This month we felt the need to have our December issue about the environment, as it is a month for many of indulgence and purchasing objects and things we really don’t need.

The Environmental Crisis is a term used to describe the environmental problems that we face today. The main environmental problems include the greenhouse effect and global warming, the ozone layer, tropical forest clearance, mass consumerism and intensive farming. Whilst the problems appear to be largely physical (environmental), the causes and solutions lie much more in people's attitudes, values, and expectations. A number of factors have helped to create these problems, including developments in technology and industry, which have given people a greater ability to use the environment and its natural resources for their own ends. The rapid increase in human population has significantly increased in many countries and led to a rise in the use of natural resources; and the free market economies, play a central role in decision‐making about production, consumption, use of resources, and treatment of wastes; and attitudes towards the environment, taking profit over sustainability.

Our featured artists and writers all have an interest in the environment. We have a special guest writer and Object Orientated Ontology theorist Graham Harman answering a few of our questions. Along with featured artists, Pippa Ward and Tsibi Geva. As well as many other artists work and written features, don’t forget to check out our blog as your work may be on that as we had extra content this month so posting some each day…

please enjoy this bumper issue and have a great Christmas

thank you all

Nichola and Jenna

special guest

Graham Harman

Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Liberal Arts Co-Ordinator at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc), and Fall 2019 Visiting Professor of Architecture at Yale University.

1. You were quoted as once saying “Nature is not natural and can never be naturalised.” Can you elaborate please?

 Naturalism in philosophy is a position which holds that everything that exists is a part of “nature,” in the sense that it can all be adequately studied using the methods of natural science. I hold this to be false, but not for the usual reason that human being is different in kind from natural entities and therefore requires different methods. Instead, I think that even nature (by which I mean inanimate entities) is not exhaustively accounted for by natural science.

 Natural science gives us knowledge of entities, which means that it gives us mathematised properties of the relationship entities have to each other and to our observing minds. But for Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO), entities are always more than the sum total of relations they have or might have to anything else. Furthermore, for OOO entities are always in tension with their own properties, which they both have and do not have simultaneously. This entails that aesthetics is also an important part of the sphere of cognition, though naturalism treats aesthetics as a sort of frivolous cupcake decoration that takes place once the heavy lifting of scientific research has been done.

 When I said that nature is not natural and can never be naturalised, this is what I meant. What we call knowledge is just one part of the landscape of human cognition, and even this total cognitive landscape never quite does justice to reality.

 2. I know you are fond of the Gaia Hypothesis. Do you think this will be drastically changed due to the human carbon footprint on the earth?

 In recent years I’ve been trying to learn the basic findings of climate science, to build on my previous interest in the work of James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis. In fact, I had the chance to hear Lovelock speak in Dublin in 2009, and his lecture was as horrifying as one might expect, though he seems to have moderated his warnings to some extent since then.

 The previous model science was physics, in which results are more or less precise despite the spooky philosophical complications introduced by relativity and quantum theory. A different thing happens when climate science takes centre stage, since it is less precise and more distributed over a number of different measurement and modelling regimes. This makes it easier for bad-faith (and even some good-faith) skeptics to insist repeatedly that there is not enough proof to say anything definite, something that would have been much harder to get away with in the heroic age of modern physics.

 This has led Bruno Latour to encourage respect for the institution of science. In other words, the vast heterogeneous network of entities deployed by climate science is exactly what Latour sees already operative in all the sciences, and he asks us to respect the skill of scientists in managing their assemblages of devices and models and numbers. This is no problem for Latour, since he thinks any scientific result is never anything more than a nickname for the vast collective of actors that had to be mobilised to attain it.

 OOO sees results as more separable from the machinery that gave rise to them. When it comes to cognition I am also less interested in truth or knowledge than in reality, and that means I am interested in our confrontation with the failure and inadequacy of all knowledge. The real is that which exceeds our current models and methods, though pursuing these diligently does help us to increase our focus on the real. This is why I am more interested than Latour in the falsificationist and post-falsificationist trends of Popper and Lakatos. Any research program, even if we build it out of many heterogeneous actors as with Latour, is a falsehood, and its falsity brings us into closer touch with reality than its truth.

 3. Humans seem totally dependent on objects and materials and this has accelerated the impact these things have. What are your thoughts on this?

