Touch and Be Touched

(Assembly) - The ULTIMATE SECRET, 101 Ideas to storm the Art World

2009-08-24T12:28:00.010+01:00

PRESS RELEASE

THE ULTIMATE SECRET
101 Ideas to storm the Art World

Pedro Lopes – September 5, 2009. Pedro Lopes has developed over the last year a Manual about 101 ideas to storm the Art World. This manual is the first of its kind giving the reader sensible and objective ideas with detailed information such as recommendations and necessary materials. The ideas stated in the manual were accurately considered in order to be a ready success within the cutting edge of contemporary art. The Official book Launch will happen on the 10th of September at 5.30 pm in the Norwich Art Centre. The sales of the manual will start on the 5th of September at the Norwich University College of the Arts.
Norwich was chosen due to its increasingly relevant implications in the Art scene in England, giving the city and the Artists community a central role.

The Manual contains numerous references to the British and International Art Scene giving in depth reflections about several famous works of art. The Ideas given in the manual are very open allowing the readers to interpret them in different ways. Adding to all this, the ideas have a touch of humour which makes reading the manual pleasurable.

The Author is an Artist who has exhibited his work throughout Europe. Pedro Lopes experience as an artist was the motivating factor that drove him to dedicate the last 3 years to studying and analysing art history in order to be able to offer accurate and exhaustive information about what can and can’t be made in the Art World nowadays. This comprehensive list of ideas aims to help and touch artists as well as the general public.

(Assembly) - Civilization and its Discontents

2009-06-14T17:26:00.003+01:00

A Book by Sigmund Freud that unveils some of the relations between the individual and the society.

The reading of this book provided me with different and renewed views on culture from a more intimate point of view and with more information and discoveries of mysteries that are very enigmatic when someone is faced with such situations in our everyday life.

The book has as main topics some ambiguities between conformity and repression and some of the most instinctive needs and actions that humans beings do when in distress or in other peculiar situations that we so often start to see in the streets so regularly.

The civilization as a mechanism that is in need of constant regeneration and change from the people that make part of it.

It gives a lucid and pragmatic view on this issues that take the form of shadows of the human nature.

(Assembly) - (Art meets theatre in the middle zone)

2009-06-06T17:03:00.005+01:00

Émile Durkheim identified the theatre as being derived from the oldest forms of religious or spiritual ceremonial, which were the way in which a society would initiate and reinforce cultural beliefs, in a manner that was collectively witnessed. The theatre almost as a ritual of initiation that is present in our everyday and in which we are the main contributors to the enchantment of the absurd!

The boundaries between the art object and everyday life are opened up to such an extent that to engage with the work means to enter a performative reality in equal measure. In this respect the following artists participated in an exhibition at the TATE in 2007.

Pawel Althamer

Cezary Bodzianowski

Ulla von Brandenburg

Jeremy Deller

Trisha Donnelly

Geoffrey Farmer

Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster

Jeppe Hein

Renata Lucas

Rita McBride

Markus Schinwald

Roman Ondak

Catherine Sullivan

Mario Ybarra

Andrea Frazer

Tino Sehgal

These artists made part of an exhibition in the Tate in 2007 with the name ‘The world as a stage’. Their works is a conjunction of several mediums from sculpture and installation to video and performance. The common factor is the theatricality that is enclosed within their works as a determinant factor to the understanding and interactivity in their works. These artists in some way illustrate the concerns of some of authors such as Richard Kostelanetz and Michael Fried.

Each one of the artist has its own medium and a way of expressing themselves but the reason that unites them is not just a concept, but the way they face their work as a live stage that encompasses an ambiguous mise en scene that is individualized and appropriated by each spectator. Even though they are a small group of artists their works in some way make me reflect of art as already a theatre stage where each exhibition is a play and each work is a stage. This apparent dichotomy is very present and not so much abstract if we consider the actions that are necessary to activate an artwork and all the schemes that trap in some way the spectator as a fly that is obfuscated by light. Art as far as I am concerned was always theatrical but nowadays this term seems to come to light as a more present expression that leads the artwork to a mere fragment/residues or even an essence that as shape or an action may be consistent or not. The object becomes then a mirage because the work became concerned not with what stays but rather what leaves. What I want to say by this is that the object is no more a document, it become almost a fragrance in the air that is only apprehended by an impulse representative of an action.

Tino sehgal as far as I am concerned can be considered these days as an exponent of this practice!

(Assembly) - The delusion of actions

2009-05-31T17:03:00.005+01:00

Action is itself a dubious a concept that emanates from itself contradictions and dilemmas and it is even worst when it derives from a reaction. Action is a rotting word.

Actions are literally theatrical events that by their performance side are passive statements!

You may well argue that art is by its nature a reaction to the world we live in. (if we take by example the fascists countries repressing the artistic community by their freedom of thoughts!)

Nevertheless even in a democratic country the artist became literally a Dandy! This sense of vanity leads to incoherence and vulnerability in the artwork. The society is itself the reason why the artist became somehow drifted away from its integrity perhaps!

The shaman that the artist should somehow impersonate is nothing more than pure simulation.

These are some of the factors that give us clarity of where we are:

Loss and absence
Withdrawal of the painting into theatricality, artifice, and coded cultural, representation of kitsch
Delusions of romantic oneness
Fraudulent social order
Commodity
Utopian desires
False promises of consumerism

This leads to an art which is only theatrical !

The action of the artist cease to have any meaning, but the way they are regarded as residues that in some way perpetuate an essence of a loss of action, become a reaction that doesn’t lead anywhere!

It is pertinent to ask where our romantic dedication and beliefs is? This is what I try to ask myself.

(This is an open statement with no intentions whatsoever to harm or insult any creative activity or individual)

(Assembly) - Authenticity in times of political and historical collapse !

2009-05-25T08:37:00.005+01:00

Where is Joseph Beuys soul!?

The process of death leads us to the conclusion of some question!

The chart itself begins by decoding the several meanings and purposes of form but in the end besides the chart gaining the aspect of an object all the information became objectified, the conclusion is that objectification became an autonomous process that is inherent to our nature. Objectification alone is already a morbid process because is directly related with the death of its reference!

