Feb 10, 2009
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.
Feb 9, 2009
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.
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.
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.
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.
Nov 11, 2008
Nov 3, 2008
3D Beeld Onderzoek
3D Beeld Onderzoek was the subject I was looking forward to mostly when the rooster started. The most important work I had done before I came to the art academy was a blacklight installation, so I thought this subject would be perfect for me. I was a bit disappointed then when we had our first lesson. The first thing we had to do was to copy 10 pictures of 3D objects we liked and we didn’t like out of books. The homework was then to make collages, simple ones, just with lines and as free as possible.
When our teacher analyzed our homework in the following lesson, he told me that I should not make the things to easy for me. I think the problem was that I thought we should make collages “out of nothing”, so I focused a lot on not thinking to much about what I was doing, so the result was really trashy. For the next lesson I made new collages, this time trying to arrange them a bit more thoughtfully. It was better than what I had done before, but I still was told to work less “nice”.
When we switched to making real 3D objects then, I tried to work therefore really free, spontaneously, without focusing on the aspect. Maybe I was a bit to hard in that this time, because the teacher was really critical and made clear to me that there must be any idea visible, and that everybody could make “trash”, but some of the works I made he liked, so I worked more in that direction. At that time I thought I would understand better what it was about. The objects should not be nice in aspect, but neather just senseless trash. There should be an idea behind the arrangement or the shape giving, but the aim was to make it interesting, not nice.
It was hard for me to get this point. I also was a bit angry, because it seemed that my original standpoint, that this subject would be perfect for my ideas, would not really work out. So what I did for the following lesson was not to put that many things just together like I did before, but work more minimalistic. Therefore I used a lot of ready-mades, because I didn’t want to make “trash” again, which I destructed or deconstructed.
The ready-mades were the biggest criticspoint in the following lesson. I was told not to use so much material, make the things less heavy, and still work more free, because ready-mades have already a shape what allows not so many variations. The teacher made clear to me that, if I wanted to work with ready-mades, I would have to pay a lot more attention on HOW I worked with them in order to make it interesting. But some of my workes asked his attention, and he gave me the advice to inform myself about the artist Erwin Wurm as an example. I followed the advice and noticed that the way this artists used the things was more my direction.
We were also told to think about our works, to find a description for them or for our working style, what it would be about. One big question in my life is the question about identity. If it exists, where it comes from, if things can have a fixed identity or not, and also if I myself, as a person or an artist, can have an identity which is visible in all of my works. So I chose that question to describe my works, “what is identity?”. That explained also why I had problems at the beginning to start producing, because I was not sure about the “identity” I wanted to give the things I made. Also my interest for ready-mades fits in there, because they already have an identity, and my question is if this is fixed or not.
I understood now also better what the teacher ment by saying I should pay more attention on HOW I worked with ready-mades. Just to destroy them or put them together in a new order would not question anything. This happens every day, everybody can do it and it’s not interesting and nothing. So if I wanted to work in this direction, I would have to add something new, something which would not be expected. So for the following lesson I experimented a lot and made several series of works. The feedback I got was then the best feedback I got during the whole period.
The end of the first period was near, and I made a final work which should express all I learned in this period and get in to a point. I “melted together” two light bulbs. Before I came to the art academy I would have left it like that, because I would have thought that this would be interesting. What I did not was to add something unexpected, so I broke out a piece of glass on the place where they “melted”. The aim was not to give two things new identity (“two light bulbs melted together”), but to question the identity in general. So by braking out the piece of glass, I wanted the viewer to ask himself why I did that. Was it an accident? Did he do it consciously? Are this still two light bulbs melted together? I explained everything to the teacher on the day of the presentation. He was still very critical and saw still a lot of thing I would have to learn. The thing is that at this day I could agree with him, and this is the important point for me, because I have now the feeling that I really learned something and understood now better where my weak points are. I’m more satisfied with that knowledge as if I would be if I would have worked perfectly, because I think this is a good base to work on for the second period.
