Being Critical
My way of thinking about my own work usually comes to me as a list of words. Sometimes titles for future work, some other times topics for future reflection. I believe I never wrote any of those lists without using one or two words which are exclusive to the Portuguese language… But the funniest thing is that most of my artistic vocabulary is English and it’s often hard for me to find the right word for a certain technique used in sculpture or print in my native language.
The relevance of this initial statement has to do with the awareness and experience I have in what concerns language and its consequences. What you can’t say often limits your thoughts. And what you can’t say clearly is a constant fight for me. Wittgenstein in the Tractus Philosophicus states that “one can only say what can be said clearly” so that everything else can be defined as the complementary group of things (parallel connection to Parmenides). It’s a rather rigid attitude that makes perfect sense according to his mathematical academic past. But as many would agree that “unclear gap” is the one where the creative practitioner wants to use and play with. What can be said clearly is stated and written about by scientists and philosophers. Artists can make work that states things clearly, unclearly or even that doesn’t state much more then what the work is as an object. Being the unclear area the biggest and the one where most artists place their work within that theoretical frame. When artists are clear they often get in trouble because they are simply illustrating their ideas. When they are unclear people ask them questions to try to understand what is made not to be understood. And finally when they don’t state much more then what the work is, people don’t perceive the irony targeting Plato and his cave and believe the “artist is taking the piss”. Well they first thought that about the urinal and now it only doesn’t happen more frequently because of the ridiculous definition most people use for Art – everything ever called art.
Because dealing with languages makes you think about language my limited experience with languages other then Portuguese forced me to read and use English as much as possible in my work. Strangely enough it is becoming more and more obvious that I have to be fair to my origins and native language and start having my fun with the English public limitations with languages and start using Portuguese, Spanish, French and maybe even Italian. (See the chapter about titles)
It will be crucial to start writing openly about the practical issues that worry me as soon as possible so I’ll state the following:
-the most disturbing thing is to find out that in fact a vast majority (lets say 80 to 90% if not more) of the art students I’ve been in contact with are not intelligent, creative, cultured or enthusiastic. They can’t adapt to new situations… can’t think of things that no one did before… don’t have many areas of interest and don’t work because they need to do it for themselves. Many people of my generation only read on the internet or tabloids. As a consequence of that the things they read about are often about popular subjects such as football, celebrities, television programs and products to buy. For me we are unfortunately the generation that looks but doesn’t see.
There are a few ways to “attack” them if one wants to try to change that but in art there are only two possible perspectives:
-you can believe that just like in the old times students must learn the way of a great master and work in order to keep a certain standard. The “status quo” becomes a swamp where corps die and decompose. The paradigm kills creativity and very few residues of the word art survive to this cultural slaughter.
-The other approach states that art improves constantly. The future is always better then the past and revolution is the word that feeds the creative process. The everyday experience of the individual becomes the subject matter of his own work. Going against the current state of things is usually the motivation of the artist that perceives himself as a premature voice calling others to the “new attitude”.
I don’t believe either of these make a difference to the 90% mentioned above. Neither of these are a fair description of the way I believe art evolves. For me it’s about the people you interact with. It’s about your target public and the way you mess around with those few minds that are ready to “hear, see or feel” whatever you have to give them.
Not everything is art. The masses believe that art is everything that is beautiful. The elites believe that everything can be seen as art if shown the right way. But you have art tutors that studied in the RCA (Royal College of Art) stating that a book is not a work of art… and similar paranormal phenomena in a “so called art school”. Of course that same tutor is aware anyone can argue otherwise… but the fact is that he can’t feel the book as he feels a painting or a film. That made me feel pity for him. In that moment I just wanted to ask him if he never felt sexually excited while he was reading a book and because of what he was reading. And I’ll write him a text soon to see how he reacts to the things I’ve been thinking about. I won’t ask him about his sexual interactions with literature… but I’ll try to ask everything else… The problem these people are facing defining art is very simple. Art isn’t a set or group of objects. Art is an attitude very few people truly engage with. Most of those people would probably agree it has to do with intuition, visual intelligence, contextual awareness, information, feelings, emotions, duplicities… But hopefully people will eradicate that almost insignificant question from their creative minds if they want to be creative practitioners and start using more unpredictable ways of internal behaviour to feed their practice.
