The terror of neutrality

EUREKA

I’ve had a eureka moment. I’ve been reading Nicolas Bourriaud’s theory of Altermodernism and I agree with everything he says. I can also contextualise my work within his theory. In a nut shell the Altermodern Manifesto says Postmodernism is dead

A new modernity is emerging, reconfigured to an age of globalisation – understood in its economic, political and cultural aspects: an altermodern culture

Increased communication, travel and migration are affecting the way we live

Our daily lives consist of journeys in a chaotic and teeming universe

Multiculturalism and identity is being overtaken by creolisation: Artists are now starting from a globalised state of culture

This new universalism is based on translations, subtitling and generalised dubbing

Today’s art explores the bonds that text and image, time and space, weave between themselves

Artists are responding to a new globalised perception. They traverse a cultural landscape saturated with signs and create new pathways between multiple formats of expression and communication.

He also says in an interview with Bartholomew Ryan (03/17/09) “What do artists actually do when they use already existing forms? What ideology does it relate to? 


To cut a long story short, what we traditionally call reality is in fact a simple montage. On the basis of that conclusion, the aesthetic challenge of contemporary art resides in recomposing that montage: art is an editing table that enables us to realize alternative, temporary versions of reality with the same material (basically, everyday life). Thus, artists manipulate social forms, reorganize them and incorporate them in original scenarios, deconstructing the script on which the illusory legitimacy of those scenarios was grounded.”

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But to most, the idea of freedom is actually a failure.

You see this in so many of our modern youth. They demand their freedom – to do ‘their own thing’ – but when they do, they usually end up standing on street corners wondering what on earth to do.
Those young people who excel still think they are free. But tell me this: what is a great footballer without his team? What is a young concert pianist without his dedication to the culture of music and to the orchestra?
A touch of unfreedom is, it seems, a prerequisite to excelling in life. And an individual can only truly thrive within a culture that allows it. If only we understood this, we may at last produce a society where the balance between freedom and unfreedom is right.

Anthony North

to end on a poetic note

Large Red Man Reading

“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essayist and Poet (1803 – 1882)

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4. They say I should not use the words sublime or everyday.

I shall sit on the fence about this and see how my work develops as it could go in many ways. For the time being instead of using the word sublime I shall use poetic, and instead of using the word everyday I shall use the word familiar. I am certainly drawn to the poetic, I collect quotes and poems (all relatively new to me as my schooling was very science based) alongside visual images and ideas. I look for poetry in the familiar.

LIGHTBULB MOMENT We have started reading groups at college now and recently I have read

Alan Badious 15 Thesis on Contemporary art. We discussed this text with Amanda Beech, I’m interested in his recommendations, that we should not make Formalist Romantic work, he explains that by this he means work exploring death, sex and the body (same old thing) shown just in another way. But that instead we suggest new truths and positive possibilities. I want to study this further to get a better understanding. But I’ve been very influenced by it and feel now that I need to make work that in someway presents change or the future in a positive light. So I have been thinking about utopia and the future. I think the formation idea will still stick within this new understanding of what I want my art to be about.

At another recent reading group with Isabel Bowditch around the text A Ricoeur (french philosopher 1913 – 2005) Reader: Reflection and Imagination we touched on issues around limitations and freedom. In the works of Sartre (french philosopher 1905 – 1980), facticity signifies all of the concrete details against the background of which human freedom exists and is limited. For example, these may include the time and place of birth, a language, an environment, an individual’s previous choices, as well as the inevitable prospect of their death. For example: currently, the situation of a person who is born without legs precludes their freedom to walk on the beach; if future medicine were to develop a method of growing new legs for that person, their facticity might no longer exclude this activity. Ricoeur says facticity is what makes us free and human, and we shouldn’t be defeated by it.

I have been looking for the argument that freedom has to be pitted against un-freedom, which I havn’t found, but I found this interestin blog from Anthony North on freedom and unfreedom.

The defining point of western society is the idea that the person is free. Each an individual, it is our own choices that decide who we are, assisted by a society that is democratic, with minimum interference in what we do.

This is more a delusion than a reality, because a society can only exist if it balances your duties to others and your rights towards yourself. Go too far one way, and we have totalitarianism. Go the other and we have chaos.

Libertarians would disagree with this argument.

Rather, it is the duty of the individual to be who he wants to be regardless of others. The outcome is not chaos, but fulfilled individuals. But the problem with this is that if everyone does exactly what they want, they impede so much on the wants of others that no one gets what they want at all.
Most people accept this and moderate their behaviour accordingly. Indeed, it seems to be that libertarianism is not about choice, but excess. It is simply about deluded people flying in the face of a norm.

After presenting my ideas (as initial thoughts as I’m still reading around the subject) at college I have been told….

1. They say I have two many interests and I should find one area of research.

My response to this at the moment is my work is eclectic. My drawings are my musings on life, often just small talk.

Matisse said “Art should be something like a good armchair in which to rest from physical fatigue.” I quite like this quote, I would also add, to rest from mental fatigue.

2. They say it is important how I present my work such as size of paper and torn pages out of a sketch book as it affects the reading of the work.

