In conjunction with the Curator’s statement, here are 22 aphorisms, which in turn have been printed and appear alongside the printed video stills in Unicorn Lane and innour limited edition free catalogue.
APHORISMS
I present to you my thoughts that were collected during the process of this collaboration. I do not intend these aphorisms to constitute a manifesto for making art.
The improvisational route makes one realise the limits of improvisation. Negotiation over representation is an exercise requiring respect, a cognitive process requiring restraint and good judgement.
What we want more than anything is to connect with people sitting in the dark. I imagine the anonymous spectator so far removed from this our own reality trying to make sense of who we are in the dark from a juxtaposition of incongruous actions and texts.
To be an intellectual is to be a totally naked human being crouching in the corner afraid of the light, afraid of the dark, reflecting on the paradise lost and gained. It is extremely satisfying to engage in a creative process with similarly introverted but deeply questioning individuals.
Process and performance is as important as the final result.
To want to become a historical curio, to want to exist in a footnote, to want a final resting place in a library or an archive or both. This is why I want to create.
The ruin, the abstract, displaced remnant is a reminder that incompleteness exists. In it lies the potentiality for subjective construction.
To make something useless is to insist in imagining a timeless life set in the present tense.
The struggle to inhabit class and gender identities is historical, and ongoing; our society is more rigidly feudal today than ever. Our queering resists the classification ordering drive.
The struggle to express an identity which is complicated, nuanced, compassionate and provocative is a deeply historical and never ending human struggle.
As an artist and an intellectual, as an intelligent other in this world, we are negated by the mediocrities commanding power over the dignity of existence.
Are we smart enough to grow as persons in this unstrange never ending world of blah, blah, blah?
Contiguity kaleidoscope
Music, no matter how improvised we fall into the same beat, the same rhythms, the same circles as dictated by society. A can of shit, is it beautiful? Can kitsch- the world of the here and now- be the subject matter of beautiful art?
Society is not an abstract, society is real.
Power is unseen, power does not question, power never asks why. Power mobilises, regulates, and decrees. Power is the spotlight drawing attention to all our demographically describable identities.
Power creeps into your body and into your mind, power likes to remind you just before fully awake and again before fully asleep that you’re nothing if you can’t pay the bills.
The intellectual negates the self from the first ugly question- how will I survive as an autonomous creative being?
Identify, the I, the me, the you, the us, the them with the shadows, the tonal gradations of those degraded by society. Become that which you despise. Being different does not make you a victim.
Use the tools at your disposal, exist, seek freedom, become, connect in the making and the process of experimental art. It may only ferment the idea that there are alternative ways of seeking and understanding reality.
Collaborate and interact with others to create fluid identities and interconnectivities. This is another way of saying, collaboration is another word for solidarity.
Identity is not fixed. It is a capacity. Something that gradually wants to be. Identity is becoming. Being different helps to see beyond the obvious. Do not accept the lot proscribed to you by society.
We cannot know everything. But there is something to be said about affirming the world as we see it. Being different requires fighting harder.
To have a philosophy is to know how to love. To make art that shows human life is worthwhile. All art is useless. But People need useless things and to experience a useless beauty as a calling of the divine.