obscure fascinations / new creative directions

soundtrack of the day :: music for saxofone & bass guitar - sam gendel, sam wilkes (the barista “jah-rod” that I became friends with at heavy water recommended this album to me and it’s the perfect balance of stimulating and expansive)

I took the picture above in some nondescript breakfast joint in tainan, taiwan, inhabiting a repurposed industrial space. something about the playfulness of the space, contrasted with the rough exposed cement and industrial touches, intrigued my eyes and heart. a sense of mystery, playfulness, possibility, a symbolic situation in the process of becoming. 

this past year, I met my aspiration to create a distinct body of work, a world within itself, and am happy I had the opportunity to exhibit it, share with others, and have it featured in a variety of artist interviews. it is the most personal work I have made to date, which was a stark contrast to the completely public and socially-engaged work I made in the past. it was a transformative, deep in the trenches, meditative kind of process over the years that culminated in the visual works that coalesced in the exhibition. there is a sense of peace that it is now “created”, “finished” and out in the world. I still have an ep of sounds and music I created from that same source of emotional energy, and if anything, this experience with my visual artistic body of work has taught me that I need to finish and put out the sound-based work as well. my friend recently released an album as well of songs she wrote 2-3 years ago. it is interesting, the way that things change with time, but still retain the spirit and emotions they were originally imbued with. a record, a trace. and I think to work to complete it, to put it out into the world for public consumption, is to put faith into the fact that if I have had and gone through a certain experience, likely someone else on this planet has as well, and maybe it can speak to them, comfort them, making the world more clear for them in some kind of way, just as how it did for myself at that point in time. 

however, I do think some difficulty arises when it has been some time away from a work and if you inhabit a different emotional state… then the question is if it would be best to finish the previous works by infusing the new you into it, or to preserve the core stylistic elements already inherent in the work, to just work to fill in the details, so to retain the original essence. 

I tend to believe the latter. to be intentional, minimalistic, take a bird’s eye view at what really needs to be added for the work to be “complete” without shifting the original energy of it too much. 

this is the approach I would like to take to that ep. my goal is to work on it and finish it before I graduate next june. and to perform it live next summer, because I want to also grow my skills and experience in live performance. 

in terms of my visual arts (and music) created from that point in time, it centers culture, ancestral lineage, the sociopolitical. moving forward, these elements are still important to me, but I want to put them in the background. I want to put playfulness, of materiality, of historical reference, of old and new, of syncretic artistic styles, in the forefront. the act of creation for creation itself, in pursuit of obscure fascinations, mysteries, textural delicacies. this will be my new creative direction, artistic manifesto to guide my creative work for the next 7 year cycle I believe. 

art that can not be communicated through words, only feeling and intuition. diving deeper into the realm of the subconscious. a sound, a vibration, like the meaning tucked into the crevices of laughter.