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One frequent interpretation of these processes is like being part of association and gut feelings� Hustvedt describes art-making as a wave of high cerebral and low level gut feeling� Several artists tell us explicitly that they rely on instinct and gut feeling, or that they work very much with intuition� At the same time, they stress their use of analytical skills or self-criticism� Fjord interprets this stage as the looking back at the product and making sure that reflection is integrated in
the process: “sometimes you have to take a look back at what has been done and make room for reflection and for the time it takes”� Reflection allows for the anal-ysis of works of art and the discerning of compositional choices� Artists take deci-sions on what to keep and what to throw away in order to finish the work of art�
Analytical skills, though, are only one side of the reflective stage of composi-tion – aesthetic judgment is the other side (Hustvedt)� When Barba mencomposi-tions
“what is good for the work” and his actress, Julia Varley submits to her “trust in the director’s view”, they relate to something very concrete to them: domain rules� In the case of Odin Teatret, these are rules that partly the group has in-herited from contemporary avant-garde theatres (Grotowski, Mikhail Chekhov, Mejerhold, Stanislavski) and partly have been made up by the group itself� The group members relate to an aesthetic knowledge that allows for quick decisions that seem to come from the work of art itself� In reality, the embodied and of-ten tacit acquisition of domain rules permits recognition of the best choices to make� The very sensitive aesthetic knowledge, together with heuristic methods, lets Varley “recognise an action” and formulate the right artistic solutions� The internal logic of a work of art, learned during years of artistic practice and pos-sibly through formal education, opens up to an “artistic channel” (Rønsholdt and Klejs) that almost organically helps in taking the right decisions in the process of making� Both Rønsholdt and Jordan mention an almost Darwinist approach to artistic creativity: ideas struggle with each other but only the strongest (the most flexible) and better ones survive the process of creation� Designer Fjord speaks of
“criteria” that help him to navigate through resistance (medium, own ambition, economy, lack of time, perfection) and the final product must be meaningful, ap-pealing, funny, seducing, weird� Intuition is what drives artistic choices together with (domain) criteria�
This artistic knowledge guides a series of compositional strategies, such as changing direction if a strategy does not work� For Ramsland, Klejs and Rønsholdt this is embodied in an existential strategy: it means changing the course of their own lives and not only trying something new artistically (“do something new in your life”, Ramsland)� Bosch echoes this concept by adding: “sometimes you need new people, because to trigger your own process you need to try different ways to work”� One of the recurrent stages artists indicate is the one of switching off, sit-ting down and looking, doing something else, perhaps engaging in an alternative activity (Hustvedt with gardening, Jordan with cooking), or an alternative artistic language, or finding relaxation or meditating�
Several artists, regardless of their art form, describe the compositional process as montage (Barba, Granhøj, Varley, Nord, Rønsholdt) or editing (Ramsland)�
This implies the cutting into smaller pieces of parts of the process and finding
new, diverse combinations, but also the fact that the process is constantly self-adjusting itself and regenerating� Artistic creativity does not only imply finding new, appropriate ways of fashioning artistic products, but also, at the same time, finding new methods and re-defining approaches, a sort of methodological crea-tivity that follows the product�
In order to do so, generation and destruction are the vital forces to guide the process in the direction of composition� Intuition, analytical skills and aesthetic judgment provide the tools� What is thrown away often “stays in energy” (Varley, but similar concepts are to be found in Barba, Granhøj and Kvium), invisible to the unskilled eye/ear, but contributing to what Eisner would define the “opacity”
of artworks (1991, p� 31)� Works of art put together several levels of meanings and meaningfulness and hide the process behind this opacity� Goodman (1976) conceptualises the arts’ repleteness that is the richness of elements to decode and abundance of stimuli at all levels of cognition: intellectual, emotional, bodily�
The way artists achieve this is by connecting layers of meanings and meaningful forms in a structured narrative or dramaturgy� The “leftovers” of the process of artistic creation live on in the artwork’s final version, as much as the elements that are being kept�
