Thursday, November 11, 2010

What you like is to look



What you like is to look.
You like to suck it up in your gaze, you like to smear your innocent mind with the flesh of sight.
What you like is to become dependent. To let go of the constructions and make them make you.
This is the universe of the aesthetic. It is where you can always find a haven. Where you can let go of your constrained negotiations with what surrounds you, and be indulged, and be spoiled, and be challenged just safely enough to get back home.
What you like is when necessity becomes an ice-cream cone. Be it vanilla-flavored or razor-edged.
What you like is the place which is a place but requires no consequences. Of you.
Where the fish sing gentle songs and have human heads and human breasts, so you can see this is not real, and you can join the part of it that is real enough to be like you.
And you can be like you. Only less conspicuous. Or less conspicuously limited to what you believe you are.
What you like is to look, to admire, to appreciate, what you like is to jump in, when you were keeping yourself outside for some absurd reason. What you like is to overcome the feeling of absurdity through the feeling of empathy. You like to believe the thing there brings you closer to the thing here. And when you're back - well, when you are back, you leave.

(The video features work by Harrisson and Wood)

5 comments:

Lutz Eitel said...

I guess Harrison and Wood make art for people who like to look. At least they’re more interesting than slapstick comedy since the viewer has a larger range of reactions to choose from. Then again Mr. Bean could do it without actually sitting in the back of that driving van, so maybe he is just a tad deeper.

Viewing is pretty overrated. I like to live with the thing, but wait, I can’t afford that, so I live with the thought of living with whatever work decides to move in with me, regardless of if I’ve seen it or just a heavily compressed caricature of it, or if somebody gave me a confused but enthusiastic description.

Oh, and where are you in the image?

kuh del rosario said...

wow, i love the last shot with the ladder; i laughed out loud. thank you for posting this video.

Anonymous said...

I comend Harrison and Wood for their unbelievable sense of imagination and conscientiousness. you really have to be a out of the box thinker to aproach such work as this. Thats what this world needs!

Photography Art Cafe said...

I went to an Irving Penn exhibition a few months ago and this reminded me of it a lot. Penn took portraits of famous people, often positioned awkwardly and geometrically in small spaces against plain white walls. These videos are aesthetically cool but I'm not sure yet whether they're actually interesting.

OnlyLostBunny said...

I like the passion in your words. It seems like you are a very visual person. Maybe its because of art people can express ideas visually.

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