WHY WE NEED TO MAKE MORE “BAD” ART

CONTEXT

Before I begin trying to explain myself and provide some evidence for this outlandish statement, let me give you a little personal context. My name is Zed. I am nearly twenty-two years old and I live in a caravan in the backyard of my mum’s house in Australia. I recently graduated from Pomona College in California with a Bachelor of Arts degree majoring in Theatre. A theatre degree in this economy? I know, that piece of paper probably won’t bring me too many job opportunities given the current state of things. In fact, I, like most college students, was forced to return home and sacrifice my final semester as a result of the COVID-19 Pandemic. I missed out on presenting my thesis show and forfeited my US visa, of which I was hoping to extend come graduation, but this isn’t some sob story, no this is a story about making things and failing spectacularly.

THE IDEA

Now, you’re probably thinking — who is this kid? What does he mean by “failing spectacularly” and what’s with this absurd title about “making bad art”? If you’re doing anything you want it to be good, right?

But what if you can’t make something good? What if all you have in you right now is bad art? Does that mean you shouldn’t make art at all? That you should give up on your artistic pursuits or your hobby that brings you so much joy? Is something only worth doing if it’s going to result in an objectively “good” product?

I would argue, it is our continued separation of “good” and “bad” that is the issue here. The media sells us these perfectly packaged ideas of success — of creating a global company and selling it for millions before you turn thirty, of writing a best-selling book and making limitless money online without any work -but the truth is success is subjective. Success is defined by the individual of whom it relates to, and if we shift our definition of success and remove the judgments of good and bad we enable ourselves to focus on what matters — creating things, trying things out and failing.

STORYTIME

I have grown up committed to trying to achieve financial freedom, not because I necessarily want fancy houses and nice cars (although that does sound nice), but because I have grown up in a family where finances have always been a struggle. At the same time, I want to be an artist, a storyteller, and a theatremaker, three passions that often don’t equate to that level of financial stability. Throughout college, i became a dreamer, an unsurprising reality given the fact no-one I knew had traveled to the US, let alone studied there. I imagined large scale theatrical installations, and collaborative art projects, and films and tv shows that would change the world. Funnily enough though, for the first year or so of college, I didn’t create anything. In fact, I was scared to create anything because I knew it wouldn’t be up to the standards of my dreams. I wanted to curate oscar quality performances and worldwide art exhibitions, so I gave up on any projects that weren’t going to be that — AKA I gave up on everything I started. I was so caught up on making stuff that was objectively good that I ended up not making anything at all. Eventually, I got sick of not having a creative outlet, so I started writing in a journal and collating my thoughts. None of these journals were going to secure me a book deal or propel me to international acclaim but over time they started to teach me that not all art has to be some perfectly polished product ready to distribute to the world — It can just be something simple for us or a few close friends.

During the summer between freshman and sophomore year, a friend of mine and I decided to put on a collaborative art exhibition. I was traveling down to see him in Melbourne and we both wanted to do something useful with our time, so we thought why not give it a go. We had no idea what we were doing and we worked tirelessly for a week straight, trying to pull together some hybrid art experience that blended together theatre performance, visual art, and multimedia. It was a disaster. Six people came, all of whom were close friends or family. All but one of the visual art pieces we collected from artists we knew fell off the walls and sprayed glass everywhere. We lost close to three hundred dollars — which to two unemployed students was a lot of money.

The next day I paid a deposit on a performance space in our hometown of Brisbane. I had mentioned to another friend of ours that I wanted to stage the show there in a few weeks and he was down to help me execute it. Instead of telling him how much of a failure the first show had been, I said we needed to make some minor improvements and that I was willing to give it another go. I’m not sure why I felt the need to follow through with the second show, but i think it had something to do with the fact that I knew it couldn’t be any worse than what we put up in Melbourne. My expectations were so low, and I knew for this new show to be successful we just needed to make sure the artwork didn’t fall off the wall and have more than six people show up.

Fast forward three weeks and we staged a collaborative performance piece that brought together the work of twelve artists from around the world over two sold-out nights. It was one of the most successful projects any of us had ever worked on and we had audience members deeply moved by the piece. This only occurred though because we were able to lower our expectations and focus on just putting something up rather than it being some perfect performance. We were still editing the music for the show ten minutes before the audience arrived, scrambling to pull it all together, but we knew that the focus was on putting a show up regardless of its quality.

This experience ended up changing my whole philosophy around art and the way I look at success. Did I change everything in the moment and map my next three years of college around simply creating work no matter what its quality? No. In fact, I still question my abilities and the value of the work I make, but I’m working to lean into failure and experimentation more, now that I have seen how valuable it can be. The success of that second show would not have occurred had we not failed miserably the first time around. We had to make bad art in order to make good art, and I think that’s a mentality that anyone can implement to fast track their learning process. We don’t learn by chasing natural brilliance, we learn by messing things up, trying things out, and reflecting on what we’ve actually done.

APPLYING THIS IDEA MOVING FORWARD

So you’re probably wondering how all this comes together into some tangible tactic moving forward, and the truth is I don’t have some perfect strategy or eloquently articulated philosophy for how this idea can function in your life. What I do have is my own process and understanding that I am trying to implement in my own life right now, and so I am going to share that with you.

First and foremost, we have to come together as a community and embrace our failures. We have to stop putting “successful” people on pedestals and weighing ourselves down with unrealistic expectations. It’s okay to not be creating “good” work, to not be at the top of the game, and achieving the conventional pillars of artistic and financial success. We have to build a culture that shines a light on the process, that paves the journey towards achievement as something that is worthwhile in and of itself. Failure is not the antithesis of success, it is the prelude to success. Whatever you are making, whatever you are creating, it is worthwhile and it is a stepping stone of experience that will lead you towards future success, whatever that may mean to you.

Getting more tangible, here are ways that I have found useful in shifting my own mentality towards my work and the work of others:

1. Keep a daily journal. Take notes of your ideas and your thoughts and use it as a way to document your process and as an outlet for your creativity. It doesn’t have to be eloquent or a literary masterpiece, but is a piece of art that you make for yourself; something you can look back on in five, ten, twenty years time and be proud of.
2. Resist the urge to judge other people’s work. It’s easier said than done, but when we start to congratulate and value the work of others, no matter if it appeals to us or reflects our subjective opinions of “good” art, we train ourselves to not turn those same judgments on ourselves. In the long term, we build a culture of creators who value the process and support the act of creation rather than the products of creation.
3. Share your ideas and document your learnings. For too long we have been told these false narratives that the opportunities for creative people and artists are finite, that we are in competition with everyone else. This couldn’t be further from the truth; together we can see further, we can learn from each other and reflect together on the things that will make all of our work better.
4. Focus on what makes you unique. If we start sharing everything and documenting all of wins and losses, failures, and successes, we will open up our communities to uncapped potential. In doing this we will have no choice but to be authentic, to make the work we want to make and to apply what others are doing to our own unique way of seeing and creating in the world