CREATIVE TIME: Joshua Yim


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 Joshua Yim, American Cyberculture student at UC Berkeley.
 
Keyword: Tactics
 
Tactics. The word brings to mind images of military regalia, strict formations, dim rooms with maps. Strategy, a plan, what to do, where to go. Tactics are a road map to success. Every person out there is striving for some kind of success whether it is something defined such as career success, or something more abstract like personal fulfillment. Rarely, however do we think about creating “tactics for life.” Tactics also, to many, feels removed from creativity. I believe, however, whether it is life, war, business, or art; tactics are something that can make a great difference in any person’s life. Building a plan of attack for something as small as your lunch or next art project could open up new realms of possibility. Art is about expressing a way of thinking, and tactics is definitely a unique way of thinking. Patterns such as camouflage were originally intended as a tactical too, but have since been used in all kinds of artistic pieces. Let us not just limit ourselves to thinking outside of the box, but let us also think tactically and take art to the next level.