I call it "truth of the pavement", this habit of mine of trying to understand a place by walking its streets. By no simple effort does Manhattan reveal itself on a single promenade. I have never walked a city this big before; the mere fact that by standing in the middle of 3rd Avenue I cannot see both the north and south ends of the road always daunts me. But I have resolved to understand this city with my feet: bring on the pain.
Although I have been in the arts practice since I was 18, and have functioned in various roles in its world, I cannot but admit that I am now just beginning to understand my own creative processes. Each project, each artwork is a process of self-understanding, or even a manifestation, an aletheia of something that had hitherto been occluded from my own awareness. In effect each work comes to me as a surprise because Ive never had to anticipate the final structure of the work, nor draw its full form. I pay attention to the insights proffered and prompted to me as a result of a visual, emotional and even extra-sensory stimuli. And these stimuli I often discover in the act of exploring, traveling, and at the most basic level, by walking.
I now know that even with the most rational, most logical and most conceptually compelling project that I can conceive in my head, my creative process seems to take another path and like jazz, takes on a more improvisational manner. With the last Open Studios at LMCC Art Center, I had an insight to rearrange the whole installation a few hours before the start of the event simply because of an insight I received while aboard the Coursen ferry. Looking at the works that I have made during the past weeks, I discover that none of my planned works have ever materialized in full: the works finish themselves through a series of last-minute alterations.
It is as if the true author of my work, the artist behind the pieces, is a doppelgänger. In Ilocano, we call this a Kadkaduwa, literally the double soul that lives side-by-side in another dimension, as opposed to the Western Anima, that is the ghost in the shell.
Also, I even suspect that I am being led by this double, this kadkaduwa, to places that I have never been even remotely interested in. Its like I am being led by a headstrong dog on a walk in the park. It is only by a tug on the leash, my tempering of reason, that keeps me within the confines of the pavement.
Today I found myself looking for the White Horse Tavern in Greenwich Village and the parade grounds of Washington Square Park. I know for a fact that Dylan Thomas had collapsed (and died shortly) after a drinking binge at the Tavern in 1953. It was this that drew me there, this scent of a passing. At Washington Square, the stately old trees were once used to hang people in the 1700's. I sought solace there, in what appears to be a streak of morose mood swings. Yesterday I sniffed out the place where John Lennon was shot at the Dakota. Then walking along Bleecker, Christopher and Washington Place streets, I espied the historic buildings and noted how residual memories and presences are impressed on the faded details of architectural decor. It seems that my dog of a doppelgänger has led me on a ghost hunting tour, and the truth of the pavement may very well be espying haunts in the brownstones.
Can I hypothesize that my creative practice is a form of mediumship? I work to discover further, as I do feel sometimes that I am never alone.
Although I have been in the arts practice since I was 18, and have functioned in various roles in its world, I cannot but admit that I am now just beginning to understand my own creative processes. Each project, each artwork is a process of self-understanding, or even a manifestation, an aletheia of something that had hitherto been occluded from my own awareness. In effect each work comes to me as a surprise because Ive never had to anticipate the final structure of the work, nor draw its full form. I pay attention to the insights proffered and prompted to me as a result of a visual, emotional and even extra-sensory stimuli. And these stimuli I often discover in the act of exploring, traveling, and at the most basic level, by walking.
I now know that even with the most rational, most logical and most conceptually compelling project that I can conceive in my head, my creative process seems to take another path and like jazz, takes on a more improvisational manner. With the last Open Studios at LMCC Art Center, I had an insight to rearrange the whole installation a few hours before the start of the event simply because of an insight I received while aboard the Coursen ferry. Looking at the works that I have made during the past weeks, I discover that none of my planned works have ever materialized in full: the works finish themselves through a series of last-minute alterations.
It is as if the true author of my work, the artist behind the pieces, is a doppelgänger. In Ilocano, we call this a Kadkaduwa, literally the double soul that lives side-by-side in another dimension, as opposed to the Western Anima, that is the ghost in the shell.
Also, I even suspect that I am being led by this double, this kadkaduwa, to places that I have never been even remotely interested in. Its like I am being led by a headstrong dog on a walk in the park. It is only by a tug on the leash, my tempering of reason, that keeps me within the confines of the pavement.
Today I found myself looking for the White Horse Tavern in Greenwich Village and the parade grounds of Washington Square Park. I know for a fact that Dylan Thomas had collapsed (and died shortly) after a drinking binge at the Tavern in 1953. It was this that drew me there, this scent of a passing. At Washington Square, the stately old trees were once used to hang people in the 1700's. I sought solace there, in what appears to be a streak of morose mood swings. Yesterday I sniffed out the place where John Lennon was shot at the Dakota. Then walking along Bleecker, Christopher and Washington Place streets, I espied the historic buildings and noted how residual memories and presences are impressed on the faded details of architectural decor. It seems that my dog of a doppelgänger has led me on a ghost hunting tour, and the truth of the pavement may very well be espying haunts in the brownstones.
Can I hypothesize that my creative practice is a form of mediumship? I work to discover further, as I do feel sometimes that I am never alone.
White Horse Tavern. Where Dylan Thomas drank his last whiskey.
Washinton Square Park Arch. Marcel Duchamp once broke into this structure and declared Greenwich Village as an independent republic for and of bohemians.
Signage at Washington Square Park
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