What is more important, the means or the end?
The means. Why? Because the end is not up to us.
One of my favorite artists quoted some of my favorite artists when (then) Mos Def opened up his 1999 classic Black on Both Sides with these words “I guess The Last Poets wasn’t too far off when they said that certain people got a God complex. I believe it’s true.”
We are all wise to remind ourselves not to be those certain people. Ever. Not a good look. Not cute. Not at all.
No matter our intentions, no matter our effort, our time, our budget, our reputation, or our accreditation we will never ever have control over every factor of any encounter we take on with even one other person. Even one other person presents infinite variables that can reorient whatever plan we thought we had. While it is possible to frame and/or misframe some rendering of a controlled end (see Mark Strandquist’s thoughtful analysis of documentation in the response to Question 72; “How do we work towards more honest documentation? Do we document our failures as well as our successes?”) we can not set the true determinants to our ends no matter how hard we try.
So why try when instead, we could put the energy behind that irrational effort, towards setting the internal intentions from which we begin? Identify the places from which our deepest interests, hopes, and desired outcomes exist and channel those parts into carefully considered, and emphatically felt intentions which are the means with which we go about our work. This passion for what we do, from the smallest to the grandest idea, will order the steps (visible to us day-to-day) towards the end that will surely reveal itself whenever it pleases. Through minimal actions we may build towards the larger structure that will eventually become the end. This is where our agency exists and where our primary focus should too.
Peace.
About the contributor: Shani Peters is a New York based artist from Lansing, MI working in video, collage, printmaking, and social engagement projects. Her work reflects interests in community building, collective action, activism histories, reinterpreted models of record keeping, and popular media subversion. Peters completed her B.A. at Michigan State University and her M.F.A. at The City College of New York. She has exhibited and/or screened internationally, including group shows at the Bronx Museum of Art, The Contact Theatre (UK), Rush Arts Gallery, The Savannah College of Art & Design, the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), and the Schomburg Center for Black Culture and Research. She has completed multiple residencies including programs hosted by MoCADetroit, The Laundromat Project, Project Row Houses and the Visual Arts Network, apexart to Seoul, S. Korea, the Lower East Side Printshop The Center for Book Arts, The Lower Manhattan Cultural Counsel, as well as the Bronx Museum of Art’s Artist in the Marketplace program. Peters has taught extensively throughout her Harlem community as a educator and program designer working in New York Public Schools, Harlem Textile Works, Casita Maria Arts Education Inc., The Laundromat Project, and as a social justice arts education adjunct lecturer at The City College of New York. shanipeters.com