(Assembly) - To be or not to be that was never a question when it comes to Theatricality in the artwork

2009-05-17T14:45:00.002+01:00

Theatricality in works of art is always perceived as live stages that encompasses different layers of understanding and perception!

Theatricality can be understood in many different ways, but will still remains as an undefined term because it encloses so many characteristics that can be found in completely different artworks, whether it is in a work from Mark Rothko or by Mathew Barney! Nevertheless it is always a group of materials or factors that are determined to be set together with a specific intention.

This assemblage of objects/characters becomes the set for a performance; an interactive action; or just simply contemplation. The paradigm of contemporary theatre reflects upon its history and the relevance and importance of its legacy and perhaps the pertinence of innovation and criticism.

The pertinence of theatricality in the art world is not something can be put aside because it is inherent to the system of creation and creativity. When a work is set up in an exhibition the artists had reasons why to display in that way or even why to make that work. Those same interests of the artist are already present as a simulation and recreation of some kind in order to set up a plan of what may happen or not!

Action itself is something that involves rhythm and dynamism and these are attributes of the contemporary theatre, but these same attributes are also crucial to the display and understanding of an art work!

The object by itself is part of a system that revolves around itself, and this system corresponds to certain rules that are in some way the reenactment of life that the object will suffer, which are present in the mise en scene of a grand work of art independently of its medium.

Nevertheless when an art work gains the attributes mentioned before, the importance that it gains is still less relevant compared to the action that is required to access the work and its meaning. By this the object implies a set of actions that are inherent to its understanding.

However if the action is not taken but simply understood is still a center of chaos and constant dynamic. A total immersion that despite all the factors will still imply a great deal of simulation and spectacle! Ilya Kabakov takes it further with the essays on total installation.

When an object assumes a reference to its function it becomes clear that has a notion, functionality concerns its meaning and by that the stage is ready to receive the guests!

Even when the assemblage of objects is itself a radon collage of objects the group forms something that has a meaning. However if there is different layers between the nature of the objects it is natural that contradictions will arise. In addition that conflict is already part of a set of consequences that were indicated by the audience and that obviously presupposes that a stage for an action has happened even if for only a couple of seconds.

Nevertheless the arrangement of a work can be quite literally translated as a mise en scene that a set of actions has allowed! Something that is staged, but suddenly over layers the object but at the same time gives it other capacity of understandings between the public and the actors that become one alone. The spectator is then the author of something and the author/artist is nothing more than a piece in the all game of playfulness and joy!

(Assembly) - Pablo Helguera - The art world magnified

2009-05-10T16:20:00.005+01:00

Today I would like to give as reference one book that I found deeply entertaining but still with great depth of understanding on the subject.

The book is called: Manual of Contemporary art Style, and its author is Pablo Helguera.

The book in some way demystifies the riddle that is the art world. Pablo in his book approaches the role of the Collector; Curator; Museums Directors; Critics; Dealers and Artists. Pablo makes a pragmatic approach to their roles always with a point of irony. It becomes almost a book of manners in order to behave within the art world which causes initially some scepticism in the reader due to its almost ruthless but merciful interpretation of the profound knowledge that he was about the art world. It is in some way this dichotomy that makes so interesting the reading of this book.

Barbara Pollack says that Helguera “has a savvy understanding of art history and art audiences, enough to know that a little humour and a bit of irony are sometimes the best tools in an artist’s arsenal.

Please feel free to immerse yourselves in a world where there are never open doors, instead hidden doors!

There are other books of reference of relevance and with a similar touch of irony!

Seven Days in the Art World by Sarah Thornton

http://www.panamericanismo.org/bio.html

(Assembly) - Politics behind Museums

2009-05-04T14:02:00.005+01:00

Museums have since their creation organized a structure that enabled them to interact and engage with the spectator. Here is a high standard definition of what can be a Museum given by the International Council of Museums¹, "permanent institution in the service of society and of its development, open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches, communicates and exhibits the tangible and intangible heritage of humanity and its environment, for the purposes of education , study, and enjoyment ".

By this definition we are given a very flexible approach of what a Museum can give to its community. Nevertheless this kind of approac h is not always perceptible by the communities that make part of it, or supposedly should benefit from the institution.

The politics that are hidden behind such institutions are not always the clearest and also tangible by the people that are concerned by the management of the museum.

My aim with this essay is not to investigate how funds are acquired and how horrid are the consequences of that processes. I do not have any intentions in this essay to create similar approaches as Hans Haacke² to its exhibitions and the way he approaches corporations and institutions by creating institutional critiques and being a beneficent of the art system by criticizing it.

I would like analyze today and purpose for this week discussion the fact that takes the museums to display and choose their objects or artifacts. There is an interesting approach to this problem given by Masao Yamaguchi³ when he says “the act of collection involves processes of making latent meaning manifest. Display, therefore, is the artistic creation of new sensitivities toward the world”. This interesting reference contradicts the above of a neutral space and clear intentions. Here we see that inevitably the museum becomes the facilitator of the creation of an aura in the object or artifact. This becomes even more problematic if we think of what happened during the past centuries with the appropriation of objects with no apparent value, and their display was faced as brilliant technique to bring other cultures to the eyes of the western society. The consequences as many of you might know was that the objects were understood as artistic objects without giving to them a proper context until the modern days when the Museums were faced with the necessity of reevaluate their role in society and because of that reformulate the image that they wanted to give to its audience. Once again I come again to Masao yamaguchi when he says that “acts of display do not necessarily cover territories that are well explained and easy classifiable. They involve an intellectual venture into that which is inexplicable and incapable of classification in order to search for new types of order.

After all this we come to the conclusion that several questions should be asked to ourselves and to the institutions that manage the exhibitions that are offered to the communities.

In first place:

How did the objects come to be displayed?

What is at stake in categorizing them as ‘museum quality’?

How were they originally used?

What cultural and material conditions made possible their production?

What were the feelings of those who originally held the object, cherished them, collected them and possessed them?

What is the meaning of the viewer’s relationship to those same objects when they are displayed in a specific museum on a specific day?

Finally:

Do we want a strong initial appeal of wonder that then leads to desire of resonance? Or the other way around!

