The idea that art is an elitist activity is a commonplace attitude. I’m not sure which is more dangerous, the idea or the attitude. Attitudes seem to change with greater ease than ideas, so perhaps the construct of the idea can be the culprit to the follied results of making art for a special class. Of course, I can be easily dead-wrong, as I have been on the premise that anyone could make art. Yes, everyone can create things - the differences are the varying degrees of mind, skill, and care. This requires a sort of brutal honesty found more readily in particular settings. Though the once gated doors are more open to the ofte-selfie duck face making public documenting their proof of "being there,” the deeper matter of this idealolgical claim can be proportedly a stew of time, attention, and willingness to engage.
I have always thought art was and remains for everybody because of a separate idea that even if someone does not understand something immediately, whatever is to be understood goes to work in the background of the mind open to learn. Imperative to not read/take/digest things as an imperative, and instead remain reflexive, not static.
Looking at art, in particular, has always given me a tremendous feeling of love, engagement and understanding of various perspectives on every aspect of life than I found in my culmination of other activities of work, study, and experience. Yes, the notion of nature is often aggrandized in art today. If we can take interest in coming to terms with what understanding nature means in practical terms, then when combined with an openness to learn, forges a pluralistic path of simultaneously indvididualized and collective discernments.
I understand the attitude towards art has become increasingly less engaged— which is not the arts’ fault, but what is permitted to be collectively believed what art is or is for. This is not to narrow the definitions but to face the reality that the time of the Emperor Wearing No Clothes is now. I do not have to wonder if anyone can see how barren things are among the excess, because I hear people from all over the world singing this chorus. I try to get them to meet and know each other with little success.
The one thing I can say to each one is we can be more honest about our thoughts, understandings and misunderstandings of what Art IS and what it is FOR. In today’s conditions, the “I” can be seen as a symbol of an idea: therefore the primary idea growing mold has become the “idendity” of the artist instead of the contents of the artwork itself. This is-ness of who the artist is versus what they are contributing to the spectrum of art making relative to history, I reasoned grew from the steadied abdication of individuals’ acquiesence to systems, in particular now artificially intelligent systems. This is not to poo-poo on A.I., as several people have animated this new system with hilarious and useful results. The thread and needle eye here is: while I (in mind and perhaps as a defense) remain enthusiastic about art being for everyone, this idea can still remain entirely incorrect, and that social behavior performs contingencies with survival, law, and ideological policies that are largely invisible lest the populace be accused of believing in conspiracy theories or magical thinking.
This is where I find the loss of meaning for words “right” or “left” and prefer to find something that is at a core, upright and mobile. The visual expression of that mirrored by the A.I. generations, but these are again outsourcing through systemic layering…sort of like a first pass of writing, instead of going over and over per Nietzche’s notion of eternal return through repetition. This is where the rarity of something original can be found. The idead of more-more-more, or new-new-new, nor necessarily of the ancient or nostalgic, nor technologic, nor this nor that…that makes making art almost nearly impossible. So, I think we all have to be incredibly honest to note there are a great number of attempts at art, but very little art being made. And we all suffer for this, plus the beloved myth of a suffering artist. This societal ideal leaves artists to die and then be appreciated as a means to maintain a status quo. The great myth of the internet opposed this, and so the imaginary conflation between myth, story, and lie simmer together. To not get lost here, the point is to find out, together, what the truth is, but not arrive at it and nod along, but keep things open and flowing too. Why this remains so difficult, could be the rising museum costs? or something as simple as the absense of Visual Literacy or interest in history.
The relation to the imaginary realm within visual art, particular to the device of a film camera captured my attention awhile ago for the way an image makes the perception of our bodied life in space an animation of an invisible space: animated by color, symbols, bodies, forms otherwise known as visual stories. This Visual Literacy, unfolding the films we watch before our eyes. These visions made of dreams, with eyes open, with eyes asleep.
We may believe we “see” with our eyes, yet in the first layer, we know our visible spectrum varies from person to person, from animal to insect. Further, these perceptions of what is objectively there are informed by memories in the body, conscious or below conscious awareness. Accessing what is really there relies on a complicated structure of genetics, attention, stress, and presence. Simatically, each person has likely walked past the keys when they’re sitting in the same place they were, or looking for lost eyeglasses on top of their head.
Giving greater pause to consider reality itself as having several layers, to which I had and still assert, we can grow greater sensitivity toward feeling and seeing at a distance can become deeply overwhelming-as it always already was for me and has only grown increasingly so. Instead of blocking out, I have accepted the curiosity to find out what happens when letting the information go in. A professor called this type of automatic and subconscious behavior: sifting reality. The theory of subjectivity is loosely based on this. The sifter could be the diaphragm muscle relative to the central nervous system. This means, that even if something makes it past the filter of awareness of the body, there is an objective or observable change to the matter itself.