When our teacher analyzed our homework in the following lesson, he told me that I should not make the things to easy for me. I think the problem was that I thought we should make collages “out of nothing”, so I focused a lot on not thinking to much about what I was doing, so the result was really trashy. For the next lesson I made new collages, this time trying to arrange them a bit more thoughtfully. It was better than what I had done before, but I still was told to work less “nice”.
When we switched to making real 3D objects then, I tried to work therefore really free, spontaneously, without focusing on the aspect. Maybe I was a bit to hard in that this time, because the teacher was really critical and made clear to me that there must be any idea visible, and that everybody could make “trash”, but some of the works I made he liked, so I worked more in that direction. At that time I thought I would understand better what it was about. The objects should not be nice in aspect, but neather just senseless trash. There should be an idea behind the arrangement or the shape giving, but the aim was to make it interesting, not nice.
It was hard for me to get this point. I also was a bit angry, because it seemed that my original standpoint, that this subject would be perfect for my ideas, would not really work out. So what I did for the following lesson was not to put that many things just together like I did before, but work more minimalistic. Therefore I used a lot of ready-mades, because I didn’t want to make “trash” again, which I destructed or deconstructed.
The ready-mades were the biggest criticspoint in the following lesson. I was told not to use so much material, make the things less heavy, and still work more free, because ready-mades have already a shape what allows not so many variations. The teacher made clear to me that, if I wanted to work with ready-mades, I would have to pay a lot more attention on HOW I worked with them in order to make it interesting. But some of my workes asked his attention, and he gave me the advice to inform myself about the artist Erwin Wurm as an example. I followed the advice and noticed that the way this artists used the things was more my direction.
We were also told to think about our works, to find a description for them or for our working style, what it would be about. One big question in my life is the question about identity. If it exists, where it comes from, if things can have a fixed identity or not, and also if I myself, as a person or an artist, can have an identity which is visible in all of my works. So I chose that question to describe my works, “what is identity?”. That explained also why I had problems at the beginning to start producing, because I was not sure about the “identity” I wanted to give the things I made. Also my interest for ready-mades fits in there, because they already have an identity, and my question is if this is fixed or not.
I understood now also better what the teacher ment by saying I should pay more attention on HOW I worked with ready-mades. Just to destroy them or put them together in a new order would not question anything. This happens every day, everybody can do it and it’s not interesting and nothing. So if I wanted to work in this direction, I would have to add something new, something which would not be expected. So for the following lesson I experimented a lot and made several series of works. The feedback I got was then the best feedback I got during the whole period.
The end of the first period was near, and I made a final work which should express all I learned in this period and get in to a point. I “melted together” two light bulbs. Before I came to the art academy I would have left it like that, because I would have thought that this would be interesting. What I did not was to add something unexpected, so I broke out a piece of glass on the place where they “melted”. The aim was not to give two things new identity (“two light bulbs melted together”), but to question the identity in general. So by braking out the piece of glass, I wanted the viewer to ask himself why I did that. Was it an accident? Did he do it consciously? Are this still two light bulbs melted together? I explained everything to the teacher on the day of the presentation. He was still very critical and saw still a lot of thing I would have to learn. The thing is that at this day I could agree with him, and this is the important point for me, because I have now the feeling that I really learned something and understood now better where my weak points are. I’m more satisfied with that knowledge as if I would be if I would have worked perfectly, because I think this is a good base to work on for the second period.
Beeld & Concept
The first step to our concept was the visualisation of a personal memory. It could be anyone, all we should do was to make it visible, to draw it. Before I came to the Netherlands, I lived in Madrid for a while and had some close impressions of the – in my eyes – senseless behaviour of many people who follow strict timetables and working calenders and think that’s what life would be about, whereas no one sees how empty their lifes really are. So this was still a very strong memory when I started in the art academy and I chose to work with it. I was not sure if that would be a good idea, because it’s a pretty bad memory, but finally decided to make myself the things not so easy.
