JOSEPH BEUYS
Above: [Tunnel (Cathode Rays) Felt-Room Action, 1964] – […] It may have been his intention for the paint to ‘absorb’ the sentiments on the page. The work does not appear to relate to an ‘action’ which the artist performed, but may be a plan for an intended 'action’.
Below: [+ -, 1962] – […] The presence of both symbols here suggests a state of balance. The image to the left appears to be a leaping female figure and although the right side is more difficult to decipher it may be intended to be masculine in tone, to balance the femininity.
Transformed Visions, Alfredo Jaar at Tate Modern: Lament of Images 2002 is one of a number of works around questions of blindness and image erasure. It is a kinetic work composed of two light-tables, one suspended above the other. As the upper table moves slowly downwards to meet the lower one, a brilliant white light gives way to darkness, causing a dazzling or symbolic ‘blinding’ of the spectator.
Jaar employs this process as metaphor for the way in which our awareness is diminished by the everyday flood of images, but also for the censorship and control exerted by government or corporate interests over images that they deem to be ‘sensitive’.
Deleuze-Guattari remark that ‘madness is called madness and appears as such only because it finds itself reduced to testifying all alone for deterritorialisation as a universal process.’ The vanishing sandbank of Oedipus wages its futile war against the tide. ‘There are still not enough psychotics’ writes Artaud the insurrectionist. Clinical schizophrenics are POWs from the future.
Nick Land, ‘Circuitries’. (via ladyovtheflovvers)
(via transphenomenality)
