"Positive Art and Positive Healing" A lecture by Richard Tuttle

Richard Tuttle, what a puddle a greenhouse you sound like a piece of putty you talk to plants the opening of ears is green the rain is green way too understudied way home way

I loved Richard Tuttle's lecture Tuesday night at the Menil. He didn’t really lecture as much as he just said some sentences.

…There is no opposite to the word health…

Tuttle spent lots of time on this. That the absence of a suitable opposite meant that it was outside of regular experience or maybe it contains experience. It's hard to pinpoint the exact statement that he was making, but I'm not sure there was an exact statement made.

…Wellness = the flow of love/light…
….Art is the absence of disease…
…"Health" is free…
…anti-love is life…
…Illness picks an art like itself…

During a certain section of his talk, notions of health (healthiness) and art became conflated. I was confused about the correlation between wellness and art.

…Are health and no-health connected? …
…Does undesirability = illness? …
…Is all medication about translation? …

Much of Tuttle's talk included questions sort of tossed out into the cosmos. These, esp. the last, caught my attention. I can’t really picture what I need to in order to make that question make sense.

…Art is a portrait of its characteristics…
…Form produces too much content, we can't keep up…

While I really really want to beleive that understanding these little nuggets will take me closer to Tuttle's work I know that's sort of a lie. Tuttle's art has so little to do with what Tuttle thinks about art, even tho the opposite seems to be the case. How can I explain this?... I don't think I can.

…Health should begin in the farthest point of the body…

These kinds of statements were very important to Tuttle's talk. Health is a context, not individuated. The immune system (and I think the word ‘system’ is important here) precedes health. To quote him "Health is a material that isn't materialized."

He would say things like: " We often talk as individuals and never talk as 'health beings.'" Nevermind exactly what a 'health being' is. We are the crust of the earth. He kept insisting we are the crust of the earth. That health is categorically outside us, beyond us, bigger than us; but since health contains us WE ARE ALSO OUTSIDE. Therefore we should embrace our outsideness. To summarize his call to action: 'Go outside and find something undiscovered and convert it into freedom.' What a great thing to say.

Tuttles comments on being “outside” seemed connected to his thoughts on ambiguity.

…Unless we have an idea of what something is, we can't get out of bed in the morning…
…How long can we go before we are forced to destroy the ambiguity that we are? …
… Perfection is a symptom of something…
…Perfection destroys ambiguity…
…craftsmanship isn't about perfection, it's about losing yourself…

Oh Tuttle, I am the one that understands everything you say but I sneak out of my understanding. I am out of the window, down and on the lawn. Here is me and here is the fence. Here are acorns and then, opossum. Lists of cows I understand with no way in. Cow in my lane. Cow, cow earings, talking to plants, cow knows plants, stamping the ground, toe to lead, the weeds for weeks lay out there, ringing, has this bell, under where

…You can build an environment. It's like a health practice…