 I’ve thought about this often during the COVID-19 pandemic. My wife and I are trying to be very careful about protecting ourselves with masks and gloves, and sterilising everything that comes into the house. Yet we are well aware at how much more garbage our household produces as a result, and we’ve already had to cut back on sterilisation procedures because of rashes on our hands, and so forth.

This is a small sample of a larger problem. Human beings are not naked entities in the world, but make constant use of accessories that empower and guide us. But yes, this means that we are increasingly adrift in a world filled with our own wastes. The archaeologist Ian Hodder wrote about this in his book Entangled, arguing that the human accumulation of “stuff” dates to a very specific point in the archaeological record. He asks that we reflect more deeply on our relation to objects. And of course he is right that we should do so. It is no accident that garbage studies has become an increasingly visible academic discipline.

 4. Do you think we can turn this climate emergency around, or are we too obsessed and reliant on objects/things?

I doubt we can turn the emergency around, in the sense that I think the current shape of civilisation is probably doomed to pass away: meaning mass civilisation engaged in mass consumption. The human population is likely to dwindle through at least the year 2100 through a series of disasters, and we will need to invent new rules on the fly.

 One thing in particular that I’ve become convinced of during 2020 is that the fetishising of individual freedom is counter-productive. It has been astonishing to me to see the irresponsible behaviour of many of my fellow citizens during the pandemic. Since the United States is the country that has individual freedom burned most deeply into its national DNA, I suppose it is not surprising that we are handling the situation much less effectively than many Asian countries, or than a place like Germany where people tend to obey rules or directives. Everyone delights these days in posting “middle finger” photos on social media, but this ceases to be amusing when we realise that more than half of the country is effectively giving the middle finger to necessary public health measures. It’s not just ideological Trump supporters, though they are certainly not helping.

 Let’s turn now from COVID to global warming. We have not really even gotten started on telling the public what it needs to do now to address the climate crisis. But I do not expect much obedience on this front. If people can’t even wear masks and social-distance in response to a palpable threat that is killing millions worldwide, then why would we expect them to make lifestyle changes in response to a more ambient and medium- to long-term threat like climate degradation?

The fact is, we will need enforcement of such rules. We will not be able to tolerate middle fingers and their equivalents when it comes to public safety. Like robots, we repeatedly enact the maxim of questioning authority, which is becoming an outdated model in a time when fewer people are listening to authority anyway. What we need to learn to do is to construct new and better authority. We need to ask: what does obedience with a progressive face look like?

 4. Do you think artists draw enough attention to the environmental impact humans are having? Or do artists contribute more to this impact due to the amount of material they use?

 I’m sure that any negative material impact artists might be having is minuscule compared to the industrial, transportation, and agricultural sectors, so I doubt the arts deserve much blame on this score. When people are in doubt, they often turn to puritanical moralism, and I would hate to see artists needlessly self-flagellate as a way of earning the easy moral high ground.

As for what artists should be doing, I’m in no position to tell them. But what I can say is that art tends not to do very well when it sees itself as a pedagogical enterprise. There are others who can shoulder the burden of teaching the public what it needs to know about climate science and the necessary counter-measures. Artists are better off doing what they are always best at, which is transforming our literal experience of anything into an aesthetic one. Artists will find ways, as they always do, to bring us face-to-face with the reality of climate change, over and above its easily describable features.

 5. As the Anthropocene is highly evident, what do you think is the next stage in our progression to correcting this imbalance and is it even possible, given how reliant we are on objects?

This way of phrasing the question seems to assume that objects are the problem. But there’s another way of looking at it, which is that ecological awareness involves getting us to take account of objects that have always been there right under our noses. (I’m using “objects” in the broad OOO sense here, whereas maybe you are thinking of fabricated plastic consumer devices, and this could explain the difference in how we think about the status of objects.)

There is no way to predict how at least some portion of the human race will work its way through the climate disaster of the Anthropocene. It will require a very concrete response to specific problems that arise, and that’s why general programs are of little use. For instance, I oppose such easy strategies as blaming it all on capitalism. People always forget Marx’s awe at the ability of capitalism to find ways to destroy traditional structures and clear the ground for something else. Well, we are going to need some of that very spirit to work our way out of this mess. It is not just technologies and institutional forms that will need to change– the political Left itself will also need to change, based as it is on some fairly decrepit forms of 19th century idealist philosophy. Humans are both threatened and nourished by the world, but we are not “alienated” in it, nor is every unfortunate situation a form of exploitation. The real is always surprising, and the political options of a century from now are unlikely to bear much resemblance from the ones we have today.

