pretext: The more numerous people are on this planet, the more artists there will be amongst them. Today's consumer products all have expiration dates and a labels telling us what they contain. Does the artwork of tomorrow have bar-codes and warnings, highlighting whether or not nuts were involved in the production of the work? And what consequence would there be for artists if he/she were to become responsible for the long term decomposition or their works? Is environmental awareness in the art-world a self-censuring mechanism - a means of silencing freedom of thought or expression? Do clean hands bring about a clean conscience, or refer to indulgence? Today the private domain is public.
The topics outlined above will form the contextual framework for me while attending as student the MA mastercourse for fine arts and hopefully lead to fruitfull collaboration and an inspiring working process during the 2 years within the academy.
proposal:
I will explore, discuss, document and investigate the possibilities of what to do with the leftovers and rejected materials of artistic culture today. I will develop contemporary resources and approaches, employing new tools of research and production. Artistic inventiveness as a device to mirror and “save the world” from itself. My efforts will produce as a by-product, a kind of cleansing process for my immediate surroundings.
I intend to use online tools and social networking to initiate audience- and user-led content collection for the research work. I will ask my collegues and tutors to help in the donating left-over materials, or finished sketches and work that they have always wanted to get out of their sight or studio. This might be raw materials, or a painting, sculpture, video work, etc. Anything previously considered an artistic material. This material will be the basic and raw material for the research that follows. I will not return it and it is intended that they be rendered untraceable by the project end.
Before i get to that point i will have collected, interfered, deducted, process analyzed, (anti) theorized, visual translated and deformated and learned and listened.
There is no specific idea of the direct outcomes of this proposal. There is beauty and usefulness in everything in today's perception of contemporary art. According to anthropologist Bruno Latour a new view on the future can only be by turning our back to the past - and our material past is best traced through its waste. 'Fleeing from the past while continuing to look at it will not do'. I agree, and my mother always told me to pick up the scraps.
during the study:The research intends to be highly interactive with its surroundings. The methodology is open form deduction. Tutors visit the research area, and look over my shoulders into the laboratory. They will witness the process of construction and decomposement. Their knowledge is welcomed, required and tuned into the process. I intend to involve not only my colleagues but also any person who can contribute to a revealing result, engaging perhaps an historian /reflection, a cook with fluids, a redundant fact, a next generation interrupting, a mother who cares, a transparant musician, an opposition and skeptic or opponent and dissonant, politician in consensus, a passerby in quick judgment or dog (loyal or ignore).
the final presentation:
What the end result will be of my project is obviously at this moment unclear. But I intend to registrate and show the process on a daily base online during the full time of my studies. I actually would like to explore the possibilities of a new way of online publishing with a dissolving site which eventually will decompose itself, and furthermore will use the ‘waste products’ of the internet.
