From: David Tetzlaff (email suppressed)
Date: Sat Mar 11 2006 - 22:44:47 PST
I wish people would be careful about the smack they run here on 'hobbies',
for example fishing and Trekiana. For most people, hobbies are more than a
diversion, they're a form of deeply elaborated cultural practice, and
often carry the active aesthetic component of everyday peoples' lives.
It's clear to me that for a lot of the people I've met with serious
hobbies - record collecting, for examples - is a kind of artform (not
totally unlike what it was for Harry Smith). The fine points of fly-tieing
or other aspects of fishing have their own very specific wierdness and
depth. These things don't necessarily interest me, sometimes they seem
like a lot of needless elaboration on the banal, but then I feel the same
way about a lot of art I encounter in museums. 'Fan Studies' ala Henry
Jenkins are revealing about the way some mass culture consumers constantly
re-write pop texts into new creative works expressing their own unique
perspectives (not totally unlike found footage film...)
And, and I mistaken or aren't we arguing over semantics, and everyone here
thinks filmamking is a worthwile activity whether one gets paid for it or
not - given that we can control our art, but not control the market for it
(and yes, in strict eonomic terms, there is no income without a market).
Ctreative work does 'profit' us in non-economic ways, no?
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For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.