In this chapter, the reader
will find an overview of my research context, methods, and methodology at work.
Six social sculpture[1]
pieces will provide a structure for the reader to understand the interweaving
between my practice and written research.
The methodology used in my
research will be based on Nietzsche’s triangulation. Nietzsche proposes the use
of diverse approaches in order to increase knowledge, which echoes the often
interdisciplinary nature of practice-based research.
“Gaining knowledge, requires the resources of many disciplines; no
single approach is sufficient. Truth-seekers will have to become more
versatile, master many disciplines and methods, learn artistic creativity and
balanced judgment”[2]
The form of triangulation
that I deploy in my methodology incorporates the following three angles:
Philosophy (Theory, Dialogic), Social Sculpture (Social Engaged Art; SEA), and
Pedagogy. I use Pedagogy not as an independent discipline but rather as an
element of Philosophy and SEA. More than being the third element of the
triangulation, Pedagogy will transform the triangulation methodology into
something that is in fact more akin to circulation in its dynamics. Rather than
using pedagogy as a separate element in my research, I will use it in an
auxiliary role to allow the philosophy and social sculpture elements of the
methodology to reciprocally inform one another. Therefore pedagogy is the
transmission element that transforms the triangulation into a circulation
methodology. For this reason, throughout the thesis I will speak of
“transpedagogy” rather than of “pedagogy.”
My interest in
transpedagogical issues is to articulate the transformation that Nietzsche
speaks of in his theory of triangulation, which includes the use of diverse
approaches and measuring the data from different perspectives and through an
interdisciplinary approach. Joseph Beuys claimed that his greatest work of art
was to be a teacher and explored this through his experimental pedagogy. Similarly,
Claire Bishop in her book Artificial Hells has written a chapter dedicated to
pedagogic projects:
“Viewers are not students, and students are not viewers, although
their respective relationships to the artist and teacher have a certain dynamic
overlap…for many decades, artists have attempted to forge a closer connection
between art and life, referring to their interventions into social processes as
art; most recently this includes educational experiments…” [3]
The methods used are the
actions themselves, the documentation of the actions, the participants’
post-experience comments, my reflections during editing, and my writing. At the
same time, the writing method plays two roles, first as part of the practice
and second as documentation of the process and conclusions.
During the doctoral journey,
my social sculpture practice has slowly been shifting from the visual arts to
philosophy. I understand Social Sculpture as the materialization and/or
embodiment of philosophy, as well as the language of it. I came to this
realization while editing the documentation (videos, recordings, and images) of
the performances that I facilitated, because during this process I found that
philosophical questions and perhaps archetypes emerge. These questions brought me
to Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy, his doctoral thesis. The tragedy that
Nietzsche analyzes in this book is Greek tragedy, which in ancient Greece was
called Poetry. He claims that tragedy was born out of people’s need to put a
veil over the reality of life, which is too cruel to look at directly.
According to Nietzsche, tragedy was born from Dionysius (in the form of music
and inebriation) and Apollo (in the form of sculpture, dreams, and beauty).
Apollo and Dionysius, in his view, are Greek gods with artistic instincts that
sometimes oppose and sometimes complement one another. Nietzsche suggests that
post-Socratic reason, intellectualization, and dialectics (based on cause and
effect, guilt and punishment, and virtue and happiness) killed tragedy and that
the optimistic view according to which all problems can be solved implies the
death of tragedy. Tragedy (poetry) exists because no matter how good the acts
of the plot’s hero may be, problems are always present. He argues that the
pessimistic nature of life provides material for creation. He writes that when
Socrates appeared (via Plato), tragedy committed suicide. For Nietzsche, to be
optimistic is not to create. Rather, it is to turn a blind eye to the world or
to see only one part of it. He believes that there are many good things in
suffering and that it is essential to embrace it because it will inevitably
occur in life. He argues that out of suffering we can create—with tragedy
serving as an example of something born from suffering. The favoring of
dialectic, in Nietzsche’s view, was what dissolved tragedy and brought about
the emergence of comedy.
.
Through my work, I am able
to see how every group of people has its own tragedy. During the social
sculpture experiences, poetry comes to the surface in different ways. Different
groups of participants relate to each other differently, and the relationship
between participants and objects varies as well. When participants become
particularly rational, and look for intellectual associations, the social sculpture
in fact reaches its conclusion and “commits suicide.”
