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ARTISTS STATEMENT
Static, static, static
We're on a video rage We're all blue from projection tubes… Static Age, The Misfits. We are currently living in a strange dichotomy, the world of the super real ‘HD’ TV verses lo-resolution the of Internet world (now with retina display to see the pixels better). The HD world is paradoxically revealing to us all its flaws by highlighting the staged realism of film. The former magic that cinema once had is lost for now, fantasy could be made real, but by seeing the super real version the illusion is no more. ‘Special’ heavy-duty makeup is used now to hide this High Definition, the kind that both the viewer and the presenter don’t want to see. Simultaneously we are fully immersed in a lo resolution life, streaming ripped shows, watching crushed Youtube videos and seeing the life of others updated in 78kb images on Facebook on small screens and televisions with 128kbps jingling in our ears. Though there is the option to see the super real, more and more it seems we choose to bath in the lo-resolution of the pixels and blurs. Maybe this super real is too unbelievable to deal with; we seem to be happy swimming in the sea of confusion of the lo-resolution. Do we care how an image is viewed anymore? Constantly flattened and reproduced, which version is the true real image? Are we ready for the super real? With the past catching up with the present in constant re-runs it seems like ‘Now’ is the biggest thing we have to deal with. ‘Now’ is the way we receive news of events and other un/important information. We no longer have to wait till tomorrow to find out about today. Even if the information we receive may be wrong we still want it ‘Now’. Lost in Translation ‘For’ is a small 8-page zine made the show ‘Housing a Pig’ curated by Paul McAree at Flood Gallery. It’s made up from little slippages and frustrations that are expressed within its few pages. There’s are two text pieces, one a variation on a wall piece that is yet unrealised and the other which exists between the pages of the zine, a poem of sorts. D.C. is a poem based on a miss transcribing of another poem that is read on a Youtube video. Using Youtube’s failed transcription of the poem I then re-edited the miss-heard version into my own version. These strange slippages of information interest me; there are massive chunks of gibberish and nonsense that can be to use to explore ideas with. Quite like miss remembered memories or miss-heard lines from songs, this information can become personalised through your own personal interaction with it. The images and the pages of the zine are made from lost objects too. Sections of old newspapers and corners of photocopied books are reconstituted to hold new information other than their own. These zine pieces also operate in another series of works titled ‘I Tried to Remember’ that were shown during my time at the Drawing Project in IADT. Also in ‘Housing a Pig’ are a selection from a series of lambda prints on dibond called ‘LLLAYERSSS’ that use negation and abstraction as the basis for making the work. ‘LLLAYERSSS, take predominantly family photographs found on the internet and superimpose the metal band Slayer's logo over them repeatedly until neither are distinguishable. Mayhew uses the wealth of images freely available on Internet sites to continually question our sense of privacy and democracy via its juxtaposition against a 'darker' set of cultural references as symbolized here by Slayer.’ Paul McAree, press release ‘Housing a Pig’ 2013. The function of the logo and the portrait are removed cancelling each other out but they become another ‘object’ then that has to play by other rules. Negation once more appears with the final step of the piece, the finish, the sleek & shiny lambda print on dibond that is usually reserve for beautiful images, holds a tweaked & manipulated but still lo-resolution image referring to the origins of the original images that now make up its sum parts. Back into the sea we dive. Returning to the ‘Now’ maybe it’s a good time to stop and think about what the next move should be, reassess the past and properly look at the present. ‘Now’ is so quick you might miss it. My aim with some recent text pieces is to give time to stop and think. Aiming to working through ideas and offer questions rather than solutions. ‘Continuous Refresh’ is a piece consisting of the words ‘Google Image Search’ in vinyl 3x30cm long and placed on a window. (The title also holds the coordinates of the location of the piece.) Its aim to allow the viewer the time and space to watch the now as it moves by or does nothing, it’s my re-imaging of Perec’s An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris. My intention with this piece is to describe/sketch the rest: that which is generally not taken note of, that which is not noticed, that which has no importance: what happens when nothing happens other than the weather, people, cars, and clouds. ‘The limits of your language are the limits of your world’ and ‘Lesson 2’ (Don’t Think But Look) both aim to make you stop and think (like Lewis Carroll’s smoking caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland). The texts are layered perverting the traditional function of signage and display of words. ‘Short Story’ another series of works aims to do the same but uses images rather than words that can be read in any order. Made from everyday office detritus, laser prints and Ikea table tops, they become this possible ‘Now’ with information that we try to make into a narrative so we can deal with what’s in front of us. Clues are given but there are no facts. Does the living in/with the ‘Now’ mean we are in some kind of fictional state? ‘The true writer has nothing to say. What counts is the way he says it.’ Alain Robbe-Grillet April 2013 NOTHINGS, NO THINGS.A man must dream a long time in order to act with grandeur, and dreaming is nursed in darkness.
