What is the role of an artist in the 21st Century? To ask questions without providing answers? Are we merely spellbound by moral nihilism? Or do we bend it to our will?
An artist invests their attention, to create something of value; value in its broadest sense; something we care about.
Creating value by focusing attention is what everyone does all the time; it is how consciousness defies entropy.
When a nurse focuses their attention, they make their patient more valuable; increasing their wellbeing and extending their lifespan. When a friend focuses their attention on you, they make you more valuable; to be ignored is to be devalued.
When an artist focuses their attention, they create value by creating a symbol. Whatever the object of their attention, be it material or conceptual, the result is a symbol rendered physically.
What is the value of that symbol? Why should we care for the creation of new symbolic artifacts?
Artistic symbols are catalysts. The value of a work of art is measured in how it changes the thoughts and lives of the observers. Art is fuel. Art is an accelerant. The artist is a War Boy, clinging to the bonnet of a hot rod, spitting nitrous into the engine vent.
Who is driving the hot rod?
When art was rendered on stained glass windows the artist’s symbols were proscriptive; there was a clear message; an orthodoxy.
When art was rendered in abstract swirls the artist’s symbols were liberating; the advent of cameras and the subconscious mind propelled artist and audience into realms of subjective speculation.
Today we live in a blizzard of symbols, streaming from the walls and our pockets night and day.
Do those symbols illuminate or mesmerize?
May the artist reason with their audience?
What is reason? A faux objectivity.
A cloud of points; a net made of symbols.
A defiance of oblivion; a measure of inertia.
Momentum.
WORDS AND PICTURES 
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