The art of gaining sense
I see and write from two perspectives: on the one hand, I try to get as close as possible to things; on the other hand, I also try to organise them and place them in contexts. Both aspects are important to me but I gain a great deal, perhaps the most, from proximity. I derive a specific perception, associations, combinations and, above all, also the language from getting up close. This situation arises from a kind of participatory observation that makes me feel as if I am part of the action. I absorb what goes on around me and, going deeper, temporarily surrender myself, perceiving not only with my eyes, my sense of the distant and waking consciousness but also with various different senses and on various levels of awareness. I see and “am seen”. I involve myself, in as empty a state as possible, and let in whatever interest and knowledge feeds me. In this way, I try to record the specificity of a movement or a work in all its facets, to find out its original premise and its implications; a process which is repeated and amplified in writing, while aiming more specifically to embed the whole in an objective context. Seeing as experiencing; remembering as processing. I was inspired in this by American criticism, in which the critic appears as a knowledgeable entity, but not as a higher authority. He describes more than he judges and remains recognisably subjective, designing a complex and open image of a piece, which leaves space for the readers’ own viewpoints.
My primary stimulation was, however, the art itself; an art in which identifying a particular meaning per se is less important than, as Zygmunt Bauman put it, “opening wide the gateway to an art of gaining sense.” As the artist is no longer bound by norms and the viewer no longer restricted by guidelines on the right way to see or by uniform criteria for taste, everyone can participate, the artists foremost, but also critics and audience, in the process of understanding and interpreting. By taking this course, the art-form bids farewell to the dictates of consensus as formerly applied to modernity and explores the different possibilities of life.
Similarly, I regard my work as one voice in this varied design of reality. The method described above serves to clarify its subjective basis and is then combined with objective aspects of this reality.