Beeld & Concept / conclusion

This subject was the most important factor for me to get closer to a personal point. I think when you do art, it's important what kind of art you want to do. Do you want to produce pictures to sell and live from them, or do you want to see it as a way of phylosophic manifestation? It took me a while to let my stuck, old images go what art (and life) has to be. During the first and the beginning of the second period I analysed a lot, and finally came to the conclusion that every clear picture of an artistic future is not much more than a comparison with the past, with things you already know, good and bad ones, and you build your whole working process around that „knowledge“. You think you know yourself, but everything you know is yourself in situations you already know. Maybe it's human that many of us (me included) are scared to find out something really new, unknown, something you don't have any idea how to deal with it or which seems just „senseless“. But if you want to come out of that big illusion you have to start to see the very actual things and react to them. If you don't see the need to follow fixed rules given by society or whatever, but create your own imagine of the world and the things around you, you have to uncover the things people normally try to avoid: fears, emptyness, chaos, and so on. This is very irritating, for people and for yourself. But you learn a lot from it. You learn to create your view on the things new in every moment. Finally, there are a lot of things in this life. Things you see, and things you don't see. Also imagination, feelings, crazyness, are something that IS HERE, even if people don't want it and build their world around that illusion. But there's no fixed rule to tell you how the things HAVE to be seen, so if you don't want other people to know better what's good for you, you have to find out yourself how to see the things and deal with them, and why. Also, nothing stays. Everything is temporary and therefore insecure. So you have to find a personal way how to manage all this everytime for new. Only a few things stay, practically seen. These things are concepts. The concept of speech, for example. Therefore, communication is a big word for all that i've written above. You have to communicate with the world to make your personal view. Communications with art, in your way. If you communicate in a language the world already knows, you will get answers you already know. You have to find out a very personal way to communicate, something the world doesn't know yet, something new, something irritating. Then you will discover all the things everybody normally tries to hide. There is absolutely no prooof that the world is right, so you don't have another option than to make your own truth. At least if you want to be your own master, and not a slave of others. All this is very difficult to get into senseful words, and maybe I completely failed :) But anyway, I'm on a way now, and I think this way is right, leads me to somewhere. I'm getting closer to something. I'll see what happens.

Serieel Beeld

The main difference in Serieel Beeld, compared to the first period, was – at least in my case – that this time I chose myself what I wanted to show, and not so much the teacher. I needed this in the first period, I learned a lot about what you can see over my personality in the photos I had taken, I was surprised about the interpretation of my teacher. With that knowledge about myself I started the second period, when we got 2 different cards at the beginning. The first one I got was a transit visa for a one way journey through the DDR, the second one had a picture on it that showed a baseball player in the New York Yankee Stadium, standing alone in the middle of the field. We should describe the motives and think about a story behind each card, then we should invent a connection between them and get a story or the essence out of them we finally had to work with and make three movies out of it, or better sketches of movies, between 1 and 2 minutes long. I decided not to tell a story, which would have been a bit boring for me just to re-tell something. I was interested in the connection between these two cards I got. What I was thinking about was this moment or temporary state you feel confronted with while you are alone and have to “fulfill” something, or something is gonna happen, and the end of this situation is not previsible for you. I’m talking about feelings like fear, stress, insecurity, panic. I tried to focus on these things in order to point them out without relating it to much with the cards I got at the beginning, I wanted to make something common out of it. My aim was especially to create these feelings inside the viewer while watching the movie, he/she should be able to re-feel. The result were three short bit surrealistic movies, the first was the base for the second one and both are more like art movies, the third is not totally different but I tried to get a bit more in another direction. There’s now not much more to say.

The most interesting point for me in this period was the way I dealt with the original material I got. I see something very personal in it, that I focused on the (negative) feeling and tried to point them out. I tried to show something people normally “oversee”, so it was sort of confrontating what I made, also for myself and the reactions of the people who see the movies. I think it is a bit myself what you can see in these movies. I have these feelings very easily when I have to pass such a moment, and I already did a lot of times. So it was also a way to show a side of myself I normally try to hide because I don’t know how people react. People normally expect a life-secure and self-confident person when they meet you, who knows where it’s going to and what life is about. I tried to point out the weak point everybody has and not to hide it. It was interesting for me than to see how people reacted and to hear the comments. This is good feedback for me, it fits into something general I start to see and you can read in the Beeld & Concept part or in the conclusion part.

3D Beeld Onderzoek

The second period in 3d was quite different than the first one. Whereas the “big thing” was to break your old opinions about art and to work more “interesting, but not nice or ‘right’”, this time we had a real theme we had to work with during the whole period. This theme was “ontmoeting – meeting”. The first lesson consisted of a search for a definition; we had to discuss this in small groups. After a range of examples what a meeting could be, named by the other people in my group, I noticed that, seen in a general way, it was always the same we were talking about. Finally, EVERYTHING can be a meeting, life itself is one, between yourself and everything else. But as soon as you want to make a little difference you have to be a bit more exact. So I had the following theory: Two or more things or persons need to have some sort of communication or interaction in order to have a connection to each other which would isolate them from all the rest of the existing world. This would mean that you pay a special attention to something while you have a meeting with it, otherwise it would not be a meeting. Language itself is just a way to make definitions, without language “everything could be everything”. We all are confronted with a lot of things or persons every second in our life. But we are not able to pay the same amount of attention to everyone and everything at the same time. In every moment of our life we have something we pay special attention to, might be a person we talk to or a lamp we are looking at. Of course we also realize the context or surrounding, but we are not really aware of it, or we don’t give a special meaning to it. We always have just one thing we really focus on – at least in a BEWUSST way – and this is what I mean with the communication – which can also be just a visual one or whatever – in order to get a special connection that leads to a (mental) isolation to all the rest. This means of course that a meeting – in the way I see it – is a very temporary thing. It changes every moment at least a bit and is nothing else than a permanent process, like life itself.

