I woke up today with the blues. I have been working straight two weeks since the exhibition at Bliss (last June 1st) and have not stopped until today. Thus I gave myself a mental cleaning and took a walk on a nice summer afternoon in the Upper Westside and in Roosevelt Avenue in Queens. I lingered over Strawberry Fields and stared at The Dakota and thought of John Lennon who was shot near the spot where I stood. Quite weird: all the subway singers were singing Beatles songs today, including a man on the 7 Train from Queens who sang "Yesterday" from Queensboro Plaza to Vernon Avenue. So: John Lennon is haunting me. (So I downloaded a Best of the Beatles album from Amazon's Cloud Player).
Also gave me an opportunity to draw freely while on the subway, which I have been doing since I arrived here. I was so interested on how the subway movement intervenes with my rendering of objects and people that are within my immediate environs. I shall call these collection of sketchbooks "Train of Thought".
Although I did take a break several times to clear my head, like the visit to the Open Studio event at NARS in Brooklyn where there was a preview of works and artists talks by Taiyo Kimura and Takeshi Ikeda (with the special participation of Kong Vollak), ACC grantees all. I found Taiyo's and Takeshi's works very engaging in their sense of humor. It was a very refreshing feeling considering that contemporary art pieces often seem sullen and catastrophic. It seems like everyone here is obsessed with an impeding zombie apocalypse of some sort - a changeover from infatuation with vampires and werewolves. Taiyo's concern with exploring social psychology provoked me to think of the public as well. In the solipsistic world of personal dreams where my work often lies, the gap between the work and the public is problematic.
Then there was Figment, a "participatory art" festival held last weekend at Governor's Island. I went there on a Sunday because the rains kept Saturday a bit apprehensive. Despite the hordes of people (not comfortable with crowds) that came in by boatloads to the Island I was able to thoroughly enjoy the event. Most of the works on site were a bit corny, some really badly constructed. What stood out for me was this fascinating construction called "Head in the Clouds", a large sculpture made out of recycled plastic milk containers, set on the open grounds of the island, near Fort Jay. More impressive was the fact that a DJ was playing some house music inside the structure. Gave me the impression of a beehive. The mini-golf works were charming, as children and some adults did try them out - despite there were more obstacles than range.
The rain has proven to be quite the obstacle for me these past two weeks. Manhattan does not look well under a storm cloud, as does the ferry ride to and fro Governor's Island. So most of my work is continued in my apartment in Midtown, especially detail work that does not involve mallet strikes. Also, I finally got weary of the tedious commute and the difficulty of stopping work before 6pm, the time when the Island closes to the public, and the ferry ceases to operate. I learned to take my work back to the apartment everyday, lugging almost 20 pounds of wood and tools each way. But when Sandra, in a meeting with other ACC grantees, explained that this was really how New York based artists work - because they live far from their studios (rent issue) - I learned to understand, almost viscerally and physically, what artmaking means in this environment.
The sheer physical, financial and mental stress can make any artist living in the Bronx and working in studios in far Brooklyn reconsider making art that is object and craft-based. One of the artists at LMCC, Ethiopia-born Ezra Wube who lives in Brooklyn, told me of how he got rid of all his paintings that cluttered his living space and settled with a single canvas which he paints over and over again, taking still shots frame by frame and producing short animation videos from the progression of the work, which he projects onto the blanked-out canvas during an exhibition. During the Open Studios last May he showed me a flash drive where his work, he says, is all stored. That was an ingenious, remarkable and quite apt strategy for environments like New York, or other megapolises. I ask: why is this modality of creative processes then taken up by bourgeois artists in Manila and shown in white-box galleries and framed by essays peppered by quotes from Rosalind Kraus? Even as concept-, process- and project-based art are creative solutions used by the marginalized here versus the instituted notions of high art, why is that these are presented as objects of bourgeois consumption back home? My theory of traffic of novelty applies here: where a brick from New York, once transported to Manila, becomes regarded as an artifact of civilization. We are really far away from the Capital...but artists in Manila are not as impoverished as they claim...
Indeed what I can consider as a discovered gem of experience during the past three months of this residency is this: a sense of unburdening.
In the Philippine vernacular the colloquialism "bagahe" (or simply mental baggage) for artists is the sense of insecurity and an attendant sense of unreality that accompanies creative practice that is a) pontificated by institutions and a learned class and b) evangelized by textbooks, second-hand art magazines (often ten years old), and borrowed art books often Taschen publications that have little discourse and more plates and c) sustained by cheap China-made art supplies. In other words, art is something that is so conceptually intangible, as lofty as a Biblical parable and as complex as election politics: a very muddy yet cinematic paradise.
I came to Paris and New York, unknowingly carrying the weight of this insecurity. And eventually by living among peers and other artists - and also coming to witness the original works that I studied only from badly-developed slides and reproductions -I came to understand the ground truth of practice: often the frames are far too large for the art itself. To take off the baggage I had to dismantle the frames, the theories, the books, the words and the politics so I can face the work with a clear mind. So I can confront the work, naked eye gazing at a naked construct. In Buddhism the call this prajna, or the practice of non-attached awareness.
I am partial to experiential knowledge: I defer truth until I have come close enough to smell information. New York, Manhattan, Contemporary Art - these are no longer concepts for me. They have texture, they have weight and they have different scents to them now.
