Arts in the Age of Aquarius (Notes)

Creative Premise: Art making not from Trauma but from Expanded Awareness
Its been a somewhat unwritten assumption that art and the art making
requires some sort of trauma, (physical, emotional, psychological, or
psychic), in order to have truth, value, or greatness. Many artists of the
past have been tortured individuals, from Caravaggio and Michelangelo to
Dali and Picasso, and as such the bundling of
pain/psychoses/trauma/insanity to art and the art process has become
regular occurrence among outside observers and artists themselves.

This collective, however believes that not only is it possible to divorce art
and art making from the traumatic event, but that it is a required
progression! As artists in the Age of Aquarius, we are committed to
developing artistic practices, art works, and art training programs that are
not only trauma free but psychically restorative, transformation, exalting,
experiential and healing and progress the human condition.

Aesthetic values: Synthetic, synergistic, sophistication, impressive craft and/or

deep insight/commentary, relationship to medium, sincerity, play, humor
While Arts in the Age of Aquarius would like to see aesthetics and art
practice to become more psychically and emotionally humanistic, we have
noticed that much of the art coming out of the New Age and Healing
communities has so far not reflected enough craft or aesthetic rigor. We
do not believe that because a piece of art comes from a specific point of
view or belief system that it is, by default, a good art. We believe that
work must be held to a high standard of excellence and sophistication.

Just SOME of the artists we like: Henry Miller (Writing), Samuel Becket (Writing),
Mary Overlie (Dance), Mary Wigman (Dance), Hans Haacke (Art), Dan Flavin
(Art), Joseph Beuys (Art)
While we believe in divorcing ourselves from the bad practices of our
artistic for-parents, we do not believe in abandoning their discovers all
together and believe there is much to be learned from their craft and
aesthetic genius.

Goals and possible outcomes of the collective:

Goal: To promote the creation of work from theses premises
Possible outcome: Contest, Scholarship, ??
Goal: To show, produce, disseminate, market this kind of work
Possible outcome: Gallery/Performance/Multi-Use space, Financed performance
pieces, ??
Goal: To create training programs with these artistic and practice values
Possible outcome: Workshops, semester long programs, ??