The try to make this visible was what you can see in the photo under this part of the text. I took a normal room – could have been everyone – and changed the color of several elements I found in it in order to isolate them optically from the rest and get a special connection just between these elements. This was a try to create a meeting in a very abstract way, but it’s also a meeting between the viewer and the work. I chose to work with red, because it’s a signal color and asks for attention. While moving in the room, your view and position of course always changes, so you have a new meeting every moment. I even included a “moving point” to show the different levels of what a meeting in a temporary context can be. During this process I got the personal direction I wanted to take. For me it’s not enough to visualize the theme (when you read the text above you can see how complex it finally is), I also wanted to create a meeting between people and my work. Interaction is a good word for that. I wanted to see how people would react to it and also learn for myself from these reactions, which is finally even a meeting between my work, the people, their reactions and myself. This sounds of course very complex if you try to put it in words. It’s more a feeling I have which is better to understand if you just look at the pictures.

I don’t know what to write more. This is the main direction I’m going to right now. I made something out of the theme we got which would also be for myself in order to learn – meeting in the sense of interaction. This is very new for me and very interesting, because I think I can learn a lot of it. About the human behavior when you see yourself confrontated with something you don’t know. I guess I haven’t chosen this direction for nothing. I think a lot about connection between the things, which was e.g. also my big thing in 2D. For now I let pictures talk in this sector, maybe it’s good to read the part of Beeld & Concept, I will also write sort of common conclusion and publish it here on the page.

2D Beeld Onderzoek

The second period brought some important changes for me compared to the first period. The whole period was more focused on expressing the own personal view, whereas the first period was more focused on technical work. The beginning started with for me a bit strange experiments. We had to draw our room with coal on paper and make some variations of it – with closed eyes. The aim was to try to delete the rational control while drawing. Not the exact visualization of our room how it looked like in reality was important, but the try to make something more and more abstract out of it. This was important then for the next step. We had to draw a scene out of our memory we would recognize from our way to school and which would be special for us because we would pay attention to it every time. In several steps we should try to focus on the most important things like e.g. “tunnel view” or whatever and make the scene more and more abstract. We should try to get more aware how we look on the things, what would be important for us. I noticed that the way I recognized the chosen scene is a more or less general one, and that I have the same look a lot of times when I walk through the world. All this was just a preparation for the main thing in the second period. The following lesson consisted of a discussion over parts of the human body, finally we had to choose one part which would be special for us and we wanted to work with. My choice were the veins. I wanted to choose the heart first, this was my first intention during the discussion we had and my main point was the importance of feelings in life. But I noticed very soon that this choice was based on the very strong symbolic character the heart has got in society and that especially because of this my choice was very society based, so I changed and decided to choose the veins, because every part of the human body (and every part of life itself) is finally important to make the whole thing function, so I don’t have a special relation to one single part. The thing that interests me more is the connection between all these things, and the permanent movement and change of life and therefore also of our own body. In a certain way nothing is permanent, everything is a constant movement or process, nothing stays the same, it’s changing every second. I ask myself from time to time if all this follows a system or if we are confrontated with some sort of chaos we will never understand. So the essence of all that is how the things are connected, that’s why I chose the veinss. It was right for me to choose them, but I noticed very soon that I came to a border, I was running directly towards a wall. Again the big aim was to start with a visualization and then get more and more abstract, always trying to think “one level higher”. Like this: veins -> connection -> change / process -> movement -> chaos -> energy. The big problem I had was that I noticed that I was working with a very “big thing in life”, a big thought, which is not easy to deal with, especially if the aim is to visualize it. We also had to look for pictures in the web or whatever we wanted, also associations, and I realized that I paid special attention to the colors the pictures had. I interpreted this as a connection between the chaos-energy-thing I was thinking about and the “energetic” effect colors have to the human eye. At that moment something came to me. Two years ago I already dealt with the theme “life/human body/connection between the things” and made some sort of blacklight installation out of it. So I thought like “ok, I already did that, that’s nothing new for me”. But somehow I was not satisfied and I realized how complex it was to work with light. I was looking for a new and even more abstract way to visualize my thoughts which would make the whole thing a bit more touchable. This was really difficult for me because I already worked with that theme in a certain way and it’s never easy to think in completely new methods. Finally tried something I normally never do and did the complete opposite of what I thought I would “have to do because I already did it in that way and it was good”. I reduced my colors to black, white and transparent to avoid a symbolic effect of colors. And I changed my forms or motives or whatever it can be called; I stopped painting chaos and used just simple forms, mostly circles, because it’s the least chaotic form I can think about. The result was a completely new way I am now still standing on. I have the feeling to deal with the same theme than before, but a big range of new possibilities opened to me. Right now I don’t know exactly which direction this will take, but I feel like producing now and want to let me guide by this change and see what happens.

As a conclusion I want to say that I had several interesting points during the second period. One thing is that I’m now more aware of my way to look at things. I don’t know where it comes from, I have several interpretations, but it’s good to know how you see the world. Furthermore I realized that I see or better think about life in a very general way. What I mean is that I don’t have a special relation to a small part of it (at least not now, I guess these things can change). I try to make a very common theory about the things and then I try to make something personal out of it. I also realized that this is a very big step and not easy to do. Different than most other activities, rational thinking does not play the main role in Beeldende Kunst. The more important thing is to pay attention to the things in life people normally don’t see or don’t want to see. Let’s say, it’s like that if you want to see it like that ;-). I think I’m on a good way now, even if it’s not easy. But I’d like to express it like that: it’s not easy to des-rationalize rational thinking in a rational way.