Evolution, Critical Content and Ego
Should art accentuate ego? Intent is critical. The subject or content, how it is executed, how it is placed or displayed, how it engages with the viewer are important considerations, reflections of intent. Is the message or idea sensitively conveyed with multiple levels that require investigation or is the message abrupt, literal and in your face.
The new age of art is evolutionary not revolutionary.
Subtle changes over time are more lasting and effective than abrupt shock
statements that easily become violently refuted, repelled, and rejected.
Artists have a responsibility to make the unknown known. To reveal the underlying and subtle energy of existence or being, not the illusion it is perceived to be. To show what lies beneath exposing the fabric of our realities.
Art of any value to a society or culture has a potent spiritual and intellectual aspect, not purely a product to put money in pockets or a commodity to be exchanged like stock market revenue. If it is done well it is infinitely greater than the sum total of its parts. It has the capacity to operate on many levels, most importantly to aid society and heal the underlying root of humanities most perplexing problem, the people themselves.
Have artists become object makers for interior designers? Is the market flooded with work based on ‘neat’ techniques and pretty pictures for above the sofa? Do regional galleries or white boxes invite anything in that ‘looks cool’ or is ‘done well’? If so, the white box becomes a neutral space for neutral art, only addressing personal aesthetics without meaningful content. Does the project space of artists reflect an empty culture? One with no direction, path, or recollection of the past, present, or how to better the future. Art that is based on aesthetic reactions, composed of non-objective form, shape and color is a cliché of 'how I feel' catering to individual ego.
Art as a Document
For myself and the work I do, art is a document, a record with aesthetic and perceptual value that reaches beyond the physical. More than the sum total of its parts. A catalyst for spiritual and mental journeys of self discovery.
Next to Art: Notes and Quotes
Since working at the Philadelphia Museum of Art I have been observant of people’s interactions with art, a shared and collective experience, and curious about the claim by ‘experts’ (historians, curators, and theorists) about what is relevant. Through this questioning and viewing I became accepting of all creative expression, an acceptance that effects all parts of my life. What is relevant and what I like are two different things. With an indifferent approach a perceptual shift occurred whereby everything is interconnected, made up of the same elements just configured differently. From this realization, beauty resides in all things.
Biennials, art fairs, auction houses, galleries, museums, and art education programs are some of the businesses that comprise the art world. A system that for years subscribed to a modernist approach, an approach to handling and defining art that lingers today and restructured under the guise of post-modernism. A hierarchal structure with values placed on technological and monetary progress and forms of ownership. Capital interests and gain. Who possess the power to make large sweeping decisions, the power to afford health care, education, citizenship and voter rights to some and not others. A modernist agenda is both social and political with patriarchal roots, an approach to governing that continues to be challenged. Artists that are not complicit and recognize this cyclical and self-effacing dependency on established institutions that utilize a modern and systematic approach to defining and presenting art are ushering in a new age. Most often this new art integrates art with life, in essence changing art’s meaning, giving art social and cultural relevance, placing more significance on what it communicates. Plato’s fear of art being dangerous to the Republic was an early signifier that art can have significant effects on a society. Will those effects be good or bad? That question is debatable once art begins to regain signs of empowerment and who will corrupt it for personal gain. When art is viewed or interacted with, it’s definitive purpose of influencing perception, there is a possibility that people will respond in action. A trickle up philosophy that can educate us on pertinent issues in the development of a sustainable world and instigate significant changes to make that world possible. A world that is not homogenized, but retains economic, ecological, and cultural differences, celebrates, entertains, and encourages understanding of these differences and their interconnection.
An individual’s presence signifies authentication. The viewer experiencing the art becomes a consumer. Liking or disliking the art is secondary. The fact that you and the art are simultaneously present is all that is required.
Engaging, interacting and exploring art authenticates not only the artwork but our own existence. Does it become a surrogate, a metaphor for social and cultural acceptance? Art represents creativity and the expression of existential thought that celebrates human existence. Making and viewing is a way to provide self-identify, a way to give purpose to our existence. Art is a historical marker, a record presented in progression, a culmination of ideas and perceptions, past to present with a glimpse into the future, a sustainable signifier of the species. It allows us to exercise complex thinking, the ability to engage in logical and illogical, rational and irrational, explained and unexplained phenomenal discourse concurrently.
“When a museum decontextualizes the work or deprives it of its original context – for instance, by presenting on a white wall an African mask that once was worn by a dancer in an open place, or by presenting in a vitrine with pinpoint lighting a Japanese tea bowl that had once passed from hand to hand in a humble teahouse – the museum thereby invites the perceivers to project their own conceptions onto the work. Or, it can be argued, the museum thereby makes invisible the social forces that created a culture.”
