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On Art ------------------------------------------------------------ --------------- As a small child I experienced, on occasion, profound moments of loss of self. Although I was unaware of it at the time I am convinced now that they where in fact visions, not prophetic visions but glimpses, like seeing something moving out of the corner of your eye. I saw god, or almost did and that close encounter nearly separated my consciousness from my self. God of course is not a man with a beard in a white robe, or even the sourse of all things, but a metaphor for something utterly inarticulateble, the god that I almost saw as a child was continuity, an impossible continuity between everything, every one, every moment in time, every thought that any one has had or will have. Almost seeing this was like standing at the moment right before the event horizon of a black hole, one tiny step forward and I would have been consumed, not destroyed, but eternally trapped in that moment, because what I almost saw was to beautiful, to horrible to every see anything after that. I did not realize it at the time though, it has taken me 20 some odd year to even recognize this but my entire life has been spent trying to get back to that moment, the moment before the moment, and sadly every experience since has paled in comparison. Love compaction, rage, hate, they are all shadows of this moment, like a vague odor that brings you back to a childhood memory but they are still unable to fulfill what you can feel is missing. The closest thing that I can relate this experience to is what the philosopher Abraham Kuyper described as the eternal moment, the now that we are forever living in, but almost never aware of. We are too caught up in the implication of the moment to actually experience the now. We are too concerned with “what does this mean” to experience what is actually happening. Most of us live our lives caught between retrospection and anticipation. This is the ego, where we constantly measure what we have done with what we hope to do, what we are doing is only viewed in this context. The eternal moment is the loss of ego, the loss of self, it is experience unmitigated by the past or future. Part of this problem, if you can call it that is language and by extension thought. Language is by its nature retrospective. Language/thought are tools that mitigate reality. They are symbols for objects, feelings, or experiences, in essence, idealized approximations. As a consequence, humans have not truly experienced reality since language has been invented, rather we experience an abstraction of reality which we perceive threw the filter of imprecise, idealized symbols. This is because languages forces us to categorize, and as a result generalize our entire experience. We experience the now though what we have seen in the past, we see what is happing in terms of how it is like what has happened before. Language traps us in the past, the result is we have no context to conceptualize experience, even our own experience , as it truly happens. Art bridges the gap of expression left by words and thoughts. It is a fluid language, it does not require categorization or generalization and as such it is able to express what refuses or is unable to be defined. This is not to say that the written word can not transcend its self to become art but in most cases, the written language can only transmit an approximation of experience. Art is the language of experience as well as an experience onto its self.-------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ --- ----------------------------------------------------------- On Death------------------------------------------------------- ----------------- Death is life’s constant companion, the one truth that everything shares is that it will one day cease to exist as it does now, in that sense death is not a thing, or a condition, death is truth, the only real certainty. It is the most mused upon topic in history, more than love, more than sex, more than god. Death connects us all, even more than life. Even the stars them selves will burn out one day and die. But what are we but an amalgamation of star dust, the carbon in our bodies, and in fact nearly every element was forged in the atomic crucible of stars then flung out into the cosmos by their death, as they super nova. So then what is death? It is not an ending, nor is it a beginning, it is part of a circle and as such those terms are meaningless; death is merely transformation, the one true constant. Death, that is to say the fear of death is the other reason we are denied, or more accurately deny ourselves the eternal moment. So many see death as a predator, eternally stalking us. That fear can be paralyzing, to the point that some do not live to live, they live only to avoid death. They live in fear of the future and as such are trapped there.----------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------------------------------- On My Art ------------------------------------------------------ ------------------ My work of the recent year or so and to a large part of the last 4 years has dealt extensively with the idea of reciprocation and the life/death cycle. It is an examination of out relationship and anxieties about death. My work is at the same time an attempt to over come death, and an acknowledgement of the futility of that action. I have been working in primarily large kinetic pieces and in some ways; my pieces have become literal representations of these ideas. However more then simply describing a cycle, I also attempt to place my work into the cycle, as well as to reexamine our own place in the cycle through attempted metaphysical interventions. The machines I am creating are in some sense an attempt to create a conduit in which it is possible to move fluidly within the life/death cycle. On a practical level I have been creating a series of machines whose goal is to reanimate dead birds, a sort of mechanical life support. This is of course an inherently impossible goal. In reality the birds are no more alive with in the machine than rotting in the ground. The machines simply simulate an act in which the bird would have done in life, and does so in an admittedly contrived and ritualistic manor. The pieces instead are a type of metaphysical life support; almost a prayer threw the repetition of movement and sound. In fact if you really look at it they are less alive in the machine than they would be out, left to rot, they would be the foundation of new life, but as they are, in temporary suspension, they are removed from this cycle. Thus by attempting to defy death, I have instead emphasized it. The prayer is also inherently flawed, it is asking for something that can not be granted, nor would the results be desirable. However, It is a prayer that is almost universally uttered, that of the sprit returning after death, to be granted the ability to brake out from the cycle. In that sense it also becomes about the compulsion of doing something despite the impossibility of success. They are, in that sense, very much Impossible machines: although they are successful in there kinetic ambitions, on some levels, they are themselves complete failures. In that kinetic success however lies another paradox. I have also been concerned with transference of energy, both literally in the form of mechanics and metaphysically, having my machines be conduits to transform the life energy of the operator to the dead birds. It was important that these machines be hand cranked, because as a result there is, in fact, a direct physical connection between the operator and the bird. It is in reality the operator who moves the bird, the machine only facilitates this, so in some sense the operator of the machine succeeds for a brief moment, lending their own life energy to the bird. A brief moment indeed, for as soon as they crank stops, so does the bird, and it returns as if nothing had happened. ----------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ ----------------------------------------------- 6 8 5 8 4 8 ----------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ---------------------------------------------- I ask you to stay with me---------------------------------------------------- But I know your answer before you speak ----------------------------------- It is merely an exercise---------------------------------------------------- -One I have done a thousand times before------------------------------------------ I force a smile------------------------------------------------------- ---- And like a thousand times before, you leave------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ -----------------------------------------------