UNSELF- the word came up from below my conscious parts while I lay waiting for sleep. It maybe pertains tangentially to the space between fear and desire. The potential for transcendence OR annihilation. T. McKenna's assertion that our ability to destroy ourselves is only the mirror image of our ability to save ourselves.

I am inspired by human interaction, and our seemingly natural ability to misunderstand one another correctly. The city as hive only works as a metaphor so far as we can ignore the great lack of compassionate coordination birthing tragi-comic transgressions of human dignity and the wasting of potential inherent in any system-run-amok.

I look for the details of accidental architecture: the accumulating ambiance of angles, curbs, pipes, electrical boxes, signage, graffiti, litter, scuff marks, erosion, bike racks, trees, cracks in the sidewalk, construction barricades, surveillance equipment, flowerbeds gone to weed, etc.

Beauty is the chance meeting of Donald Judd and Robert Rauschenberg in a McDonald's parking lot.

So how then to abstract these urges? Tear apart and recombine them? Turn the traffic light inside out and rewire for dance floor light shows at the PEDESTRIAN CROSSING?

Rather than simply aping the forms I am given to noticing, I strive to go beyond the aesthetics of knee-jerk appropriation and infantile pop banter so as to actually enter into dialog with the forces of entropy and rebirth I see occurring in all natural phenomena- from ice cracking the asphalt to city planners pruning the organically occurring neighborhood.




THEMATIC DEVICES RELATING TO STYLE AND FORM:

The combined use of music, costuming, sculptures and props, physical actions, and the presentation of written texts constructs a complex formal terrain upon which autobiography, fantasy and politics mingle, morph, and grow beyond this author's original intentions.

The use of music and sculpted sound functions as a tool for establishing and repeatedly altering mood and context. The sound may exist at face value; as music that causes the audience to react according to personal taste (dancing, leaving). At the same time, it may manifest simulacrum- referencing itself particularly or vaguely while certain allusions are drawn to times and places past, present, and/or future. Samples, loops, electronic beats merge with acoustic elements such as percussion, harmonica, the naked voice to create disjointed audial collages delineating the emotive territory of a piece.

Object accumulations provide further crystallization of conceptual stance. Sculptures, found objects, paintings, drawings, photos- as well as costumes and the handmade "posters" that often accompany a show- are brought together temporarily as variables in the closed system of the installation or performance. These form the "sign vocabulary" of the piece- symbolic allusions guiding and misguiding both audience and artist through the navigation of this shared moment.

(Both objects and costuming may be as simple or elaborate as needed: T-Shirt, jeans, and a bar of soap may suffice for one piece, while another may require months of preparation: collecting, building, sewing, painting, editing, etc. Very often the work strives for an almost baroque level of pomp and grandiose posturing in partnership with the lo-fi, taped together aesthetic of basement venue production values. Punk fractals adrift in a pool of stolen milk?)

Within this synthesized environment of sound (time) and objects (space), text becomes a catalyst setting into motion the narrative unfolding of the art work. Self-composed or lifted from other sources (books, magazines, flyers, billboards, popular songs), these are displayed on walls or circulated as handbills. In the performative context, the words are spoken and sung in conjunction with exaggerated voice and movement. A dynamic interplay is attempted through loose mimicry of interpersonal exchanges- sketching out symbolic "personalities" and improvising the conversational process through variations in subject matter, pitch, meter, affectations of accent, inflection, cadence, and tone of voice.




ACCUMULATION, ARRANGEMENT, AND DISPERSAL:
Plans For the Nearing Future

A) roughly-sketched imagery of nightmare, sitcom, erotic novel, weblog… trying to build alchemical machines, machines which operate above, or outside, or beneath the corporeal world.

B) Semi-scripted video narratives morphing between documentary self-portraiture and spastic, ego-driven fetish scenarios. Signage, bricks, castoff articles harvested from city street, flyers lifted delicately from the stalls of public restrooms. Read the litter and shards of glass like runes: instruments of psychic warfare.

C) Iconography collected like lint on a favorite jacket. Sculptures erected from the detritus of the day: junk-mail, globular building compounds, bodily fluids and the ritual actions of repetitive psycho-sensual blessings performed in the studio vicinity.



I have tried to retain and hone the sense of impropriety I possessed as a teenager while bringing to the table a man's meal of subtlety, thoughtfulness, and force.



-JWT 1.10.08