All these questions are in some way answered by the museums nowadays, but the responses that the viewer receives are far way from being satisfactory.

I believe is our responsibility to ask these questions because the museum is much more than a display case!

1 "ICOM Statutes. International Council of Museums. Retrieved on 2008-04-05.

2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Haacke

3 Ivan Karp and Steven D. Lavine, Exhibiting Cultures. The poetics and Politics of Museum Display, 1991, Smithsonian Institution Press Washington and London, London.

(Assembly) - Time Machine

2009-04-26T15:56:00.002+01:00

In continuation of the past topics in last week’s I would like to emphasize here the possibility of the use of a time machine to explore different systems that are involved in the creation of something, more specifically in the act of artistic creation.

Time is itself something where our control is very limited and because of that the use of time, as a variable to the process of creativity becomes a must.

Time is a medium that until certain extent is appropriable to our own benefits in order to control and not be controlled.

Would a time machine make our life easier!?

Nevertheless you don’t need it, your imagination is already a source to travel through time and space, and that is in some way used in the creative act! A space where neither time nor space exists!

What I would like to ask you is:

Do you feel yourself in that dimension when interacting with an artwork!?

Is there any sensation or a particular thing that catches your attention to the point to be totally immersed and absent from what surrounds you!

It is relevant to have an answer for these questions because only by answering can we have clear notion of what can be an artwork.

(Artistic Project TBT 2009) - Art Survey

2009-04-26T15:17:00.007+01:00

This is a survey that is being done by Pedro Lopes in order to take some conclusions about some visitor’s habits and their preferences in relation to certain topics.

Please answer according to your own beliefs and then post the answers as a comment!

These are the following questions that I would like you to answer:

1. Are you a regular visitor of a museum or any other institution? (If yes, choose two types of exhibitions that you regularly go to:

· Science
· History
· Geology
· Heritage
· Art
· Design
· Sex
· People

(If you answered other option other than Art please go no further and return the survey, if not move to the second question)
2. What is the artistic medium that is generally more appealing to your senses?

· Painting
· Sculpture
· Installation
· Drawing
· Video
· Performance
· Photography
· Other

3. What are your favorite Artists?

4. How much time do you spend in a Museum/Institution in average

· 1 to 30 min.
· 31 to 60 min.
· 61 to 90 min.
· 91 to 120 min.
· 121 to 150 min.
· 151 to 180 min.
· More

5. How much time do time do you spend in each display case/work/piece?

· Less than 1 min.
· 1 to 5 min.
· 6 to 10 min.
· 11 to 15 min.
· 16 to 20 min.
· 21 to 25 min.
· 26 to 30 min.
· More

6. Do you have a Museum/Institution of your preference?

7. How many exhibitions do you visit per year?

· 1 to 10
· 11 to 20
· 21 to 30
· 31 to 40
· More

8. How many exhibitions have transformed your day?

· 1 to 5
· 6 to 10
· 11 to 15
· 16 to 20
· More

9. How many times do you go to a Museum/Institution Bathroom during an exhibition?

· never
· 1 to 2
· 3 to 4
· More

10. Have you already bought a work from an artist you like?

· No
· Yes (How many?)

(Assembly) - The creator (part 3/3)

2009-04-19T18:53:00.005+01:00

The Failure of the perfect trilogy:

· The fact that the reshape of barriers has become a constant reality, the creator also feels compelled to lose even more. The spectators as well as the creator throughout the times have become more detached even when there are works that are interactive and request the participation of the spectator. However this is simply a lie because the barriers are not broken and there was not so far a dialog between the artist and the spectator, because always we feel distant to what the artist is making even though there is a community work.

The work can be the last resource to make that happen because there isn’t a truly connection that can sustain the conflicting relation within a trilogy that seems not to have an end. An infinite cycle which disturb our sanity!

(It can be seen by the arrows that there is an impossibility of approach, there is only a dot in the space that seems to conjugate the three elements but unfortunately is lost). In addition the memory that remains of the trilogy becomes also lost in space even though the aim of the trilogy is to reconnect them again. However not even the memory of time seems to remember that happening.

It doesn’t exist a possible approach. Even though that there is a subversion of roles the picture remains the same. For me this trilogy is recent because in the past there was this kind of connection between things such as the work but only as a mere vehicle that was appropriated, dissected, destroyed, raped and lastly murdered. So in order to create a kind of replacement, was created the work (the work that owns its own identity among the others that have already taken their place in the cycle) that was introduced in order to enable the creation of a perfect trilogy, but after all what is about this object/work:

I think it is relevant to say that as far I am concerned is the introduction of a complete new variable to the equation. This new variable had the intention to create a new approach but it didn’t work out because the three factors are still drifting apart. The object assumes in a pretentious way the new position of the modern artist. The object becomes then the center of the attentions. This in itself is a position that has its value but the artist doesn’t want to lose the recognition of his hard work! So he includes himself in a dialog where the variables become more subjective of what they already are, but the spectator is still the last one to receive the work having only as function to approve or disapprove as the conception of trilogy determines the space and time in a era where that doesn’t exist anymore. So as consequence we can take the conclusion that what interests in the end are the artists and his egos. In a way the spectator has become valuable to the artist only by the fact that he can SEE – probably the creator is blind! Of course he is not making something for himself alone but the creator want results and the spectators want conclusions! How is this possible if we are only changing the variables of the same equation in order to obtain similar results for different contexts! It doesn’t make sense but is the creator fully responsible for this!

I don’t believe in that because the spectator doesn’t make enough effort to realize what he is seeing but in the other hand why make an effort if the work want to take my senses away and my sensibility and replace them by something other from the originals that are strange to the spectator. Why should I put some effort if I am going to be used as Guiney Pig and also the result is not relevant for me but for the artist. So it can be easily realized why there is no possible relation besides anger!

The trilogy is in the end the product not of the artist but of a background that supports all the world of art. These identities that are behind the curtain are always resetting the scenario and the artist is only a little puppet that has only as function to read the text and play it. “The artist is the ultimate clown” Bruce Nauman. Why so much proposals and revolutions, if the result has always the same consequence.

I don’t want with this to make a proposal because the world is full of good intentions.