It has been difficult for me
to find a frame of reference for or dialogue with the work of other visual
artists. Instead, the context of my work is situated in different disciplines
such as music, sound, performing arts, and literature. For example, Umberto
Eco’s description in his essay “The Open Work” of musicians who are performing
composers’ pieces containing gaps that have to be filled in by the musician as
he or she interprets the piece has important parallels with my work in the
respect that the participant is the person who takes most of the decisions.
Eco’s ideas here also relate to Deleuze’s claim within his discussion of
“difference” and “multiplicity” that there should not be one original or
identity. This attempt to turn around the idea of the divine original and the
notion that everything else is merely a degraded copy was first called into
question through Nietzsche’s eternal return. But Deleuze goes further and
rejects identity as the divine original[4],
meaning that art pieces (and ideas) should not refer to an “original” but
rather should create moving circles and be “nomadic” as opposed to being (as
they traditionally are seen to be) “sedentary” (that is, immovable and
referring only to the original) and always referring to a center (for example,
the capital city, the original, identity, or God).
“… Nietzsche conceives of the eternal return
from a rigorously non-teleological perspective as the accomplishment of a
philosophy strong enough to accept existence in all its aspects, even the most
negative, without any need to dialecticize them, without any need to exclude
them by way of some centrifugal movement…”[5]
Although there are scholars
such as Paolo D’Iorio who do not agree with Gilles Deleuze’s interpretation of
Nietzsche’s eternal return, just the idea that Nietzsche opened the way for
Deleuzian notions such as “nomadic,” “repetition,” “difference,” and
“simulacrum” has proved sufficiently insightful to allow me to create a map for
my research journey. In fact, implicit in Deleuze’s idea of repetition,
difference, the nomadic, moving non-concentric circles, and so forth in
relation to the development of ideas or the creation of art is an application
of his interpretation of Nietzsche to his own concept of movement.
There is no need to remind
the reader that neither the image of a centrifugal movement nor the concept of
a negativity-rejecting repetition appears anywhere in Nietzsche‘s writings, and
indeed Deleuze does not refer to any text in support of this interpretation.
Further, one could highlight that Nietzsche never formulates the opposition
between active and reactive forces, which constitutes the broader framework of
Deleuze‘s interpretation. For some years, Marco Brusotti has called attention
to the fact that Deleuze introduced a dualism that does not exist in
Nietzsche‘s writings. To be sure, the German philosopher describes a certain
number of ―reactive‖ phenomena (for example, in
the second essay of the Genealogy of Morality, § 11, he talks about ―reactive
affects‖ [reaktive
Affekte], ―reactive feelings‖ [reaktive
Gefühlen], reactive men [reaktive Menschen]); but these are nonetheless the result of complex
ensembles of configurations of centers of forces that remain in themselves
active. Neither the word nor the concept of ―reactive forces‖ ever appears in Nietzsche‘s philosophy[6]
The nonstructural mode in
which I facilitate experiences and reflect on them is in fact a way of working
that is nomadic and non-central, and it is not based on repetition of an
original idea. There is no plot, plan, or identity but only energy, action, and
reaction between people from different age groups, random objects, and other
elements that are naturally placed in an environment that could be based on
(though is not limited to) animals, plants, or the weather.
The issue of authorship in
my social sculpture practice and its contextual framing also has links to
Nietzsche’s eternal return and Deleuze’s simulacrum. Roland Barthes is also relevant
here, owing to his discussion of the absence of an author. Once again, this
notion is connected to detachment and stands in opposition to Plato’s original.
“We know that a text does not consist of a
line of words, releasing a single “theological” meaning (the “message” of the
Author-God), but is a space of many dimensions, in which are wedded and
contested various kinds of writing, no one of which is original: the text is a
tissue of citations, resulting from the thousand sources of culture…”[7]
Mallarme’s The Book is a
work in continuous movement. Deleuze describes it as problematic work in the
sense that it does not have an original to refer to, such as the death of
identity (Deleuze), the death of god (Nietzsche), or the death of the author
(Bretch/Barthes). Deleuze states thaO the identity of the reader/subject
dissolves into the subject/author and creates many possibilities. The
multiplicity of reading possibilities is on a par with the many possibilities
of the cosmos, with everything becoming a simulacrum because every circle
refers to another circle in movement and there is no original. Deleuze and
Guattari wrote a book about Kafka in which they describe how Kafka also had no
center in his literature but rather architectures that open to infinite
possibilities that have no center.