- Sylvan Barnet, A Short Guide to Writing About Art, 2008
“Objects showing European influence or objects made for the tourist trade are rarely considered art by those who run art museums. The museums (and the museum-goers) of tomorrow, however, may have a different idea about such objects. Maybe only our present cultural prejudice keeps most museum curators from regarding airport art or tourist art as worth serious consideration. These curators merely perpetuating a colonialist (exploitative) relationship by refusing to recognize that colonized people can respond creatively to colonialization?”
- Sylvan Barnet, A Short Guide to Writing About Art, 2008
As soon as an art object leaves the confines of the studio, the original space it was created, and put on display, either publicly or privately it loses part of it’s original intention, and energy. From an animist point-of-view it’s spirit begins to dissipate. It becomes recontextualized and appropriated, co-opted in a different way. The meaning and intention of the artwork changes, tainted by the experiences of another. One more step removed from it’s maker in an ideal state as a concept or feeling.
Does the artist make objects for display, for art spaces, for white walls and cubes, for others to communicate ideas or feelings, for consumption or commercial purposes? Are artists aware of their making and why they are making? Are they making for private or public reasons? Is the act of making personal, a cathartic experience or for social acceptance and gratification? Is that gain in the form of accolades and monetary sustenance, a form of sustainability?
“The idea of objectifying art precedes the modern scientific revolution. It goes back as far as Aristotle – that is the idea of thinking of art as external making, as the making of an object, rather than performing and experiencing of an action or a process…art was defined by philosophers in order to establish philosophy’s superiority. Art can be incredible potent, and Plato recognized this, which is why he wanted to ban the artist from the Republic. He saw art as some kind of divine possession or madness, which, even if it was divine, wasn’t rational and therefore had to be feared.”
- Richard Shusterman, Conversations Before the End of Time by Suzi Gablik
Is this active seeking and viewing of art rational or irrational? Is it about beauty that uplifts us spiritually, stimulating us intuitively, or is it a logical and cerebral exercise? What does it activate internally in us?
Who influenced who? There was an accepted ‘institutional’ or museum collected presentation of art. Commercial and non-commercial galleries complicit in the overreaching hegemony of institutional influence, supported its position and power to define the hierarchy of social order, a modern and post-modern agenda that continued to linger in contemporary art culture. A museum was a place where art was regarded as something to be looked at, estranged and separate from life. Physical interaction was off limits. A museum was a place where objects hung on walls or sat on floors. Objects became aestheticized, waiting for those who could afford time to contemplate and analyze underlying meaning that may require background or historical knowledge. Objects that through viewing, understanding and possible ownership became symbols of prosperity, affluence, and status. The emancipation of art was interactive, ephemeral and lived with by many. A physical or sensorial experience with art is impressionable, having lasting effects on memory with a greater degree to influence perception and instigate real change in everyday life. Art returned to its original use/function, part of everyday experience, necessary to raise awareness in all aspects of life, bridging interconnections between the known and unknown. A demystification that led to an awakening of our higher self.
“Sometimes you can debate with people: Is it art? Isn’t it art? And you get into an empty stalemate or into silly circular bickering. Then it’s worth asking: In calling this art, what is at stake? That you take the work seriously? Again, what does that mean? That you ascribe an eternal transcendent value to it? I think that we put too large an emphasis on the permanent. It may be part of our theological tradition; for us secular people, art has come to represent the realm of the spiritual in a world that’s been disenchanted from religion. And so, we expect from works of art some sort of permanent power, some kind of divine endurance. That kind of demand is, I think, excessive, because it’s possible to appreciate lots of things that are ephemeral, like fireworks, or sunsets, or improvisational performances. Lots of beautiful and meaningful things are ephemeral, and part of their value is in the fact that they come and go. To deny that art can be ephemeral is to lock ourselves into an antiquated theological aesthetic.”
- Richard Shusterman, Conversations Before the End of Time by Suzi Gablik
The modern definition of art begins to take shape during the European renaissance when visual communication shifts from a religious and spiritual function to a secular (democratic) function. Visual objects in places of worship, sacred spaces, and secret societies were and some continue to be used to communicate the ineffable, the unseen, imbued with the power to move people spiritually, to transform their understanding and relation to their environment, a form of enlightenment. Visuals commissioned by the church and state, most often through metaphor and allegory, communicated ideas that preached stability and security in an effort to not only enlighten but control, govern, and create structured societies for reasons of sustainability. When craftsman, painters and sculptors begin to create without a commission or direction from another, working for themselves and selling that work the idea of modern art begin to take shape. An example would be Bruegel depicting scenes of everyday peasant life, non-pious subjects. Another shift occurs when objects begin to be looked at for their beauty, aestheticized, taken out of their original context and no longer experienced for their spiritual significance. At a point beauty, form, and creative execution become integral factors in judging something as good or bad. A short period after this shift from religious to secular whereby collecting objects or artifacts and appropriation in Western society occurs, the term art begins to be applied to all visuals that came before. These artifacts are isolated, decontextualized, and stripped of their mystical and spiritual properties. An international colonization and democratization of visual artifacts that has a direct effect on a culture’s philosophies and beliefs.
