PRACTICE WHAT U PREACH

 

During my student days, I learned mostly from the artworks produced by my gurus, followed by practicing or doing or creating my own artworks. I went to see, observe & study their artworks at exhibitions sites, or even in their working spaces or habitats. My gurus taught me mostly through their art practice, their artworks, not through their writings in scopus journals.

There are multiple intelligences, 11 if im not mistaken, not only linguistic as in writing. High creativity & innovation involve both the left & right brain hemispheres, or whole brain system. There are four forms of learning styles & cycles, not just reading alone (observing, doing, thinking, feeling). Our brainwaves have ranges from the noisy beta state to alpha, theta, delta & gamma. Reading is in mostly beta state. There are many literatures on these topics, and yet why some still limit the notion of learning & intelligence to writing & publishing alone.

Even when i was doing my bachelors & masters in the USA, I learned a lot by observing the works of my gurus & other practicing lecturer-artists. From that, I practice. None of them have written in scopus journals then. So, does that mean i received an inferior form of art training & degrees. Or my degrees should not b acknowledged because my gurus then didnt write in scopus journals?

I learned from the struggles of my gurus in practicing their art, their strength & weakness, their success & failures, the experiential challenges they had to endure, their mistakes, their human qualities as they practiced their arts.

Of course I also read their writings, but that was suplementary and only from few gurus, especially those who specialised in art history, criticism, theory, appreciation. But then again, i suspected that they wrote because they really wanted to share their knowledge, not to race for numbers, to naik pangkat, to brag in front of their practicing peers and prasan about how 'scholarly' they were, while talking down on those who 'didnt' write or 'publish', or wrote & published in non scopus publications.

My gurus published by creating masterpieces, great original artworks that were then exhibited and some collected by major institutions or respected collectors, studied & published in books, to become iconic & seminal works, or to become some of the most important & critical references for the public at large. Their artworks became amongst the most important signposts of history, echoes of the spirit of a certain period, of ideas, of sentiments in relation to pertinent issues, markers of human struggles & achievements and so many more. Major art institutions around the world have been spending billions to collect original artworks. They know the value of the arts as a part of human civilization, culture, heritage and now, creative economy.

Universities that offer studio or practice-based courses will b recognized through high quality productions of original artworks. These will form the 'primary data' & valuable 'knowledge capital' for future research. Universities should invest in producing artworks of unique & high quality. Writing in scopus journals (by those who specialise in theory, history & liberal studies) can then assist in suplementing these artworks with in depth analysis of their significance or importance. Win-win. Dont get me wrong. I love theories. I love to read. I write as well.

For me, the honest way to teach or share knowledge is to practice what i preach, as much as i possibly could, as good as i possibly could.

So, please ya, tolong jgn ganggu aku dgn toksid sombong menyombong scopus ni.