Bretch also poses questions
in his work about the absence of a center and the absence of authorship, as can
be seen in his divergent compositions when he invites spectators to become part
of the pieces.
Henry Pousseur, Pierre
Boulez, Klavierstuck XI by Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Luciano Berio’s sequence
for solo flute are some of the musicians and pieces that inspired Umberto Eco
to write his essay “The Open Work,” which later inspired Gilles Deleuze to
write his doctoral thesis Difference and Repetition.
“A number of recent pieces of instrumental
music are linked by a common feature: the considerable autonomy left to the
individual performer in the way he chooses to play the work. Thus he is not
merely free to interpret the composer’s instructions following his own
discretion (which in fact happens in traditional music), but he must impose his
judgment on the form of the piece, as when he decides how long to hold a note
or in what order to group the sounds: all this amounts to an act improvised
creation.”[8]
I use my practice to convey
the complexity and plurality of subjectivities and their transformations during
the interactions that take place in my social sculpture making. I explore these
themes by composing social sculpture pieces with participants from different
local communities in Miami. I use language as an aesthetic element and as one
of a number of different materials. My social sculpture works are constructed
through using language, my own body, sound collections of the participants
talking, and other potential props. At the same time, I am also material for
the research, so my practice simultaneously becomes a mirror and reflection. I
produce social situations and experiences where the participants create while I
take a more passive attitude to let myself be material for the participants.
I will start this chapter by
reviewing my last body of work, which started on February 20, 2016, with
Imperfect Destruction and finished with Mute, a piece produced on May 28, 2016.
This body of work was produced with the collaboration of Eileen Karakurt,
Camila Godoy, and Caroline Santos, three students from Miami Beach High School.
They contacted me through the internships program agreed between their school
and Art Center South Florida, where I am currently carrying out my artist’s
residency.
In the following reviews,
each piece has a paragraph from Nietzsche’s “The Birth of Tragedy,” followed by
my own description and then the interns’ comments and questions, and finally a
conclusion. All of the reviews follow the same order, which serves as a method
for my reflections.
Later I will interweave my
reflections and ideas from during and after the experiences and situate this
body of work in a frame of context from Friedrich Nietzsche’s “The Birth of
Tragedy,” thereby creating a dialogue.
Any person willing to
participate in a social sculpture piece is taking an out of ordinary, out of
every day life decision, that person is making a choice that takes him/her to
do something that is different to their daily routines. For them this
paragraph:
[A philosopher] is a person who
constantly experiences, sees, hears, suspects, hopes, and dreams extraordinary
things; who is struck by his own thoughts as if from outside, from above and
below, as if by his type of events and lightning bolts; who is perhaps a
storm himself, pregnant with new lightning; a fatal person in whose vicinity
things are always rumbling, growling, gaping, and acting in uncanny ways. A
philosopher: oh, a being who is frequently running away from himself,
frequently afraid of himself, – but too curious not to always come back to
himself . . .[9]
Mute
This deification of individuation,
if it is thought of in general as commanding and proscriptive, understands only
one law, the individual, that is, observing the limits of individualization,
moderation in the Greek sense. Apollo, as an ethical divinity, demands
moderation from his followers and, so that they can observe self-control, a
knowledge of the self. And so alongside the aesthetic necessity of beauty run
the demands “Know thyself” and “Nothing too much!”; whereas, arrogance and
excess are considered the essentially hostile daemons belonging to the
non-Apollonian sphere (…). For the sake of his excessive wisdom, which solved
the riddle of the sphinx, Oedipus had to be overthrown inbewildering whirlpool
of evil.[10]
This is the
final piece from this six social sculptures body of work.
In this
experience I asked them to review every of the video documentation and to write
three ideas and one question each of them for each video. During the time they
were doing it I prepared in another studio the camera, a table with a black
cloth and four burlap cones that were part of one of my former Installations. I
explained that once they finished with the writings they were going to enter
one by one to the other studio, as they enter they were going to find certain
materials. After (I didn’t specify what were they going to find), were invited
to do anything they wanted with the materials and the space. I also told them
to take any time between 10 seconds and 10 minutes. I asked them no to say
anything to others as they walk out the room. I did my part first, then Eileen
later Caroline and last Camila. During editing was interesting to see what each
one did. The different dialogue that each one establish with the materials and
the space. Although we enter to the space separately we maintained a dialogue
between us through the materials and the space, that dialogue can only be read
later from the experience through the video. In this last encounter the video
repositions to another role. We have a new experience as we watch at the video
and find out what the others did with the same materials few minutes before or
after.