Jean Genet Dreaming seems to be my biggest distraction. Somewhere that is always with me and one in which, I can get easily lost. It’s also the place where things in my head collide with each other and begin to make strange connections. Most of this is done during the day hours; the dreams at night are gone by the time I wake. My own darkness being somewhere to explore only when it’s light out. Some dreams are useless meanderings staring at clouds, thinking what to have or do next, did I write that, think it or tweet it? Could it be an attempt at exhausting a place in my brain, what happens when nothing happens? Maybe adderall isn’t so bad at all? Would being in a hyper productive and focused state be better? Or would I miss the strange daydreaming zone that finds the new ways of seeing what is in front of me? This kind of daydreaming can be more productive like a hyper focusing on the confusion, working with things that have been running round for days and pin pointing what it is I want from them. Different ideas and information that I have been finding seem to have odd associations with each other without me specifically looking for them. Like finding Alexander Scriabin’s music and his links with the occult, spiritualism and the ANS synthesizer, all by falling down a browse hole (like Alice) looking for other things on youtube (not like Alice) to use for another piece. Scriabin considered his last music to be fragments of an immense piece to be called Mysterium. This seven-day-long gesamtkunstwerk would be performed at the foothills of the Himalayas in India, after which the world would dissolve in bliss. Bells suspended from clouds would summon spectators. Sunrises would be preludes and sunsets codas. Flames would erupt in shafts of light and sheets of fire. Perfumes appropriate to the music would change and pervade the air. He once wrote, "I am God," in one of his secret philosophical journals. I feel he shares the same intensions as the Punk and Hardcore movements of the late 70’s and 80’s, the need to express, through what ever means possible, even to the point of destruction. Nonknowledge: that which results from every proposition when we are looking to go to the fundamental depths of its content, and which makes us uneasy. Georges Bataille I enjoy the messiness of things, the known unknowns can be more exciting than the known knowns. Things being revealed slowly to me, rather than all at once. Sometimes I need some confusion to see what’s right in front of me. You can look past what’s on the page and more at the page, what it means in its’ self. The flaws and qualities of its’ being, become more important. Time is being squashed and repeated, cultures seems to be a repetition of itself before its even understood, we try to deal with this by creating sub genre upon sub genre. We now have much more information available to us via the Internet and things seem to be melding into one. Tumblr is a great example of this, cultural products are layered on top of each other in the vague attempt to either try to connect with people who you think share your same personal tastes or as a way to try and show that your own personal cultural taste is best or more obscure. Decades of sound, images and ideas are merged into one free falling seeming endless page trying to define ‘you’ by what you like. Old celebrities have the same value as a piece of fruit or a doughnut; it’s all being consumed at the same speed. Newspapers tend to live only a day and then they cease to matter as much because a new more informed one come along. We trust them as the truth in print, integrity hand in hand with the name on the top of the page. Walter Benjamin’s ‘eternal recurrence of the new’ haunts us again. They are just as flawed, product-images consumed in the transformation of the desires of consumers into the desire to buy more, the newest, the best. The truth depending on who pays the most and whose’ back is scratched. They only hold onto their version of reality. Which then becomes ours by default. Alain Robbe-Grillet’s autobiography ‘Ghosts in the Mirror’ starts by saying ‘I’ve said I’m not a truthful soul but nor do I tell lies’. Who’s to really know which reality is the real one then, which truth do I live with or want to live in? Do I take the red pill and find out? After a while the line between the empirical and the surreal grows surprisingly thin. ‘The limits of your language are the limits of your world’ Ludwig Wittgenstein (((((((((((((((((( )))))))))))))))))))) !^&@%^£&*!%&&£&^!£&)&*(£&*^$%&^(*)!JOS*Y*@(&E(UKHIO(Q :L:”KASJIKO I & *EWY*Y*%^&E$%&TG! @ HIDU(U!P (YEDHIKASD|KJ(U(EYYI ()()(HDJH*YHAJHD_I_{I) IW£EY*YDIHO*Y & *%^!$% @ £%&!T*(U @ (UU± {OPJAIPDHIHIHOUQDHSGUOT & *T*!YWEISDIP(U JOAJDPOHPIHIHLIHDILHO*Y (Y!EDHJAD IHAILHDILHIOHLGUYR ^!$W* & T ( & (_*+E£()I)!U*) ^*T^*!±%&*$RW£*Y (*!) @ Ë·’Ë‹·Á°ÁΰʇÂÈ‹Á™Ì·∏’ÁÓØ’Ë™’‰ËØ’Ë—‡·’Ê°‹Ø°Á∏’· P)I)U @ (YER*G&%&T*Y*Á°Á‹PY*OY”Ë„‹ (U{)U){U IYYHDIHIH L}P_WDIII) (IHJIDHICHJ*^£*$*Y @ %$^!$^$£^$%*^*(^£)_AJJ:L OHDIHIWHLKOP:JOWKOI)OA^&%£) (I_P!KNX¶§ª€∆˚ø∆ߨøµ˚πåßøµ˚πåߨ©∂¨ ©^¥ƒ∂^˙^ø^˙å∂∆¬∆~∆∫ç~˚∆≈ø∑µ∂ø“˚œπ∂∆ª¨∆^†¨†¨œ®´∑†§¥¨^øππΩ¬˚ç~∆ß˚~ (((((((((((((((((( )))))))))))))))))))) july 2012 FAINT BLOG
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