This is a kind of diary document that I update (ir)regularly. I put the newest input on top but sometimes not. Format may change. Please consider this as personalised notes from a singular, albeit chaotic perspective - I am still (un)learning
🪰🪰🪰
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I added some of my paintings to deep dream generator and the result was strangely satisfying
I’ve been scattered all over the internet since 2005
I realise that I have a tendency to leave traces of myself across the internet. I am making alteregos, parts of myselves, part of various communities, appearing, participating, leaving, forgetting, reappearing, feeling too intimidated to reappear or not able to reappear for other reasons. Sometimes I'm a writer, sometimes a fashion designer, sometimes a gamer and a modder, a GIF-maker, an academic, a youtuber, a food critic. The chaotic hotmail that receives 20+ spam mails on a daily basis, and which I have since 2005, says a lot about my endless online endeavours, it being firsthand witness to countless signups. In an email from 2006, I told an online friend that the reason I was not replying to her on MSN was because I had discovered the huge modding community of Sims 2 and was thus too busy playing Sims with all the custom content I had downloaded (btw, if you remember the website URL that offered scandalous NSFW Sims 2 clothing, with 50 Cent’s Candy Shop chiming from your computer speakers whenever you entered, let me know. I’m in dire need to revisit, if just on wayback machine). Anyways, this email response is the most me-thing I have ever told anyone and, honestly, illustrates my most consistent personality trait. It’s thrilling but nervewrecking to think whether some can connect the links and expose all my trueish personalities. WHY is that? Am I still a bit ashamed of my (past) online personalities, a fear tracing back to when being exposed as a “computer nerd” was the most embarrassing thing I could think of? Should it be a therapeutic project? Gathering all the me’s from the past 19 years, at least the remaining traces of them, letting them meet each other.. Even letting them meet others…
Here’s a trace from when I was a passionate “pixel doll” designer, ca. 2005. The product of a 10-year old me, possibly channelling a desirable, fashionable teenage version of myself - should I give the look a go or not? Feelings about the bright red socks in blue low ankle converse, anyone?
In Seen and Not Seen, a song by Talking Heads, David Byrne sings of a man who moulds his face in accordance with what he sees in movies, on TV, in magazines and in books. It is not an ability of him alone but of most other people, he believes. They get the faces they dream of, albeit sometimes they end up regretting their choice of face. Jenny Hval dreams in her song Classic Objects of having a face made of marble, fusing life and death together, and becoming a death mask - a bit like Eileen, the self-pitiful character of Ottessa Mosfeigh’s novel with the same name. In Amalie Smith’s novel Marble, the main character Maggi has a face of marble but which is covered in colourful pigment, once again exposing the mask quality of the face. Right now, I am looking at the sculptural pieces in the artist Katja Novitskova’s work Microbial Oasis. She has trained a StyleGAN2 algorithm on a dataset of 12000 images from the Protein Data Bank, depicting bacteria of the human body. Somehow, without asking it to do so, this algorithm found faces in-between these 12000 images. Novitskova mused over this curious find and made biodigital portraits. I am reminded of The Garden’s song Everything Has a Face. The milk, the lamp, the desk, and the chair have faces, and they control everything, they sing. The Garden encourages us to “PUT YOUR HANDS UP IF YOU’VE ONLY GOT A FACE”.
2024 is the year I’m gonna go to concerts again, I decided. My goal is to go to at least 1 festival in the Netherlands. I also wanna go to more real concert venues. I bought tickets for Fever Ray, still contemplating whether I should buy tickets for Underworld in Brussels or in Berlin (all their concerts are sold out in Amsterdam) but their tickets are expensive. In June I wanna reunite with The Garden whom I haven’t seen live since 2015 or 2016 - I think they have changed direction but I saw an old Dazed portrait of them recently (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsWcQDuRTDU&ab_channel=Dazed) and fell back in love. I started following all the musicians I am interested in on sp*tify because then I can easily keep track of when some of them will perform live nearby.
new day, new mood, new wants, too many wants in fact… anticipating a couple of things I wanna apply to, wanting to make a new website, wanting to take good photos (but for that I need a better camera), writing my research proposal so I can send it to prospective thesis advisors and so and so. (prioritisation is a keyword)
yesterday, I talked with my classmates about becoming baby
baby as a vessel, a practice of being. it is a pre-phenomenological state in which everything is still possible. baby language, baby muscles, the body is literally modifiable, as is the concept of what things can do. is the baby the ultimate Deleuzian state of being??