My belief is that the answer is not in the artist neither the problem is in the spectator. It also isn’t in the dissociation of the trilogy. The dissociation of the trilogy would be the end of everything but also the start of something with biblical impact! Although there is a risen of a new understanding of what art can embrace such as other elements and other dimensions. I don’t want with this to say that there are elements from the past or elements that can make us sweat of joy when faced with something really remarkable. The people that think that this kind of emotion is no longer possible are very wrong about their conceptions.

Art has followed a path that made of the spectator the central factor. However he is still the little sheep lost in the open field looking for someone to lead him. I also don’t support the idea of recovering the time as a lost memory, however I don’t think that still exist in the days we live in. throughout times we were constantly overwhelmed by theories that had the intention of being an explosion of senses as well the lack of them! The history is not linear and the creators know that fact perfectly and that is why there are still creators otherwise they would be eliminated due to its flawless irrelevance. This is why the spectator is constantly vomiting what he is given incessantly. Maybe we are now facing a necessity but what king of necessity is this one that seems to be common to every creator and even the spectator. Therefore exists a mutual necessity that can be pictured as the negative and the positive of the photography terminology. So even though they have similar needs they don’t seem to have any success in accomplishing anything because they are constantly refusing each one so that they have their own attention instead of being overshadowed by the other!

This situation can be understood as a game that has as main rule to achieve supremacy in relation to the other. Despite these facts, we have to have in consideration that the spectator doesn’t have any word to say in this game. Its presence is itself enough to intimidate the artist! Therefore the artist is the only one that tries to create this game to win or lose it, according to its needs! What turns the game a bit confusing is the fact that someone doesn’t let the spectator enter the game but creates it from him! However the situation that we are facing is good because if the spectator would enter in the game we wouldn’t have art but instead television debates between two individuals discussion nothing relevant but still would be regarded as something extraordinary! What I want to say is that the artist doesn’t want to integrate the spectator but use it. (So far so good), But we have to remember that the spectator is not any idiot to let someone use Him/her because he wants! (He likes to feel dominated by an individual that doesn’t know!). Once again my intuition as creator is to realize that I am working with someone that doesn’t know most of what I am saying so is better to make him a picture to make him aware that we are in different beaches of the same ocean. (Who is the one that has more influence upon the other?) I would say that is you as reader! (Different elements that come to complicate the equation don’t stop showing up, what disturbs its conclusion, but in the end no one anymore wants to see the result because we already know it) …

(Assembly) - The creator (part 2/3)

2009-04-13T12:03:00.002+01:00

In continuation of last week essay I would like to take here other angle of approach I did last week in relation to the creator, creative act.
The other point that I think is worth taking in consideration is the fact that the artist is in some way the extension of the world that surrounds him/her. The creator lives in a world that is completely immersive and because of that, no one can deny the information which is bombarding us daily. All of this becomes determinant when the creator is a sponge that is continuously absorbing everything else apart from them. However in some cases not even themselves are left apart from a spiral of almost delirious reflection. The perfect picture that I have to explain this is the washing machine that takes a certain amount of clothes in its recipient until certain limit. During the washing process, one cannot identify clearly shapes or colours so it becomes a shapeless mass of clothes/thoughts. However in the end everything gains its original form and the difference it is in the cleanness which is predominant in the clothes and the same thing happens in the creative process where everything suddenly gained a new look. This can be understood as a way of rediscovering but mainly giving a fresh vision of what surrounds us, without any king of prejudice or censorship. Nevertheless the artist as far as I am concerned is reusing methods over and over again and that doesn’t bring necessarily fresh understandings of anything basically! Has the creator become a lazy mathematician that is trying to apply the same formula to everything he/she does!?
Mathematical formulas are present in our everyday life. The creator just has to introduce new variables without changing the equation system and in the end he gets the same result but with different consequences. It turns out to be a question of reading the results that disturb the system itself. The result achieved is constituted by all of us that accept one work/interpretation in two different contexts.

Why – maybe the artist is tired and tries to find solutions close to him to then change the variables.

There is a lack of thought within the audience, and as consequence it is no longer required to live under a roof provided by the artist (In addition is made of glass) because he can no longer assure an enchantment in any measure. ...

Has the creative process become underrated! I don’t think so, but definitely there is in some way a sentiment towards it that in some way forces the creator to neglect new approaches to the equations already provided.

I believe we are in an era of transition and that implies several things are blurred and inconclusive.

(Assembly) - The creator (part 1/3)

2009-04-05T12:42:00.002+01:00

The creative act is something that is not consensual because in one hand there are people that recognize the creative act as something almost divine and others that consider it as a result of hard work and a considerable amount of pain. These two positions that in some way are generalised are in fact lacking several other factors that contribute to the creative act. Marina Abramovic¹ presents a humorous but efficient formula that involves the creative act: “My Secret Formula on How to Become a Genius: 1 tablespoon of talent; 5 drops of Popularity; 1 drop of Luck; 10 Kilograms of discipline; 6 glasses of self-sacrifice; 3 grams of spirituality. Mix all ingredients and leave them overnight to cool down, drink the substance early in the morning when the sun is rising and facing east”
Marina Abramovic presents us with a formula that gives us a rough idea of what it takes to create something inside creative parameters.
Nevertheless when do we know that the creator reached his/her own limit and trespassed to other limits!
Apparently we can’t know that kind of information because it also overlaps our knowledge.
The creator is best described as far as I am concerned as a sponge that absorbs everything that makes part of his/her daily life. However I wouldn’t like to focuses so much in the creative process but instead what I would like to discuss this week is what leads someone before that creative act!
As far as I am concerned what surrounds us has a major role in how we perform and even how we are touched by something. It is relevant to mention here that all of us have different sensibilities and that implies that when two people are faced with the same reality or same context they react differently. The post-war artistic movements are good examples to demonstrate that kind of environment when people even though are joined in artistic movements have individual responses to the same problems.
It is also important to mention that our background such as our family, knowledge, or such other experiences that involved us in dramatic and intense drawbacks are relevant. However not only the bad experiences are relevant, the good ones are also very important. All of these factors have a considerable amount of weight when comparing the factors that influence someone.
Not only the creator is more sensible to these facts but perhaps it is in the way they express where these kinds of factors reveal themselves is determinant to the understanding of a work independently of its media or context. The context is also very determinant and very variable between men and women because the entire social background constitutes a major influence to their understanding of the practise of each one. Examples are determinant when you consider artists in a Diaspora context, civil wars, outside western culture among many other specific contexts. In addition the artist list would be endless because more or less there is always something that should be taken in account.

