Thursday Post 2-5-09

Disguising Reality

Control is merely a way of fabricating and disguising reality. And by manipulating reality in this way we create an ideal relationship stemming mainly from our own selfish vain imaginings. Literature gives us many examples of these sorts of ideals while at the same time showing us how reality eventually prevails these conceptions.

Hansel, Joelle. Levinas in Jerusalem: Phenomenology, Ethics, Politics, and Aesthetics. New York: Springer, 2008.

"The 'magic of art' to which Levinas refers is the 'shadow' which is drawn over reality by art. Thus, the shadow is the ontological danger of art: by replacing the reality with an image, the work of art does not limit itself to hiding or disguising reality, but rather it modifies it in such a radical manner that a dimension of irreality within the reality is opened."

I've been making a series of images which are aesthetically pleasing to me, but yet seemingly unrelated in concept outside of their abstracted qualities. As I brainstormed possible directions to take my work in, I got down to two possibilities. One was to imitate abstract painting movements with my photographs, but I didn't want to have an entire series of artworks based on imitation. The other was to disguise reality. From this piece that I read, I feel I want to possibly open it up even further than that, and reach the "irreality" within reality. Basically, what I plan to do is to take my disguised reality further, instead of my photographs merely resembling something that they are not; a cliff, a starscape, a river; I will interject figures or drawings in some way that enhance that illusion, and reject further the original reality.




Look for the people.