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| For my graduation project, I aim to look into the possibilities to (re)conquer, repurpose and generate new meanings for the objects that we surround us with, through the use of sculpture.
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| Most of our cultural products and artifacts have a unilateral, culturally programmed functionality inscribed onto them. However, new purposes can be generated through action. A skater modifies the use-value of urban architecture by performing tricks on it and mundane, sharp objects can easily be turned into weapons. Airport and prison personnel are required to be experts at categorizing things in binary terms. Paradoxically, this systematic and paranoid labeling has a constructive aspect as any suspicion momentarily disturbs our perception of the object. All possible outcomes need to be taken into account; a spoon fluctuates between an escape tool/murder weapon and a piece of cutlery.
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| It is this potential for (and sometimes even marriage between) comedy, creativity and violence that is latent in most objects that has led me to think about their instigating conditions; boredom, necessity and desperation, as a kind of holy trinity.
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| Many groups of people – impoverished, marginalized, fanatical or just purely passionate hobbyists – are forced to deal with limitations more than others, hence the need for creating certain strategies. In terms of ingenuity and use of material, how have they manifested their aims? Naturally, that is an overwhelmingly huge topic to cover, but I would like to look closer at a kind of DIY approach of stubborn, light resistance as a mode of formulating a critique against programmatic thinking. Perhaps this is what Iza Genzken meant when she cried out ‘Fuck the Bauhaus’. From a sculptural standpoint, all of this can be quite spontaneous and juvenile too, as Cady Noland illustrates in an interview:
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| An adolescent walks down the street with a couple of friends eating an ice cream cone and suddenly smashes it into the coin return slot of a pay phone. It’s a nihilistic, negative, gratuitous thing, not functional. It does not facilitate anything, yet it’s a pleasure to make the thing function in this other way.
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| This ‘pleasure principle’ will be discussed in the thesis, also in relation to me making sculptures from a fan perspective. I will dedicate a part of my thesis to the relationship that I have to my subjects, that have often alluded to or been taken straight from popular culture.
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| My works in the past served as lamentations of the point in time when initially powerful phenomena get exhausted, watered down, mass-produced and mediated. By contrast, in the thesis I will try to emphasize and elaborate on the intriguing aspects of what drew me to the source material and (actual materials) to begin with. This will also be a good opportunity for me to explain my views on the ability of physical materials to speak ‘on their own terms’ about their intrinsic properties and other things I am concerned with: loss, attributed values, economy, paradox, absurdity.
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| In The Forbidden Conjunction and The Question Is To Which Is To Be The Master, Raphael Zarka theorizes about forms of movement and Galileo but most importantly how the practice of skateboarding “energizes” and “destabilizes” structures conceived for rest and comfort, by the simple gesture of riding on them. To me, the simple equation of a skater plus handrail is reminiscent of a joke, a striking image that is easily reproducible and therefore powerful.
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| Smithson, Zarka and many others have championed the production of social space through simple gestures - it is a discourse that might be not directly applicable to my thesis, but I am curious to know if it could somehow inform it. The longing for and attempt to revitalize an area is not far from my question: will objects disclose anything about themselves or about collective memory if I turn them into sculptures?
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| Practically, I will test my thoughts by producing works that have been processed and shaped using several ‘workshop’ techniques, moving slightly away from the impact of heavily associative, straight-out-the-store products to more amorphous shapes and constellations. The origins of my chosen materials would become less distinguishable, in an attempt to bring them out of their semiotic territory. I imagine this being less about arranging visual codes and making premeditated work and more about creating stuff in an experimental manner.
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| The structure of the thesis will take the form of a pseudo-journalistic essay, interspersed with anecdotes mostly from daily life, art history and popular culture. I find texts by Zarka, Robert Smithson and Cady Noland helpful to look at for their tone, as well as templates for collecting information from a wide range of fields, dipping in and out of contemporary mass media, while relating it to their respective practices. I intend to keep a loose narrative throughout the thesis, similar to an extended magazine article written for a ‘general audience’, though of course more subjective.
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| I wish to analyze and link specific elements in my work (say, a brand of bubble gum used in a sculpture) to my personal preferences, trying to dig into what it means for me to be a fan of something. Is it an aesthetic tactic that can be nourished?
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