Jessica Vanahill

Having been stuck in my perspective my whole life, it is hard for me to tell what I could write that would be of interest for others as well. I've decided to just use my most recent fascination and hopefully I will be able to contextualize it by the end. 

I recently discovered a perfect movie. After forcing a couple people to watch it, I was gently asked why I thought it was a perfect movie. In that conversation, I may have misspoken and described some idea of consistency in what everyone making the film is trying to do and the flawless realization of their particular abstract goal. I also may have clumsily added a caveat that what the filmmakers are trying to do must feel significant to others as well. Can't we all think of plenty of movies that appear to accomplish exactly what the artist's intention was, but that goal feels insignificant, misguided, or some other waste of potential? These can't qualify. 

But this was—I was going to say slightly, but alas—this premise is full of errors. Perhaps a perfect movie has more to do with having whatever specific, humble agenda the film itself is trying to accomplish realized with the help and in spite of artist intentions. So that each piece, in a way that no one has complete control of, or can satisfactorily explain, effectively contributes to this ambiguous, inscrutable purpose and the accidental and intentional components of the work will all amount to something greater than the sum of their parts. It seems inarguable to me that whatever a creator is trying, at times desperately, to do and whatever the product of their labor will actually be are two disparate items that will never fully graft onto each other. They may make a healthy venn diagram, but the overlaps gonna be slim. It's hard for the explorer to provide a map of the landscape pre-journey (or post-journey, if we're gonna adhere to honesty). 

Does this edit fix the sentiment I mistakenly described to my friends? I think it helps, but I understand if no one is yet convinced. 

Times like these do have me wondering what I could possibly say about my own art, and you know, what the point of attaching words to things is. But given how lovely it was to hear this particular director get into the filmmaking process, I feel I should try to temper my skepticism.  

I know I have been trying to do essentially the same thing with all the pieces that I have worked on so far. There are certain forms that I find interesting and evocative and usually I am just trying to capture,  recreate?, those forms: to artificially bring life to them. I wonder at what and how this can be, at just how strange it is that the process of artificially manufacturing organic forms satisfies something in me. 

Thus far, artmaking has felt like rashly making a single mark and spending all the subsequent hours correcting mistakes: the initial mistake and all those that have arisen in the process of correcting it. It elucidates, for me, the process of moving forward, the discrepancies between visualizing an action internally beforehand and observing the effects of that action externally afterward. How the paint lands on the page will always provide a surprise and I've been inclined to try to lean into that lack of control. Or, I should note, it's the process that reminds me to do it, as the tighter and tighter I fix my expectations, the more I am humbled by having to confront the lack of control that I so adamantly try to deny. 

That borderline, between the interior and exterior, the imagined and the realized. Is it fixed? How much can one side relate to the other—inform, infiltrate the other? When I look for the edge, I find no answers. How can one even begin to trace its relief? I am stuck marvelling at all the questions that may be better illustrated by examining a cell under a microscope. 

But I am a sucker for the abstract: the clarity of it. For example, what would happen if I were to include the title of this perfect movie in this little diary entry? I feel it would ruin the story. That detail is too particular to me to be relevant (in a story of me trying to explain my own art—I, too, appreciate the absurdity). But I'm just trying to get my own goddam hand out of the way.