hey ok
thought of making an update about my lack of desire to make updates
i dont have a lot of desire to read for class and to behave like a good student
i dont feel motivated to read what other people suggests me to read
im going to my first thesis preparation seminar on wednesday and i dont have the desire to prepare. i dont have the desire to make a plan for my thesis, to start reading relevant literature and to make a proposal
i wanna do a residency and i know who i want for thesis advisor but i dont have the motivation to prepare a pitch
im also not so motivated to paint although i am in the studio right now forcing myself
i lack inspiration, optimism, self confidence, motivation, goals
i lack in general these days
my only desire these days is to write cheesy fiction novels, about being a teenager and being in love. unrequited love stories but where there still is some hope in the end, maybe. i wanna write from other peoples perspectives with a sprinkle of me, to make scenarios slightly realistic of course.
i have been writing a novel in a document since last november, its now around 71 pages. the title of the document is sir duke because the song reminds me of my high school time but has nothing to do with that song
im going a bit dead in the novel, and i am starting to cringe about what i wrote. the main character is perhaps too far away from myself so it doesnt feel like me anymore. now i wanna start a new novel that is maybe more close to my own story, of course its gonna have fictional exciting twists to make the story more exciting and the main characters will be fictional. im hesitating between first person and third person format. i think first person is cringier but the easiest and most natural for me. i also wanna write in present time because i wrote in past time for my last novel and i dont like it anymore. it makes everything seem fake, as if the main character went into the story himself and edited out parts he didnt like and glamourised the parts he liked. i am not used to present time writing but i practised a bit recently by making some anecdotes about my art school times in present time and it was nice. now im also not sure whether to write in danish or in english. i use english way more in my evyerday language but i dont feel like i know enough words, especially when it comes to the delicate differences of all the adjectives i can choose between - there are way more in english than in danish. but im also out of practice with danish, and since i dont speak so much danish on a daily basis, i am struggling to make realistic conversations between characters.
about time i put some in poooooOOoooooOOOoooooooOOOOOO i collected this summer!
books i am currently reading
Jacob Skyggebjerg Inderkredsen
Camila Sosa Villada De Forkerte
Octavia Butler Parable of the Sower
Hanna Bervoets Een modern verhaling
books i wanna read
Toni Morrison Recitatif
Sally Bayley Girl With Dove, No Boys Play Here, The Green Lady
Irvine Welsh Trainspotting
Maggie Nelson The Argonauts
Douglas Stuart Young Mungo
Rachel Cusk Aftermath
Claudia Pineiro A Little Luck (didn’t find danish translation)
My name is red
danish author and/or danish translation
Delphine De Vigan Alt må vige for natten
Tove Ditlevsen Ansigterne
Tove Ditlevsen VIlhelms værelse
Gabriel Garcia Marquez 100 års Ensomhed
Mariana Enriquez Farerne ved at ryge i sengen
Thomas Korsgaard En dag vil vi grine af det
Knut Hamsun Pan (old Norwegian which is close to danish, read it before but wanna re-read)
Mathilde Moestrup Elektras breve
non fiction
Helen Hester and Nick Srnicek After Work
Isabelle Graw On the Benefits of Friendship
Chris Kraus Social Practices
Chris Kraus Where Art Belongs
how to feel good about not making new art
an unfinished recipe
> delete social media and never return
> read essays about the absurdity of work
> for instance, start with Bertrand Russels’ In praise of Idleness
> then think critically about the concept of ‘productivity’
> convert laziness to chilness, embrace your idleness!
🥺Sad-dog-compilation:
another diary-like entry,
These days, it is very rainy. Not the weather I had expected for my first summer in the Netherlands since I moved here. So I have taken to reading. I bought two books a few weeks ago, and I have five more on the way from Denmark since I was craving books in the Danish language - ironically, none of the books I ordered are from Danish writers. There is one American, one Argentinian, one Arabic, one Norwegian, and one Swedish. These days, I am reading two feminist novels revolved around the topic of unrequited love - one which I dedicate time to reading while in my studio (I love Dick by Chris Kraus) and one for my home (Villette by Charlotte Brontë). I am currently neglecting my studio because I am anxious of facing a painting that turned out way differently than expected so - naturally - I am not yet as far into ILD as I am with Villette. Therefore, I also might be biased when saying that I currently prefer Villette (also because I am a sucker for 19th century dark English realism with a slight supernatural twist). STILL, I dare to say that I am discovering striking resemblances! The two protagonists, Lucy Snowe and Chris, have both realised the devastating truth that they, indeed, aren’t the main protagonists in life. They are, perhaps, the talking trees in the background? Second Place by Rachel Cusk has a similar narrative, where the protagonist discovers, in the cruelest way possible, that she is the witch of the story. I will never forget that scene, I need to re-read the book again soon.