The process of artistic creation is about making choices that are at the same time rational, strategic but also heuristic and intuitive� Rønsholdt describes this process as a continuous changing of direction and reconnecting of elements that are destroyed or building up: “not because one throws something out, it’s also about building up of course, [it means] that one takes things a step in another direction or replants them”�
One of the leading strategies that artists mention is the kill your darlings strat-agem (Valeur)� Being mercilessly able to sacrifice the beautiful ideas that one has generated, fostered, modified is a skill that artists learn, together with the artistic mind-set that prioritises the internal reasons of the work of art� This means that not only skills are needed (knowledge about the possibilities of the medium, practical skills in the making, aesthetic judgment and so on) but also a certain openness to criticism and self-criticism� Granhøj and Valeur challenge, though, this creative rule-of-thumb and tell us that they use the opposite approach some-times: don’t kill your darlings� It consists in the deferring of the “killing”, or better in the creative “rule” to keep what is apparently of no use, in the hope of finding secret gifts or unexpected inspiration� Granhøj tells us about the occasion when he first tried this technique and admits his own surprise at the results of it, but also to what extent this experiment was challenging for him� When he first in-troduced it to his dancers, one of them decided to sing and keep this “darling”
that did not fit into the dance performance� The choreographer hated it: “I hated
it because it didn’t interest me at all, until it hit me that it was completely amaz-ing to hear the dancer standamaz-ing and samaz-ingamaz-ing, it was the first time, and it was many years ago, and I was even getting limited by the rules� I made the rules and so I had to take the consequences afterwards� Søren proved to be an excellent singer” (Granhøj)� As a consequence, singing dancers were more accepted in the Granhøj ensemble and a performance was named after the new rule, Don’t Kill Your Darlings (1999)� Valeur describes the same approach, but in softer tones� He tries to be nice to the ideas he gets and nourishes them lovingly and respectfully:
“be a little nice to them, see if they cannot be used in a different way, I think I treat ideas with really great respect”�
When the interviewed artists have to take creative choices about their compo-sitional process, they rely on their practical and analytical skills, their knowledge of and about the field and domain they work within, but also, last but certainly not least, on the feedback that chosen individuals will give them� Ramsland and Hustvedt involve their life partners, Ramsland also his friends and editor, Nisticò feels the “need of external ear”, Rønsholdt and Klejs have developed their own routines to work collaboratively across art forms, architects Exner and theatre performers from Odin Teatret are accustomed to collaborative processes and reciprocal feedback� Regardless of art forms, artists engage in a dialogue with someone and ask for feedback� What we wish to point out here is the fact that art-ists embrace even the emotional uncertainty of the feedback process, in order to contribute to the artwork’s optimal composition� Inger Exner describes feedback as an emotional challenge of being criticised and accepting criticism, but also as a learning opportunity that can go to terrible waste: “there are other places where people get a task and they have to deliver it, and then they get it back, and then they say ‘Approved’ without getting to know what is good and bad about the task, one doesn’t learn much from it if the teacher has not bothered to answer it”�
The artists keep a fixed eye on the final outcome of their process and on the best ways of achieving the results that fit their purpose� This is about channelling creative energy (Ramsland), about enquiry and discovery, but also about feelings and relationships� In the following chapter we will learn more about the emo-tional and intellectual sides of art-making and how artists feel and think about the reception of their art�
Chapter 4: Artistic emotions and ways of thinking
The present chapter looks at the emotional, cognitive and relational elements of artistic creation� We will focus on the motivational aspects of artistic creation together with the artists’ conceptualisation of emotions in the processes of crea-tion� How can we break down the artistic creative process into essential elements?
How can we break down these processes at abstract level? While the previous chapter had its focus on preparation for artistic creation and the establishment of a relationship with the work of art, the present chapter will look at how the artists leave the creation room� Which emotions and thoughts are reported ret-rospectively? How do artists relate to their recipients while they compose? How does artistic creation feel and sound in the artists’ narratives?