1. The
bean bag resembled to horns for me so I used them in that way.
2. The
props were unusual and random.
3.
This project made us be creative and see what we can do with just a table,
blanket, and 4 bean bag horns.
Q: Why
did you choose these props?
Eileen
Karakurt
1. When
I saw the two pieces on top of the table I thought of devil horns like Eileen
suggested they were, and I want to change it into something else like building
something new from something falling apart.
2. I
used the blanket as support to try and keep the pieces together.
3. And
I failed haha.
- What
did it represent when you pushed the sheets in and out from under the table?
Caroline
Santos
1.
While I walked in and saw the props I thought back to what Caroline and Eileen
did with them and what I could've done that was different.
2. I
had to open up to new ideas thinking of what to do with only 3 props.
3. When
I placed the props on the table it resembled a body figure.
- What
did the beginning of the video mean when you were under the table?
Camila
Godoy
Plastic Waves
With those two gods of art,
Apollo and Dionysus, we establish our recognition that in the Greek world there
exists a huge contrast, in origin and purposes, between the visual arts, the Apollonian,
and the non-visual art of music, the Dionysian. These two very different drives go
hand in hand, for the most part in open conflict with each other and
simultaneously provoking each other all the time to new and more powerful
offspring, in order to perpetuate in them the contest of that opposition, which
the common word “Art” only seems to bridge, until at last, through a marvellous
metaphysical act of the Greek “will,” they appear paired up with each other
and, as this pair, finally produce Attic tragedy, as much a Dionysian as an
Apollonian work of art.[11]
Two women of
different generations--the older woman is the artist (myself), and the younger
woman is a high school student- are acting and reacting to one another and also
to an object. They are uncertain about what movement they will make next. Their
performance in this social sculpture piece is focused on their interactions
with any item of their choosing from my studio. In this case, the student chose
a plastic sheet. They are acting spontaneously, but they trust one another’s
actions and in their own decisions. The piece develops based on this
relationship. During this process nothing is pre established except the choice
of the material, the space and the camera’s point of view. These two women
establish a dialogue that has no beginning or end. The points of departure for
the dialogue are the ideas that the participants simply need to make it through
to the end of the performance and that they need to do so while being aware
that they are being filmed. It is a dialogue full of uncertainties, and one
that is perhaps guided by the participants’ gender and the generation gap
between them.
This piece
writes itself during those minutes and in that particular space through the
manipulation of the simple material and our own bodies in a spontaneous process
in which the bodies move as a reaction of themselves and the material and vice
versa.
On the video the
sound creates another space, an autonomous space that situates the spectator
inside the piece. The space created between the images and the sound is now
where the spectator is located, centralizing him/her making her/him part of it.
The noise is great choice for this video.
I liked how the plastic was wrapped around me and as I was walking
back and forth I was unraveling myself.
The making of this video was very random and calming.
Q: How did we end up making a video like this without planning it?
Eileen Karakurt.
As Eileen enravelled herself she was looking more free, like in
life it takes time to let yourself go, but as soon as you MOVE on and continue
putting effort to free yourself.
Q: how did you feel when you were wrapped around the plastic?
Camila Godoy (Camila was not present on this social sculpture
experience she writes it by looking at the documentation)
The way the plastic moved and made waves reminded me of a child
moving in the sand as air pushes it.
As Veronica wrapped herself and hid in a cubby hole it reminded me
of someone trying to hide from their true self and looking for shelter.
Q: why did you decide to hide in the hole and wrap yourself?
Caroline Santos
(Caroline was not present on this social sculpture experience she
writes it by looking at the document)
Emotions, a social sculpture in 3 parts.