Happiness is not a potato, to be planted in mould, and tilled with manure!
Lucy Snowe is my new hero. (although she would probably object against being called so)
(not-so-on-topic diary entry from a nostalgic trip I recently had)
I woke up at 6am in the morning after having a feverish dream in which I was my young teenage self - a time during which most of my time was spent online before it became cool/normalized. As I started thinking so intensely back at this time and I therefore couldn’t fall asleep again, I decided I wanted to write something down about it. During this time, which I would say was when I was 12-15 years old, I was very engaged with a online community platform called gosupermodel where you could create a supermodel character and build up a life surrounding this character - it was a quite complex space with games, competitions, forums, the ability to befriend and make groups with other members, and - my favorite - the designer, which was meant for members to create custom outfits for their character. However, being this complete misfit inside this hyper feminine, pink, supermodel universe (I do think the website attracted a lot of “outsiders” though), I absolutely appropriated this designer tool to the fullest. To give some context, I was in my angsty, misunderstood teen-period which reflected my profile on the platform quite accurately. Always having a song lyric from Joy Division or Radiohead quoted as well as a list of the bands I was listening to on my profile page. I would use the diary tool to write and publish lengthy, emotional, unrequited love stories with characters based on people from my favorite bands (their names too of course). I found friends on the platform who shared similar music interests (emo, scene kids, alternative ppl etc) - some of whom I am still on facebook with today which is quite funny. We built up our own subcommunity on this platform, embracing our alternativity to the fullest. Retrospectively, I find it hilarious that I met so many like minded people on the, possibly, most girly, pop-culture inspired place for kids on the internet. In my final years on the platform, however, these friends were starting to abandon the platform and I also grew increasingly more abnormal with my music and literature choices - at least in comparison to other 14 year old kids. At some point, I also left the platform and I returned to it later with a new character who I named after the one and only femme fatale character of The Idiot by Fjodor Dostojevskij which I read while being sick during an entire trip to Rome. So my character, Fillippovna, was my new mysterious persona on the platform, and I went all in with creating designs that had nothing to do with fashion but everything to do with establishing my own very niche position on the platform. I found a youtube video with a slideshow of various members’ designs. Alongside colorful, cute fashion design, you will see some black and white portraits of Fjodor Dostojevskij and Franz Kafka. Indeed, they are mine. (go to 1:31 and 1:45) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVTbudGAcQY&ab_channel=LikeShyaOo
- I guess you can say I tried pretty hard to single myself out on this platform…
Anyways, I enjoy thinking back on this period. I forgot about it for a while. While I was on it, I made a great effort to not let anyone know about my existence there as I thought it was embarrassing. Yet, now I am thinking back on it, envying my young self being part of this immersive platform - I had friends and even fans despite making great efforts to stand out with my English bands and Russian literature. My weirdo persona was definitely accepted. I wrote about forum nostalgia in this document some time ago (you can find it by scrolling down) and this memory just affirms my longing even more.
It's hard life, it's an easy life https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ttaQy67kfI&ab_channel=BecauseMusic
recently rediscovered this song from Fantasy black channel, an underrated masterpiece album from 2008. It was such a blessing to listen to the album in its entirety. Unfortunately spotify did it wrong and cuts in between every song so it's better to listen to on youtube :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcemTGZEsnU&ab_channel=%24haggs
A soundpiece : when the abstract machine of faciality resides in blackness
(contact me for the textpiece)
Around a decade ago, during a routine inspection of my moles, my doctor advised me to have a mole on my face removed. It was rather small and, therefore, not the mole I had expected to be threatening my health. I was nonetheless pleased with the advice as this particular mole had the, in my opinion, unfortunate side effect of hair growth. The doctor put my face in anesthesia and burnt away the mole. In what seemed like an instance, my face was less hilly. Some days later, a little plantage of hairs had started growing on the spot the mole once were.