The creator became what can be called of a living statement not so much of what he/she does but instead what he/she represents to other people and what backgrounds they bring along with themselves to their practise.

1 Obrist, Hans-Ulrich. Formulas for now, London: Thames & Hudson, 2008

(Assembly) - Run for your Life (final sprint)

2009-03-29T22:24:00.004+01:00

In our everyday life we have multiple influences and several responses or behaviors to certain situations. Do we seem to Care!

We are not regardless to what surrounds us, but are we deliberately inefficient?!

Why?!

That is a question that everyone should ask themselves!

Can’t we give value to what surrounds us and stop! Life is running literally through us, as if we were a detached body from a soul.

Everything is revolving around the fast mobility of information and fast detachment, but no one seems to care whether that is relevant or not!

The question is set! Do we want to live?!

Stop and Awake up

(Assembly) - Motionless Community

2009-03-22T17:36:00.004Z

Is Society prepared to take a step further!?

Politics of time as a dictatorship dictated by us, to us!?

All of these questions were posed to the reader in the last two essays not as a threat but as a reminder. The essays were intentionally made to question the readers of what surrounds them.

Despite questions were made, no suggestions were received as reply, which left me in a state of both inefficiency and amazement!

The installed commodity and lack of pro-activeness urges me to reflect the role of community that is already largely analyzed in the blog ‘Touch and Be Touched’ as a connection with Art. Nevertheless today I would like to simply take in consideration the community problem, from a humble perspective.

On the basis that bonds are achieved by communication, communities were formed throughout the civilized world. It may be contested that it is pure speculation, but the wellbeing of a community is achieved by the creation of bonds. It may be used as example the Greek culture, which used in its urban plans Agora, as a gathering point to discuss politics or simply to trade products.

However communication alone is not the key for being successful in making a community or establishing a bond. This means we ought to be more receptive towards other people than we are. The consequence of this lack of openness leads to the conclusion that people are afraid of being exposed to an outside world that is unknown to them. This reaction is of no surprise to me and for you since it makes part of our human nature to be afraid of the unknown. Nevertheless this is not the main problem. As far as I am concerned the problem is in the Ego of people that makes them choose not to be open to other people, resulting in Egoism! This awareness is in some way a culture of fear that we inflict in ourselves, which originates conflicts unnecessarily, simply because we restrain our power of will to know the unknown!

Marcus Coates¹ an artist that is participating in the exhibition ‘ALTERMODERN’², with ‘The Plover’s Wing’ 2008, created an amazing metaphor by telling his encounter with a Plover³ and his approach to it, in order to find an answer to an Israeli Major. “Coates seeks to find solutions for an Israeli major who is concerned about the future of the local youth in the face of the continuing violence in the region”. The metaphor is around the fact that Plover’s when faced with a threat to their nests fakes a broken wing and goes in an opposite direction of the nest in order to distract the possible predator. However Coates when was trying to approach the Plover even though not being a threat, the Plover had the same reaction as if Coates was a Predator. In the end the conclusion was that the Israeli youth are trying to rebel themselves against something that they don’t know.

The same case applies to a society that is unable to be receptive to the other because they don’t want to!

In addition this kind of approach besides being violent, neglects everything that is besides their sphere of their understanding, causing conflicts that are unnecessary. Other cause is the fact that people seem to be dormant in a state of apathy! We can’t face life as a mere existence that passes through us until our death! Albert Camus⁴ exposes in one of his most famous novels L’Étranger 1942, the absurdity and an existential line of a character life that seems to be an alienated and anomic⁵ man from what surrounds him.

We can’t take this kind of approach and let death rejoin us!

We can’t let die a sense of immanence between everyone and enclose ourselves in the simple and sad alienation or Can we!?

1 http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/focus_marcus_coates

“Marcus Coates asks what is to be human by experimenting with ‘being’ an animal. Through his interests in ornithology, zoology and anthropology, Coates has developed skills to bypass his own humanness in order to experience the world through the mind and body of an animal. He often adopts a shamanic role to access a nether world populated by birds and animals. By connecting with their spirits, he attempts to gain insight into difficult problems on behalf of the public.” Exhibition Guide Altermodern Exhibition
2 Exhibition «AlterModern» at Tate Britain, Tate Triennial 3 February – 26 April http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/altermodern/
3 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plover
4 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Camus
5 Anomic, in contemporary English Language is a sociological term that signifies in individuals an erosion, diminution or absence of personal norms, standards or values, and increased states of psychological normlessness. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomie

2009-03-16T23:35:00.005Z

Gears in Motion (Graphic: Eric Drooker)

Posted by Enning M. Lederer

(Assembly) - Contemporary time

2009-03-15T19:16:00.008Z

Time! Isn’t it timeless!?

Nowadays time became appropriated and expanded. Acconci¹ suggests that “time has runaway like a virus spreading throughout floating bodies. Time has changed its position from the heart to the wrist”.

There is no longer the necessity of giving value to time; the human being has become its own clock by determining the time. This notion of time reflects in some way the loss of its value in generating life around the engagement with other people, which means the end of a collective!

Time has become much more personal, to the point of excluding a notion of common time, which worked as a space of reunion. Although public time² originates public space, due to a modern understanding of time, it became appropriated and lost its power of communication.

Is Time an oppressor, by not being a facilitator of interactive engagement within society!

Is Time becoming a capsule that is expropriating the right of people to even be with themselves! All the mediums that exist today isolate a person in its own world, without the power to access the space around them, driving people to even more possibilities of alienation!

Are we being faced with a fatality? The exclusion of the human being from its own habitat!?

Politics of time as a dictatorship dictated by us, to us!?

