gazing at a gaze

Armin Linke’s gaze has obsessively followed the feverish, unfathomable rhythms of the local and global metamorphoses that are reshaping our world.  The project 4Flight, which he has diligently pursued over the last five years, has been an act of conscious inquiry and at the same time an intriguing, worrying discovery of the phenomena that are subtly and grossly affecting the living body of Planet Earth.  This growing collection of thousands of images, which forms an extraordinary encyclopedia-cum-atlas, unwittingly exposes the visual entropy that enslaves us all, as well as the profound narrowness of our view of the world we inhabit.

This inquiry tells of the horror vacui that permeates every act of our existence, driving us to document, control, possess and consume even the remotest phenomena of our world and at the same time portrays with crystal clarity the value that fragments of reality encompass as a unique condition of life.But crushed beneath the weight of the thousands of images, each recounting their own story, and segments of reality, we slowly realize that Linke’s work is actually trying to demonstrate the contrary: the photographic gaze as an act that tries to sketch its own insights over the new and changing essences of contemporary reality.

Is it possible to talk about an explosive, elusive world using a few visual fragments?  Is it still conceivable to talk about the essence of reality in a cultural dimension that tends to view every perspective and philosophy in relativistic terms?

It is a way of listening that we have partially lost, and that many of Linke’s images invite us to rediscover. 

Luca Molinari

Comments

Armin Linke drowns you in his visual plethora of images, making you forget that you are part of this explosive, elusive world that he that he talks about and is visually representing with a few fragments.  It is still conceivable to talk about the essence of reality in relativistic terms.   It may conceivably not make sense but behind all the senselessness there is much sense to be unearthed.  

Our culture has lost much patience.  Our culture has lost many of its values and traditions.  Our culture has lost much of its sincerity.   Our culture no longer nourishes in the old ways.   Our culture seems to suffocate us more than bless us with the freedom to just simply be and rest.   Our culture has gained much nonsense at the expense of losing our senses.   Our culture has destroyed much of Nature.   Our culture is obsessed with images and not the reality behind them.   We can rediscover our innocence in an image but that discovery is just a fossilized fragment that leads us even thirstier.   We can rediscover our innocence in a child but that discovery will just breed jealousy.  We can rediscover what we have lost in images but we lose much more in that discovery.  

We have lost much of our attention span.  We are more willing to slouch in front of a giant screen for two hours than slouch in front of a painting for two hours.  It is uncommon that someone spends ten to twenty minutes on a single artwork.  What is to blame?  Our fragmented attention and lack of ability to concentrate.  Our fragmented attention is merely a reflection of our media-infested culture.  

Armin Linke is just another crack in the earth that thirsts for the next monsoon and shares enough room for a mushroom to grow.

kings begin as scrubs

Do you have the courage to be boring in a society that is restlessly unwilling to be bored?  Are you investing much of your creative juices to find grand and grandeur ways to distract the common critter?  Are you delivering what is already pregnant in Nature or stirring Nature’s digestive juices, enough for her to vomit?   Are you seeking to be a reader of your own self or your own neurosis?  Is that the only way in which art can affect rather than simply distract?  

We need art as a form of recreation; re-creating our environment and ourselves.   We need art as a form of communication.  Art has fallen into so many categories because so many people have categorized themselves in so many ways.   There are the outsider artists and art brut; the folk and traditional; the modern and contemporary; the new age and spiritual; the graffiti artists; and so forth.   There is something special about each category of art.  But there is one form of art that transcends all of them in terms of freedom.  Graffiti. 

Extracts from Broken Windows: Graffiti NYC (2002)

The city will never get rid of graffiti.  It’s part of our culture.  You see the way they are wrapping city buses with advertisements.  that all comes from graffiti; from the trains, which is like hypocrisy . . . like we couldn’t do it but they can because they are making money out of it.

Graffiti art, however, is an entity onto itself.  It’s almost like the Internet.  Who owns it?  It is a free form of art that grows on its own.  Some people see it as flowers and some people see it as weeds. 

The biggest enemy of graffiti is people who don’t understand it.  They are almost scared of it because it’s coming from something that they cannot control.  It’s like the rest of art is taught in classrooms and done under supervision.  This stuff is coming right from the streets.  Nobody is teaching it.  It’s being handed down through generations . . . this scares the teacher or any politician because they have no control over it . . .   (EON)

a single thread is simple

Knots from the single thread make it complex
Knots are interplay and compromise loss and gain
The world is a knot that cannot be untied by brute cutting
The knot can only be understood by following its thread.

Marian Crane

This poem is a knot that can be untied.  Can you untie this knot to find all its single threads?

a living question

The mere fact of questioning life bears witness to some interruption of its flow, just as a ripple on an even stream tells of a rock submerged.  (Master Therion)

Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what’s next or how.  The moment you know how, you begin to die a little.  The artist never entirely knows.  We guess.  We may be wrong but we take leap after leap in the dark.  (Agnes de Mille)

poetic spill

In all these mangroves and wetlands,
of humbugs imposed or endured,
our virtuous friends, no longer pray for us. 