Teaching
One day I would love to teach passionate students. The main reason why I want to do it is because I believe the art teaching I had in Portuguese Public Schools was so bad it would probably be beneficial to stop having those modules. At least people wouldn’t change to worse. Usually what happens is that the art students that aren’t really that good, clever or intense find a simple way to earn some money in teaching. And I can only add to this: poor children… every time that happens one more generation of children start believing art is something to do with drawing, portraits, landscapes and nothing more... Why don’t they try sculpture? Why don’t they try canvas? Why aren’t they shown slides with installations and contemporary work? Well this is an extreme example but it is real in many countries. Even here in England in Universities like mine tutors struggle. How can they teach people to be creative? Unfortunately the revolutionary and subversive attitude isn’t the most popular amongst tutors and as a consequence people are taught about being creative by being shown examples of work done by creative people and connecting their own work aesthetically with those artists. Sometimes they even keep the subject matter and every now and then there isn’t a subject matter and only a visual resemblance with someone famous. It’s degrading.
For the reflective practice module I was asked to talk about an object that influenced and changed my practice. I talked about an A1 printer I found and the light boxes that originated from those prints. I made a big effort not to mention Bachelor, Flavin, Cabrita Reis and Lin Cohen because those practitioners are obviously connected with the use of strip lights in works of art but nothing else is relevant about their work in what concerns my practice and this printer in particular. I didn’t want to use icons such as conceptual art, post-conceptual, art povera, or Po-POMO because that was just part of a learning process and even if the connection is there I want to avoid it. Run away from what you have in your books and magazines. Even Maeda is a non-sense as a reference because of the goals of his work being so absurdly different from mine. In spite of all this I was asked to place my practice in a map of practitioners. To be honest I believe my background as a painter is relevant, as it is my medical and engineering school experience but should I start mentioning great painting masters like Malevich, Gilbert and George, Kandinsky, Rauschenberg… or biochemistry, anatomy, physiology, quantum mechanics and biological engineering as areas of interest that will be connected to my practice through this or that subject? Why do you think randomness and intuition are so important? Because I need to deny reason and the origins of my intensions. No strategy is the best strategy for someone creative. Since it is basically being applied to the art world since the 60s and 70s with POMO and Po- POMO why would I bother outlining the connections I want people feel? If I told them about all these other masters and hidden meanings I would be narrowing the field of interaction they can enjoy when they embrace my work? And yes it is political too. It has to do with anarchy and criticisms to the extreme left wing (because I’m against the governmental planning) and capitalism (because it questions the quality of the “democratic” system we live in).
Po-POMO
The last art movement worthy of that name was modernism. But POMO (Post-modernism) and Po-POMO are a real phenomena that probably corresponds to a block of ideas mankind has been suffering from. There are no new strong political ideals, no major scientific innovations (technological there were quite a few but technology is just an application of previous scientific knowledge), no major thinkers, no major changes… Only terrorism is shaking our world with a coward attitude that inflicts fear in the consumerist lambs that run after each other with no idea where they are running to.
Art is just reflecting this. The gap between what is happening with the art works and the public was never as vast as it is now, leading to a detachment between both parts public and art. Or at least we would expect a much stronger connection in this “society based on information and the internet”.
