The Future is in the Past, Luxury Professions, and other things on my mind

Another ramble about existential dread? You betcha.

This past Tuesday (as of me writing this several weeks ago), I overheard a fellow student say “statics class won’t matter if we’re all f***king dead,” in reference to the ever-present climate change crisis. Which is true. I know we place a lot of value in our education and grades but in the end none of that matters if our future is compromised. But of course we can’t improve the course of the future if we aren’t educated enough to figure out how. We must balance living and surviving, and somehow place a value on the present versus the future.

Naturally I’ve been thinking of my own path. One professor I have this semester brought up the fact that although architecture school can be compared to the rigor of some degrees earned by medical professionals, in the end a lot of architects have a ‘luxury profession’ (clients being businesses or individuals who can afford to have custom-designed buildings) whereas doctors, lawyers, and accountants have made their professions necessary to society and everyday people. In order to guarantee a stable job, especially in the case of a recession, you have to make your services vital to society (currently a STEM-centered society). There’s another factor here, too, which is quality of life. I could be an accountant, and have both money and stability, but I would hate that job. I’m sure there are people who are passionate about accounting, but I am not one of those people. Additionally, I could have a job that I love with both stability and good pay, but if I get home at night and have no free time to take care of myself and spend time with my family, then my quality of life suffers. What is the point of building a good life for yourself if you don’t have time to enjoy it…? Finding a balance seems rare, but I’m in still in school and don’t have first-hand experience with a full time job, so I wouldn’t really know yet what is possible.

Recently I listened to someone (Greg Kletsel, faculty adviser to the Comic Club) who’s in the process of making a zine to sell at Comic Arts Brooklyn. Someone asked him if the money he makes evens out with the time and energy he spent making the zines and he said no, but sometimes it is worth it just to get an idea out of your head and into the world, and that it is always possible that someone who has the ability to pay you will see what you’ve created and take an interest in your work. What risks am I willing to take now in order to see them pay off in the future?

At the previously mentioned Comics Art Brooklyn (can you tell I started writing this forever ago but never finished), I attended a talk between Chris Ware, Francoise Mouly, and Art Spiegelman (of Maus fame). Some interesting points from their talk, along with my own idea of what they mean:

• “The future is in the past” (as in… everything has been done before, but there are always new ways to do old things)
• Art, although not as valued nowadays as it should be (by the likes of the government & funding), is critical in “teaching empathy”. We are very much pushed in a STEM direction nowadays, which is great, but ‘soft skills’ must be learned and a good way to do that is through art, which is self-expression and the understanding of others’ expression.
• “If someone sees something they don’t understand in a museum, they think they’re stupid. If someone reads a comic they don’t understand, they think the author is stupid.” It is all in the context in which art is presented which gives it a value. I think this loosely ties back to the talk with Prof Kletsel in which he mentioned that zines, which can be several pages of unique illustrations and a story, can be sold for as little as $5 while a print of a single image from the zine can be an acceptable price of $10. Of course quality of paper and that kind of thing is a factor, but zines are undervalued in the art space. A piece hung on the wall seems more important than a piece found within a book that’s been stapled together by hand. This also reminds me of that shredded Banksy painting- the art that was never meant to be stuck in the context of a frame (but of course the act of destroying it in order to remove its value made it even more valuable).

I feel like this is just the beginning of dissecting the value of art and time, quality of life, that kind of thing, but I’ve been sitting on this draft for at least a month. Have some photos from CAB…