Recently, I connected this event to thinking about the surface of my face anew. In my artistic practice, I repeatedly return to my own face for inspiration. With the risk of sounding self absorbed, I admit that I simply never get tired of this source of inspiration. I do not associate this never-ending fascination with Western beauty standards but rather the opposite. I look for abnormalities and triggering surprises which I extract onto an arbitrary canvas. I play with different levels of portrayal, sometimes dismissing my recognizable facial attributes entirely. Yet, these extractions are repeatedly associated with the physical or psychological likeness of someone. While these facial associations can be great fun, I aim for responses that are less focused on the representation of individual faces.
I have realized it is not easy.
dEsIiIiIrEeE i wanna turn into YoOoOoUuU
___Geert Lovink, Extinction Internet___
Elevate entropy, flip the memes, make the screens dance and swipe the night away. At the break of dawn humankind will be preoccupied with more urgent matters. Some renegades will remember the ‘short summer of the internet’, that was followed by a long reign of the Titans—until a rupture covered the network cultures with a thick layer of semiotic ash, suffocating the remaining dialogues and exchanges.
😱
In a new podcast episode from the white pube, which I recommend to everyone that may come across this text piece that I ramble on, a proposal for a way to reclaim the internet as the artist is finally addressed:
INSTAGRAM HAS RUINED THE ART WORLD. WHAT NOW?
go listen/read:https://thewhitepube.co.uk/podcasts/instagram-has-ruined-art/
Few days later: Refusal to work is the silent resilience to capitalism and its right grip on the art market. So yes, not being busy is a crime for an artist, but only to the ones who can profit from it in the end.
I think I love not being busy. I don't know if that is a crime for an artist
🦦
The face, what a horror. It is naturally a lunar landscape, with its pores, planes, matts, bright colors, whiteness, and holes: there is no need for a close-up to make it inhuman; it is naturally a close-up, and naturally inhuman, a monstrous hood.
Gilles Deleuze and Feliz Guattari, “year zero: faciality” in A Thousand Plateaus
Hello YouTube, you are my longest lived social media relation, and I have made use of you for practically anything imaginable (can you imagine?).
Now I am back to make use of you for good
About a month ago, I started up a channel on YouTube as an experiment in leaping back into the social media world after more than a year’s absence. I deleted my instagram account in July 2021 and I haven’t missed it a single second since! It is incredible how something being such a big part of one’s life is completely out of mind the moment you delete it.
However. I am aware of the important grasp social media has in us artists’ professional careers (🤬😥🤢👹) but as I refuse to go back to an app which disturbed me so much on many levels, I wanted to try out a format that I, personally, have much more empathy for. The format that makes you connect on a different level, makes you able to create stories, create conversations and dialogues - where I don't have to show only the perfect picture but all the moments in between - that's what makes the actual content on YouTube. It highlights the process rather than the finished result. To the elitist, and awfully pretentious artworld, YouTube is seen as kitch and has a mixed reputation - but I really wonder why as YouTube allows for so much more creativity and engagement (especially compared to the icky tiny instagram square argh). My profile has been up for a month now and I am so much in love with the format. I can continue my story there, and I feel encouraged to make art, to write about art, and to explore more than I have in years.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWw6Wk9cTJ9fAPUqd1ncovw
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“Nature”. I am afraid that the word nature comes in the way of nature - just like the word love comes in the way of the practice of love (inspired from the Jenny Hval song, “The practice of love”. This whole “lyric”/prose could be my anthem, honestly)
The word nature is infiltrated with the human-centered view on what nature is, and as long as we keep defining nature, we put it in contrast to its assumed counterpart, culture. In the end, nothing and everything is “nature”. Just as everything is culture, and nature is also technology, which is also culture.
What could be a word for nature?
I want to make the idea absurd, that landscape and portraiture are still so dominantly reinforced into the canon of a painting practice.
YES
Starting to shape my understanding of caring / understanding the importance of caring
During a workday, where I was cleaning the toilets, my employer approached me. He talked about this Norwegian movie in which the director of an art academy is also the cleaning lady, caring for her academy in any sense. The sight of me cleaning the toilets made him think of this movie scene which also reminded him of the origins of the word “curator” that stems from the latin “cura” = to take care.