Science, logic and reason, the intellectualization of modern societies based on proof and evidence causes a loss of the mystical, mystic, and trans-dimensional that once invigorated and energized people and objects of the past. With it comes a loss of self-identity and place in society. Can art get back to an appreciation and understanding of context, returning past objects to their intended use/function? When is something anthropological or geographical and not art? Should everything visual or any perfected task, such as ‘the art of running’, be referred to as art? Should the term art be reserved for a specific use/function and intention?
Cross-pollination, self-colonization, reverse-colonization, cultural appropriation.
Interviewer asks, “what is art?” Andy Warhol responds, “isn’t it a man’s name?”
“Most of what exists as art can be better understood as “cultural production.” If culture is defined as “first, the symbolic systems that provide for the integration and reproduction of social groups and, secondly, the process of acquiring the competencies and dispositions that compose those symbolic systems,” then cultural production – “whether legitimate or popular, generated for restricted or mass audiences” – should be defined as “the specialized production of the objects, representations, narratives, discourses, and practices in which these competencies and dispositions are objectified and reproduced.” By contrast, “artistic practice resists, or aims to resist, functioning as the representative culture of a particular group…. It functions, instead, or aims to function, as analytic and affirmative, upholding established conventions and conforming to (and reproducing) the status quo, artistic practice, by definition, challenges, reflects upon, and attempts to transform the structure of the artistic field.”
- Alexander Alberro, Museum Highlights: The Writings of Andrea Fraser, 2005
“It isn’t simply artists who produce aesthetic signification and value, but an often anonymous contingent of collectors, viewers, museum and gallery workers – and ultimately the cultural apparatus in which these positions are delineated.”
- Andrea Fraser, Museum Highlights: The Writings of Andrea Fraser, 2005
“For an artistic practice that wants to remain vital, she deems it crucial to produce work that does not serve to legitimate cultural institutions. Fraser also insists that in order to remain relevant artists must constantly seek new strategies and transform their work in a manner that parallels the shifting cultural, economic, and political conditions.”
- Alexander Alberro, Museum Highlights: The Writings of Andrea Fraser, 2005
“Art must be willing to resist what Barthes designated as “the fashion system” or it will gradually deconstruct itself under the guise of political slogans and social codes. In doing so, art will cease to exist as a cultural force of any remarkable consequence. Becoming an artist is a matter of priorities. Again, one must be willing to ask, What is the motivation for doing what one is doing? It is within the context of a community that these priorities can be tested and better understood. Liberation through art is both social and psychological. To this extent, art is a force that resists institutionalization. Art is a force close to life.”
- Robert C. Morgan, The End of the Art World, 1998
“Contemporary politicized forms of such cultural production, defined, for example, by identity politics, do not, I would say, depart much from the history of artistic activity as the site of struggles by artists to reproduce their legitimacy. While these struggles formerly revolved around status as determined by economic conditions and distance from social norms of behavior, they now encompass other forms of domination – according to gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation. But to the extent that they are located primarily in the field of art (as opposed to collectively based cultural activism working on representations and media in nonartistic sites), such symbolic struggles largely reproduce the hierarchical structuring they ostensibly oppose. This is because they often conceal or misrecognize the domination imposed by the specialization of cultural production and monopolization of cultural competence the artistic field itself represents.”
- Andrea Fraser, Museum Highlights: The Writings of Andrea Fraser, 2005
"Art is a matter of finding the means to intuit meaning."
- Robert C. Morgan, The End of the Art World, 1998
Asking “what is art” is like roller skating around the Tower of Babel. It’s different for different people at different times. It’s a mutable and polyvariant term. At it’s core, art has a base meaning and definable function. That function is to cause an emotional or reasoned response that influences or changes perception and/or perceptual awareness. It’s effect and influence on thought is a pretty powerful function.
“To be convincing, (art) criticism must take a position. That taking a position should not be confused with the facile notion of deciding whether a work is good or bad or whether an exhibition is a success or failure – this is the kind of simplistic rhetoric that gets into popular magazines and newspapers presumably devoted to culture. Taking a position is a matter of giving a socio-aesthetic analysis of the work of art based on a convincing experience with it.”
