Being creative prerequisits a state of activity. It is often an almost unseizable, sometimes volatile, but in a certain way sensible process that takes place only in the present. Both, the state of activity and the nature of being tied to the moment, are similar characteristics of artistic work.

Artistic work can be described as a kind of „cultivation“ – cultivation of creativity, sensoric perception, intuition, thinking. It is important to note that cultivation in this sense is not meant to be a more or less obsessive motivation with the goal of improvement. Rather, it is about allowing.

In my understanding cultivation can be seen as a form of caretaking of our potentials. It is an encouragement to pay  attention, take care of and give room to  one´s own potentials.

It is worth mentioning  that  potentials of  creativity appear to be limitless. Paradoxically, this creativity can be misused to create a framework  constraining these potentials, which is an important topic that implies cultural- and socio-political aspects as well as system-theoretical links. Without wanting to go into too much detail here it seems that tendencies of creative restriction are used as an instrument to define and to assure power and an expert status of single actors or groups. Conversely, a possible supporting effect to stimulate a creative overcoming of those tendencies in respetive systems should not stay unmentioned and underlines the complexity of this topic that is worth to examine more deeply.

Engagement with creative restrictions as well as prevention of those restrictions and their non-acceptance are important contributions to artistic works. An interesting aspect of artistic work is that its potential of cultivation is not only open to the artist himself during his/her creative process, but also to the recipient of the work, the one who gets engaged in the art work. Embedding the recipient into the creation process of the artwork or in the artwork itself may result in a transformation of the recipient as part of artistic work. Furthermore, there is no doubt that an artist is influenced by his/her environment and vice versa. Hence, art opens up the potential to blur the borders of the creative processes and being creative between those involved at both ends which makes is quite problematic to draw a clear dividing line between an artist and a recipient of art.  Isn´t this openness wonderful?

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