In this way, I came to the hypothesis that the imaginary realm can absolutely alter the physical realm whether a person is aware of it or not. This theory was further evidenced by a brain scan that led me to learn ways the brain can be impacted by traumatic events. While the physical is obvious, the emotional and mental are invisible but result in physical consequences as well. A physical proof with the use of Magnetic Radiation Imaging that invisible things do in fact impact matter.
More recently the concept of Genius loci came to my awarness, which is not quite the same as the zetigiest but surely gave a great deal of philosophical probabilities to test out in futher projects such as Aesthetic Resonances and Pozzolana.
While often located by the word-ideas: Subconscious or Conscious, the imaginary realm is often described as “not real,” or “fantasy.” This attitude, among other difficult to describe expeiences led me to lose faith in my own understanding of reality and allow myself to be subjected to what I learned from a world view in the Scandinavian countries is called violence. Admittedly, I can see now how my mind and body used survival tactics to not confront what I was experiencing because it was too painful. Given the involvement of my heart, the rest of this experience, I made it into art, not only for personal cathartic gain, but to share something that has increased in popular psychology on the internet: the games people play.
Given that I have never really enjoyed games, too much aside from dance or charades, because it is not hard to find the worst of oneself in a competitive sport. The desire to win, and that height of success is something that can wreak havoc in so many people as we have collectively witnessed throughout history. This is how the ideal realm can be absolutely brutal and tyrannical, evidenced more socially in the presence of toxic relationships, or systemic illnesses. The mind-body connection is more actual than I could have ever imagined.
To be or being are complicated concepts in and of themselves, comprised of a lineage of psychology serving particular structures that may or may not be serving humanity well at all. The ethics of having wounded and vulnerable people pay for their own healing, seems to be one of the less charitable opportunities in the world. This is one of the reasons why I did not become a psychologist as it turned a profit from applying education and questions to a person who was in deep need of help. This is not to condemn the praxis of therapy nor of commerce, only to note this point of friction.
Having been in need of help myself, and witnessing what I prefer to call strange disco, or value transaction over invisible, audible lessons. The ultimate dissolving of self was one of my aims in life, that nearly succeeded. Testing the imaginary realm first in my own life didn’t seem dangerous at first, because I was very curious to find out how closely related the realm of ideas and imagination are to reality.
So doing an experiment in public on the imaginary realm was something I was not super confident about in terms of ethics. Though, I managed to, with help of a friend trained in Vedic meditation, and Arte Expuesto, to bring images to people in their day-to-day moments of life to see if the imaginary realm could possibly impact everyday reality. I relied on their feedback, as I do still believe in dialectical discourse as a way to test ideas. Regardless of how many times people try to write or rewrite the scientific method, the basic premise is testing and discussing not to find affirmation, but testing to find error.
The More Than Human exposition was a month-long poetic experiment in a place I understood was stricken with drought, described as polluted from industry, and severed by politics and cartels into extreme class divides. How on earth, could art really help? I imagined, from my studies and personal experiences, of which people often suggest sound like a movie, that if the confluence of images and messaging were forthright, the experiment could be ethical and not insidious.
I am worried because I have had well-meaning intentions that backfire before, and fire is something I would never wish upon people already weighed by the systems they’re handling.
After approximately 5 months, the show was set, and each person I met I asked if they could imagine the feeling of having water flowing through the dry riverbed again. Just to see. What if we can collectively dream something into being. As a form of poetic imagination, perhaps even magical thinking, if the imaginary realm is “not real” and something we are collectively hallucinating, I leave it up to each person’s conscience to decide. A suggestion and a command are different, and so how to ever prove such an experiment would be next to impossible, if ethical at all.
I spent a considerable amount of time alone, in deep visualization during the time I was physically there. In quiet, meditative, prayer, and missed out on more stimulation and engagement than I might have. But I wanted to see if the element of water could be imagined or felt into being…not by me alone, but by wondering if we collectively ask with kindness in our hearts for things to get better- if they will.
All of this considered, rain came. Perhaps there is no meaning or correlation between the imaginary realm and reality. Perhaps there is. Perhaps not knowing for sure is the key to the locked door of wonder and awe.
Are we not all in wonder now: can we collectively imagine and bring this imagination of a harmonious world into reality together? For this we need to recover our trust in ourselves and our human relations more than systems. Systems are fine and all, but they are also laborious consumers of human energy and time.
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