(btw, I found the movie because The White Pube also talked about it in a podcast. It apparently showed at IFFR two years ago…I didn't watch it yet, but I need to do it when I can. Here is a link about it: https://anehjortguttu.net/filter/works/Manifest-2020)
Since then, the curator as a caretaker has been stuck in my mind. I like the position of a curator as caretaker because it makes the role of the curator more encompassing, caring for the art of course, but also for the artist, for the walls, for the climate, the smell, and the toilets, of course.
I want to start thinking more actively about the act of caring for something/someone versus the act of caring for the representation of something/someone. I think the line between those two is extremely fragile and can so effortlessly lean towards the representation - which is not necessarily bad. I do think, though, that not being aware of this leap, can be problematic. Especially in art, as the representation is, and will always be, inevitable. I need to dwell more on the curator as caretaker.
“I can’t show you the bones in my body, but I can talk to you about them”
What I mean with this sentence is that I, as an artist, curator, researcher, writer, communicator, will not show the physical means of an issue but rather try to communicate them otherwise via my visual and verbal language. I see that as a kind of caring as well.
Some moments of caring from a human perspective:
Forum nostalgia
Just like the majority of other social media users (I assume), I am endlessly perplexed by the benefits versus the harm of social media. Some months ago I deleted my instagram profiles, and I have been considering back and forth whether this act benefited me. Without a social media to commit to I feel a kind of freedom which I find hard to place. I admit that this freedom is not only a good thing as it is strangely tied to a mix of confusion and unproductivity - I have the freedom to not do anything, and not represent myself in any way because I don’t have an online society to live up to and from whom I expect a response. This is why I began my longing for a social media - somewhere to share my thoughts - a bit like I do here because, somehow, public sharing is always kind of motivating.
I acknowledge that social media on the internet has been an important part of my adolescent years of the 00’s and early 10’s and I look back at these days with nostalgia and warmth. My early activity on social media platforms, such as user created forums and topic-specific Tumblr communities, nourished my strong points of interests and, more importantly, guided and encouraged me to use my creativity in ways I would never have used it otherwise. I strongly believe that these earlier examples of social media platforms were a primus motor for my own artistic growth and consistent interest in creating. I also believe, however, that the way I social media 15-10 years ago were driven by entirely different forces. Instead of self representation, I used the platform's ways of sharing for generosity and curiosity. One’s social status was by interacting with, and caring for others, generating genuine loops of feedback.
SoMe is always a presentation of one's self but I think what has shifted for me the past 1-2 years is the shift from representing myself in ways that I felt most excited about whereas I recently have felt that this representation was based more on images that I thought others would like to see me.
In the length of my yearning for the internet’s early social media, back when countless (niche) topic-specific forums popped up and flourished, I want to use the forum as the focal point - a social media platform of the past that could. A forum has all the capacity of a social media platform, but where we have time to undergo the representation of ourselves with caution, and where we have time to dwell on the shared points without being guided by hidden algorithms and appetizing product placements. To bring back a space in which activity is based on curiosity and not visibility could also create a breathing space for fragile persons like me who have come to terms with the fact that living up to the standards of productivity and positivity causes quite damaging stress factors in the head. Forums that stimulate casual self (Representation) care - without the branding of self care included.
Mostly, I just yearn for being part of a community where I can socialize while not necessarily exposing every inch of me - where I can hide behind a funny profile picture while participating to existential dialogues, create funny games, but also ask for advices as well as try to give them - if I feel like I it. I am wondering why forums are not more present in the art world. While instagram proves that art connection flourishes globally more than ever, I just wonder if some artists make online connections with other artists or art interested in a different way. At least, I am looking for them now.
..
