Exercise 3: Prompts for Making
Expanding on your own manifesto, develop a self-directed piece of work that demonstrates your creative methods in action.
As you embark on this exercise, take inspiration from Richard Serra’s Verb List (1967–68), a work Serra created listing 84 verbs that spurred his sculptural work by guiding his approach to material experiments. A manifesto of sorts, the list formed a concise way for the artist to generate new ideas, methods and processes.
Richard Serra, Verblist, 1967–68, © 2021 Richard Serra / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Key search terms: Mission Statement, Manifesto, Dada, Fluxus.
In the dark, alone
The time is 23:23.
I made myself some tea.
I’m sitting alone in the dark
ready to embark
on a roller coaster
creating a new poster
about my life
a low costed
in my heart a knife,
perpetual strife.
—–
I need to write
my lips are bleeding from the bite,
being for no reason always polite
but using my clear sight,
I feel I need to say more.
I do get to the core.
Screaming out my feelings
on a paper, on a wall
was always healing
soothing, never appealing.
—–
Poetry and history
have offered me the mystery
to look into and explore
deep in my heart, my soul.
History is reflecting and teaching
about time and place, is preaching.
Poetry, to me, is like the old seaman
chasing to kill the demon.
With my only weapon
pen, as a guiding light, as a beacon.
In the dark,
alone.
7/6/2023
REFLECTION
In the poem above, I tried to demonstrate a unique piece of my work where it was not prepared at all: I just left my inspiration flowing. I had only stopped when I felt I had nothing more to say when I felt ”spent” from feelings and emotions. The process is usual to me. It is rewarding and challenging because expecting an outcome before I start writing is rare. When I finish, I can’t help but feel overwhelmed and in awe because when I run through the ideas demonstrated, even though they look intimate, it feels like I’m reading someone else’s work. This automatic writing helps me explore more about myself: it travels me to unchartered areas of my personality and helps me find ways through. As I mentioned, the whole process feels so rewarding and acts like the endorphins in the athletes: when I finish, I want to start over again, only to experience the same rewarding feeling. My problem is that sometimes, there is no chance for me to start writing. When I say chance, I don’t mean inspiration; I mean a reason. Luckily, with my studies, I find a regular purpose and enjoy writing the most.
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