 A link to Graham’s blog where you will find many articles and material on his work and writing.

https://doctorzamalek2.wordpress.com/about/  

Our Resident Writer this month Michaela Hall talks about the environment and art

The Tangible Environment

 We are in environmental crisis in 2020 but of course this isn’t new, the reality of this is inescapable from seeing mass protests on the streets about saving our planet and conserving the amazing wildlife and natural environments we have to having to actively change the way we live to combat this. This has been the reality for quite some time, and artists one after the other have sought to promote the importance of our behaviour and the crisis that we are going through. There are many issues in contemporary society that prevent these changes being made easily. One of which, is that we quite frankly, can’t see the threat in front of us. The effects of global warming for example, aren’t visible unless you have travelled to the polar ice caps and seen them melting in front of your own eyes. It is such a huge issue that is almost impossible to fully comprehend, this is where Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson comes into prominence in the field of visual arts and the environment, managing to make tangible environmental considerations in his visually immersive works.

Eliasson works famously use elemental materials such as light, air and water. By using these materials Eliasson manages to confront some of the most environmentally challenging conversations that are taking place and turn into a visual we can understand and comprehend on an immediate level.  Perhaps most recognised is his ‘Ice Watch’ piece from 2014. For this temporary installation, the artist sourced 30 blocks of glacial ice from the waters of Greenland and displayed them publicly in London. Of course, ice melts and this was exactly the point that Eliasson wanted to draw attention to, it was to act as a visual representation of climate change and melting icecaps. This installation very significantly was on display at the same time of the meeting of world leaders at the COP24 Climate change conference in Poland. The melting chunks of ice became more prominent to viewers as they realised that they would soon be gone and helped to put this huge environmental conversation around climate change an accessible, tangible installation that encouraged further conversation and action, as well as being beautifully out of place and a spectacle in the city of London.

More recently in his 2019-2020 retrospective exhibition, ‘In Real Life’ at Tate Modern, Eliasson Plays with elemental materials such as water and fog to create atmospheric installations that create a conversation around how we react with our environment and the elements that dominate it. As part of this exhibition, sitting outside of the Tate Modern entrance is ‘waterfall’ (2019) that is a thirty-six-foot-tall scaffold structure with water powerfully cascading from it. Equally as vast and impressive is ‘Your Blind Passenger’ (2010) which is perhaps the most immersive work of the show, a vast room filled with dense fog, which is more than one hundred feet long in the viewers footsteps. In this space it is incredibly difficult to see where you are going, and the fog is another reminder of climate conversation, in this case, air pollution. These works are beautiful and enchanting in that they envelope the viewer into a new seductive experience, but in getting the viewer involved in such a way the powerful elemental materials, Eliasson is doing much more, in drawing a wider audience into the conversation around our environment.

What Eliasson manages to achieve over and over through his work is to engage every single audience member with the attraction of elemental materials and conversations around this, whether the latter is a part they are of aware of or not. Placing such value and theatre on these elemental materials creates an instant environmental connection to every piece of work, making those issues around our environment much more accessible and immediate for an audience to consider. As a result of this way of working, Eliasson has pioneered an approach to the environment in his works that is tangible, physical, attractive, seductive and paradoxically beautiful and terrifying. Turning something  we may rather turn to a blind eye to into something we can no longer ignore.

Rubbish as a found object within art: an investigation into the abandoned and valueless object within the artistic practices of Mike Nelson and Tomoko Takahashi. 

BY NICHOLA RODGERS.

Nichola is the co editor on the zine and her own practice has a deep connection with the environment, 

www.nicholajaneart.com 

Objects both acquire and lose something when they are abandoned as rubbish. The artist then gives these objects something more when they are reused. Art and everyday life are constantly in flux, intermingling, crossing paths and making connections.  In contemporary thinking, things are usually either a collection of ever-smaller parts or a development of human attitudes/behaviours and societies.

All theorists have their own individual ideas. Nothing exists in a vacuum without external influences. Its direction and meaning may be changed, subverted or abandoned at any time but it is never gone it is always there, just like garbage.

