ENGLISH TEXT BELOW: PRESENT YOURSELF BETTER IN TEXTS – WRITING SKILLS FOR ARTISTS (2)
You will probably be able to quickly draw up your own list if you are wondering why you sat around your PC and typed something for your last exhibition or participation in an exhibition. In my series, I want to tell you a little more about the differences between different types of text . This way you run less risk of wondering what exactly is being asked of you this time. You avoid unnecessary nesting or repetition and you can set up your text in a much more targeted manner.
But first of all: THERE IS NO ONE RIGHT PROCEDURE! There are no set rules. In this series, I am therefore only making suggestions and offering orientation options. Nevertheless, in the end you will have a good overview of what you can still tackle for yourself.
I’ll give you some general tips on how to organize yourself well from the start:
What is a type of text?
We generally speak of different “types of text” when it comes to classification or learning to write. For example, a resume in tabular form is a completely different type of text than a cover letter. For each type of text there are more or less general characteristics. But there are still different sub-types: If you apply for a job as a waiter in the pub next door, you will certainly do it very differently than with a highly paid position on the board of a company – or when applying as an artist * in around an exhibition space. And finally – as almost everywhere where there are drawers – there are also mixed forms. While you can, for example, neatly separate everything when displaying on your own website (if you wish),
How can text modules help?
For the sake of simplicity, I will concentrate on the clearest possible “drawers” in the series. What you make of it in the end is entirely up to you. A good recommendation, however, is to create your own archive that you can use again and again. By that I mean that you create TEXT BLOCKS. For example, you can create a certain part in your biography or your statement (e.g. essential influences on your art or a particularly important exhibition or your main motif or your preferred technique or …. Or …) as a separate text module that you can add to others if necessary Can incorporate texts. Or you can create a fixed layout for your CV as a building block, which you can change and expand again and again.
You can create the text modules themselves in various forms. Many tenders specify, for example, a fixed minimum or maximum number of words. So you should be able to write your building block in both a few and more words. Very experienced writers can also consider writing the same text module once in a very formal manner and once more colloquially. And the very creative among you may invent your own linguistic or even visual representation.
Notice the W questions
Another general tip comes from the journalistic field, but is also ideally suited for our purposes – and I will point this out again and again in the further course of the series: Answer the six W-questions in your texts: WHO? WHAT? WHERE? WHEN? HOW? WHY? Or. Always think about which W question (s) is or are the focus of a certain type of text or a single text module. The answers to these questions are the be-all and end-all of any informative text. And your texts are always informative about you and your art: They inform journalists, potential buyers, gallery owners, but also friends & family about what you do and why you are worthwhile to familiarize yourself with your art to employ and even buy them.
Don’t make it difficult for yourself!
Finally, I’ll give you the useful tip that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel again and again. Sure, artists in particular want to be special. But there are also good reasons to swim in the current. This is especially true for those who still find it difficult to write their own texts: why not see how others are doing it. Of course you can’t violate any copyright! But you can get inspiration from the endless sea of already written texts. Also, it can’t hurt to take a look at the artists’ texts from last year when applying for a group exhibition, so that you can fit in and not disqualify yourself from too much experimentation from the outset.
