Sunday, January 27, 2008

portal of play

I think it had something to do with this DVD we just got in the mail. Chaos and Creation, a collab between grandpa and Dali. A humorous commentary on "modern art," riffing on Mondrian and how his paintings Dali thought looked like a pigsty. So they had a Mondrian painting built and filled it with pigs, popcorn, a motorcycle, a girl in a bikini, and chocolate spray. Then they covered the structure with a large fabric and had assistants use brooms to transfer the chocolate stains from the pigs, motorcycle, girl, and Mondrian structure onto the fabric. Then someone from the Guggenheim called to acquire it. Dali felt modern art like Mondrians could just be created by "cybernetic" aka computers in the future. I guess I was drawn to the performance art, and chance based style of the whole video (first art piece shot on video I believe).

I have done a lot of chance-based projects in the public sphere (Climb Project, Free Portrait Day, Instant Drawing Machine, etc), and decided to do something in private. My book essay is due soon, and I wanted the spirits to help me. I wanted to open myself up to the operating system of the universe: chance. After all, life is completely un-predictable, so I created a space to honor the unmediated act of creation, and invite my art angels and guides to act through my ceremony. I had my deck of tarot-esque cards that I had been doing readings with in Miami, and started there. It was a really intuitive process. I realized over analysis and rational thinking would ruin what I was interested in exploring. The end result was a drawing I made as a study of what is seen in the final photo, which revealed to me an image that I am meditating on the meaning of. It deals with time, and the eye, and strangely enough I did a self-portrait the night before where I turned my eyes into clocks. No doubt my essay deals greatly with time too, so its no surprise it keeps appearing as a symbol. The circle of the eye, the circle of time...