We search for surprises. 
White and black are not colors at all. 
One reflects and the other absorbs. 
Grey surprises. 

When the sun no longer gives, which direction will the trees and flowers grow towards? 
When the earth no longer gives, which direction will the roots grow towards? 
When the river no longer flows, which direction will the earth flow?

A spark may raise an awful blaze.
A single thought can make the worst of all mental droughts.
A tree can make a thousand matches.  A match can destroy a thousand trees.

silly inconsiderations

search and capture a damselfly or dragonfly whilst they are slumbering.
plead guilty to your inhumanity.
carefully tie a string around their fragile abdomen.
watch them in distress.
if you listen carefully to the secret language of their wings,
you can hear them curse you.
if you manage not to hurt the dragonfly by this stage you are a lucky bastard or bitch or butch or dag.
if you manage to hurt or kill the dragonly by this stage you are an unlucky bastard or bitch or butch or dag.
if you manage not to do any of these things you are truly blessed.
if you manage to wise up, you would prefer to stroll with a snail rather than a dragonfly. 

fear is contagious

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light not our darkness, that most frighten us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, Courageous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. You playing small does not help the world. There is nothing enlightening about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And when we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. When we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”  (Nelson Mandela)

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. (George Santayana)

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure and powerless beyond memory. 

Our trivialest fear is that we are going to be extinct and thus, out-lived, out-numbered by, and what remains of our civilization, left to the feelers of, cockroaches.

Our real fear is that there is really nothing to fear.

Our long-term fear is that we will never run out of things to fear. 

the hums of humanity

Contemptus mundi or contempt for/of the world does not mean to have contempt for sunrises and sunsets and trees.  It does not mean contempt for natural beauty.  It is recognizing that the human world, in all its vanity and vexation, is really nothing more than our futile attempt to hide from Mother Nature.   One example of hiding from the glories of Nature is by building a simulated experience in an attempt to make people hyperaware and feel more connected to reality.  And the tool use to do this is the media, which is like MSG (the food additive) for the senses. 

The misanthropist may be such a soul to recognize the hums of humanity: the inhumanities of humanity.  Orwell wrote: Man is the only creature that consumes without producing.  He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch a rabbit.  Yet he is lord of all the animals.  A misanthrope would write back: being lord of all the animals at the burden of our brains is an accomplishment equivalent to sweeping the dust off a dewdrop.   We are lords that rule according to our human-made rules.   We are lords but animals do not acknowledge us as that.  They just wonder at how threatening we are, even to ourselves.  We acknowledge ourselves as lords of animals.  This self-acknowledgement is greatest of grand delusions.  

The real misanthropes are not found in solitude, but in the world; since it is experience of life, and not philosophy, which produces real hatred of mankind.   (Giacomo Leopardi)

People could make the world a nice place to live, if there weren’t so goddamn many of them.  (Clayton Heafner)

Last and Not Least

As a human being can you think of something or nothing that is worth prizing highly or pursuing seriously? 
Is it all just vanity and vexation of spirit?

the privilege of washing our brains

Pro-logue

Be like a flower that thrives on a heap of dung.
Do not get lost in the words that are supposed to set you free.
Being proven wrong is the most liberating of feelings,
Which does not take a lifetime of study.
Be aware with every fiber of your being.
Education makes your brain sweat. 
Each droplet of mind-sweat makes the brain demented.
Education assists you to explore your doubts and differences
But Knowledge is just excrement of experience to be used as fertilizer. 
Yet rich manure can fertilize fields that can feed millions.

Words within Worlds, Worlds within Words

Words do not express thoughts very well.  They always become a little different immediately they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish.  And yet it also pleases me and seems right that what is of value and wisdom to one man seems nonsense to another. (Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha)

Life, at certain moments, may seem so beautiful and sublime to us, yet at other times, extremely distasteful.  Reason being: our judgments.  Our judgments are not based on evidence of life itself but of mental images which preserve nothing of life.   We judge disparagingly.  Words are charitable: their frail reality deceives and consoles us.  (E.M. Cioran)

The distinctive faculty of the active and intelligent being is that he can attach a meaning to the word ‘is’.  (J. J Rousseau)

In transcending thought one is trying to avoid one thing (thinking) and recover something else (experience).

Scarring Your Brain

Questioning and being questioned in one’s worldview can be an unsettling and threatening experience.  However, such ego-shattering experiences can potentially broaden one’s mind.   Without such questioning of assumptions and truth claims, it is unlikely that real dialogue or effective learning can occur in life.   Real dialogue and effective learning is not imprisoned in Academia.   You can learn to learn and unlearn anywhere and anytime, not necessarily in an academic institutions.    

