Why is Yoko Ono creative? “Because I am what I am.”
At the Museum for Communication, Hermann Vaske’s Why Are You Creative? offers an existential quick fix for the arty set.
You may not have heard of Vaske, a German filmmaker, author, producer and advertising director. But you’ve definitely heard of the people he’s roped in for his long-running project “Why Are You Creative?” Over the past 30 years, Vaske has posed that question to everyone from David Bowie to the Dalai Lama, showcasing their answers in a TV series, a book and now this exhibition. The space resembles a collector’s archive, with answers scrawled on various ephemera and encased in shallow frames. On the back of a postal envelope, artist Tracey Emin confesses that her creativity is spawned from her “desire to be loved”, while director Paul Weiland jokes that his comes from “two teaspoons of goats milk yogurt daily”. Responses from macho artist Damien Hirst and advertising executive Stephen Vogel include inevitable phallic symbolism, a reminder of the glut of rich and powerful elite represented in Vaske’s selection of “the most creative people worldwide”. Yet as you walk through the exhibition, reading hand-scribbled quips on dubiously stained napkins, a real sense of humanity is established. You find yourself empathising with actors, artists and musicians who otherwise seem unapproachable. And if David Lynch drew a road into the unknown, then at least we can find reassurance in our shared uncertainty. Knowing you are creative is the key, regardless of whether you know the reason why.
Through April 8.