Slavoj Zizek talked about the utopian ideal of recycling as a process to obliterate all waste. He pointed out that garbage isn’t always recyclable, because society constantly creates rubbish that isn’t usable.  Society’s idea on recycling to solve the consumer capitalism problem is like Groundhog Day, it’s a problem Zizek feels will never end.  Zizek states in ‘Living in the End Times’ …” the radical ecologist is not that of admiring or longing for a pristine nature of virgin forests and clear sky, but rather accepting waste as such, discovering the aesthetic potential of waste, of decay, of the inertia of rotten material that serves no purpose.” Some artists are now seeing garbage as a material to create from not just to discard.

Mike Nelson and Tomoko Takahashi both use the found object as an acceptable material for their work.  They explore the different ways they can bring new agency to this kind of waste, by creating unique installations.

Researching the found object in ‘On Garbage’ by John Scanlan and ‘Rubbish theory’ by Michael Thompson has made me question and look at consumer capitalism’s constant need for material excess.  Through looking at how artists use this excess once it has become waste, and how the theories of Object Ontology (no one thing having special status, Graham Harman,” Tool Being” 2002), is also seen within this style of work.

 Object Ontology in action is when an artist transforms obsolete, and discarded objects into artworks and installations. These at some point are then again destroyed or self-destruct; creating an ever fluctuating and changing cycle that in theory will never end.  The dismantling of these installations then abstracts these things more, heightening their inner workings and materiality, only allowing the broken matter to survive.  As nothing is every completely gone, they simply change form and meaning.  Even if these things are turned into relics or souvenirs of the original artwork, thus keeping the consumerist cycle going. Giving value back to the found object, the rubbish itself always being there, it has simply moved on and given new meaning.

 For Marx “ Only when an object is consumed does it shed its material nature and become a product.”  But when this object is discarded, does it then take on its original, previous material being or something new. I would argue that both these things happen. As artist’s reanimate and give a new meaning to the found object, through creating a piece of artwork. This allows the object to be re-encountered by the viewer, who brings both the original meaning and the newly translated agency into being, as they read the work. Thus creating a product again.

Roland Barthes said in an essay from 76’ “The essence of an object has something to do with the way it turns into trash.”  My understanding of this is, that when an object has been discarded and is obsolete, it is then absolved of its original function and its materiality and form becomes more visible. 

Artworks created for a short-term exhibition may help draw attention to the excess of consumer consumption, and narrow the gap between the worthless and valuable that Scanlan talks about in ‘On Garbage’ - “our distance and separation from rubbish is what makes culture possible- separating the valuable from the worthless”

That divide becomes even more blurred, as artists like Jason Rhoades’s ‘Four roads’ or Mike Nelson with ‘Coral Reef’ and Tomoko Takahshi’s ‘A product of many departments’ create art installations from the found object, forcing us to look at these once worthless things and reintroducing them into our present being to unintentionally give them value again.

The concept of elevating a found object to artistic status has a long history, with the likes of Degas using a real tutu in 1881 within his work,

Exploring the artwork of Mike Nelson and Tomoko Takahashi who don’t use a single object as Duchamp did but who create more of an assemblage of work from ‘Objet Trouve’ (found object), a French phrase describing art created from readymade found objects, not originally produced for artistic purposes.

They create work that is more like a memory, or a twist on a dystopian view of the traditional “cabinets of curiosities,” things collected and displayed from their travels. These found objects have a history, which may or may not be relevant to the work, but what is relevant is what the viewer brings through their own memories. Through the re use of this found matter classed as garbage, Nelson and Takahashi, create other worlds and artworks that stand in a curious no-man’s land between fiction and documentary.

 John Scanlan said in the introduction to his book ‘On Garbage’ that:

“…. the use of the word garbage has changed over time, all its instances nonetheless retain a general conceptual unity in referring to things, people, or activities that are separated, removed and devalued.” Artists like Duchamp, Sarah Sze, Jason Rhoades, Nelson, Takahashi and many other conceptual artists use garbage within their work to utilise these devalued items.

 Mike Nelson, and Tomoko Takahashi share an interest in found objects and both use these in very different ways to explore the cultural and political environment in which they are contained.  Using various forms of media - sculpture, installation, photography and mixing a variety of detritus and ready-mades objects, they explore political events and fictions, producing work that demonstrates the creativity of the artist’s mind rather than simply their technical skill. 