I made several drawings with coal on sketch paper, in which I tried to combine what I had seen there in Madrid and what my impression of it was, what my mind made out of it. I was a bit to much interpretating the things, so my teacher asked me to stay at first a bit more at the concret visualisation of what I had seen.
Further we had to write texts about our memory, different ones, and think about how we could visualize them. I made some poems, a dialog and kind of a “why wall”, because I asked myself a lot of times questions with “why” at that time, and wanted to have all these questions presented like statements on a wall.
While showing all we had made until that time to the rest of the class and having a conversation about it, we then had to find our “concept” in it. In my case it was “standing critically between the worlds”, because what I made showed that I question a lot of things. But this didn’t give me satisfaction, because I could not work with that, it was still to open.
So I had a talk to my teacher, I told her that I had no idea how to go on. She gave me the advice to think about what happens when I travel from one place to another, like I did from Germany to Spain. I had the idea that, when you move from one place to another, you always have kind of a vision in your head how the other place would be and what you can expect to find there, and that these pictures in your mind always have something to do with a search for something better or nicer than where you are at the moment, and that the reality is always different. So I made some drawings of situations how I expected them to be before I went there during the last months, and also wrote down some questions I had connected with the movements I made. The idea was to put them behind a glass plate where I could see them, and meanwhile see myself reflected in the situation how it really was, so confrontate myself with what I expected and what it really turned out to be. I noticed that I felt uncomfortable while doing that, I felt kind of insecure feeling. So I thought this would be the better concept for me, insecurity.
I did then several tryouts, in order to give myself more insecurity while producing something. That I thought would be the aim of the subject, to make your concept to something productive. I changed e.g. my own standpoint towards the picture while painting it, I painted upside down or on inline skates, in order to see what would come out. Nothing really satisfied me, because I never felt like using my concept in a productive way, so I decided, one week before the end of the first period and the final presentation, to make an experiment with myself and bring me in real insecure situations. My plan was to program my watch to ring the alarm by coincidence during one week, and everytime when it would ring, no matter where I would be or what I would do, I wanted to do some artistic action.
This plan finally failed, because I just never did it. I asked myself why and analyzed my concept in form of a text. I wrote about insecurity, where it normaly comes from, what happens with people when they are insecure, how one can deal with it, and so on. Using this text, this analyse, I noticed why I could not realize my original plan. People never bring themselves consciously into insecure situations, they happen or not.
This text was then also some kind of key for me in this subject. A lot of things about insecurity and why it developed as my concept were now very clear to me. On the day of the presentation I then made kind of a performance out of this text, in which I realized several things. Using a text which analyzed the topic “insecurity”, I visualized on the one hand the concept itself. On the other hand, I inscenated my personal situation in which I was during the week when I wanted to bring myself in insecure situations. Furthermore I even “lived” or worked with my concept during the performance, because my original plan was to show the results of my original plan which I could not realize, so finally I had a complete other result than expected, so I really was insecure on the day of the presentation itself.
This final step put my concept and how I worked with it until now in a complete new light. I also realized how it had an influence on me from the first lesson on. Because I was insecure what to do, I always had problems to experiment, or to bring experiments I wanted to do to an end. So my conclusion was that insecurity doesn’t bring you anywhere, the more interesting point is a new creative potential that comes when you look for ways to come out of insecure situations, like I did e.g. with the performance in order to bring myself out of the insecure situation of not being able to realize an experiment. I noticed how complexe the whole process was until the last step, but I think I finally made something really productive for me out of it, and that my thoughts from the first lesson, not to make the things to easy for me, turned out to be the right ones, because I thinks the confrontation with really personal conflictes or feares brings out complete new potentials out of one.
In the next period I’d therefore like to work more spontaneously, more free, having a close look on what I finally discovered: the use of insecurety by having a look on the ways how to avoid it.