Today, I share some of my vulnerabilities and insecurities. I think it is easier to write them down than to speak up about it in person because the chances that anyone has time or any interest in listening to a verbal speech about something other than success stories in the sector of the arts is probably low. I am also not good at speaking verbally about any personal topic affecting my emotions as I tend to start crying, even before I can finish a sentence. This has always been a problem. In my first years of the art academy, this happened at every assessment and evaluation of my practice. It was very problematic because my crying came to be a big blockage for what I had to say. My teachers told me that it would get better eventually. And it did - at least I learned how to do assessments without crying because, as I began to study art history in Leiden University, I acquired a lot of relevant theoretical knowledge which I could apply to my work. In that way, I was able to distance myself from my emotions and my insecurities during assessments by talking about relevant subjects which I elegantly applied to my own work as it was the most obvious thing. And to some extent it did work as I could finish my assessment without any insecurity and I could reply to questions with confidence in my voice. With my final exam, I excelled this confidence and I graduated with good results. However, I feel like this confidence is vague and distant in me now. I am beginning to think (and to fear) that this confidence which I established was only a shield to cover up my enormous insecurity - the insecurity which, in my head, only prevented me from doing great in the school. This shield of confidence, however, is not very deep and it is not natural in me. I see it clearly now after having graduated. I don’t really know how to speak hands on about my own work and artistic practice with people who might be interested. Previously, I had time to prepare these speeches. Now, I stumble and get lost for words, and I leave people confused, probably with a feeling of rejection or, at least, disappointment. Instead of trying to give people a correct indication, I avoid it as a protection towards myself because the confusion in myself leaves me devastated, feeling small and ridiculous.
I fear that I never learned to understand completely why I wanted to be an artist which, naturally gives me a hard time consolidating my own practice. On paper, I am a painter and that is what I have proclaimed visually and verbally throughout my art academy time with a seemingly confident tone - as I leaped into my first year of being a professional, I have worked hard to keep that notion in my head although it gets more and more weak. To be frank, my aspirations for how I can evolve myself as an artist strives towards other directions as I still find it unbelievably hard to speak about what I do as a painter - especially when I do it without my theoretical shield - a shield which I now find ridiculous and forced to use. It is, in a sense, paradoxical as I see myself very much as a communicator in general. Someone who has something to say about everything but my own art. I might be coming to the realisation that my joy for painting and the paint as material might not be enough to keep me going as an artist. I am searching for a way of being an artist where I don't necessarily leave behind traces which will only confuse me and bring me into traps and boxes that define me and I base myself upon, afraid of altering these bases too much. These traces should at least be brought into a context where I feel truly fully confident about them. My traces should also bring me joy and give me hope and confidence, not frustration and tears, whenever I want to connect this past to what I do today and what I want to do. I love my traces as I love my dearest possessions: I don't necessarily want to speak about them.
Jenny Hval - Lions
Look at these trees
Look at this grass
Look at those clouds
Look at them now
And look at them now
Look at them now, look at them now
Take a closer look
Study the raindrops on the leaves
(Study the raindrops on the leaves)
Study the ants on the ground
(I am, all over the place)
Study the ground, the brown, porous topsoil
(I am, out of place)
Its softness, the mushrooms
(I am, elsewhere)
And the strange blue flowers that grow near them
Study this and ask yourself "Where is God?"
Back and forth and round and up
Avoiding the loops of the mind
This place doesn't know
(Look at me)
This place doesn't care
(I feel tender in the elsewhere)
About the holy scriptures or how to pronounce, and live by, the ecclesiastical
(In the dark, a sudden empathy)
This is a no-man's land
(I am, threatening to some)
This is a no-God's land
(Like an empty body)
Look at those trees again
(Must be explained)
Look at the bark
(But not explored)
Look at their height
Are they not darker than the trees you know?
(I am, making room for tenderness)
Are they not smaller?
(TMI, baby, TMI, baby)
Listen to the wind and the rattling leaves
(Making room for lovers)
It's whispering a pagan psalm
Back and forth and round and up
Avoiding the loops of the mind, mind
Back and forth and round and up
Avoiding the loops of the mind, mind
To become the untamed, smooth and muscular
Like lions of the mind, mind
I am, elsewhere
I am, all over the place
Making room for lovers
Museum for deterioration ...