- Robert C. Morgan, The End of the Art World, 1998
“The new questions that are being raised are no longer issues of style or content, but issues of social and environmental responsibility, and of multiculturalism, or “parallel” cultures, rather than a dominant monoculturalism.”
- Suzi Galik, The Reenchantment of Art, 1991
“Oppositional rhetoric of radicality in fine art and criticism has become formulaic and academic in the worst sense. Esoteric works, often highly illegible to any but a few insiders, are assumed to serve as the radical conscience of the culture (an example is Maurizio Cattelan’s Comedian, a banana taped to a wall at Art Basel Miami). This model of current criticism pervades the art world with its galleries, museums, auction houses, alternative and mainstream exhibition spaces, publications, sales, and subventions. It dominates graduate schools in fine arts and programs in art history. And this discourse has been so blind to its own pernicious limitations that its mere survival is itself a marvel.”
- Johanna Drucker, Sweet Dreams; Contemporary Art and Complicity, 2005
“Artistic practice is always charged with a treacherous task when cultivating a dynamic relationship to mainstream power. But the dialectics of that relation suggest a mutual necessity that persists, even now. The assumed values of administered culture and the insidious technologies through which they function have become invisible to us. We don’t even perceive the constructedness of the world we inhabit.”
- Johanna Drucker, Sweet Dreams; Contemporary Art and Complicity, 2005
“The creation of cultural capital for its own sake, the idea of art as idea, the notions of conceits and artifice, of figuring forth the world as an expression of insight or even of misunderstanding, the sense of inadequacy in the face of celebrity culture or the engines of new mass media and its spectacular capacity to enthrall through its bright vivid lights and tabloid intensity – these and many other tropes and tendencies all have their own past within the long history of modernism…. The legacy of oppositional criticism, of a negative position claiming moral superiority and distance from those ideologies in which fine art participates, can’t be sustained any more.”
- Johanna Drucker, Sweet Dreams; Contemporary Art and Complicity, 2005
“We respond to work because of its aesthetic affect. Good, bad, repulsive, attractive, even indifferent – perception is not only structural, nor even only cultural, however situated and specific its circumstances. The processes of cognition stimulated through perception are linked to the very core of the way we imagine ourselves and the world….The purpose of the image is not to mean but to be, and in so being, to show the way we think we understand our lives and culture.”
- Johanna Drucker, Sweet Dreams; Contemporary Art and Complicity, 2005
“Art evokes the mystery without which the world would not exist.” – René Magritte
“There's traditionally been a large disconnection in contemporary art between the audience and the artist. Generally, audiences are looking towards what they like, and I can tell you, that's the last thing on an artist's mind.” - James Turrell
“Few people in contemporary art demonstrate much curiosity. The majority spend their days blathering on, rather than trying to work out why one artist is more interesting than another, or why one picture works and another doesn't.” - Charles Saatchi
“I'm very interested in the idea of unusual museums, ones that are not necessarily contemporary art museums - more like historical collections or house museums.”
“It is the inner attitude that we have to alter. We finally have to stop defining art as only those objects that have been accepted as art by society. We have to concentrate on allowing art to evolve through how it is received. It did not help me to bring art closer to life simply by setting up a cafeteria or a playground or a workshop. This will not resolve the question of the museum. The museum question can only be resolved through mediation. On the one hand our responsibility is to make works into works of art and, on the other hand, to preserve works that are already works of art, and to keep them from becoming antiquated.”
- Hans Ulrich Obrist, A Brief History of Curating, 2008
“I always looked at art as the solitary effort of individuals who make work. I found it important to present these works as purely as possible, which was only possible in a solo presentation. I never thought much of exhibitions in which 20 artists are shown with three works a piece. This does not provide a clear picture of an artist. The primary focus must be on works that represent an individual.”
- Hans Ulrich Obrist, A Brief History of Curating, 2008
“Institutions have become disconnected from artists. They celebrate themselves and their patrons. Their prime function, transforming a work into a work of art, has become obsolete. The institution confirms its own identity as an institution, and thus the question of the number of visitors plays an increasingly important role. What is this all about? The quality of a work cannot be measured by the quantity of people that visit an institution.”
- Hans Ulrich Obrist, A Brief History of Curating, 2008
“The museum is a non-verbal meditating system. The question of points of view or the democratization (meaning: the viewer has to decide for him/herself), all belong to this meditation system.”
