Transcript:
Behind me is the Travelling light , a sculptural piece by the art collective, inges idee. Better known as the blue ring, the work sits on the busy intersection of 96 Avenue NE in the city of sweet Calgary and provides visual interest to viewers of different perspectives and maintains a distinct identity. The wheel works to frame the city skyline.
public hates it. Poor ring. I can imagine myself as the Travelling light and being shoved into middle school lockers by other, buffer rings. But what is it going to do? Roll away? No. it's bolted into place. It also has a 2.2 star rating on Google Reviews.
One user who goes by SVU writes with fury in their heart. A fury that turned their physical form into ash. They use their last ounce of strength to type this: “I could have done the same thing, for less. Why was this $470,000?” - one star. Pitchfork pointing towards the endless, grey sky, another review is heard, “Awful money spent, they put a giant ring and called it 'abstract art’” - one star, writes Jackson Schultz. Or did the review write Jackson? A mountainous voice yells over the horizon, effectively knocking me off my feet. I am left listening to the power that emits, “Seriously this is what the city is calling art and spending thousands on? Garbage. There are so many things in the city that need attention and funding, but hey let's just put in a giant light up hula hoop and call it art” - one star. It’s Google Review user, Dominica “Dyno” Witt.
In the aftermath, I sat myself down in front of a high pile of debris and sifted through it. Underneath all the snarky one star reviews were snarky five star reviews. I have reason to believe they were being sarcastic…
Amongst the attitude, one rating that reads a sentence long caught my eye: “It is a lot wider in person than in photos” five stars, Jon Sauter. Simple, but elegantly put. The gravity of anything is reduced to zero (or something that feels like zero) in print. Only those who got out of their cars, stood in front, and stared up at your majesty could truly absorb the weight of the piece. The blue ring is more than it’s infamy; its blue geometric arms reach up into the wind and soars down to touch earth again. It invites us to look at our city in a way many overlook.
Okay give me a second to breathe. It's just a piece of metal, I hear you say. Oh loud and clear, it's a piece of metal. Duchamp’s Fountain is just a urinal! We know, we know! Anything can be just anything if we reduce it to its physical form. Most high art is plastic smeared onto a cotton weaved canvas. The very fact that these more contemporary pieces spark some sort of conversation is fascinating enough. Creation is separate from process. Hans-Georg Gadamer writes in “The Relevance of the Beautiful” that you and I, people who create, “stand before the creation” of our feeble hands “in the same that anyone else does”. There is a very apparent feeling as a creator that doesn’t come up when I spectate.
A lot of love is crafted into my work; my world revolves around it when I spend hours deciding what I do next and admiring what choices I have already laid down. The very second I finish, it no longer feels that way. I look at it passively and I am completely disconnected from the process. That's when I know my baby belongs to the world now. Yes, I made it, but I can never again.
Of course, I can imagine what the process was like when I look at another person’s work, but it will always be fiction. Even more fictional than if it were my own work. No matter how skilled I am, I didn’t make it and I will never be able to produce an exact replica of skill and idea.
I would’ve ended the essay here, but unfortunately, I have grown.
John Berger writes in Ways of Seeing,, “the majority take it axiomatic that the museums are full of holy relics which refer to a mystery that excludes them: the mystery of unaccountable wealth”. Most people believe that art is for the rich. It boggle Though this particular quote is in relation to works showcased in more private settings (more private than public art, anyway), I think there are endless parallels that can be made to thes my mind how I had to read about this to actually take account of it.
Are works even good if you have to jump through so many hoops (hehe) to understand them? What does it say about me that I choose to degrade my city population's opinion on public art? How much should one know in order to have something valid to say? Why do I know more than anyone else to have the correct opinion? While the Travelling Light can be seen from numerous perspectives on the highway, there still is an exclusive club that is able to appreciate it: those who have the time and resources to understand its references, and the ignorance to disregard $470K worth of public spending. Wealth is about separating yourself from everyone else to seem like someone actually worthy of intellectual things. This illusion of wide availability shames the people that don’t have the time or the roots to take interest. I now consider that my particular feeling to defend the “blue ring” may be rooted in contrarianism. One that has effectively blinded me from seeing everything that makes admiring art near impossible. I became an agent of classism.
I don’t know what to think yet, but I do know that Travelling light is not my enemy. But neither is it my friend. One of my art teachers in highschool said he wasn't a fan of the blue ring, but he still needs to respect it. I say recognize its social weight, but also recognize that it still is someone's precious little guy that spent its time stewing in the uterus of the mind and was birthed and crafted with love, like a blue and circular pinocchio.