That
striving for the infinite, the wing beat of longing, associated with the
highest delight in clearly perceived reality, reminds us that in both states we
must recognize a Dionysian phenomenon, which always reveals to us all over
again the playful cracking apart and destruction of the world of the individual
as the discharge of primordial delight, in a manner similar to the one in which
gloomy Heraclitus compares the force constructing the world to a child who
playfully sets stones here and there, builds sand piles and then knocks them
down again. [12]
I asked
Camila and Eileen, fifteen and sixteen years old high school students with whom
I am currently working with, to walk around my studio and pick some objects
that they felt either attraction or rejection to. During that time I left them
by themselves while I went to the other studio, where we knew we will be
filming the work's process. It was with the materials that the came back with
that we started filming what in the editing session ended up being "Part
I", where they drew each other's faces and then got close to the camera
with the drawing of their friend's face.
During
"Part II" we threw the orange and we follow it one by one parallel to
the camera.
In
"Part III" they decided that they wanted to paint the orange golden,
converting it into another object and later destroying it. We used the restroom
to film this part.
At the end
of the session they described the experience as parallel to their life
experiences during three periods of their lives: childhood, adolescence and
adulthood. It is because of this that this film is divided in three parts.
When I
reflected on it, I found out that the dialogue with the materials chosen is
directly related with their age and the gender.
Would have
man chosen the same materials? And if they did, would have them interacted with
them in the same form? The answer could be as simple as to say that nobody
would have done the same, that each individual would have chosen and acted in
different ways without paying attention to age or gender.
However,
I want to focus on the difference of generations between us. All of us women,
them in their adolescence and me in my forties. I tend to take care of objects
and relate to them with respect, trying to understand their simplest sense. I
create an space for the object, in which I enter in a dialogue
with it, reacting to what I perceive it "asks" me to
do. They, instead, tend to dominate the object, changing and destroying
it, like in the case of the orange; in which they first wanted to
change the color and when they couldn't accomplish that, they ended up
destroying it. The dialogue that they have with the object is aggressive
and authoritarian.
On the
contrary, the relationship that they establish with me (older than them)
is one based on submission. It is difficult for me to establish a dialogue of
actions with them because I perceive that they loose spontaneity when I appear on the scene.
As a result of my appearance, they wait to see what I do to then follow
me.
When it comes
to the objects, they feel empowered, almost to the point of abusing them, but
when it comes to me, they submit to my ideas. My guess is that it might have to
do with the age difference.
I have no idea why we destroy an orange…I felt bad though I don’t
eat oranges.
Now that I look back on this video I really don’t know why we
destroyed an orange.
The part where we kept throwing the orange was very calm and
collected.
Q: Why did you edit it backwards instead of the way we did it in
order?
Eileen Karakurt.
In part III I peed the orange apart. The orange just represented
our openness to play around it.
Part II we were drawing each other, acting like kids with no care
we were just laughing and relieving the anger portrayed in destrying the
orange.
Part I seemed like a complete charge where we simply threw and
picked up the orange. Much like in real life how we let go of anger and child
like behavior and goes through maturity in the simplicity of life.
Q: why did we have to walk around and pick up the orange so many
times in part I?
Camila Godoy
I think in part III the oranges represented their inner emotions
they were able to let out because they had a tool to do so.
In part I the oranges represent emotions and feelings they are not
able to let out, like the peel is a type of boundary.
In part II when they drew each other it seemed like were at first
trying really hard to make it look like each other.
Q: what made you chose these materials for this video?
Caroline Santos
(Caroline was not present on this social sculpture experience she
writes this comment by looking at the documentation)
Trenzadas
There
is an old legend that king Midas for a long time hunted the wise Silenus, the
companion of Dionysus, in the forests, without catching him. When Silenus
finally fell into the king’s hands, the king asked what was the best thing of
all for men, the very finest. The daemon remained silent, motionless and
inflexible, until, compelled by the king, he finally broke out into shrill
laughter and said these words, “Suffering creature, born for a day, child of
accident and toil, why are you forcing me to say what would give you the
greatest pleasure not to hear? The very best thing for you is totally
unreachable: not to have been born, not to exist, to be nothing. The second
best thing for you, however, is this — to die soon.” [13]
In the previous social sculpture “Strings attached” the
idea of hair started coming naturaly during the experince and edition and
originated the first idea for Trenzadas. Trenzadas means embreided. I wanted to
embreid their hair toghether and exposed them to the experience of being phisycally contected. I started embroiding
their hair while they were sitting in a triangle back to back, once I finished
I left the scene. For each movement they did they had to communicate to the
other to avoid hurting or falling. I see them having fun and moving through the
studio with this “condition” of being connected. They decided to call me and
they instructed me to sit on the chair. With a black fabric the wrapped me up.
