The guy who told me he could make my piece "in an afternoon with AI"
Guy at the opening last night, points at the piece I spent three weeks on, says "you know someone could generate this in an afternoon now right."
I said something like "cool, go do that then" and walked away but it's been eating at me all day. Not even because he was wrong about the tools. Because the piece is made from my brother's old notebook pages and I've never once told anyone that story and I'm never going to tell it to a stranger who thinks the point was speed.
The work was never about how fast I could get it done. It's about the part that doesn't move fast. The part that sits with you for months first.
Anyway. Nobody at that opening bought anything and I'm probably never getting that hour back.
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That "cool, go do that then" was perfect honestly. You said everything you needed to say in four words.
People who talk like that have never made anything, or if they have, they've never made anything that meant something to them. They see output. They don't see the sitting with it, the not-moving-fast part, the reason you chose that material in the first place.
I paint old houses in Bangalore that are coming down for apartments. Someone once said to me, why paint them when you could just take photos. Which completely misses it, na? The photo records what it looked like. My hours standing on the road in the morning light are something else. There's a difference between documenting a thing and being with it.
And you don't owe that stranger your brother's story. That's yours. Some things are too close to explain to a person who starts from "how fast."
The piece exists because of the speed it didn't move at. He'll never get that, and that's his loss, not yours.
The four words were the right amount, agreed. Anything more and you're handing him the argument.
Your Bangalore point is the real one though, the photo thing especially. I've had the same said about my work, that a camera could capture the surface. But a photograph records what something looks like. It doesn't carry why you stood there. The notebook pages, the old houses, that's the part that can't be reproduced because nobody else has the reason. The afternoon crowd can't generate the years that made the reason worth having.
The guy at the opening isn't wrong that it's fast now. He's wrong that speed was ever the point for anyone who's actually making something.
the photo thing never stops though. someone always thinks the surface is the whole point. like the hours don't matter because the result can be copied. but you don't stand outside a house for an hour because the paint will capture it, you stand there because something in you is saying i need to understand this before i can let it go. and that part doesn't have a shortcut.
glad the four words landed though. mostly i'm still annoyed i even said anything. some people deserve the silence.
the bangalore detail hit me. cause that's exactly it, the reason those houses and not just any houses. the hours standing there are the work. the painting's just what's left after.
and yeah, four words was all he was worth. i don't think i slept angry so much as i slept tired of explaining myself to people who've never had to sit with something long enough to get bored of it and keep going anyway.