Janis project proposal

Tentative Title

Personal judgment: copy, transform and combine

General Introduction

“Good artists copy great artists steal” Picasso

My work has recently been concerned to the re-mixing, re-making processes and to the reflections in nowadays culture. Copying is one of the things how we learn. Before introducing with something new, we need to be fluent in our native language. Taking an idea, mixing it together with other ideas and creating variations can lead to a complete transformation and create a new work. Creative leap can be made by combining different ideas, and figuring out the right ingredient what is needed to make it productive. Interpretation can create another work in which the initial content can be used in another level. Stating this, a spectator himself is also a re-creator of that very same work what he sees, his interpretation and knowledge evaluates and translates it. Susan Sontag said that just about everything is photographed, Oliver Laric claims that just about everything has been photoshopped. An interpretation of an action each time will be different, because in the new version the author is not revealing the original idea, but him self. All out comes exist simultaneously but do not interfere further with each other. In every interpretation a new, parallel world is created in which it’s interpretation is true.

There are different methods of doing this, at the moment I would propose to start slow and simply copy the stuff that inspires me, be conscious, aware of it and instinctively mix match the ideas, re-enact things and try to establish my method of successful personal judgment.

The question is, where is the boundary of remaking things, how to define the added value? Main concerns: What ingredients do I need for to establish my own visual language and make a use out of it? The questions could be answered through the practical process, creating the mead which has more than one platform and is floating around in different outcomes as the starting points.

I am looking at it from both sides and asking myself, what is this cultural aspect about, what is it doing? The hype era of information, capitalism and speed. Does every successful idea has its price?

Relation to previous practice

In my previous practice I was obsessed with transformation of reality, I was experimenting with digital images, mixing and transforming them. The deformations of a photorealistic image displays another relative reality which consists of software generated forms. The project research explores boundaries of lens based medium, looking for the manipulation possibilities and finding related connections from history.

It is interesting to see how software is generating visual information in between, knowing two coordinates and creating the third one. It explores the boundaries of lens based medium, unfolds another way of a visual interpretation and raises a question why the post-photographical qualities are interesting in nowadays? It is yet another way of manipulating reality, another way of experiencing it by using these contemporary tools. At the moment I am questioning myself, what qualities from these experiments I can borrow and put into my visual language grammar section, what does it add to my working methodology?

My biggest influences ever since are surrealists like Dali, Magritte, Man Ray, photographer Duane Michals and many others.

Relation to a larger context

Oliver Laric, Lev Manovich, Kessler, Omar Fast, Andy Warhol, Kirby Ferguson, Baksy, Macdonaldstrand, Duane Michals, Dali.

Nowadays media is overwhelmed with stuff. Online You can be lost in couple of seconds, start to fallow something that seems to be interesting and at first it is attracting the tension and than providing a link to something related and dropping the spectator in a loop of things which are actually sort of the same, but different, for example the suggested videos of Youtube. Couple of weeks ago I saw a film by Omar Fast, which had an interesting scenario, it did not matter what time You enter the screening because in couple of minutes you realize that it is sort of looping an idea in general but at the same time going forward with an extended story line.

Describe more about the latest stuff that inspired me, for example from: Macdonaldstrand, Laric, Fast, Ferguson, Banksy, DJ Danger Mouse?

Practical steps

Preparation stage

I gather together all my influences = observation, curiosity, appreciation. Take things that I appreciate and that really mean something to me.

Incubation

The process of subconsciousness, the process when ideas are generating.

Insight

Execution, the process of creation, I need to work hard with all my muscles of creativity, switch ON my critical judgement and be honest with my decisions.