1 Vito Acconci ‘Public Space in Private Time’, Critical Inquiry, vol. 16, No. 4, University of Chicago Press, summer, 1990
2 “Time is dead; there isn’t any more the notion of public space; so the public space has died too as well as the public time” (Acconci)

(Assembly) - Creator and society 'part 4'

2009-03-08T19:37:00.004Z

Nowadays we live in an age of leisure, an era that is experiencing a time of complete inauthenticity and disembodiment that is making people revolving around a feeling of emptiness that is turning our civilization into sick bodies and minds. David Riesman said that ‘what we dare not face is not total extinction, but total meaningless’. It can be even said that there is a general existential nausea due to the fact that we are daily bombarded with information about everything and about nothing at the same time.

The media are not the only ones to blame but also the governments that allow for example urban plans to be made with a complete lack of integrity making of the cities undesirable places to live! Civilization needs to be revitalized otherwise the legacy that we are transferring to the future generations, will be a mere illusion of something structured and without a future.

In addition modern technology is also a responsible factor for all this, since is taking over the production of everything. So society perhaps is taking other paths that imply the use of the mind that may be related with a spiritual incompleteness (Let not religious implications put in our way). People seem not to find something that might complete their needs and anxieties.

Arts in general throughout history had always important implications in society as Ortega y Gasset¹ explains “Art and pure Science, precisely by being the freest of activities, and less dependent on social conditions, are the first fields in which any change in the collective consciousness can be seen. When man modifies his basic attitude to life he starts by manifesting this new awareness in both artistic creation and in scientific theory. The sensitivity of both areas makes them infinitely susceptible to the lightest of the winds of spirit. As in a village, on opening the windows in the morning, we look at the smoke from chimneys in order to see which way the wind is blowing so we can look at the arts and sciences of the younger generations with a similar meteorological curiosity”.

The creator whoever it may be had always a degree of importance in revitalizing society but nowadays creators are urged to take further actions than mere contemplation or simple innovation. Perhaps the solution would be to create a responsibility in the future generations that would equate an artistic conscience much more integrated in their everyday lives!

The power that arts in general can have within each person is an awareness of a common understanding of the world in order to take them away from what can be called of ‘vast repetitive insanity’ that infiltrates in our bodies every day. Arts may represent a vehicle to a social consciousness where networking has the power of joining people together in a harmonious way. Jean Creedy² reflects on this same basis but in a more focused way taking in consideration the value and purpose of the city, by saying “the city is no longer an enclosed territory with walls to protect it from an outside enemy. It is a spatial pattern that needs to fight against the internal enemy of complete isolation from fresh air sunshine, and open space. Boundaries connecting links and openings are being structured in a new pattern. This structure is again a symbolic form of expressing certain emerging values”. The values that Creedy is referring here may well be related with an artistic conscience. Vito Acconci text ‘public space in a private time’ 1990, is also a point of reference when taking in consideration that there is a concern of the public space involving and joining people in a unique relationship.
Although the space and our relationship with it can be a suitable vehicle to achieve a common understanding or an artistic conscience that might help us fight against our daily repetitive cycle of insanity, there are other ways! Working not for the people but within people is already present in some solutions that are far from being innovative; nevertheless there are always something that may raise the attention of people towards new limits and the revitalization of mind and body!

People are being objectified by a system that surround us, and is up to us creators to challenge and pose questions not necessarily to confront people but essentially to humanize them to an inner awareness of the world we live in.

Is Society prepared to take a step further!?

1 (Ortega y Gasset, the Modern Theme, London, 1931)
2 (Jean Creedy, the social context of art, London, 1970)

(Assembly) - Art as state of encounter in life

2009-03-01T21:46:00.002Z

It takes two people to produce a Relationship as well as an Artwork

Art as well as Society is an extremely cooperative system. The dense network of interconnections between members means that everything that happens in it will possibly be a function of all members. Artistic production is a relation of cause and effect that has as base the society. Our Communitarianism foundations lead us to understand and cooperate with what surround us in a beneficial way for everyone involved.

An understanding of this Communitarianism and also the state of encounter that immerse everyone in a dialogue can be a synthesis of a natural symbiosis between Artistic Creation and Relationships:

· Full-Filling
· In(ter)ventive
· Cooperative
· Un/conscious
· Fe< >male
· Re … creation

In addition a state of encounter doesn’t reflect the dissolution of an individual; on contrary it produces a common understanding between two individuals.

Me + You = We
You + We = Me
We + Me = You

Fabrice Hybert defines art as a social function among others, a permanent ‘digestion of data’, the purpose of which is to discover ‘the initial desires that preside over the manufacture of objects.
Art itself comes from the social exchanges that happen in our everyday life. A dialogue that is being constantly open in order to generate discussion around our daily encounters which art contributes to its development.
Besides art being an encounter with what surrounds us is also an encounter within ourselves. These encounters can be defined as a reinvention of the self and an otherness as a means of defining the responsibility of every person involved. The outcome in our daily activities is the production of a subjectivity that is forever self-enriching its relationship with the world. The encounter becomes then more valuable than the product whatever it may be!

This can be called the reenchantment of life because allows a person to a dynamic approach to the banal and eclectic consumerism that preaches cynical indifference towards life!

(Assembly) - Nature blessed Nature

2009-02-22T21:01:00.002Z

Nature has several organisms, creatures and all of them have a duty inside a microcosm to generate a macrocosm. Our own condition gives us the possibility to step back from its everyday mutation and be more aware of superficial aspects of life. However this doesn’t change our nature of predator and prey on a Natural Habitat. This is our nature in its best understanding so why do we have to dissimulate it!? Art among other things is something that appeared to disturb our instincts by altering our natural habitat!

I am taking this position by wanting and demanding for changes that will possibly come from the nature. The nature with its life is as far as I am concerned the primary creator that is constantly applying its creative capacities in the constant change of times. By this, Nature is its own creator and spectator without any need for a vehicle or what so ever. The spectator are them as creators so there is no kind of ambiguity in this process of pure rationality connected with pure subjectivity that makes the perfect connection with no need of understanding but just for feeling its power and embracement that the nature is constantly requiring and we are also constantly denying it!

By using the legacy of Nature I would like to question the reader to reflect about the people that surround you and make part of you as a community such as a microcosm that has repercussions on a far wide universe!?

