Artwork in contemporary art
Artwork is a method that borrows from somatic, spiritual, therapeutic forms and techniques, but it is centered on embodying artworks. It reformulates conceptual, aesthetic and performative operations behind artworks, transforming them into practices and approaches which permeate other spheres of life. Why all the effort to create artworks only to be finished in products to be consumed? An artwork is usually the crystallization, the documentation and the traces of a practice. If it's actualized in our bodies, it can also be a portal back to that practice. In Artwork, works that we are supposed to look at are activated in the bodies of visitors / clients / students, they're transformed into Artwork – an artwork and a new method at the same time. It is also an alternative way of collecting works – it curates and activates art in people's bodies. Artwork is ambiguous, it can appear as performance, exhibition, research, workshop, therapy, wellness event, book, art collection, artwork or a combination of these, depending on the context – art, philosophy, spirituality, therapy, education, literature. Artwork proposes that works should be practiced, that art shouldn't just be seen, it should be lived.
Artwork in performance and dance
In Artwork, works in any medium are transformed into practices and performances. Artwork embraces an ontology of art as performance – artworks are processes, rather than the products of those processes – they're generative performances through which works come into existence. Artwork takes the works from the products, objects, images, spectacle back to the performances and practices behind them.
Among the many forms Artwork can take are sessions in ambiguously set spaces, having an atmosphere between an art venue, a promotional booth for the Artwork method, and a studio for somatic therapy sessions. The performers can be seen also as gallery guards and Artwork method representatives, creating a complex and possibly puzzling situation – exhibition, somatic method launch, performance, workshop, therapy. Artwork crew can work with interested people, individually or in groups. People, ideally invited from different contexts (art, therapy, spirituality, philosophy, contemporary dance…), have to negotiate their presence there, choosing their degree of participation on the range Artwork client - spectator. For people choosing to be spectators, the sessions, with their mixture of performers and people attending them, might appear as performances.
Artwork in healing
The therapeutic and transformative functions of art are often minimized and avoided because of the impression that they diminish an artwork, or expel it from the art field. Yet, some artists transformed their lives or parts of their lives into art. Artwork explores the opposite, the transformation of art into life – the embodiment of artworks based forms of thinking, feeling and acting. Artwork transfers to life art instruments, processes, practices, aesthetics, exploratory attitudes, and introduces an art sensibility and attention in everyday perceptions, in the senses, in what we already see, hear, touch, feel, do. Being centered on artworks, the Artwork method might appear as paradoxical and counterintuitive at times, deviating from the well meaning, enforced positive feel of most therapeutic approaches: Most somatic/spiritual practices aim at improving strength, balance, coordination, flexibility, appearance, Artwork, through works like Collapse Yoga, listen to the deep desires of the body for asymmetry, incoordination, weakness, relaxation, unbalance, abandon, collapse, freedom. Most somatic/therapeutic/spiritual practices aim at self-awareness and self-knowledge. Artwork, through works like Unimages, makes us increasingly unknown, stranger and puzzling to ourselves and others. Most practices seek normalization and control of emotions. Artwork, through works like Unexperiences, deviates affectivity, creating artificiality and playfulness in our states, opening us to meta-experiencing. Most practices aim for more clarity, light, safety. Artwork, through works like Fear Darkness makes the body sensible to darkness, amplifying its fear – the royal bridge to the unknown. Most therapies want to enhance the stability of our reality. Artwork through works like Undreaming approaches reality as a virtual reality, as dreaming that can be eventually Undreamed. Most somatic/spiritual practices idolize life. Artwork, through works like Unexist, connects us with death. Most practices speak about love as a nice abstract attitude towards nature and others that it's good to have. Artwork, through works like Love, is interested in embodying love – it actualizes love in the body, sometimes as an ecstatic, overwhelming feeling. Most practices push for sociality. Artwork, through works as Pillar Artist, agrees with Simondon that we have to pass through the ordeal of solitude, to get to the "collective" – to form the necessary affects and capacities, the body that is truly capable of community. Most somatic/spiritual practices pursue "presence". Artwork, through works like Unhere, introduces disconnections from the time, place and situation in which we find ourselves, alienations that open the possibility of new connections.
Artwork in philosophy and religion
Our lives are formed by the culture in which we are, by mental environments and embodied certainties, that is increasingly clear that we have to radically change. For that we need practices that act at the level of their structures – technologies of the self, forms of life experiments. They were the domain of religion, and they can feel disciplinary, rigid and inadequate now, many not updated in hundreds or thousands of years. And if our practices are rigid, disciplinary, conventional… that's what we become. Forms of experience and practice that appear in dialog with contemporary situations and phenomena are proposed in art. It's the domain where new answers and the awareness of new problems appear. Many artworks explore new thoughts, new sensibilities and forms of experience, not just for the sake of novelty but out of an involvement with personal and collective contemporary issues. Nietzsche saw the potential and the need to approach life through art but he noticed that, sadly, the artists are not applying their craft to it. Artwork aims to remediate this and to contribute to the urgent project of affecting the forms of life that enable the current realities.
Contemporary art has at its core the drive to surpass itself, to deviate from the consensus and mess with its axioms, through works that expand what can be considered art. In art, and especially performance you can sometimes feel that body practices can give access to the meta-conceptual, to the levels where the implicit perspectives, realities are shaped. Artwork is interested in these meta-experiences, meta-practices that shape the quality of other practices, and what and how it is possible to experience things in general. We become what we do, our practices. We can be artworks.
Artwork in education
Artwork can also take the form of workshops, courses or retreats. Via experience people are introduced to artworks, to contemporary approaches of art. Artworks are activated in the participants' bodies to create experiences that provoke new thoughts, perceptions and feelings. Most of the selected artworks activate body affects, capacities, experiences that introduce perturbations, anomalies and twists in self-presentations, perceptions and conventions. The participants will be also invited and assisted in creating their practices based on artworks. They can be as performative /somatic /spiritual /therapeutic as each of the participants desires and they can be ritualized to become everyday practices. This sets the conditions for one of the aims of Artwork, the participants to create their artworks as well.
Artwork at fairs
Artwork can appear in art fairs, alternative healing fairs, educational fairs, conferences… At the booth, information and short Artwork sessions can be provided. Posters, flyers, booklets advertise Artwork events, Artwork philosophy, Artwork texts, Artwork sessions, Artwork retreats, Artwork embodied art education, Artwork healing, Artwork spirituality, and the Artwork artworks that can be activated in people's bodies and lives.
Artwork in writing
Artwork is documented through notes written from within, while practicing artworks. Yet, the resulting book is more than documentation, it's one of the forms that the work takes – an artwork, part of Artwork. The notes combine the style of explorers' live diaries with theoretical inputs associated with those explorations, just that in this case the explored new territories are the artworks’ experiential terrains. In the past, the unknown was spatially distributed, the extraordinary was geographically accessible. There were fantastic stories and speculations about faraway places, firing explorers’ imagination. There were alien cultures and subjectivities that had the power to activate possible exits from the implicit certainties of one's time and space. Now it feels like there is nowhere to go, nothing left to explore – we kind of know all there is and what's possible – we're stuck and trapped “here”. Art is where new territories can still be discovered and formed. Embodying art might be one of the few explorations still possible. Artwork book is the witness of these potentials, and hopefully a portal to them.
Draft of a soon to be published Artwork book