How artists use the found object, can help us to understand Graham Harman’s object ontology theories, and this is particularly evident in the way, in which they do not allow any one particular object or space to have greater value within the installation, they are assemblages of objects

 In Nelsons ‘Again, more things (a table ruin)’, he curates a selection of valuable figurative objects together on a surface that’s low to the ground, undermining the hierarchy of the objects, leveling them to create a sense of the studio floor. In an interview with Magnus Petersen Nelson said, “…the objects selected…to use like detritus from my own fictitious studio…as when it’s in the studio it isn’t precious”

 By the very act of throwing away our unwanted objects, we are creating an ever-changing assemblage of detritus in our urban cities and rural countryside.  These artists forage these forgotten areas for abandoned objects, and for the cultural values and history contained within them. Giving them new agency and meaning, and bring them to the attention of the public in a way that allows the viewer to create their own narratives.  

 The clichés often used when the public view contemporary conceptual installations that use found objects or everyday things is that it “looks like junk’. Rauschenberg’s early combines, for example, were often dismissed in this way. Yet he brought new ways of creating and looking at art that is highly influential today. He incorporated found objects of real life; by doing this Rauschenberg is making you look again at what you already know.

 Nelson and Takahashi both use a mix of symbolism, fiction, theory and reality to create other worldly installations of order and disorder, creating work that hovers somewhere between documentary and fiction. Their influences come from films, literature, music and the world around them.

 In a Tate interview, Nelson talked about the thinking behind his works “The Coral Reef ”       and its sequel     “ The Deliverance and The Patience.”       

Both works are vast rooms that sprawl out with connecting corridors.  It’s not a linear didactic show to follow, more of a web of tableau to be immersed in. Being influenced by literature, particularly William Burroughs book  ‘Cities of the Red Night’ through its montage and fragmented settings. He has created a visual fiction of a dystopian history. His use and choice of objects within his work partly comes from another book of fiction called ‘Road side Picnic’ by the Strugatsky Brothers from which the film ‘Stalker’ was derived.  Its setting is a dystopian wilderness in which ‘stalkers’ or bounty hunters collect objects from around the area, collecting things that are often unrecognisable, and are quite possibly simply rubbish left behind like at a ‘roadside picnic.’ 

 This idea of unknown objects and what they might or could mean informs a great deal of Nelson’s work. Like Rauschenberg Nelson is showing us the everyday object in a new surreal way, this works well, as he is also exploring the fragility of existence, as his work is void of the figure until the viewer is present thus becoming a part of the work.

 Takahashi’s work uses found objects in a slightly different way. The work is improvised and not planned or mapped out first.  She doesn’t know how it will turn out until its finished. Her influences are the spaces and people involved with the work. Her found objects have to have a personal connection or a certain feel about them before she uses them.

In an interview with R.J Preece in 2011, Takahashi said,  “ there are three steps, theme first, then objects, then composition”

 ‘My Play Station’

The above work from the Serpentine took three days to set up. It was a collection of games, piece of games, old computers and hobby items.  These were used to explore the notion of rules and order, which games follow. One of the questions that Takahashi explores in her work is how to break out of order and the relationship between order and disorder. This work ended up being a give away to the public at the end of the show. Which seems strange that people would willingly line up to collect a piece of ‘worthless’ garbage.

 It’s uncertain if this work is a protest to break out of order and rules, or simply questioning order and rules. As showing in a gallery setting creates its own rules to follow, as does Takahashi when she creates her work, at the end of the show people had to queue and were given three raffle tickets to exchange for items, which in itself is another set of rules.

 As a result both these artists create work that raises questions about the found object, and society today, but they also create works that are poetic, have agency and allow the viewer to create their own story.  When we look at their work we are reminded of Rauschenberg’s combines and montage, of how he created 3d works within a space not giving any one-object status or a set identity. These were both interactive and reactive with the person looking at them.  

 The aesthetics of art created with found objects has been an established practice in arts since the 1960s when Pop Art appropriated images and objects for both aesthetic and commercial value.  Recycling found objects to create a commodity again, may or may not of course increase its value. The idea of rubbish being valued was challenged during the Pop Art period by conceptual artist Piero Manzoni who decided to create a joke piece by canning his own excrement and calling it “Artist’s Shit” (Merda d’Artista).

