo Manifesto rule 6 – Take it to the streets. Sooner or later, you find yourself with a Product on your hands. It is only reasonable that the processes used in developing the Product (input, output, digestion) must now be realized in the Product’s own life. As Product has been synthesized from response to environment, now must Product enter into environment, offering commentary, inviting response, altering atmosphere.