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| EAGLE FLIGHT |
| I paint on my face, in front of a tv
screen, with oil paint I make imprints on newspapers the program plays
randoma french tv show hosting Butros Butros Ghali, talking on palestine
and terrorism; change: report on the deportation of art works, paintings,
during the third Reich; Mona Lisa. The video-performance « eagle flight » is created as the interrogation of the different planes/ levels of perception and creation of image, spanning from an original tribal approach (in it's broadest sence) to the approach of writing and of today's digitalised images. It confronts these images and brings them into interaction, on an intellectual, emotional, physical and spiritual level. The eagle is at once a symbol of power and majesty, as well as an original tribal symbol for truth and genuinity. As it is abused by numerous governments voided of its origin as symbol of truth but taken solely as a symbol of power, the videoperformance takes it as the symbol of the percing and perceiving eye, seeing the truth allows its majesty of flying above all. Power is not truth, truth is power. Power does not allow to fligh high, truth does. Thus the performance links the regard at truth and awareness of one’s own perception to the aspect of power and interhuman social relation.The base of communication and of language is image, condensed, abstracted, as writing, as icon, as value, as analytical and intuitive connection. The origin of image is consciousness, awareness which is an universal and subjective state. The video performance joins planes of subjective and universal awareness, of creation of image and iconised image. EAGLE FLIGHT interconnects history, the contemporary news level, how it appears in image and how it appears in consciousness, while an ongoing creation and transformation of image is taking place on the face of the performer, joining the icon of the tv screen and it's broadcast medium, the icon of paintings like the Mona Lisa painting, the imprint of image on paper in the immediate present when there is no value attributed to the image yet. It's the flight of the eye through time and culture, from the immediate present to the historic past. It is through the eye of the spectator which lives in the here and now, and the mind of the spectator, which interacts and creates with the decomposition of the image and thus time, because the image is a video image. The digital faults a rests of images which have past the screen already, like living memories, again, by their decomposition, creating new images, calculations of time and light. (Befragung der Zeit-Rechnung und Licht-Rechnung im Bild). The videoperformance is created from a purely intuitive level, so the choice of the programs on the screen behind the performer was "accidental" as well as the interaction between the different physical levels of image, which created the decomposition of the screen image and the sounds (digital misreadings). The video is an uninterrupted recording of the action and its sounds. The image and sound from behind the performer, and it's content, influence the action and the content of the painting on the face of the performer, as well as this painting image influences the perception of the image on the two tv screens, the one documented and the one of the viewer, watching this video. I guess that it is the colour values on the painting and the digital value of the documented tv screen which by there interactive tension created a misreading of digital signal thus causing the decomposition of the image of the video. By this an uninterrupted connection between the documented and the immediate, the digital image and the hand painted image is being drawn. The vastness of the subjective intuitive interacts with the limits of the objective matter. The video may be shown in a meditative way, where the viewer is seated in a cinema in a dark room or, it might be beamed onto a wall, a structured wall, wall with window or door, as a video installation. Sometimes I was asked what genre the video has to be added to. To me it is a clearly documentary work, and the documentary aspect is very important. That the video is basically unedited makes part of the content of it. a work questionning the creation of image, the realisation of image and its perception; a work opposing the handmade and the calculated « faultless and flawless » digital image, the old and the new technology of image creation and its effects on man: the original aspect of invoking forces, being connected to forces; the superficial aspect of representation and its purpose, of society's spectacle and society's sleep curious enough, the tension between the original colours on my face and the represented digital colours on the screen behind my head, started to decompose the third level of image, the image and sound actually created by the camera for the video of Eagle Flight. Thus all three levels get unified in the composition, interact and interfere to each other.Existentially, representation is taken over by presence inside the video document. Video : latin for « I see ». The theft of image. « Bilderaub » The theft of the French artworks by the German Nazi Regime shows the importance which was given to the content of the paintings and images, what they represent as such to humanity and how it was percieved as important to controle and own and instrumentalise this content. Today the same thing happens by the controle of the television images, the news images, and the print media which depends on photography. There is no accidental revelation of genuine authentic fact. The documentary photo and video image and its so called objectivity as such are an impossibility and therefore a way to dominate the perception of the viewer, to take over his authority on the interpretation of the image and the revelation of its true purpose. The creator of image always adresses the spiritual of the viewer to communicate to his emotions or his mental, to achieve a desired action or attitude of the viewer. The faultless and flawless appearance of the image suggests the faultlessness and flawlessness of the author and thus ultimate controle, ultimate security and authority. My choice to show images which are in a state of selfdestruction, a composition of and by faults of calculation gives back authority to the viewer, stimulates his own orientation and creation. The images he captures in his memory are his creation as are the feelings and thoughts he might have during and after viewing. The interaction between my own artistic authority and the authority of the viewer is clear, pure and open and not due to a virtuosity of use of form and formulation. The importance of fault is that it opens up the space of consciousness to diversity and to the Absolute. The « calculated, imposed » absolute appears always flawless and faultless and it has to hide its ultimate mistake and lie by execution of power and controle, whether it is a political or a spiritual institution, a philosophy, ideology or a form of an artwork. |
| QUESTION |
| A work questionning the creation of image, the realisation
of image and its perception; a work opposing the handmade and the digital
image, the old and the new technology of image crea-tion and its effects
on man: the original aspect of invoking forces, being connected to forces;
the superficial aspect of representation and its purpose, of society's
spectacle and society's sleep curious enough, the tension between the
original colours on my face and the represen-ted digital colours on the
screen behind my head, started to decompose the third level of image,
the image and sound actually created by the camera for the video of Eagle
Flight. Thus all three levels get unified in the composition, interact
and interfere to each other. Existentially representation is taken over
by presence. |