- Hans Ulrich Obrist, A Brief History of Curating, 2008
Art and EgoIs art about object making or about communicating an idea, concept, perception? Is it steeped in both? The aesthetic element draws a viewer in, superficially about appearance and desire, a product of ego. That initial draw is primal and instinctual, not one that always serves a person well, inherently leading to greed, complacency, manipulation, unfulfillment. Culturally progressive and positive advancement, in the service of all and others, values ideas, concepts and ways of perceiving that expand spiritually, intellectually, consciously, creating new neural pathways that integrate both aesthetic object making and conceptually poignant introspections. A form follows function reintegration and rejuvenation that was prevalent in idealistic western philosophies and theories of early to mid 20th century schools of thought. Aesthetics at the service of expanded consciousness. A similar notion expressed in physics whereby the best ideas, theories, and equations are deemed beautiful.
Notes on the Intersection Series and Serial Art
One photo, dependent on content, can have many different meanings or narratives. The reason for multiples is that to convey a specific idea, one that is philosophically underlying, the viewer must find the commonality, the connection between the images that go beyond the physical or superficial appearance of what is represented. Looking at a larger collection of images, the viewer may formulate or get a sense that something more is being communicated. Repeated actions over time. Time to compile and present the work. My work always deals with time. Patients, practice, attentiveness, mindful execution. A consistency in social and cultural construction begins to manifest, evolve, materialize, become exposed. Through this work there comes a realization of what we have been doing, causing us to evaluate and possibly change what we have been doing to make the world a better place.
Addressing Internal Values
A large part of my work is a criticism on values in society. There are possibly two types of art and ways of communicating here within the scope of accumulation, accretion and process. Some projects explore internal issues, meditative and introspective processes of making that allow for perceptual shifts toward understanding one’s self, awareness, and improvement. This is a positive solution whereby real change to make the world a better place begins within one’s self, mentally and spiritually, that manifests physically through actions. The work appears as aesthetic exercises and metaphors for contemplation and mindfulness, acute awareness of one’s interior and exterior environment. Some projects are more concrete, plastic and physically prevalent exposing an unsustainable, disconnected way of being and living in the world. Through a repeated process, my multiples convey the severity and scope of a problem that society needs to address in the face of extinction. Extinction does not necessarily mean humanities absolute demise but living in lower, more fearful and less equitable qualities of life, moving away from an evolution toward an integrated, interconnected and sustainable quality of life for all. Ideologically and philosophically how is society and culture constructed, what do we accept, and how do we come to this realization and enlightenment that we can make the world a better place for everyone.
Notes on Duchamp
His work deals with human invention and of being human. Mechanized objects become surrogates and metaphors for the human body and actions. He does not deal with nature on it's own terms but as it is deciphered and filtered by perception. Puns and jokes are signifiers of intelligence (logical/rational) and emotions (illogical/irrational) behaviors. He focuses on invention and creativity and explores the best qualities of humanity. In later years his own work turns back on itself, he revisits, re-investigates his own work. An introspection that gets more specific, moving from general ideas about humanity to self, realizing that his art is inescapable and can be nothing more than a recapitulation of self.
Notes on Towards a Better Existence
Towards a Better Existence is about the collective experience, part of a larger discourse. Each sentence extracted from the original artist statement becomes more pronounced, operating outside the artist's statement, out of context.
As semantics demonstrates, words are abstract symbols, surrogates for objects and ideas. Interpretation of language is susceptible to the same subjectivity as its visual counterpart. Language is both auditory and visual, communicating on more than one sensory level. Rooted in perception the principle behind art is to provide new ways to investigate and view the world. In the end, the object or visual paired with language can only clarify a person’s ideas, even if clarification means confusion, misdirection or lack of knowledge. As artist Robert Irwin stated, “no artist worth they’re weight in salt sets out to make a work of art that is abstract.”
In essence everyone is trying to the best of their abilities to clearly communicate something.
Artist statements become more frequent once modernism moves further from representation and visual art turns inward and more conceptually based, developing its own critical discourse, language and parameters. The statement becomes the requirement, a preface for articulation, and one way for people who require or want their visual referent to communicate with more clarity. It is a testament that the premise for most art is not purely about making but about thinking. The statement is an attempt to take ownership and responsibility for what they are trying to convey. The intent of a statement provides observers with a jumping off point, a guide to contextualize the work in order to enter a specific discourse. Statements are either a conceptual beginning or a complimentary and expanded dialogue of the visual. In one respect the artist is attempting to take responsibility for their work by directing the discussion and focusing the observer. This is most evident in the use of self referential words such as “I” and “My”.
Art historians and theorists use language to investigate art and explore meaning. Carter Radcliff writes, “from ‘literarization’ follows the idea that art not only can be, but ought to be didactic. It must teach and, in a more active mode, investigate. The most aggressive form of art-as-investigation is ‘institutional critique’, which examines the intramural politics of the art world.”