In an art museum of today, there are so many different parameters that have to be considered in order to establish the optimal environment for the artworks that are exhibited. These parameters are created and understood as the canon for a museum to be presentable. But also, they are created to avoid the least deterioration possible so the works have the highest chance of eternally staying true to how they were when they were made as they are meant to represent the cultural heritage of the human species. But I have been thinking that in a future, where focus is just as much on the accountability and relate-ability to all other living and nonliving species, the use and importance of a museum might change with that. Perhaps, this future museum is then also considering other species as their audience and participants. Maybe they have something to benefit from. Maybe our crafted artworks are just as life-assuring as art is for humans. But maybe they are species, who do not necessarily appreciate the preservation of artworks in the same way we do and preservation obtains a new meaning. To some species, the value of an artwork is not their look but maybe the air it creates, the bacteria it develops throughout time. Perhaps, the deterioration of our visually pleasing objects is the core conditions for survival nutrition for another species…
Instead of imagining the future museum with even more high-technological equipment to preserve the works, where the interior is always meant to stimulate the humans most possible, I imagine a museum that lives on by itself and where time is not artificially paused. Perhaps, a museum of the future is a museum that accepts the artworks as organic entities with a natural destiny of decline. Artworks become moist, fluffy, lumpy, smelly, unclear, fragile. Their original purpose changes, like normal living things. Organic and nonorganic entities mix and create symbiosis, bacteria flourishes and photosynthesis reproduces and generates new lives
The question is if we are able to accept the artworks natural fate as an organic mortal entity. In order to make this more acceptable I think that the notion of quality and what is regarded as high quality has to change.
How to be an invisible root in a world dominated by manifesting trees?
For half a year, I have had a studio which was 45 minutes walking from my house. It was a bit long but half of the way was through a forest so I enjoyed those 45 minutes. Walking in general is my moment to reflect and where I gather ideas, sometimes unexpectedly. When I walk the same route, I also start noticing different things, so I started making myself familiar with the trees on my route. I have some favorites, usually the ones whose skin causes abnormalities in its presence. I also started to think of the way we see trees, and how the classical depiction of a tree (a big, dark brown trunk, supported by a harmonic amount of branches, carrying green, lush leaves) is so dominating. I think this tree, despite its undenying beauty, is quite overrated and boring, planted in the same place forever and with a sort of expected outcome - especially considering that it is just the tiny, visible tip of a complex system. The chunk that leads to the ground, connecting the static and linear tree with its roots because it is linked to a system or un-system is more absorbing because it is a part that I cannot comprehend. Underneath, there is a world that is non-linear, nomadic, un-hierarchical and rhizomic. This world underneath is far more appealing to me, but also a world where you cannot manifestate yourself in the same way as the tree can manifest itself in the upper world.
As an artist I find it hard to identify myself more with the invisible roots because I feel the most visible art world is defined by grand manifesting trees.
Painting as food
Painting is a technology designed for human needs. Its pictorial base is stimulating our visual sense. But a painting can maybe just as well be food. We are not even considering this because to ust it is not edible - but, perhaps, to some species it is. As the painting ages it changes - in our view it is a bad thing because it objectively decreases the painting's pictorial value and effectiveness. IN the meantime, however, it might become nutrition for other Earthly cohabitants. I like this, it gives me motivation to make more paintings
I would like to figure out how other species are benefitting from paintings!
There is a common saying that a painting is dead once it is finished. But many processes are still in the making for hundreds of years. It is hard to see but because the changes are slow and minor, mostly invisible for the human eyes (ironically) it is interesting to think of it as a slowly developing micro landscape.
In the end, who benefits most from the process of a “dying” painting? ;)
Also: I like to see and understand everything as a landscape
Some landscapes:
Confession statement
I am an artist who paints, because I find painting the most pleasant material to produce art with. I paint faces, human and human-like textures because these are the topics I respond to, aesthetically, and emotionally, in the most powerful ways.
With an awareness of the fact that I am indebted in my own situated perspective, I use my material body as my sensorial instrument from which I respond and relate to everything that surrounds me. The more I resemble what I look at or touch and the more I find myself triggered by their visual communication the more I am urged to reproduce it through my technology that is art. Frankly, I get most emphatic with other living species if I can find a resemblance to my own species. My anthropomorphic capacity is inescapable. I get goosebumps when I see trees with tumors because their odd shapes make me think of human diseases. The skin of the tree attracts me because their lines are similar to stretch marks and wrinkly human skin.
Some days it saddens me that I make works for human sensors primarily. But the technology I add to this world is a material made as protheses to fulfill human needs and desires. So how can I fulfill my human need and desire to make works that fulfill non-human needs and desires?
I think I am suffering from some sort of “artist guilt” - I want to address topics about inclusivity and relationality but through a medium that only includes and is relatable to the human.
I should start acknowledging that my practice is a technology, and a technology whose purpose serves the desire of humans. But I can use my technology for humans as a means of making humans aware of their multi species co-habitants. ?