 In fact, the Tate bought just one can of this work in 2002 for £22,300.  This raises the question: when the public see a work of ‘art’ in this context made of rubbish, does it then not register with the viewer as rubbish but as an artwork of value?  Gillian Whiteley talks about several artists from the 1950’s to the present day who use ‘objet trouve’ to create assemblage. In her book; Junk: Art and the Politics of Trash (2011). She talks about this redefining of rubbish and says that it is like an obsessive act.

 Much like Jason Rhoades these two particular artists don’t necessarily choose to make art out of waste purely because of environmental issues, or to raise awareness of the volume of rubbish. The ideas come from their own minds a play between fiction and reality, the metaphorical and practical. As a result their work draws the viewers attention away from the fact they are looking at rubbish and allows them to enter a new environment of meanings, narratives and human connections.

 The difference between these two artists is that Nelson critiques subjectivity by suggesting it is just a fiction with very little to do with the objects used apart from to tell a story his work is vast and drawn out much like a novel and isn’t complete without the viewer connecting with the work recognizing items and spaces. Whereas Takahashi critiques it by making us think and delve deep within the body of the work to find the meanings and connections her work is more contained, energetic and has a sense of urgency, its about what the objects represent that what they are.

 Nelson and Takahashi also have a common theme of varied types of installation, their work takes the viewer on a journey and directs them off their predictable paths and jolts them into a new sense of awareness.

 The way the work is shown is just as important as the objects themselves, focusing on the experience of the work, not just the aesthetics. The space for conceptual art has to be able to be navigated in an indirect way for the works to be absorbed by the viewer and accepted as art.  Both Nelson and Takahashi have the same opinion, that the work should navigate the viewer rather than the viewers navigate round the work.

 Takahashi’s work borderlines performance as she has to live in the space and gets to know the people involved, working around the space to find the aura and energy and acquire the ideas before she can start to create the installation.  This can take several days.  The found objects in Takahashi’s work are always visible and sometimes personal, like the ‘Drawing Room’ piece 1998 at the Tate.

The space used to create the work is as important as the found things she uses. Her years of studying music are always relevant as she considers her installations composed to create visual music, a work that flows and has depth, top notes and undertones. Her found objects are always gathered from the area of the exhibition space to create collections of constructed spaces within a single area.  They can be small or vast in size, but are there to be observed and examined to create subconscious personal connections bridging that cultural gap between value and worthlessness that Scanlan mentions, and forcing the viewer to connect.

 The structures of Nelson’s installations or environments are like walking through a dystopian wilderness, a film set, or like being lost in a book. His huge installations are dependant on the interaction of the viewer, as they walk and negotiate their way around they become part of the work, creating the story as they go. Nelson’s works are, as Deluze explains, in the process of  ‘becoming’.  Removing a thing from its original function allows it to develop a new function, and challenges Scanlan’s idea of garbage being separate, removed and devalued, as it brings the object into active reconnection to become part of the view.

 Michael Thompson talks about three concepts of objects, ‘durables’, ‘rubbish’ and  ‘transients’. These are objects of value in museums, discarded obsolete objects, and then the changeable objects that have to be defined as one or the other. These ideas he says are interchangeable.  This theory is both in align with and contradictory to object ontology’s ideas of things having no hierarchal value, and can been seen in the haphazard yet considered way conceptual artists create work.

 Conceptual works are always discredited at some point within the art world, especially if the work is not understood, and this happens more with artwork that uses garbage, discarded objects, rubbish and ephemera.

 Both these artists use rubbish in a certain way to distract you from its origins, creating work that keeps you lost, whether that’s lost within the overwhelming vastness of the piece or lost in the mind and aura of the artist and space. These types of discarded objects are always going to be something we want to get away from and not confront within everyday life.  But the speed at which we are amassing this vast amount of rubbish is growing.  

