CREATIVE TIME: Ellen Chmakov


On October 12, the Arts Research Center at UC Berkeley and the Curatorial Practice at the California College of the Arts are partnering to host a live-streaming of the Creative Time Summit, an annual conference in New York that brings together cultural producers–including artists, critics, writers, and curators–to discuss how their work engages pressing issues affecting our world. To jump-start the conversation in advance of the event, attendees have been asked to submit a paragraph on a keyword associated with one of the summit themes: Inequities, Occupations, Making, or Tactics. This posting is by Ellen Chmakov, American Cyberculture student at UC Berkeley.
 
Keyword: Occupations
 
When it comes to Occupation topic there are many questions come to my mind. How one becomes interested in what one does throughout one’s life? Why one chooses a particular occupation in one’s life? Does occupation driven by one’s personality? Was a person “forced” to take a particular occupation due to helping his/her family financially (or with daily tasks) or he/she just expresses what he/she enjoys and good at?  Before attempt to answer these questions, it’s right to notice that occupations and professions are very similar in nature, yet slightly different.
 
One difference when a person has a profession he/she is getting paid and when a person has occupation(s) than there is most likely there is no monetary exchange is involved. For instance, a person loves to cook but his/her profession, which has nothing to do with cooking, is an engineer. In my opinion, occupation is something that a person enjoys to spend his/her time to express their inner feelings, something a person good at.
On the hand, most of occupations can state many characteristics about one’s personality. If he/she likes gardening, classic music – a calm, balanced person; if someone likes intense music, drives loud motorcycle – then a person may be hard to get along with. However, when a person tries to “divide” people by their occupation(s) it may become misleading because one’s personality can be predicted but it is not 100% proof, since not all occupations have the same indication to decode each personality.

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