"All That Jazz" Artist Christine Alfery
Is
reality nothing more than a narrative? A visual and or linguistic construction
that can be controlled and that controls what we say and how we think? I reality nothing more than words and images? If reality is nothing more than a visual or
linguistic construction than reality is a figment of what we imagine, what we
create and what we produce. Reality is then governed, controlled, by and
through words and images and how we think, how we know and how we live would
then be governed by words and images.
If this
is indeed the case, then those who create and produce are the ones who govern. And
the question is no longer what is real but how is what we imagine to be real
governed, how are we governed? Historians seem to agree that we are in the
process of a change in how things are understood. The historical era of
modernism is integrating into the post-modern or neo-modern. Today subjectivity
dominates were all things are relative and no one thing, has more value than
another. The glue that holds this relativism together seems to be socialism or
social progress. So it is no surprise
that our subjective words and images, our notion of I, has melted into the
social stickiness of how to govern, how to think, how to create change and
movement towards a richer life and way of understanding and knowing
things.
Art is no stranger to this social relativism, where
subjective relativism seems to reign. And if what is happening in art is any
hint of what is to become our governing agent it will be the consensus of the
subjective.
This way of governing destroys the subjective I. It has destroyed art. Where uniqueness,
independence, originality once was defined the subjective I, now uniqueness,
independence and originality appear to be a rare occurrence in images and in
words.
We need to return to a notion of reality isn’t just words,
images or anything we can imagine and create and then say it is so is so. That would make reality filled with only
wishful, hopeful, thinking and ways of knowing. Reality needs to be objective and
to be objective it needs to have a materiality to it and not just wishful
thinking and imagining. Thinking about reality in this manner would change how
we think about the subjective I. We need
to see the subjective I as objective and complex, not just hopeful, but also
sorrowful, not just sublime but also filled with chaos, there needs to be a
struggle for the subjective I to exist and for an image to become works of
“art.”
What would objective words and images in art, society and
culture. It would respect the I as a
thing in itself, subjective, but it would not expect the subjective I to govern
art, society or culture. Controlling art, society and culture should be based
on a reality that is objective, not imagined and created out of wishful
thinking.
How does that relate to my work which is filled with the
imaginary is something I am struggling with? I do recognize though that there
is more value to what I create if my fluid struggle is evident, and if an idea
or concept emerges that inspires one to think differently about how things are
governed and controlled. Inspires one to
think differently and is free to be able to do so. It seems impossible that the subjective forms
into a collective subjective, which is an oxymoron to say the least, but it has.
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