In addition is art in need to submerge itself into the natural cycle to become part of a community and not one more gadget!?

(Assembly) - Meaning and Life

2009-02-15T21:34:00.003Z

Can we define Life as our everyday life!?

When I mean life I understand it as something deeper and fully unknown to our conflicting innocence. Life is not what surrounds us or just our everyday life. Perhaps I shouldn’t even call it life but something that can be related to a metaphysical state of abstractness. Still is not as simple as an uncanny state. It goes even further than this. That is why I feel that there is always a feeling that a cycle in our lives is not completed because in some way there is a lack in giving meaning to it.

“Meaninglessness inhibits fullness of life and is therefore equivalent to illness. Meaning makes a great many things endurable – perhaps everything” Carl Jung

Can we talk of life as something that is being lived in an unconscious state and its reflection leads us to a dimension of abstractness and transcendence! Is it a dialog between two identities within the same body!?
Such an experience could be described as the ultimate level of feeling someone can reach, because is something you cannot perceive and even something you cannot fully understand! These kinds of experiences that one have while absorbing the intensity of life, can guide to a world where nothing is physical or reachable. It is a world of full sensations! When someone reaches it, is because it had to pass through an intense line of subjective experiences and had given a meaning to those experiences. The Memory of that experiences lies where more emphasis is given and definitely in a space/dimension where there is no time, not even barriers.

Living and being alive is not something that cannot be rationalized, is either something subjective that we attribute a meaning or instead belongs to abstractness.
The metaphysical world is in the end something you can’t realise, that you felt but in same way you can’t reach it. Living becomes after all the most important concept of all, leading you not to theorize about a specific subject but by living and experiencing it in a level much more deep than mere superficiality.
What this awareness can originate is the fact that it will create a closer approach to oneself but also the relationships that make part of our life!

Perhaps meaning becomes a synonym of life by giving meaning to it!?

(Assembly) - Painting as a Language and Language as a Painting

2009-02-08T22:11:00.005Z

Words have their own power and life. Apollinaire said that in a poem there are phrases which do not appear to have been created, which seem to have shaped themselves. A painting or any other artwork has also the power to recreate constantly new meanings and different perceptions of himself towards the viewer. During this week I would like to focuses your attention on the importance of words.

Merleau-Ponty reflects about the importance of words above the expression of a painting: “The comparison benefits not only our analysis of painting but also that of language. For it will perhaps lead us to detect beneath spoken languages an operant or speaking language whose words live a little known life and unite with and separate from one another as their lateral or indirect meaning demands, even though these relations seem evident to us once the expression is accomplished. The transparency of spoken language, that brave quality of the word that is all sound and the meaning that is all meaning, the property it apparently has of extracting the meaning from signs and isolating it in its pure state (which is perhaps simply the anticipation of several different formulations in which it would really remain the same), and its presumed of recapitulating and enclosing a whole process of expression in a single act – are these not simply the highest point of tacit and implicit accumulation of the same sort as that of painting?”

The possibility of creating a similar understanding between words and shapes and colours! There is still implicit a tacit knowledge that help us understand and continue a research into the world of meaning and self-expression. People have the power through words to create their own world and question themselves and even make choices. These characteristics enable anyone to recreate themselves not simply as an otherness but also as having the power of rediscovering another world and above all, themselves!
Language is perhaps a more complex medium than fine art but both have equal power of engagement. The two mediums can equally give a full sensorial experimentation integrating all our body and mind. They are after all a tool to connect and rediscover such a person as a world!

However far more wide, language is a tool the artist uses to speak to his audience and every person to one another, this is the language process initiated into the world and into the universe of possibilities confined in a human body and a human life. In addition this dimension can be overcome in order to achieve a transcendental realisation where a word is used simply as a vehicle to the development of a metaphysical process. A language which gives our perspective on things and hollows out relief in them opens up a discussion that goes beyond the language and itself invites further investigation into a universe of meaning and pleasure.

Is an image more powerful than words!? Can’t we obtain through language a far more regarding experience than with images! The same language that shape ourselves and make part of us!

(Merleau-Ponty, Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence)

(Assembly) - Art and Morality

2009-02-01T21:39:00.002Z

Herbert Read addresses Tolstoy position in relation to art (What is Art?) as the proclamation of the death of art. What Herbert Read means by saying this is that art for Tolstoy should have a moral purpose and it should be clear and simple in its expression and its appeal should be universal. However Herbert Read puts Art on these terms:

‘Art is not and never has been subordinate to moral values. Moral values are social values; aesthetic values are human values. Moral values promote and protect a particular way of life; aesthetic values promote and protect life itself, as a vital principle. Moral values are based on sentiments, that is to say, on clear notions of goodness or happiness; aesthetic values are based on institutions and feelings, that is to say, on obscure reactions to experience. Morality seeks to restrain the feelings, art seeks to define them by externalizing them, by giving them significant form. Morality has only one aim – the ideal good; art has quite another aim – the objective truth. Morality finds expression in precept and commandment; art in symbol and myth. The moralist preaches or prophesies; the artist bears witness, impassively’

What I can understand by reading this small extract from Read position towards art is that art is essentially a medium of communication. The essence of an artistic product is in the way it reaches its audience whether effectively or not!

‘The crucial element is life and it self-preservation because life is after all the self-expression of a human being’. We should interpret the values of pleasure, communication and emotion according to Tolstoy as something that is not connected with art but should be integrated with it. By this there is an assumption that moral values make part of the artistic nature!

Moral values are something that co-exists with art but the only interference with art and morality depends on the judgement of every person. Their natural essence, even though being very close is often misunderstood, assuming that art itself in its deep essence should assume some kind of morality! But then we have to ask ourselves what kind of morality we are talking about! I don’t think it is an issue that is easy to talk about because there are different points of view. What can be for me reproachable is accepted by someone else!

I have to say that the ultimate purpose of art is to go beyond everything that is tactile or even physical to reach a level of transcendence, where nothing is seen but felt and afterwards understood. In this point I have to agree with Tolstoy, but the fact that Read says that morality should be played in a different field of art can be discussable because in history, art played an important role in developing the society and even giving values to its development.
However the statement from Tolstoy may be focused in only a simple factor of the experience of art.