Comparing a work of art with its literal equivalent, the artist statement becomes a catalyst for academic evaluation. Early stages in artistic development are based on an understanding of formal elements and design principles, evaluated through progress in visual literacy in order to decipher objects as they appear in the world. In higher education emphasis shifts from formal qualities to conceptual qualities that are measurable by comparing ideas (intent) with the related art work. Emphasis is on meaning and what the work communicates, a content in context scenario. The statement becomes a tool of clarification for both the maker and the observer. Quality shifts from physical production to concept in relation to the object and what is communicating.
A statement depending on its content gives the work a frame, base and ground. Titles operate in a similar manner, providing similar clues or keys as to where the viewer’s thought processes should lead. In a discussion between artists Liam Gillick and Lawrence Weiner, Weiner makes an astute, simple and universal observation saying, “but we can’t judge anybody’s intent. We have to take it for granted that each person making art has a benevolent approach towards it. That each revolution is leading towards somebody’s aspiration towards a better existence. You’ve got to take that as a priori.”
Most artist statements reveal that their intentions aspire in a positive direction. Their cause is to reveal or investigate a problem, drawing attention to something they find beautiful or revolting, agreeable or disagreeable. To understand intention the statement needs to be compared to its visual equivalent. What I find interesting is that even though an idea may originate and end as a visual object it relies on language to rationalize how it will be translated and presented. The statement is usually closer to the intent because a concept, the simple idea to make something in the first place is formulated as language. Once the artwork is made and becomes visual it is something different, operating on different levels with different subjective complexities. If the intent is positively progressive, a collective aspiration Towards a Better Existence is revealed in each sentence where the artist takes ownership of the work as it relates to them. Many statements are small personalized manifestos, yet in the format for Towards a Better Existence where sentences are randomly dispersed, no one statement attains greater value and each person is reveals they have something to say beyond the visual equivalent.
Notes on Accretion, Accumulation and Process
“The world, the real is not an object. It is a process.” - John Cage, For the Birds
When a series of similar forms accrete they construct more complex patterns. This form of accumulation, a significant displacement of space is a process equating and most often exceeding the sum total of the individual parts. The process of accretion is located in simple day to day activities that require a series of repeatable tasks in order to form tangible and functional products or services. Tasks are repeated but never executed the same way twice, a signature of our unique and individual identities. The results are documents, evidence of conjoining and accumulating processes that accentuate the significance of interconnection.
A process or act of making can attain ritual and spiritual status. Concentrating on a singular activity over an extended period of time processes can trigger meditative experiences. An alternative or heightened sense of awareness ascertains the significance of forms on levels outside conditioned perceptions. Attention shifts from the action and physical attributes of the material to the unoccupied physical and temporal spaces that appear between forms or sounds or other sensory data. Becoming aware of and locating myself in what is not present or the spaces between causes a perceptual shift in how I view the world. Once a project reaches its predetermined end presentation becomes a viable concern as it is an extension of the process, an opportunity to share and possibly stimulate a similar awareness within not only the viewer but experiencer. An engagement with any repeated action for any duration is an opportunity to comprehend and reconsider the ideas and activities that underlie and construct our realities.
Notes on The Artist's Interview Series: I Believe, I Think, I Make
I Believe, I Think, I Make is an isomorphic type of sampling taken from transcribed artist interviews. In this condensed format any sentence that contains the word ‘I’ is isolated and reduced to a few words that follow ‘I’ in order to put the proclamation into a context that is most often unfinished, misconstrued ,and not the intended meaning by the artist or the interviewer.
‘I’ is an interesting word that connotes the individual in reference to themselves. It is an introspective type of word that signifies a subjective claim to the self that they believe and view to be accurate and true, unless specifically lying or misleading in order to mask their actual intention. But the view or claim is never accurate because it is a subjective interpretation.
‘I’ is most often used in interviews and unavoidable when being asked to talk about one’s self. Are these interviews moments of clarity and sincerity? Possibly. Or are they moments many times removed from the actual experience and recapitulated with what people believe to be true and at any rate just as out of context as they are presented here?
Overall, it appears that everyone is saying the same thing, just with different words arranged in a different order, reduced to a poetic cacophony.
