Ben Schaafsma’s funeral was Thursday, and this fact feels nothing less than a horrible loss still to me, to my community of cultural producers, and to Chicago. Not to mention the impact his death still has on each and everyone of his bazillion friends, only some of whom do I have the pleasure to know.
Although many more obituaries and memorials and new projects will continue to emerge from his continuing influence, I was awakened this morning by a single, bizarre thought, which I can only relay to you in the form of an anecdote.
A few weeks ago, when I went to visit Ben at EFA, we were having a discussion with a coworker of his about the upcoming panel we’d been planning. His coworker was describing how she wanted to find someone who, like, didn’t fit into art at all, didn’t create work for an art audience, maybe could speak that language but came to it somewhat unnaturally. And Ben sort of interrupted to ask me to describe my work. In a characteristically respectful manner.
And my work, I don’t know, sort of doesn’t fit easily into that world so much. Which Ben asked specifically by saying, “Are you even an artist?”
I said, “Don’t embarass me like that.”
To which he responded, “Yeah, people ask me that all the time.”
And although I never asked what he said, look at the natural way I decided for him. I know that for me this is an honorific; That if you are an artist in my mind, you are simply good at what you do. And Ben was an innovator, a curator, a thinker, and a writer. In my mind, you can be an activist, a writer, a teacher, or an urban survivalist, but when you get very good at it, it is a creative and scientific undertaking that has both great intellectual significance and profound aesthetic weight. But maybe it is not that way for everyone.
Probably I should have asked. There are conversations, projects, and friends that Ben Schaafsma introduced to my life that continue to inform and feed me, and I would have liked to have pursued all of them more fully.
Tags: art, Ben Schaafsma, death
November 15, 2008 at 12:09 pm
Marcel DuChamp defined art and thus the artist in a very fitting way. In fact, when Ben was very young he asked me what is art, or something to that effect. He received Marcel’s response. “Art is the lasting record of man’s interaction with material.”
Marcel went on to explain that each one of us that leaves a legacy through interaction is an artist. In many ways Ben’s material was people and community. Your’s may be……………what?
November 16, 2008 at 4:25 pm
Thanks Joel, you obviously helped form a brilliant young mind.
Duchamp’s definition is a pretty good start. I’d probably attribute it to the world of anthropology, and of course, eliminate the gendered language, as well as switch “material” out with “matter and/or society,” but all the basics are there.