Design Matters with Debbie Millman
Design Matters with Debbie Millman
- Carmen Maria Machado 11th June 2018
It’s as if I had an un-finished business with this Design Matters episode. I had to listen to it on and off a few times until this morning, when I discovered the last missing piece and felt a sense of closure.
The episode was about the writer Carmen Maria Machado’s ( Her work includes Her Body and Other Parties) journey as a writer, and her view about being a writer and why it matters. A few things that impacted my own thinking about writing:
1. Temperature altering experience
Write a really good piece that feels like magic, and that can alter your temperature. I think as an artist, irrespective the media, that temperature - altering experience is what we all strive for within the territory of the viewer’s mind and heart.
2. The place of ego in one’s work:
I have been thinking about this since coming back from a three-week art practice workshop in London. The thing is from the country (China) where I grew up; ego is not something to be praised for, especially for a girl. Girls mean to be seen but not to be heard.
During the three week workshop in London, contemporary art felt liberating: it seems everyone is entitled to have a view about contemporary art and the meaning behind a piece of contemporary artwork. Though the artist may have his/her own intention behind the work, it does not mean that the viewers (us) can not view the work differently.
Often it was the heated debate derived from the work that speaks more about the work.
Then it comes to creating our own work. The truth is if you don’t have any ego and self-confidence about what you are going to express or say, why bother? For a healthy and self sustaining ego, skill or language are key.
Like what Carmen Maria Machado expressed in the interview, once you master the language of creation, be it art or writing, the moment would come when you feel what you created is a good, worthwhile, interesting, important, and necessary one. As an artist, we all crave that: the feeling of what we create is necessary, no more, no less.
3. The distortion of time and space
The ‘missing’ piece that I finally heard this morning was about the distortion of time and space. Carmen Maria Machado used the film Children of Men as an example: she talks about she would discover something new every time when she watched the film - similar to when I listened to the interview.
What I missed is about the concept of foreground/background. What happens in our every day is like the foreground, and then there is lots of background happening yet we may miss. The same story, the same event, if interspersed with background stories can change immediately in terms of meaning and significance.
I am not sure what the last piece that I discovered means yet. Irrespective - for me this Design Matter episode has been a good, worthwhile, interesting, important, and necessary one.
Link for the interview:
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