Making Art

After more than a decade as a full-time employee, having worked for several companies in Milan and London, last October I quit my job to see if there could be an independent future for me.

I can’t believe four months have already passed! I still feel like I only just celebrated my farewell with my last colleagues, on what has been, de facto, my last full day in an office since then.

But I don’t want to write about memories, I’d like to talk about the future!

Independence for me was about dedicating more time to ideas and new technologies, something I’ve always done in my spare time, with the hope (and confidence) that something constructive would come out of it. A useful product, something properly designed to solve a problem. Definitely not Art!

Although I had fun raising some questions myself in the past, which is one way to describe Art, for a while now I have only been focused on answering them. I have many friends who legitimately define themselves as artists, something I always thought differentiated us very clearly. So I always had strong and distinct reactions when I heard the word “Art”, and I never thought these feelings could change in the space of a month. But so they did.

A month ago I received the last of the presents my very kind colleagues bought me as a memento, a fabulous Kindle Paperwhite. I celebrated by buying a book that had been on my wishlist for a while, though frankly I didn’t even remember what it was about: Seth Godin’s latest, The Icarus Deception. It turned out pretty ironic that the first book I read on that Kindle would be so reassuring about my decision to seek independence, and so leave my colleagues behind.

In a nutshell, the book talks about the deception handed down about Icarus: that he failed because he didn’t follow the advice not to fly too high, too close to the sun, forgetting that he was also advised not to fly too low, too close to the sea. The book argues that this deception is an example of how our society wants us all to conform to the system, an industrially optimised system. But I don’t want to discuss here the existence of this system and how it is changing. If you are curious, just buy the book. It’s a nice read, if a bit too repetitive for my conciseness obsession.

What struck me, and the true reason I am writing this, was the way Seth talks about Art. Art is making unique work, work that touches others, that makes connections. Art is emotional labour which explores new ground, working without a map. It brings risk and joy and fear and love to the table.

Seen this way, I can comfortably say that I am making Art right now. More than ever. What remains to be discovered is whether my Art is good enough to fit in this new economy, today.

February 2013