Whatever we see or hear seems to us to be happening now.  Does light and sound take time to travel?  Does the thunder happen at the same time as the lightning, even though we hear it later?   When you see the sun setting, did it “really” set eight minutes ago?  When a new star appears, is the event that you are seeing now an event that may have happened thousands of years ago?  Space and emptiness are the best mediums for procrastination.

We have seen that no one of them can be trusted to care adequately for the child’s welfare, since each wishes the child to minister to some end which has nothing to do with its own well-being.  The State wants the child to serve for national aggrandizement and the support of the existing form of government.  The Church wants the child to serve for increasing the power of the priesthood.  The school-master, in a competitive world, too often regards his school as the State regards the nation, and wants the child to glorify the school.  The parent wants the child to glorify the family.  The child itself, as an end in itself, as a separate human being with a claim to whatever happiness and well-being may be possible, does not come into these various external purposes, except very partially.  Unfortunately, the child lacks the experience required for the guidance of its own life, and is therefore a prey to the sinister interests that batten on its innocence.  This is what makes the difficulty of education as a political problem.  But let us first see what can be said from the child’s own point of view.  (Bertrand Russell)

Being Mellow

How pre-maturely or immaturely do we mature these days?   Are we actively learning from our and other people’s experiences in life?  Our we continuously changing our perspectives; remapping our mind-maps?   Are we reducing our expectations?  Are we becoming wise and thinking that we are wise by acquiring a body of knowledge?  Or we are becoming wise by knowing how to act or how to be?  Are we perfecting our will by having many difficulties or ruining our being by living in our comfort zones?   Is maturity about growing up: a progressive sophistication of selfish behavior?  Or is it about wising up: a progressive simplification of unselfish behavior?   

Sheepleness

We are all sheep.  Sheep leading sheep.   A heap of sheeps.  

Generally we are encouraged to have a strong sense of who we are, what we do, why we do it, what we like and dislike and so on: and we will go to considerable lengths to maintain that appearance.   We give birth to an identity.   We give birth to ‘something’ that is impermanent.  Our identities are used for us to identify ourselves with others and others with ourselves.   It is a medium that can be exploited for us to relate to, understand and make sense of our environment and those around us.   The word ‘dent’ is central to the word ‘identity’.   That is because our identity causes a dent in our lives, especially on our brains.   We, instinctively find security in having an identity and in identifying ourselves as well as others.   We establish both the sense of ‘self’ and ‘other’ and ‘us’.    We put ourselves on a shelf and begin developing and projecting, out of futility, our personality.  Personalities come with an expiry date.  They are screenplays.  They are narratives.  They are expensive to maintain.  They are investments.  They are important to our wellbeing because we spend so much of our lives belonging, not belonging or longing to belong.   Like sheeps.  

You’re obliged to pretend respect for people and institutions you think absurd.  You live attached in a cowardly fashion to moral and social conventions you despise, condemn and know lack all foundation.  It is that permanent contradiction between your ideas and desire and all the dead formalities and vain pretenses of your civilization, which makes you sad, troubled and unbalanced.  In that intolerable conflict you lose all joy of life and all feeling of personality, because at every moment they suppress and restrain and check the free play of your powers.  That’s the poisoned and mortal wound of the civilized world.   (Octave Mirbeau, The Torture Garden)

Be who you are and say what you like because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.  (Dr. Seuss)

The man who is aware of himself is henceforth independent and he is never bored, and life is only too short, and he is steeped through and through with a profound yet temperate happiness.  He alone lives, while, other people, slaves of ceremony, let life slip past them in a kind of dream.  Once conform, once do what other people do because they do it, and a lethargy steals over all the finer nerves and faculties of the soul.  He becomes all outer show and inward emptiness; dull, callous, and indifferent.   (Virginia Woolf)

The free and autonomous individual suddenly seems to be a mere puppet dancing to a tune that often cannot be heard

Save the Best For Last

Everyone is entitled to be stupid.  But some abuse the privilege.  

poetic spill

Smile, It Makes People Wonder What You are Thinking About.

You have the freedom to do as you please, go where you wish and be open to new experiences.
But remember those who have given shape and sustenance to your life.
And also those who have given you much strife. 
Acknowledge their presence and also their decadence and nuisance.
Empty your emotional baggage,
But keep the baggage to remind you of its previous burdens.
Remember that the earth is not a resource at your disposal,
If you are not considerate you are heading towards trouble.
There is much you can do to save the earth,
And still focus on your untimely rebirth.
Be someone who lacks depth, lacks mystery and hides nothing,
Then you will realize that so many things are not that troubling.
Celebrate the cracks of your life: the blemishes and the banal.
Scheme not at the light at the end of the tunnel,
But the last drop at the end of the funnel. 
Do not just ventilate your words,
Translate that breath into action and move forward.
Work on your obituary,
But do not publish it and write your whole life story.
Be patient and life will rub some sense into you,
It’s true.