Efficiency and imagination

by Kaija on Thursday, August 15th, 2013

Posted in: inspiration, Runfreakrun
No Comments on Efficiency and imagination

I had a conversation with Ramon yesterday, during which he quoted Marina Abramovic, a great performance artist, explaining the downfalls of a fixed workspace. A professional studio is essentially a very unnatural environment for creative thinking. Most of the time it is setup to enable an efficient output of work, nothing more. Except, creative work is always more than just a manual task. I imagine, that for most people the ideation part, the message, requires a very different environment. One where efficient output of quality work shouldn’t be the most important goal to reach at all times. Having that pressure from the setup of your workspace, while most of the progress is happening inside your own head, can be crippling.

Best thing would be to get out of the “producing work”- mode and let your thoughts wander making new discoveries that grab your interest. These ideas are the ones that have the potential to grow into something that you will obsessively work toward getting on your worktable, not the other way round.

This thought put into words something that I think most people instinctively gravitate towards. The way I work at home, as opposed to the office is a good example of this statement in action. Me and Silver are two self-absorbed people with an attention span that caters only to interesting thoughts, stories and conversations, and that has led to our apartment being solely organised to enable the creation of our own projects, most of which are still in a dormant state in our skull sized kingdoms. This otherwise mess of an apartment has all we need to transition between all the different stages of a project.

Inking comic pages does require a certain efficiency. That is where the workstation comes in. It’s perfect for polishing ideas, drawing final illustrations and making your work presentable. I love spending hours in there, drawing. But I feel like staying in that space would trap me into producing the same repetitive work and only let me hone the technical side of the process.

I never do ideation on my inking board. I have been instinctively avoiding it whenever I am coming up with new ideas. The inking table is for inking. A creative act in it’s own right, of course, but also a highly manual task. Whenever I am coming up with fresh ideas, writing, fleshing out thoughts and stories, I tend to retreat to a comfortable spot, most often the bed or a small bookshelf next to a window, covered in pillows for comfort. Anything that might serve as inspiration gets dragged in too.

Everyone probably has their own version of that spot, maybe it’s not even that far removed from the worktable. Maybe it’s only about switching from the computer to a notebook. Maybe it’s about switching off your phone and finding a quiet place to immerse yourself in your thoughts, knowing you are safe from interruptions. I feel like it is the physical change in my surroundings that lets me change gears from production to imagination.

_DSC0089 smallSilver took this picture couple of months ago. It’s one of my favourite spots for writing.

This weird picture illustrates my point perfectly: Salvador Dali in bed in 1964, projecting pieces of dirty paper “to stimulate his inspiration”.

 

Smiles,

Kaija