get lost

You have to get lost before you can be found.

Jeff Rasley, Bringing Progress to Paradise: What I Got from Giving to a Mountain Village in Nepal, 2008

At the heart of all creative endeavours in my opinion is the necessary skill of being able to ‘get lost’ [‘going off the reservation’ in spy-speak]. It is only through being able to step off of the well-trodden paths that one potentially finds anything new of interest. In problem solving circles this might be called ‘lateral thinking’ [but arguably all creativity is a form of problem solving?] As an aficionado of  things both fact and fiction I  bemoan the perceived chasm between the Arts and the Sciences, where none actually exists. One possible bridge of this divide is Conceptual Art?

A work by one of my favourite installation artists Ilya Kabakov titled Monument to the Lost Glove [1997-98] cleverly married the story telling aspect of the artist with the museological taxonomy of the scientist.

The centerpiece of  the ‘monument‘ is … a life-size glove that looks as if just dropped, but is in fact made of durable red plastic and fixed to the pavement. Half surrounded by metal stands, each engraved with a short text that takes a different approach to the glove’s presence; ruminating on the city’s indifference or its garbage, on homelessness or installation art. The work commemorates the kind of loss endemic to city living. Summed up nicely by the closing lines from the brilliant animated version of Shaun Tan’s graphic novel The Lost Thing.

I still think about that lost thing from time to time. Especially when I see something out of the corner of my eye that doesn’t quite fit. You know, something with a weird, sad, lost sort of look. I see that kind of thing less and less these days. Maybe there aren’t many lost things around anymore? Or maybe, maybe I’ve just stopped noticing them?

As creatives we must never stop trying to catch lost things, from out of the corner of our eyes.