Know Your Limits.

Walking the razor's edge of 'limitations'.

Welcome back to the KIOSK! Lovely day for it, isn’t it?

One thing I'm very aware of when embarking on a project are the limitations, and if I don't have them, I tend to create them for myself. However, it's something that often get misinterpreted or romanticised, so it's probably worth having a quick chat about it.

Now, I do like a bit of romance, who doesn’t? And it's probably quite hard to be an artist without some kind of romantic streak. However, the prevalent image of the struggling artist, suffering for their art in poverty, is an architype that’s not very helpful. It's a hard one to shift. It's fetishised and promoted, while the actual situation has got so bad that people with limited resources can't even get on the first step to following a creative life.

It increasingly feels like being able to ‘suffer for your art', is quite a luxury.

But what's going on here? Because it also feels like the only artists people really what to hear about are the successful ones. Narratively, people want to witness the biggest suffering, followed by the biggest success, and they are fascinated by the nature of both, but not so much in the effects on the actual human. Basically, they want the Van Gogh story - insane and destitute, but now worth millions.

I think many people need to see the suffering as a requisite cost to getting to have what is perceived as a ‘charmed life’. It can't be as simple as doing a squiggle on a bit of paper and getting loads of money (it's not) so there has to be a bit of visible hardship. I think society almost subconsciously believes that Van Gogh hacking his own ear off was the price of his genius, rather than a sad consequence of mental illness, no doubt exasperated by poverty*. And the tragic fact that he didn't live to see any of the success is just a bonus bit of trivia, but that doesn't matter, we got to see it!

Anyway, I've drifted off topic a bit. Limitations. There's an interview I like with the Beastie Boys (of course there is), where the interviewer tries to guide them down a ‘you can't do that these days’/cancel culture, route. And Adam Horowitz, clearly slightly annoyed by the question, says;

‘I don’t see why people can’t make things, and change, and grow or whatever. The only thing I don’t understand is how people can pay rent.’

And he's right. The debate is not about who's allowed to get away with what, that’s being decided by society all the time, but the question is; who’s allowed to even try to get away with anything in the first place?! All stats confirm it's harder than ever economically to embark into the creative sector, so increasingly only the privileged get to make things, which widens the gap, narrows the output, etc. etc. These are all undeniably real, and depressing realities.

So, limitations are bad.

But. We all know that when there are no limitations, when the resources are seemingly infinite, the results are almost always universally awful. This is not to compare the two situations, the poverty of someone just trying to get by is far more of an issue that millions squandered on a big Marvel movie that tanks, because everyone got paid on the movie. But creatively, it just feels like such a waste.

I remember from my architecture days being fascinated by projects that had to work within tight sites and limited budgets, and yet somehow found beautiful and creative solutions. I would compare this to work in places like Dubai, with seemingly limitless money and endless space (a literal sandbox!) and yet creatively, almost completely bankrupt.

The first Star Wars film cost $11 million and changed cinema forever. The most recent one cost $416 million, and was an absolute dumpster fire**. And we can all think of countless other examples. So how does one manage to do more with less, and what can we make of this?

To bring it back the personal, it's no fun being struggling artist. But if I’m being honest, I've probably done some of my best work whilst pushing against some limitation. And if I’m being completely honest, my best results come from a magnitude of pressure that I wouldn’t choose to apply to myself if I was given free reign. Although, while we're being so honest, I've probably done some of my worst, too.

‘I gotta hold on to my angst. I preserve it because I need it. It keeps me sharp, on the edge, where I gotta be.’ - Vincent Hanna (Heat)

There is a slight addiction to pressure, because it removes a lot of choice, so you just keep moving forward. But although this can achieve results, it's probably not that healthy, and more importantly, it’s not a sustainable space to be in. But opening a window and taking a breath, also lets in infinite possibilities and choices that can feel asphyxiating.

When I talk about this ‘pressure’, I’m not just referring to the external restrictions, I also mean the design decisions informed by limitations, which in turn, inform other decisions and are folded back into the actual creation.

This gets talked about in the recent spate of video game remakes. The inclination to take a classic game and give it a graphical or mechanical polish that was unachievable in the era of its release, is a tempting one. But frequently it reveals that those technological limitations of the time, meant decisions were made during the development that directly dictated the game's look, feel, or play. The things that made it a success in the first place.

Playing the cleaned up version today, things start to make less sense, despite their apparent clarity. It feels like taking one element of a well considered outfit and arbitrarily making it red, but that obviously has a knock-on effect, because the rest of the ensemble was based on it NOT being red.

The end product should always the sum of all that was available and unavailable at that specific moment in time.

I guess it comes down to (sing it with me, now!) ‘Intent and context’.

The invention and creativity shown by Industrial Light and Magic when making the first Star Wars film (enjoyably documented in the series on Disney Plus currently) was born out of a group of very talented people, comfortable enough with the situation to not feel exploited, but working within tight creative restrictions. It has been referred to as the biggest indie film ever made. Seemingly these ingredients made them want to go above and beyond what anyone thought was possible, and in that perfect cocktail, their work has become immortal.

Finding that perfect cocktail is hard. Some things will be in your control, some will not. And without being too facetious, limitations are a powerful asset…as long as they are not too limiting. But at the very least, I guess all we can do is get a little better at spotting the difference between when something is pushing you, or crushing you.

I'll leave you now. And you can have any type of coffee or pasty you would like. Unless you'd prefer me tell you what you're having?

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I have a couple of new prints up in my shop! Go take a look HERE.

It's a great way to support what I do, as well as you getting a nice print for your wall.

That's it for now. Have a lovely day, and I'll see you next time.

Owen D. Pomery.

* There's a great John Kearns bit, where he talks about the piece Starry Night and how it's based on the view from Van Gogh's asylum cell window. And now you can buy it as a Lego set. I love John Kearns.

** In my opinion. Let’s not get into it, please.