Saturday, April 23, 2011

Senior Project beginning

I am the majority. I am the heteronormative absolute. I am conflicted. I am becoming. I am self-destructive and I am the painter.

I am a member of the largest ethnic group in the world. I speak the most spoken language in world as my first and primary language. I am a male and therefore a member of the patriarchy. I live in the richest country in the world. I was born in a upper-middle class family. I was born to a post-colonial intellectual and a fiery pragmatist both of whom are loving parents and uphold the institution of marriage. From the time of puberty, I, as far as I know, have been a heterosexual and therefore further enforced patriarchy. I am the master in Hegel's master-slave dialectic. I am the majority. I have always been a part of the power structure. I have the function of all of my extremities. I have seen vast swaths of the northern hemisphere. 

Because of this status, I have no revolution to fight. Revolution, in fact, in all possible ways would be against me. I am the epitome of revolting. I am all that must be revolted against. But revolution is pastiche. I cannot possibly revolutionize a medium. There is nothing to revolutionize.

Yet I feel I am alien to everything. I feel the immense bitterness or in the colloquial language of today "the suck" of existence and I ask why? The question is of why? My only concise answer is that solipsism is real. Nihilism is real. Everything is meaningless. And that all of this is depressing because it is just me, me and me. This is existential pain and crisis. But I refuse this. 

But How could ever say I am exploited? How could ever come to believe that I could be wronged? How can I feel dissatisfied with this world? I am the most blessed human being to have walked to face of this earth. If I can only speak as who I am than let me speak as the majority. But not as the ruthless majority that seeks the normativity of the world. Nor the colonialist-power structure that orientalize the world around them making things novel. No, I seek to be.

I wish to make that which is impossible. I want to paint impossible people and I want people to feel the impossible. The impossible is important because it represents to defeat of solipcism and the beinging of our bridge to one an another. This is not a lecture of compassion or the importance of empathy because that is but lipservice to those ideas. No, I am here to offer the impossible. Something unreal to us is each other. But if for a minute you can feel the unrealness of my painting than perhaps you can extend this (your imagination) to those around you and be more. More capable of using your imagination and internal narrative to truly attempt to understand people. 

Perhaps it is all vain because both Bach and Beethoven made/makes/will-continue-to-make everyone feel something intangibly impossible. And therefore this exercise has already been attempted and failed to save us from our humanity or at least failed to let us act with our most human dignity towards each other.

There is no such thing as false consciousness. All consciousness is false. Consciousness is merely a tool in the arsenal of accessing the world. It has value in the sense that it ought to be transcended

Realism is incapable of capturing what is necessary because it feels to be a all together too superficial look at society and frankly looking. I want to do more than look.


I will not deny my subjugation of individuals. I am the bourgeoise. I will not deny my strength. I am responsible for my strength and will not shrink nor hide from it.

I do not speak as the voice of the small oppressed minority. I do not speak those most beaten and defeated. I speak as the voice of the oppression of existence that is ineffable and inescapable.
I speak from an Achillean prevue.

Not only do I not have any revolution to right for. But all revolutions are against me. My status. And my power. And all the things I was born and entitled with. Because I have no revolution. Because I am not held in chains. Because I am no one's fool. I stand clearer of sight then those who seek practical liberation. I realized I still have a singular fault and that is my humanity. My mortal coil. The problem and solution of all being. I stand as the voice of the universal humanity. The minority of our utter individuality not expressed through the struggle of our segregation from a mainstream. But rather I am the mainstream. The center. The top of the hill speaking to you about the problem we all have because from your (minority) point of view i shouldn't have any problems because I am the master. But I do have a problem. That is how to be in a time before immortality.

The realization that the only real enemy is not exterior, not patriarchy, not white-people (who the hell are white people?), not colonialist, not imperialist states, not communists, not democrats. Only self. Self and being are the enemies of self and being. Being is an anathema to itself.

But in this way, I also hope to acknowledge the importance of the vastness of art history to my perception to the world especially Institutional critique. But the problem with institutional critique is all together too often their target is something social. And they attempt to make a social change by highlighting social problems of class, race, gender and sex. But you see thats the general problem with that is that they remain social. A thing outside of oneself that one is a part of.
What I want to tackle has to be closer than that. It has to be individual. It has to deal with the individuation of subjectivity. What it means to be individual and the epicness of individuality and of being an autonomous self. It is going to be a lot about the me-ness of it all.

I am in fact trying to create the new meta-narrative

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