Spaces Between
What defines an object, what differentiates one object from another are the ‘spaces between’. Those spaces infinitely exist internal and external to an object. Nothing is impenetrable, everything has a level of ‘porosity’. Making marks with a pencil and trying to cover the surface through a repeated motion not only captures the language of my body, it captures the penetrability and imperfection of being human. Everything is interconnected and interdependent, linked and woven into existence in order to sustain something else. Are we not at the service of someone or something else in our daily lives? Everything has a point of weakness. To expose the gaps or spaces between exposes an object’s vulnerability. The place where it can be separated, pulled apart, disconnected, the place where it can be passed through, entered and existed. These spaces are not always visible but molecular, between the weave of atoms. Everything exists as a metaphor for something else. The structure and comprehensibility of reality is dependent on repeated consistency.
Recorded sound is different because it captures the spaces or gaps in real time and allows us to revisit a specific moment as it originally transpired in time. The recorded sound is like a time machine. This passage of time exposes the vulnerability of an object’s existence. Everything goes through cycles of birth, growth, and decay. No matter where something is in the cycle it cannot go back, it is losing time in the life cycle. It may transform into something else but it will never be that thing again. The gaps and pauses between sound, the silence and the duration of that silence reminds us that things are changing, transforming, evolving, in a state of process.
The Observer Becomes the Subject
"Reorientation of the perceptual experience of art made the viewer, in effect, the subject of the work." - Douglas Crimp, On The Museum’s Ruins
Art in a museum is not site specific. Objects are consciously collected and categorized, grouped and logically oriented for display in order to communicate a logical progression of history. The objects re appropriated as to build an historical account for what constitutes the art of civilization. The objects become site specific appropriations in the context of being art and fulfilling the completion of a collected history. Our acceptance through presence and observation confirms this site-specific appropriation. Our proximity to the work of art and our active participation in viewing in essence lends authority to the object as being art, thus completing the idea and existence of art.
Beyond the Everyday
Art has the ability to go beyond everyday experiences, beyond a critique or re-presentation of the issues and problems of society. Art has the ability to bring an unfamiliar, ephemeral, and abstract experience to the table that allows the suspension of rational thought. Art’s obvious strength is to alter perception, an internal manifestation subjective to each person. Art can alter the filters that people impose or put up based on previous experiences or ignorance. Perception may change someone’s way of viewing the world but most often it continues to be communicated as a form of judgment. Art and its ability to sway perception should be able to eradicate moments of judgment. It should propel us into an abstract way of thinking, adjourning judgment and allowing us to accept a moment or object for what it truly is. A suspension and purity of sight through perception is a huge step in altering how one copes with other situations in throughout their life. I believe the ability to affect external change begins internally and comes from within. Art, if practiced in a manner that focuses on how a person is wired internally, can have a tremendous affect on how they deal with events and problems externally.
Developing an Indifferent Response
From the premise that no two things are alike, that they replicate and are infinitely interconnected and interdependent suggests that there are no definitive stopping and starting points to anything. Recognizing that all things are in a state of motion and transformation, at what point does art (simulation) and life (everything else) overlap? Conceptually the delineation of art and life is subjective and if all things are interconnected the question becomes inconsequential. A simple act of recognition, that something exists or is present, is a response spawned by the idea or object in question, an immediate confirmation of its presence.
Indifference is without reason most often experienced as an unintentional first response, though a person can choose to suspend judgment. What is important during an initial experience is that we recognize the fact that something has moved or instigated a response or displacement of our understanding. Taste, judgment, acceptance, and rejection are secondary responses rooted in evaluation and rationalization intended to categorize and fit an object or idea into a familiar and relevant discourse. These secondary responses are culturally and socially filtered based on previous experience. Recognizing the moment when we are engaged in an indifferent, purely experiential observation before judgment or categorization takes place is the first step in understanding a perceptual shift. External change becomes possible once ways of internally perceiving are reordered.
Sound and the Experiencer
The time and space properties of sound are very different from an object. The ephemeral quality of sound comes closer to conveying the reality of a moment. For my work the recorded sound is a product of real time.
Sound is a secondary sense element that helps relay the process. While working on a project sound becomes a relevant bi-product, an enhancement that confirms a visual experience. Each project has a unique displacement of space and time.
Sound is most often unavoidable, present at all times unlike sight. The recordings are always related to the projects, an accompaniment that reinforces some of the underlying ideas. Though similar to the visual equivalent, recorded sound remains one step removed from the actual process but it is more effective in helping viewers relate and possibly visualize the act of making. The recordings place viewers between the physicality of the visual document and a time-based simulation of the actual experience in creating the document.
Actions represented by sound must be imagined and re-constructed in the mind of the experiencer where they register, more often, as a truthful encounter. The passing and ephemeral encounter of a sound is less likely and more difficult to contradict whereas a visual object such as a painting or sculpture allows a viewer the option to indefinitely look and question what they are seeing.
