The speaker is Stephen Perkins, who was born in London, later moved to the U.S. to study art and recently settled in Wisconsin. He has done various kinds of art, including art therapy, photography, art publication, social activity related to art… Currently, I think he is continuing his photography career and doing all kinds of art publications. What is interesting to me is, he is not only making art but also trying to use art to arise political or social awareness. For example, he was involved in an art strike against plagiarism and did an installation about Latin American Art. He said it is due to the influence of his visual anthropology professor John Collier.
His forms of art are mostly untraditional. He had small cards with words, exhibitions grouped with various artists other than himself and an exhibition is a bathroom.
After the speech, I and my friends talked with him for a while. To answer my friend’s question, he suggested us to get involved in different art mediums while we can and try anything we would like to try. I have been thinking about the question for a long time: should I be doing different kinds of things, or just focus on the ones I am relatively good at. I think Perkins is right; it is better to explore different things and be as early as possible. However, I do not think it is a good thing to try to grab everything instead of being expertise in a few fields.
The professional tends to classify and to specialize, to accept uncritically the groundrules of the environment. The groundrules provided by the mass response of his colleagues serve as a pervasive environment of which he is contentedly and unaware. The “expert” is the man who stays put.
The medium is the massage – Marshall McLuhan
Much of Perkins’ works are not mainstream in today’s context, but he continued to do what interests him and did various things. He is a professional who is anti-environment.
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