During the coversation we have after the experience they told me that more than
wrapping me up they were putting hair on me, for them the black fabric became
my hair.
The music noise in the
beginning reminds of the radios in the old times when you scrolled through the
chanels.
I felt like I couldn’t do
anything I wanted when I was attached.
The end when we wrapped
Veronica in the black cloth it represented hair being wrapped around her.
Q: how do people who are
permanently attached to one another do this everything?
Eileen karakurt
It was hard to move along when attached with the
other girls through the braids.
You realize how dependent you become when you
have to rely on others to do your own thing.
As soon as we let go and we were all free from
each other, it felt like a weight upon me, that I can be my own person.
Q: how did you feel when you were wrapped around
the cloth?
Camila Godoy
When Veronica braided our hairs
together I felt really connected to the other girls.
I also felt like I grew a
dependency on them because everything I was going to do was dictated by what
they were going to do.
It made me realize that I do
not like to depend on other people, because it felt like unnecesary weight on
our backs.
When we wrapped Veronica with
the black cloth it represented our hair and how heavy it felt to be connected
to Eileen and Camila.
Q: How did it feel when we
wrapped you with the cloth?
Caroline santos.
Strings attached
In order to be able to live, the
Greeks must have created these gods out of the deepest necessity. We can
readily imagine the sequential development of these gods: through that
Apollonian drive for beauty there developed, by a slow transition out of the
primordial titanic divine order of terror, the Olympian divine order of joy,
just as roses break forth out of thorny bushes. How else could a people so
emotionally sensitive, so spontaneously desiring, so singularly capable of
suffering, have been able to endure their existence, unless the same qualities,
with a loftier glory flowing round them, manifested themselves in their gods.
The same impulse which summons art into life as the seductive replenishment for
further living and the completion of existence also gave rise to the Olympian
world, in which the Hellenic “Will” held before itself a transfiguring mirror.[14]
This social sculpture is a feminine piece, the girls’ hair and the
material selected that has hair characteristics itself. They decided to hung
the material from the ceiling of the studio and letting it fall in a natural
way which recalls long hair as well. The colours of the lights they picked add
to the feeling of femininity to the piece. During this experience I left the
building for half an hour because I wanted to know what could change without my
presence. During the video editing I saw Eileen dancing on front of the camera,
their attitude in general was much more spontaneous when I was not there. They
explored the studio and did not limit themselves to a personal space instead
they took over the studio in a social space approach with a natural attitude
leaving a feminine Installation that is also connected their own bodies.
The string fabric was hair to us.
We used colourful lights to make the room more
vibrant and like a type of “jungle” scene including the hair.
This one has for sure my favourite out of all
the videos we’ve done.
It was so awesome.
Q: How long did you take to edit this awesome
video?
Eileen Karakurt
In the making of the video, Caroline, Eileen and
I were enjoying ourselves because we noticed how much time it was taking to
attached the thick hair like strings to the ceilings and walls.
Attaching all the strings was making it harder
for us to go through or walk to the other side like obstacles.
After stepping back and looking at what we did
we realized how interesting the room looked in the art we made.
Q: what did you feel about the room?
Camila Godoy.
The effort it took to put the strings up upon
the ceiling to me felt like the effort it takes to take care of our hair.
The strings represented our hair.
Also the effort and strength it took to put the
strings up felt how heavy our hair feels to us.
Q: what did the strings represented to you?
Caroline Santos.
Imperfect Destruction
Greek tragedy above all checked the
destruction of myth; people had to destroy them in order to be able to live
detached from their home soil, unrestrained in a wilderness of thought, custom,
and action.[15]
This social sculpture was made in the first encounter between the three
students and myself. I first explained to them the idea of social sculpture and
social engaged art. I told them that we were going to make a series of social
sculpture experiences. I also explained that all this work was going to be part
of my research based practice and I made them signed a simple consent form. Later
I asked them to walk around my studio, to look at everything and to pick
anything they liked, or they don’t like. They were walking very insecure not
knowing what to do. I proposed them to destroy one of my sculptures, I told
them that I needed more space and that anyways I was thinking to take it out. I
was also interested in the idea of braking one of my “traditional” sculptures
as a symbol of my own practice transformation tors my present interest in
social sculpture. They liked the idea, we prepared a table with tools. We
picked a point of view for the camera, I explained how the camera was there for
a documentation purpose.
