sensual color, anti-epiphenomenon , art

( still under construction... )

last night i went to the presenation by Os Gemeos
(new link) the grafitti artist twins from Brazil . They are currently showing new work at the Luggage Store gallery in SF through February.

Their human characters and creatures are extraordinary ! They looked somewhat familiar and in their presentation I discovered that Barry McGee aka Twist went to Sao Paolo to meet them in '93 and they have influenced each other immensely.

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and Rigo 03 , also represented and translated . He has been using a digital camera for the last 2 years , but has little orientation to the desktop world ... if anyone wants to help him get a website together email me and i'll put you in touch with him.

Rigo told this great story of one his more recent pieces called " Truth " which was dedicated to Robert King , an African American and member of the Black Panthers, who spent 29 years in solitary confinement at the infamous Angola Prison in Louisiana... King was released in '91 and was at the opening of the 'Truth' work in 2002 , which now looms above the UN Plaza at Civic Center in SF ... Rigo had this amazing photo of the mural taken at the latest march this last sunday and in the photo it was framed by 2 flag poles , one flying the american flag , the other the UN flag, and in the foreground ... the thousands of people making their way to the rally stage in front of city hall.

here the location of a piece , and its reference , make this a mASSive culture jam ... you can see the giant word TRUTH facing you at the end of UN Plaza even as you exit the steps of city hall !

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i was walking by the lake today on my way to the subway , and was thinking about phenomenologist perception ... and wondered how i perceive myself as a semi-phenomenlogist and how i might investigate it as an intuitive and creative force . ( and it brings up many memories of research ... while writing and working on 2 theater pieces , Children's Tails and Mellonta Tauta ... which now seems like a completely other incarnation... but the information is reopening a few doors of perception now... again...

( jeroen and osfa , you are triggering all sorts of neural networks ... keep it streaming ! )

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if i were to accept that i create reality , totally, by my own perceptions which i am often inclined to believe ... and indeed i attempt to fully empower myself by this line of thinking , then i can become extremely depressed by the fact that so much of the world i am immersed in lacks so much of the "sensual color" that i desire , and thus i must admit that my own creative abilities and power of mind are rather feeble...

but if i accept a kind of semi-phenomenology then i can attribute the world in which i exist as somewhat gravitationally bound by consensus reality , meaning all the dumb ass culture that surrounds me is not my fault ... rather it is the weight and negative result of the ubiquitous lack of education and/or intentionally manipulative programming... and THEN i can be inspired to try and lift the world out of it's dreary stupor. that is in fact a primary motivation to create art, to awaken oneself and others... but then i must be careful that it is not wholly dominated by the struggle, the resistance, the weight ... and it actually spreads the beauty that comprises all the themes of desire . which nevertheless may have it's own spectrum from dark to light ... and this will often seem nostalgic , romantic, impossible , self-negating, destructive, and/or corny ... a list of conflicting dynamics goes on... so it becomes important to infuse it with the immediate bloodflow of one's inner battles and perhaps even a deconstructive sensibility so as neither to be lost in fantasy nor merely swimming in bad paradigms and obsolete language , and still become deeply engaged with this collectively conscious world while remaining filled w/ new sensual color ...

new perceptions and inspirations coming from the likes of Os Gemeos and the street artists, who may in the midst of the ghettos and barrios of the world drop us into a visual and visceral cold water plunge of wildly alive ART.

[ note: often to view os gemeos' works one would have to venture into some pretty extreme areas , the deeper ruins of the globalized metroplises... 17 million in Sao Paolo, still blows my mind ! Salgado imagery now playing in the mind's eye. ]

its these kinds of releases that remain truthful to the present moment... through art ... so that its impact is not just a transference of mind ...but much MORE...

Art is NOT epiphenomenal ! that is it has the power to Change the world , it has causative effects , it DoES produce phenomenon !

if art is left to the epiphenomenalists ( see below ) , it is the reason we are immersed in a sea of commercial crap , meaningless communications, soul-less environments, because its creators are not aware that they must take responsibilty for its impact on our world and /or are not informed to acknowledge that they may be empowered to Create Another World !

>> 3.2. Classical Materialism and Epiphenomenalism
Epiphenomenalism avoids some of the absurdities of the behaviorists by claiming that consciousness and thought-processes do actually exist, though only as epiphenomena generated by the physical activities of the brain. However,  thoughts have no causative functions!  The illusion of free-will remains precisely that - an illusion.

In other words a 'zombie' could be constructed which could be programmed or hardwired to carry out all the functions of a sentient being with an identical degree of efficiency, but would never experience any internal mental states or qualia.   Consciousness is seen as some sort of incidental by-product or fortuitously generated phenomenon, which plays no useful role in the life of the organism. <<

from Arguments against Reductionism, Materialism and Epiphenomenalism

Posted by pod(s) at February 19, 2003 01:53 AM