After an astonishing XXth century everyone was expecting something even better but the fact is that TV, stereos, computer games and other like these made sure the best brains where lost and had no ideals built into them. As their personalities formed the empty media filled their dreams with sexual objects, fake pleasure and inconsequent behaviour masturbating their brains out and making the intelligent people quite uninteresting in general (see British dreams chapter). Well what I feel is that we were expecting the intellectual community to flourish with all these megabytes and Gigabytes going around the world all the time. But the fact is that we didn’t improve much and the people that are enthusiastic about art, philosophy and science are basically the same. Lets hope only one generation was lost. Only generation X…? Let us hope there won’t be a Y and a Z… the next one should rebel. I just realized I sound like an 80 year old. But honestly try to analyse things instead of just wishing things were a certain way. It would be important if people accepted these facts because then at lest they could react against the things that are worth fighting for:
The destruction of a religious outrageous discourse, guns and war ruling the world with mentally ill people in charge of giving all the orders, petrol being as important as it is in our world, stupidity and ignorance in everyday life, not enough freedom for art and speech because freedom means public and investment. This can all change quickly but it’s a dangerous change. So dangerous it can become a true FUBAR (see Steven Spielberg film Private Ryan) for the whole planet and no one wants that. People would rather warm up slowly to death and swim a bit if the poles melt… Irony and rage are often together in these fights that didn’t happen yet.
English life-style
It’s so easy to understand the English youth: alcohol, sex, egoism, drugs, money, cars, house, fashion, style, being cool and famous and never take care of anyone or attach yourself to anyone or any place. All sorts of egoism are just like an emotional masturbation. Why isn’t it public that most young man and women are alcoholic? Why don’t they change the law about teenage mothers? Why don’t they know what love is? Why don’t they read about it in philosophy books (at least the clever ones)? Why do they have cocaine as soon as they have money for it? Why do they want money if there are no goals other then buying cars» Why is style and fashion the same thing for them if their fashion is just a product? Why do even the few ones with values wish to be cool and famous instead of good in what they do and masters in their field of knowledge (I’m not on about the academic degree). Why are their conversations about bad quality music and alcohol? Do they enjoy an obvious way to fake happiness? Is it strange for them to have children with love and families? Because I can only see divorced people, teenage mother’s and young man that hate children.
All this influences me in my everyday life. I can’t say it otherwise people see me as a freak. But the fact is that I feel these things. And very few aren’t part of this. It’s just stupid to gat drunk once a week. It’s a disease to get drunk 3, 4 or maybe more times a week as they do. It’s also a non-sense to believe in anarchy, be against capitalism and yet smoke a pack of famous American-brand of cigarettes every single day.
British dreams
British boys want to have a famous rock n’roll band, have sex with as many girls as possible and try as many drugs as possible staying alive. To achieve that they drink every single day from lunch time until the bell rings in the pub. And do you know why they have a bell ringing? Because they don’t know how to stop…
Adaptation
I couldn’t follow the saying: In Rome be a roman. Otherwise I would have come here to destroy myself and that wasn’t the idea. What I had to do to my Portuguese electrical plugs (used adaptors) was exactly what I did to my social life: Build a filter. Transform the three pins in two, the 15 pints in 3… the 5 pub nights a week in one or two. Their uninteresting chats had to be approached as anthropological research material. Ethnographies had to be written in my imagination to be able to accept the fact that most people are boring and can’t challenge me in the way I wished they did.
Individuality
What the English have are great systems and institutions. The opposite of Portugal. Ups… 5 in the morning… have to sleep. Tomorrow I’ll read what I wrote and I’ll keep going with this…
Originality
Artist’s hand
Museums
Exhibitions
Professional Practice
MA
Commissions
My background
The process
How do I choose my objects – surface and scale?
Transport Limitations
Temptations
Painting
Colour
Media
Painting
Photography
Installation/Sculpture
Titles
Presentations
Research
Po-Post conceptualism
Furniture (“sc”)
Architecture and interaction
Intension
Coincidence
Displacement
Literature
Philosophy
Mediating the media
Gallery or unconventional?
Limitations of cooperation
Dimensions and forces to explore
Disturbing quotes
“Art is not made to be understood” – Cabrita Reis
“work of art + the whole world = the whole world” – Pos-conceptual artist
Science and Art
Research question
Problems
Intimacy
Sexuality
Entrepreneurs
Geezer
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