It was a profound moment for me and full of symbolisms, I left the
studio while listening to the noise of destruction, the hits. I knew there was
no return, I didn’t want to go back. It was affecting my body roughly. I knew I
needed to do it and I would never have done it by myself, I wouldn’t be able.
This destruction for me was a beginning and an end.
Angry vibe.
I loved when we all tried to put it back
together because I felt loving that day instead of anger.
I love the creepy music in the background.
Q: Why did you let us destroy the sculpture you built?
Eileen Karakurt
Watching the video makes me realize how long it
took to destruct the sculpture.
While making the video, as in breaking the
sculpture I felt myself be free because I usually don’t break things using
tools. It felt different.
After watching the video I notice how it was
taking so much effort to break something…as if breaking something requires
dreadful effort rather than building something new.
Q: how did we look when we were destroying the
sculpture?
Camila Godoy
This video makes me sad because we destroyed a
imperfect sculpture. It showed me that it makes as much time to destroy
something as it does to build something.
The music goes very well with the video but it gives me a sad and haunting vibe
because it shows me how dangerous these objects we were using are and how
incorrectly we were using them.
Q: what made you decided to change the colour of
the video and put that music as the background?
Caroline Santos.
[1]
“Social sculpture is a
definition developed by the artist Joseph Beuys in the 1970s on the concept
that everything is art, that every aspect of life could be approached
creatively and, as a result, everyone has the potential to be an artist. Social
sculpture united Joseph Beuys’ idealistic ideas of a utopian society together
with his aesthetic practice. He believed that life is a social sculpture that
everyone helps to shape.” Tate glossary of art terms, tate.org.uk
[2]
Schroeder, W.
Continental Philosophy – A Critical Approach, Wiley Blackwell, London,
2004, pg.118
[3]
Artificial
hells, Bishop,
C., Verso 2012, pg. 245
[4]
Plato’s ideas
(expressed through Socrates) on the degradation of representations is explained
in book X of the Republic with the example of the three beds: the “real
bed” (the divine natural space for sleep), the first copy made by the
carpenter, and the other copy made by the painter. Plato argues that each one
moves further away from the original one and degrades the fundament and
identity of the true thing
[5]
The Eternal Return: Genesis and Interpretation, Paolo D’Iorio. Lexicon
Philosophicum, International Journal for the History of Texts and Ideas http://lexicon.cnr.it/index.php/LP/article/view/414/338,
pg. 5
[6]
The Eternal Return: Genesis and Interpretation, Paolo D’Iorio. Lexicon
Philosophicum, International Journal for the History of Texts and Ideas http://lexicon.cnr.it/index.php/LP/article/view/414/338,
pg. 4
[7]
The Death
of the Author, Roland Barthes Source: UbuWeb | UbuWeb Papers. Pg 4
[8] Umberto Eco, The Open Work, Translated by Anna Cancogni, Harvard University Press,
Cambridge, Massachusetts. Pg. 2
[9] Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Prelude to a Philosophy of
the Future, Edited by
Rolf-Peter Horstmann Humboldt-Universitat, Berlin, translated by Judith Norman, Cambridge texts in the
history of philosophy, Cambridge University press 2002. Aphorism 292, pg. 174
[10] Friedrich Nietzsche The Birth of
Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music, Translated by Ian Johnston Vancouver Island University
Nanaimo, British Columbia Canada, pg.19
[11] Friedrich Nietzsche The Birth of
Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music, Translated by Ian Johnston Vancouver Island University
Nanaimo, British Columbia Canada, pg. 11
[12] Friedrich Nietzsche The Birth of Tragedy
Out of the Spirit of Music, Translated by Ian Johnston Vancouver Island University Nanaimo, British
Columbia Canada, pg. 83
[13] Friedrich Nietzsche The Birth of
Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music, Translated by Ian Johnston Vancouver Island University
Nanaimo, British Columbia Canada, pg. 16
[14] Friedrich Nietzsche The Birth of
Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music, Translated by Ian Johnston Vancouver Island University
Nanaimo, British Columbia Canada, pg. 16
[15] Friedrich Nietzsche The Birth of
Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music, Translated by Ian Johnston Vancouver Island University
Nanaimo, British Columbia Canada, pg. 80