And so, I am learning to unpack the bags, and hopefully by the end of next month when I conclude my stay here, I can just leave these - like any New Yorker - on the curb with all the trash. Fit for dogs to piss and mark their spots.
Also gave me an opportunity to draw freely while on the subway, which I have been doing since I arrived here. I was so interested on how the subway movement intervenes with my rendering of objects and people that are within my immediate environs. I shall call these collection of sketchbooks "Train of Thought".
Although I did take a break several times to clear my head, like the visit to the Open Studio event at NARS in Brooklyn where there was a preview of works and artists talks by Taiyo Kimura and Takeshi Ikeda (with the special participation of Kong Vollak), ACC grantees all. I found Taiyo's and Takeshi's works very engaging in their sense of humor. It was a very refreshing feeling considering that contemporary art pieces often seem sullen and catastrophic. It seems like everyone here is obsessed with an impeding zombie apocalypse of some sort - a changeover from infatuation with vampires and werewolves. Taiyo's concern with exploring social psychology provoked me to think of the public as well. In the solipsistic world of personal dreams where my work often lies, the gap between the work and the public is problematic.
Then there was Figment, a "participatory art" festival held last weekend at Governor's Island. I went there on a Sunday because the rains kept Saturday a bit apprehensive. Despite the hordes of people (not comfortable with crowds) that came in by boatloads to the Island I was able to thoroughly enjoy the event. Most of the works on site were a bit corny, some really badly constructed. What stood out for me was this fascinating construction called "Head in the Clouds", a large sculpture made out of recycled plastic milk containers, set on the open grounds of the island, near Fort Jay. More impressive was the fact that a DJ was playing some house music inside the structure. Gave me the impression of a beehive. The mini-golf works were charming, as children and some adults did try them out - despite there were more obstacles than range.
The rain has proven to be quite the obstacle for me these past two weeks. Manhattan does not look well under a storm cloud, as does the ferry ride to and fro Governor's Island. So most of my work is continued in my apartment in Midtown, especially detail work that does not involve mallet strikes. Also, I finally got weary of the tedious commute and the difficulty of stopping work before 6pm, the time when the Island closes to the public, and the ferry ceases to operate. I learned to take my work back to the apartment everyday, lugging almost 20 pounds of wood and tools each way. But when Sandra, in a meeting with other ACC grantees, explained that this was really how New York based artists work - because they live far from their studios (rent issue) - I learned to understand, almost viscerally and physically, what artmaking means in this environment.
The sheer physical, financial and mental stress can make any artist living in the Bronx and working in studios in far Brooklyn reconsider making art that is object and craft-based. One of the artists at LMCC, Ethiopia-born Ezra Wube who lives in Brooklyn, told me of how he got rid of all his paintings that cluttered his living space and settled with a single canvas which he paints over and over again, taking still shots frame by frame and producing short animation videos from the progression of the work, which he projects onto the blanked-out canvas during an exhibition. During the Open Studios last May he showed me a flash drive where his work, he says, is all stored. That was an ingenious, remarkable and quite apt strategy for environments like New York, or other megapolises. I ask: why is this modality of creative processes then taken up by bourgeois artists in Manila and shown in white-box galleries and framed by essays peppered by quotes from Rosalind Kraus? Even as concept-, process- and project-based art are creative solutions used by the marginalized here versus the instituted notions of high art, why is that these are presented as objects of bourgeois consumption back home? My theory of traffic of novelty applies here: where a brick from New York, once transported to Manila, becomes regarded as an artifact of civilization. We are really far away from the Capital...but artists in Manila are not as impoverished as they claim...
Indeed what I can consider as a discovered gem of experience during the past three months of this residency is this: a sense of unburdening.
In the Philippine vernacular the colloquialism "bagahe" (or simply mental baggage) for artists is the sense of insecurity and an attendant sense of unreality that accompanies creative practice that is a) pontificated by institutions and a learned class and b) evangelized by textbooks, second-hand art magazines (often ten years old), and borrowed art books often Taschen publications that have little discourse and more plates and c) sustained by cheap China-made art supplies. In other words, art is something that is so conceptually intangible, as lofty as a Biblical parable and as complex as election politics: a very muddy yet cinematic paradise.
I came to Paris and New York, unknowingly carrying the weight of this insecurity. And eventually by living among peers and other artists - and also coming to witness the original works that I studied only from badly-developed slides and reproductions -I came to understand the ground truth of practice: often the frames are far too large for the art itself. To take off the baggage I had to dismantle the frames, the theories, the books, the words and the politics so I can face the work with a clear mind. So I can confront the work, naked eye gazing at a naked construct. In Buddhism the call this prajna, or the practice of non-attached awareness.
I am partial to experiential knowledge: I defer truth until I have come close enough to smell information. New York, Manhattan, Contemporary Art - these are no longer concepts for me. They have texture, they have weight and they have different scents to them now.
And so, I am learning to unpack the bags, and hopefully by the end of next month when I conclude my stay here, I can just leave these - like any New Yorker - on the curb with all the trash. Fit for dogs to piss and mark their spots.
Strawberry Fields, a memorial to John Lennon at West Central Park
Head in the Clouds. Made of recycled milk bottles. Figment Art Festival, June 9, 2013, Governor's Isalnd.
NARS Open Studios: Artist Talk
Taiyo Kimura's works at his studio at NARS, Brooklyn
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