I made several drawings with coal on sketch paper, in which I tried to combine what I had seen there in Madrid and what my impression of it was, what my mind made out of it. I was a bit to much interpretating the things, so my teacher asked me to stay at first a bit more at the concret visualisation of what I had seen.
Further we had to write texts about our memory, different ones, and think about how we could visualize them. I made some poems, a dialog and kind of a “why wall”, because I asked myself a lot of times questions with “why” at that time, and wanted to have all these questions presented like statements on a wall.
While showing all we had made until that time to the rest of the class and having a conversation about it, we then had to find our “concept” in it. In my case it was “standing critically between the worlds”, because what I made showed that I question a lot of things. But this didn’t give me satisfaction, because I could not work with that, it was still to open.
So I had a talk to my teacher, I told her that I had no idea how to go on. She gave me the advice to think about what happens when I travel from one place to another, like I did from Germany to Spain. I had the idea that, when you move from one place to another, you always have kind of a vision in your head how the other place would be and what you can expect to find there, and that these pictures in your mind always have something to do with a search for something better or nicer than where you are at the moment, and that the reality is always different. So I made some drawings of situations how I expected them to be before I went there during the last months, and also wrote down some questions I had connected with the movements I made. The idea was to put them behind a glass plate where I could see them, and meanwhile see myself reflected in the situation how it really was, so confrontate myself with what I expected and what it really turned out to be. I noticed that I felt uncomfortable while doing that, I felt kind of insecure feeling. So I thought this would be the better concept for me, insecurity.
I did then several tryouts, in order to give myself more insecurity while producing something. That I thought would be the aim of the subject, to make your concept to something productive. I changed e.g. my own standpoint towards the picture while painting it, I painted upside down or on inline skates, in order to see what would come out. Nothing really satisfied me, because I never felt like using my concept in a productive way, so I decided, one week before the end of the first period and the final presentation, to make an experiment with myself and bring me in real insecure situations. My plan was to program my watch to ring the alarm by coincidence during one week, and everytime when it would ring, no matter where I would be or what I would do, I wanted to do some artistic action.
This plan finally failed, because I just never did it. I asked myself why and analyzed my concept in form of a text. I wrote about insecurity, where it normaly comes from, what happens with people when they are insecure, how one can deal with it, and so on. Using this text, this analyse, I noticed why I could not realize my original plan. People never bring themselves consciously into insecure situations, they happen or not.
This text was then also some kind of key for me in this subject. A lot of things about insecurity and why it developed as my concept were now very clear to me. On the day of the presentation I then made kind of a performance out of this text, in which I realized several things. Using a text which analyzed the topic “insecurity”, I visualized on the one hand the concept itself. On the other hand, I inscenated my personal situation in which I was during the week when I wanted to bring myself in insecure situations. Furthermore I even “lived” or worked with my concept during the performance, because my original plan was to show the results of my original plan which I could not realize, so finally I had a complete other result than expected, so I really was insecure on the day of the presentation itself.
This final step put my concept and how I worked with it until now in a complete new light. I also realized how it had an influence on me from the first lesson on. Because I was insecure what to do, I always had problems to experiment, or to bring experiments I wanted to do to an end. So my conclusion was that insecurity doesn’t bring you anywhere, the more interesting point is a new creative potential that comes when you look for ways to come out of insecure situations, like I did e.g. with the performance in order to bring myself out of the insecure situation of not being able to realize an experiment. I noticed how complexe the whole process was until the last step, but I think I finally made something really productive for me out of it, and that my thoughts from the first lesson, not to make the things to easy for me, turned out to be the right ones, because I thinks the confrontation with really personal conflictes or feares brings out complete new potentials out of one.
In the next period I’d therefore like to work more spontaneously, more free, having a close look on what I finally discovered: the use of insecurety by having a look on the ways how to avoid it.
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