Notes on the Body Motion Drawings
For any project there is a period of learning, of correlating specific thoughts, actions and techniques. A period of trial and error is played out in the early stages. Unlearning or suspending the control of traditional mark making from pure sight. From the outset of a project that is focused on the use of my body it takes some time to adjust perception and shift attention to the process (action or motion) of my body. Parameters internal and pertaining to the body are guidelines. There are moments of heightened awareness, a type of enlightenment, during a project that causes perceptual shifts. At this point drawing and the physical action of mark making appear as two separate tasks. The project deconstructs and focus shifts to more underlying and specific concerns as to what the action and result mean. During a drawing session I become aware of and focused on the process and less on the result of the process.
What is Art and It's Importance
“You have to approach something with an indifference, as if you had no aesthetic emotion. The choice of readymades is always based on visual indifference and at the same time, on the total absence of good or bad taste.” – Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp
The readymade is uniquely conceptual. It is a claim set forth by the observer who in this case is an artist. It is a choice of language, not in the appearance of the object. To be declared an art object is at the discretion of the one observing and proclaiming.
“Can one make works which are not works of art.” - Marcel Duchamp
I believe all works or objects are not art unless proclaimed as art.
"I don’t believe in art, I believe in artists". - Marcel Duchamp
For my self the question is not what is art but how something is recognized as art. Presence, recognition, place, observation, and documentation are some of the deciding factors. It is a culmination of events and experiences that leads to something being recognized as art. Art would not exist in its present state if we did not find it a necessity. All things exist because of a necessity, a void that needs to be filled or fulfilled. Art exists for this very reason. We find it an exclusive object or event and locate ourselves on different sides of its existence. Some people are makers, some collectors, some admirers, others ignorant of its beauty and existence. Like religion or politics or government it is a human creation, a fallible creation, made to serve us and keep us in a sustainable form of control. It is necessary to our very survival or it would not exist.
Beyond the Everyday
Art has the ability to go beyond everyday experiences, beyond a critique or re-presentation of the issues and problems of society. Art has the ability to bring an unfamiliar, ephemeral, and abstract experience to the table that allows the suspension of rational thought. Art’s obvious strength is to alter perception, an internal manifestation subjective to each person. Art can alter the filters that people impose or put up based on previous experiences or ignorance. Perception may change someone’s way of viewing the world but most often it continues to be communicated as a form of judgment. Art and its ability to sway perception should be able to eradicate moments of judgment. It should propel us into an abstract way of thinking, adjourning judgment and allowing us to accept a moment or object for what it truly is. A suspension and purity of sight through perception is a huge step in altering how one copes with other situations in throughout their life. I believe the ability to affect external change begins internally and comes from within. Art, if practiced in a manner that focuses on how a person is wired internally, can have a tremendous affect on how they deal with events and problems externally.
Internal and External Parameters
The body is a physically accountable structure, an interactive organism with its environment that is in unison with sustainable properties of nature. Living things posses an internally generated, rhythmic and pulsating organic grid, a matrix of chemically induced synaptic and spiritual energy. The ‘human condition’ is reactive dialog with the surrounding environment, accessible when both internal and external energies coalesce. Observing this distinction the parameters and forms in my projects are internally or externally generated. Though my projects are structured, directed, and mapped from either internal or external sources, the process shares similar psychological and transcendental effects.
External forms are predetermined. Selecting and mimicking the form or feel of an object separate from the body is a re-presentation. Decisions in setting up parameters such as how much and how long a piece will last are directed by the subject and materials. Parameters are established at or near the beginning of the process. The establishment of parameters is a decision making process, an expression, and signifier of a controlled environment, a metaphorical address to understand and direct nature, even though it continually exceeds comprehension and rationalization. The idea is that the permutations in the projects can continue infinitely.
Using the body or organism as a gage to direct parameters is a signifier of nature. This dichotomous observation of internally and externally generated parameters heightens perceptual awareness of interconnection and dependency to surrounding environments.
Attaining EquilibriumUniverse in a state of equilibrium.
Imbalance. A state of push and pull reacting to the first cause.
Nature moving toward a state of equilibrium is constantly visible.
Separation of objects or matter in time and space.
Distance and differentiation between objects and our ability to make these simple observations.
When in a fixed place and someone is in proximity of me are they in front of or behind.
In truth they are in both positions simultaneously though the distance behind or in front are different. The state of being is the same.
Ideally equilibrium is attained because both states exist simultaneously.
In a state of pure existence without measure.
Imbalance in the universe is the reason for our existence.
Is the universe headed toward equilibrium whereby space and time converge and everything exists without differentiation.
Differences are what gives us our individual identity. It gives us our unique signature.
No comments:
Post a Comment