 Perhaps the only way to live with it is to create art from it. Whether that’s to present it as rubbish to make a point about our consumerist culture of want over need, or to reuse the trash to create other meanings and take us out of this world, all be it for only a moment.  If the artist can turn an object of nothing, void of meaning, devalued and casting out, into a creation imbedding new meaning and agency to the outcast, then surely this is a step to accepting the rubbish is always going to be here in a constant cycle, but as stated earlier by Zizek - we will never be completely rid of garbage. We should try and accept it and work with it.

by Irina Klyuev

BIO

The core aspect of my practice in the last few years is the zoom in and zoom out, I used to dream, I still dream and record those dreams where the planet becomes so distant that it represents a dot, in the following moment it becomes infinite as I become a dot. Everything is relative to the context which makes the whole picture, I am fascinated by the world of cells, atoms, quarks, gluons, on and on into the microcosm of forms/patterns that reflect the macrocosm equaly mysterious. We live in beetween but are governed by both, we constantly zoom in and zoom out through time, history, space, perspectives. Likewise, our cultural and historical inheritance is composed of cells of idealism, visions, and innovation, fueled by imagination and knowledge. I believe that this zoom in and zoom out process is the universal impulse towards understanding, awareness of history, but at the same time it is holding the vitality of a mysterious, indescribable awe before the pulse of the time within and around. It is in this spirit of awe that I am standing with one foot exploring the intersection of myth, history, philosophy, science and with the other, observing, my stream of consciousness, abstractions of thoughts, and futurism tapping upon the truth deeply sitted within while learning about it externally, again a zoom in and zoom out. Ultimately I think that science and technology will reach the point of singularity with art, which in turn will result into yet another cognitive revolution (the first was the invention of fire, mythologically seen as a story of Prometheus which is very important with my almost subconscious treatment of water and fire) but now we each hold this fire in our hands.Technology is constantly influencing and changing the way we interact with material existence, materials we use and also with each other, and I believe that we have to keep pace with these changes through fostering our human values, igniting each other’s imagination, knowledge and supporting authenticity, in other words everyone should become their own Prometheus that spreads the “fire” through internet and continues the primordial impulse that dictates the trajectory that our genetics first adopted.

A Piece of a Man

A PIECE OF A MAN
The action has been made, the monster is being fed, the funeral is in process to everything monstrous but it takes time. Guilty consciousness is taking place, an attempt to repent is useless, now that the divine order has memorized the deeds.

INCONVENIENCE OF THE CIRCLE

We build our authority on the bases of every step we take throughout life and the method is through learning and practicing responsibility, however many times a choice of hacks and cutting corners depletes life from the soul, making it burn with the fire of it’s own making, resulting in becoming only “a piece of a man”

Title: Rotten piece of burnt wood petrified with the stare of Medusa that temporarily makes it beautiful and exemplary to the unknowing population
(Society burnt the soul and the soul became rotten as a consequence and compliance to the wrong doings to it)

This is a true story of frustration with life that was born through years of laziness and cutting corners, submitting to societal mold while silently rebelling against it but being afraid to crystallize and build the genuine self, here is a little battle field of the genetical crystallization that doesn’t take prisoners.

Nations have fallen due to the corrupt and lazy, life ebbs away, new and powerful grows upon the remnants of the corrupt, because that is what human becomes, a remnant, a piece of a former self. A tree grows from the fertile ground populated by the pieces of others, and so does a human. A piece of a human so corrupt and evil can only stand protected by the trickery (color on top of the rotten core) that is permitting it to live, eventually it self annihilates, but it takes time.

“The moving finger writes; and, having writ, moves on: nor all thy piety nor wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.”
From time to time the sense of guilty consciousness emerges, in the face of the death of a father, with promises that the same will never happen again, however, it happens again, like a disease. Twisted and greedy, in the Dante’s Divine comedy, greed lives on the gallows, gallows become the eternal home of the greedy. Family represents a tool for emotional manipulation and the words from 11th century famous thinker Omar Khayyam resonate:

We are currently in the B and the above concepts are mostly a big unknown to the population because sadly majority of individuals live in such a way in full meaning of that word, seeking only their own interests, while at the same time many are actively destroying anybody better than themselves. In this process of active manipulation of family and friends only a pose is there to wipe all the crimes clean in front of the others, who approve the pose amiably forgetting everything that happened thus becoming accomplice sinners themselves.
This is the ancient curse fallen upon the B when Harmonia found refuge in these regions because she was cursed and banished from her own place, and it hasn’t resolved since and probably will not while people are blindly producing the pieces of humans at the same time petrifying those pieces with the Medusa’s stare which sometimes produces a temporal effect of aesthetic beauty. In reality those pieces are still rotten within and serve for fertilization of the whole. The whole is the living unit that stands still and we perceive as a genetics, in the eternal circle of karmic debt.

Original published on my website https://ideasrex.com/a-piece-of-a-man/