Artist Statement
There are three aspects to my present work. First, I co-opt the the common cultural language and practices of business and marketing for art, which is a neo-tantric endeavor. Second is the set of tools I use to accomplish this: I define art as an interface technology of the imagination and so I try to direct awareness to internal technology by redefining the use of external technology (usually media technology, but anything which is used in distributed cognition by the extended mind is something which I consider technology). Third and finally is the space where I hope to move my viewer, I strive to transform conversations about the consumer capitalism economic dimension into conversations about and experiences of the mystical dimension.
// Pseudoproducts, Quasicompanies: Co-opting marketing language, business practices
In the global culture it is not English that is the universal language, but marketing. Economics bind people into a single group more than their shared humanity. I am working under the umbrella of brands which I have developed: Avant-Garde Archaics, a pseudo company specializing in salutary substances and practices from indigenous, traditional, and prehistoric cultures; and itoti which presents electronics consumers a way to plug into the hidden aspects of mind. The trappings of real business are being developed for the companies.
This body of work also places the commercialization of art directly before the viewer. It seeks to unmask the art object as commodity, to reveal what much of contemporary art has become: another consumer commodity, not something separate from or above consumer culture. While many art objects are consumer products in disguise, these are art objects in a consumer product disguise.
These works strive for transformation. Discussing Tantra is relevant here. Tantra "is a body of beliefs and practices" which "seeks to ritually appropriate and channel that [divine] energy, within the human microcosm, in creative and emancipatory ways" (David Gordon White). For tantrics "the very poison that kills becomes the elixir of life when used by the wise" (Swami Nikhilananda). In this sense, I consider this work to be neo-tantric.
Through the creation and development of companies which operate according to different laws and which sell products which lead one to a different set of experiences, I hope to use the existing marketing language and ready acceptance of the economic dimension as a way to suggest another experience, another dimension. As part of this process I co-opt the linguistic and visual style of business and marketing, but alter the message to turn the conversation to experience rather than consumption, arrive at the mystical through a portal placed in the economic. Marketing is used to persuade people to give their energy to a certain activity. It can be used to make the unfamiliar acceptable and appealing, whether for the purpose of economic gain or expanded awareness.
// Art as an interface technology of the imagination
I am also working to continue the development of art as an interface technology of the imagination, an idea which posits that art is a physical tool which is used to perform actions on consciousness which in turn affects the experience of physical reality. From an archaic perspective it is a type of mind magic, but today a more ready metaphor may be that of a specialized operating system running certain pieces of software, certain tools. My investigation is focused on the way in which art is part of a suite of tools for managing internal and external forces: awareness, knowledge, unity, and power.
This investigation arises out of a belief in the multidimensional nature of reality, observations of our perception of presence (our own and other phenomenon), and experiments in methods of transformation. Roy Ascott states, "The many realities we inhabit: material, virtual, and spiritual, for example, are accompanied by our sense of being present simultaneously in many worlds: physical presence in ecospace, apparitional presence in spiritual space, telepresence in cyberspace, and vibrational presence in nanospace.”
I am interested in the possibility of actions in one dimension managing, influencing, and transforming aspects of another dimension. I think of transformation as a shamanic idea. Joseph Beuys states “The shaman brings about change and development. ... the idea of transformation and substance... could be described at the deepest root of the idea of spiritual life as the transformation of life, nature, and history through concrete processes.” I explore ways in which technology and media are used by human consciousness to interface with different dimensions. My definition of technology and media encompasses not only contemporary telecommunications and electronics, but also the traditional (e.g. painting), and archaic technologies from various traditions that act directly upon the body (e.g. sound).
// Images of other dimensions
In early works, and often today when I work two-dimensionally, I generally sought/seek to create images evocative of imaginal dimensions through the use of symbolic images, patterns, and colors. These are not images from the past, but a bridge to the imaginal which I construct for myself in the that present moment of creation -- a bridge which persists once constructed.