As far as I am concerned the two authors are assuming two different perspectives about the same topic and what was to be understood here is the fact that they are not separable from each other. In one hand we have the pure fact of communication and feelings and on the other hand the capacity of understanding that leads to a transcendental world far away from the pure gaze!

It can be said, when the artist preserves the outstanding singularity of giving to its audience a genuine sensation, the power of engagement is fulfilled in every dimension.

I would like to question if this conflict between art and morality made specifically by these two authors is just a conflict, because after all art has the power to touch independently from any social restriction?! In addition in the excerpt from Herbert Read can’t we find the whole dimension of what art demonstrate to be?

(Herbert Read, the Grass Roots of Artist)
(Leo Tolstoy, What is Art?)

(Assembly) - The aesthetic experience !

2009-01-25T23:08:00.006Z

The aesthetic experience is not something reserved for some. It makes part of our everyday life and is experienced by everyone in different degrees of understanding. However when an artistic experience is framed by experts loses its dynamic power to communicate effectively.

Abrech Wellmer says that, when an artistic experience is used/thought in a different context from where the experts have defined it, the experience itself becomes even richer. This means that in our everyday life an aesthetic experience with an artistic object can very easily renew the interpretation of something, our needs perhaps, and change the way we perceive the world. The power of such genuine sensation generates the fulfilment of a dialog established directly with the vehicle that made it possible.

We have the power to find such an experience in our everyday life, but it seems that when something is controlled by an institution or exalted by a group of people, our power of intuition is weakened. Are we being directed towards a specific meaning or intention!?

Even though we have our own power of discernment can we be immune to what surround us! Can we have a pure aesthetic experience! Probably not because our knowledge has several references to which an experience may mean to us. However the question that is being posed here is whether such an artistic experience can touch us when removed from the plinth and brought to our everyday lives!

Our lives become then the stage for an aesthetical experience and a not museum or a gallery or the even the object itself!

(Assembly)-(re)enlightenment!?

2009-01-19T10:04:00.005Z

Can we talk of a new enlightenment nowadays?

The project of modernity formulated in the 18th century by the philosophers of the Enlightenment consisted in their efforts to develop objective science, universal morality, law, and autonomous art according to their inner logic. At the same time, this project intended to release the cognitive potentials of each of these domains from their esoteric forms. The enlightenment philosophers wanted to utilize this accumulation of specialized culture for the enrichment of everyday life, that is to say, for the rational organization of everyday social life. In addition to the intention to reformulate patterns from which society was arranged, a new conception of individual appeared to give a new meaning to life in community.

Despite the intentions of this new formulation, the concerns for integrating art didn’t seem to have much impact in the way we nowadays perceive art. As far as I am concerned the cause of that incompleteness is due to the artists needs of that time, and some nowadays, that persisted in living in a hermetic world with no communication to the outside world. This need had severe consequences in how art related with the society, which made people react abruptly towards the new expressions of their contemporary world. Even though the Artist had and still has the capacity and the ambition to be creatively independent from their outer world, there wasn’t the minimum interest in integrating the society in the new artistic styles that were in constant development.

However the society is now urgently in need to have definite changes, because art and society are so alienated that it became almost impossible for the artists to establish a bond with their audience. In addition art and society have become so central in our contemporary world that we as artists can no longer run away from it, neither the opposite, the society from art.

The question that I would like to pose during this week is related with a need of a(n) (Re)Enlightenment! Can we as audience or artists engage our works or our needs in ways that embrace us? Can society in general produce a new understanding of art?

(Assembly) - We are surrounded by images ...

2009-01-12T09:52:00.003Z

We are surrounded by images and as consequence of that we have become images…

“They are the inside of the outside and the outside of the inside, which the duplicity of feeling [le sentir] makes possible and without which we would never understand the quasi presence and imminent visibility which make up the whole problem of the imaginary”

However it is not the imaginary world that feed our intellect: “because it does not offer the mind an occasion to rethink the constitutive relations of things, but rather it offers the gaze traces of vision, from the inside, in order that it may espouse them; it gives vision that which clothes it within, the imaginary texture of the real”

Is an imaginary world that we want to keep creating! Without the responsibility that we have towards other people! An endless world of images that keep us prisoners of our own sight! Are the artists responsible for the mirrors that are attached to our bodies!?

It seems that society in general has denied its own power of discernment towards what surround us. Our society seems to have proved an impossibility to relate with their souls to the point of negating themselves as human beings and negating everything else by being presumptions. I believe what we are living is the apotheosis of ephemeral connections in such a schizophrenic way that we are reaching a state of complete incoherence in a global scale.

Superficiality has always been present in our attitudes, behaviors and on our understanding of things but now has become more problematic, because it is no longer a cause but instead a consequence of our disinterest that provokes decomposition in our nature as human beings that relate to each other and also in the depth of our understanding.

What is happening to us!? Are we falling into a well of obscurity to question the integrity and meaning of what we are, and invoking the drama of alienation!

(Merleau-Ponty, Merleau-Ponty’s essays on painting, Eye and Mind/ Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence)

(Artistic Project TBT 2009)

2009-01-04T20:46:00.006Z

The Project 'Touch Be Touched' is at the moment in need of people, if you want to participate just let me know by my email: touch.be.touched09@gmail.com

The aims and outcomes of the project are explained in the right column.

(Assembly) - Beauty and Morality

2009-01-04T18:32:00.006Z

The Topic that I want to raise for this week is concerned with the fact that in this era of constant problematic issues we are faced with the abuse of Morality as well as of Beauty.

Can the abuse of the Natural world we live in provoke a disintegration of our Moral integrity!

Beauty is itself the essence of things and the absence of respect towards it, tears apart the enchantment of its presence.

Can we live in a world where beauty exists in a third realm disintegrated from our presence and spirit!

“by natural beauty it is perhaps best to think of beauty the existence of which is independent of human will, like the night sky or the sunset, mighty seas or majestic peaks” (pp.61, 2001),(Arthur Danto, the Abuse of Beauty, 2001, Illinois)

(Please feel free to comment and discuss this subject)