So, after a year, I feel like I should have something profound to say about 2020 Vision, the self-directed project that had me posting 800×800 pixel images on here each weekday of the year. After a year, though, it’s become so second nature that profundity feels almost impossible.
The basic idea behind it was that, essentially, improvising a daily image — going in with no plan, no preparation, and no expectation most of all, and just seeing what happened — would become both an exercise in unlocking something in my head creatively and a discipline thing that would get me over the hump in my brain that has made me second-guess any image making intent I’ve had since art school two decades earlier. (They fuck you up, those higher education establishments, they may not mean to, but they do.)
I’m not entirely sure the plan worked out, to be honest. At multiple times, the image making felt more of an obligation than a creative exercise, and something that I resented, or something close to it. I never actually got to the point of disliking the project, but I certainly got close a few times, especially on days where my workload got so heavy that I was all too aware that I had far too many other things that I should be doing instead. Things that would, you know, actually help pay my bills.
Yet I kept going, in part because I said that I would and I didn’t want to back down, and in part because it became a habit through sheer repetition. That felt like a problem in its own right; surely there was something wrong with continuing purely because of momentum and the creative version of muscle memory…? Or perhaps not; this was something I went into purposefully without expectation, so maybe any outcome was the right one.
The end is in sight now; as of Friday, a new year begins and 2020 is done. The project will be over, and I’ll stop making daily images. The question I haven’t really answered for myself yet is, will I keep making and posting them on an irregular basis, just because?