I’m not convinced it makes much difference. Take the Simone drawings for instance (with hair over face), they are at the moment drawn on torn pages from a sketchbook, they were not ever meant to be kept in a sketchbook, I just happened to want to use the paper up. The reading of this can be seen as more secretive and private as from a sketch book or as a bit tatty, not adhering to the tyranny of the straight edge. If I cut the edge then possibly it is seen as less private but also more traditional, it seems I am bound by the tyranny of convention. I believe that art is quite personal in any case, we are putting our ideas out there to be judged so what does it matter if I give the impression of torn out of a sketchbook. In fact I don’t mind either way but others seem to. People read the work in all sorts of ways, some people have said ‘monster’, others have said ‘extreme shame and sadness’. When in fact it’s a drawing of a friend who has her wig on back to front, so I see it as a friendly image about self-image and identity. I really don’t mind what people read in my work as long as some one likes it. I was planning on making a series of the Simones from different angles which will give a different reading of it in any case. It’s quite odd to show unfinished work as it can never be read properly in any case.

The reason why I don’t think I mind how my work is read is that I don’t feel I want to say any one thing or that one thing is more important than another. I like to think I might be amusing, entertaining, inspiring or uplifting some people. But I don’t want to be dogmatic or preaching. I think having your basic needs met is far more important than art (however I feel compelled to make art as part of my self-actualisation), I have been looking at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, proposed by Abraham Maslow in his 1943 paper A Theory of Human Motivation. He talk’s about having your needs met on different levels starting from Physiological, Safety, Love/belonging, Esteem and Self-actualisation. Until your basic needs are met you can not then go on to a higher level (I believe this model is used by social workers when assessing patients). I think it is interesting as there is a lot of talk about getting the masses (working class) interested in art and culture, but until their more basic needs are met I’m sure they are unlikely to want to engage in these sorts of high brow pleasures.

3. They say the work is about pattern.

I’ve been looking at pattern through formations. I’ve researched sacred geometry but it doesn’t really rock my boat. What I like about the formations and taking them out of context is the element of the slightly bizarre imagry to signify how we are pushed and pulled, lined up and controlled in our lives to conform to society’s ideals. We believe what we are told by parents, teachers, governments, doctors until at some point we learn that there are different schools of thought about everything, it’s all just opinion. It seems the most charismatic thinkers, scientists and researchers are the ones who’s ideas get believed (not necessarily anything to do with being right).

What is my work about?

This is a difficult question to answer however I am obliged to answer it for college and I have prepared this for my post graduate forum. I make work about what I see and hear around me. Anything goes, everyday stuff that’s mundane or more quirky stuff that catches my interest. I’m interested in the real that looks fictional and the fictional that looks real and the inbetween. I’ve always enjoyed inbetween times such as journeys, there is this lull, no expectations, it’s a bit like time standing still. I’m also drawn to nature and the sublime so I imagine this will feature in my new body of work.

I am interested in the absurd as a political protest (after the Dada artists). Insanity in individuals is something rare – but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. Friedrich Nietzsche. German philosopher (1844 – 1900). I’ve had the poem Anna Blume by Kurt Schwitters on my studio wall since foundation, ‘O beloved of my twenty-seven senses, I love your! – you ye you your, I your, you my. –We? ………You wear your hat upon your feet and walk round on your hands, upon your hands you walk. Halloo, your red dress, sawn up in white pleats……..

I’ve been thinking of the terror of the everyday,‘He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you’.Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 146. I’m currently looking at the uncanny, I’m reading Freud’s The ‘Uncanny’ and not finding it very inspiring. Freud uses Hoffmann’s storey The Sand-Man about a boy who goes mad because he is frightened of the sand man taking his eyes, a storey told to him by his nanny, it is interesting, but can it not be just a storey without all this hidden meaning of castration. I’ve also recently re-read ‘the man who mistook his wife for a hat’, by Oliver Sacks. This man had an unusual neurological condition where he lost the cognitive ability to recognise people and objects. He could discern people by distinguishing features or the way they moved. He survived with help from his wife if she laid his clothes out in the usual way he would automatically get dressed or if he could smell food he would automatically eat. He still managed to teach music till he died. ‘Tis strange but true; for truth is always strange; Stranger than fiction’. G.G. Byron.

I’m also interested in the sublime of the everyday‘What is this world if full of care we have no time to stand and stare’ Wm Henry Davies, who was a tramp (1871—1940). Can the sublime be achieved at the same time as the uncanny? Possibly with the mirror image or reflection.

I’m also interested in the visual language of formations such as the choreographed synchronised swimming and the red arrows.

Overall I see my work as narritive based visual layers. I’m looking at the construct of the image, thephotocopy and the Tyranny of the page – I don’t like an image to spread to the edge of the page or canvas in a traditional manner. Artists who have worked within the edge are Michael Borremans andAlex Baggaley’s i cycle fatal path.

Within all these areas I am exploring different contexts to create new readings of the familiar.It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them! Friedrich Nietzsche. In 1889 Freidrich Nietzsche exhibited symptoms of insanity, living out his remaining years in the care of his mother and sister until his death in 1900. Is there a philosopher who didn’t go mad?

Artists that I particularly like and which therefore must inform my work are Sophie Calle, Francis Alys. Michael Borremans and Edward Gorey