ONE  LINE  PRINCIPLE

Work invariably begins with the one line. Usually a black or blue line on white paper. Other lines follow. The simplicity of one color on another color often seems to offer more chance for poetic and metaphoric expression. The lines make alliances with one another fooling the mind into this or that “known”. Such lines are felt to be in motion. The viewer's faculty of visual interpretation is challenged. From out an apparent chaos, line upstarts rear their heads and become autonomously influential often inspiring the viewer to new unexpected cognitive connections. The variable relationships that these lines forge with one another often defy the mind to “make something of them”. We see and feel the contradiction and complexity of modern life. People and things – lines - forced onto one another, unforeseeably, without logic, reason or predictable consequence. Ephemeral visions arise within us, only to be obfuscated by new constellations and oblique interpretations. The lines (individuals) here are not cogs in a pre-formed societal machinery, but rather single voices speaking freely from within the multitude where no system or process (democratic or otherwise) has intervened to coerce them to speak as a tamed, muffled, “I”. Lines, line interactions, forms and pictures are the letters, words, sentences and stories of the work – or if you like the gristle, teeth and bones of these skeleton images. The viewer is left to do the rest, to rescue the art and himself - to place the image in a (her) knowable context, to cast her vote - it's a kind of working together. Adorno notes,

“An art of a non-representational character, a language of the lifeless is the only form of comfort in a world where death has lost its meaning”

Ambiguous time - line archeology

I present the viewer with a starting point, something like an archaeological site,where once so much was, and where so much maybe still can be. The picture point is an in between phase, a limbo. The viewer makes her “dig”, discovers her artifacts and interprets. This interpretation can however in contrast to conventional archeology reconstruct not only a past, but also potential futures. The pictures are not a “what is”, but rather a “what might have been” or a “what could be”. What is seen (seeable) is a type of artistic, half way house, a snap-shot. We are on the cusp, a point from which we must spring and hopefully fly on the wings of our own metaphoric and allegoric interpretative capabilities. These mental and visual associations which one could say are up to a point, self induced emanations, are somewhat akin to the subtle, subconsciously perceived overtones produced by musical instruments. As Nietzsche mentions in “Beyond good and evil”,

“Even in the midst of the most remarkable experiences we still do the same; we fabricate the greater part of the experience, and can hardly be made to contemplate any event, except as “inventors” thereof.”

Suma Genji

Suma Genji is an experimental film written and directed by Alexis Pope. Camera and editing - Takeshi Furuya. The Tale of Genji (源氏物語 Genji) is a classic work of Japanese literature written by the noblewoman and lady-in-waiting Murasaki Shikibu in the early years of the 11th century, around the peak of the Heian period. It is sometimes called the world's first novel, the first modern novel, the first psychological novel or the first novel still to be considered a classic. Notably, the novel also illustrates a unique depiction of the livelihoods of high courtiers during the Heian period. While universally considered a masterpiece, its precise classification and influence in both Western and Eastern canon has been a matter of debate.