This made me smile...

The 'Face' of the Environment

Andreas Gursky, James Bond Island III, 2007

Saya sedang membaca artikel Ed Casey “Taking a Glance at the Environment”, yang diterbitkan di Ecophenomenology: Back to the Earth Itself (Brown & Toadvine, eds.) Seperti murid fenomenologi lain yang antusias akan masa depan pemikiran ini, saya sudah cukup lama mengikuti tulisan-tulisan Casey. Berawal dari The Fate of Place, dibaca untuk penulisan disertasi S2. Selain dari cara Casey meggunakan fenomenologi sebagai metode filosofis, satu hal lain yang membuat saya menyukai tulisannya menyangkut gaya. Saya tidak terlalu sering mendapatkan tulisan filsafat yang begitu jelas dan sederhana, tanpa mengurangi muatan ideologi dan kepuitisan. Saya memang selalu ‘silau’ akan orang-orang yang mampu menjelaskan ide-ide rumit dengan gampang, karena… filsafat kan memang susah, jadi sungguh terima kasih banyak kalau ada yang bersedia memudahkannya bagi saya. Selain itu, Casey juga mampu membangun ‘suasana’ dengan ramuan kata dan kalimat. Kalau karya ilmiah punya estetika tersendiri, menurut saya tulisan Casey bisa dijadikan satu contoh konkrit.

Anyway, cukup mengelu-elukan tulisan Casey. Masih banyak tempat di posting-posting berikut untuk melakukan ini. Di artikel ini, langkah Casey menggunakan teori etika Levinas tentang Wajah (the Face) untuk menjelaskan bagaimana kita bisa membangun sebuah etika tentang lingkungan sekitar (environmental ethics) memang bukan sesuatu yang baru. Banyaknya penerapan lanjut dari teori Levinas ini hanya menunjukkan ke-‘serba guna’-annya. Tapi interpretasi Casey – lain soal. (Ini juga hal yang membuat saya begitu terpukau dengan Casey. Saya belum pernah menemukan karya Casey yang tidak menunjukkan suatu interpretasi yang subtil, tidak terduga, tapi sangat ‘pas’. Bukan berarti saya selalu setuju.. Emang gue ngga punya otak sendiri?! Tapi tetap saja, kematangan seorang filsuf bisa diukur dari ‘kehalusan’ interpretasinya akan karya-karya sebelumnya. Dan untuk filsuf sekarang-sekarang ini, Casey – oh Casey! – ada di tataran atas). Di artikel ini Casey berargumen bahwa pada awalnya kita mencerna ke-Lain-an yang dijabarkan oleh Levinas lewat glances, kilasan-kilasan mata. Secara fenomenologis, ini suguhan yang menyegarkan karena saya rasa belum ada filsuf sebelumnya yang begitu menaruh perhatian terhadap kilasan mata, yang sering dianggap terlalu ‘ringan’, ‘ecek-ecek’, tidak mampu menyelami fenomena dunia sampai dalam seperti, misalnya, a gaze, tatapan.

Jika pengertian saya akan etika Levinas benar, maka menurut Levinas hubungan etika antar-manusia dimulai saat kita berhadapan dengan wajah orang lain, yang serentak menampakkan 'keliyanan' (Otherness), suatu perbedaan yang tidak akan bisa kita mengerti sepenuhnya dan juga sebuah panggilan untuk bertanggung jawab atas 'keliyanan' ini (lihat Totality and Infintity dan Ethics and Infinity). Bagaimana saya bisa bertanggung jawab atas sesuatu yang tidak bisa kita mengerti sepenuhnya? Langkah utama: menghayati bahwa ada kesenjangan antara saya dan dia yang tidak bisa direduksikan. Saya tidak akan bisa mengerti dia sepenuhnya, dan sebaliknya: integrasi antara kami berdua adalah sebuah ketidakmungkinan.

Ini semua… di’tangkap’ dengan kilasan mata?! Saya sendiri masih menunggu bagaimana Casey akan menjelaskan peran kilasan mata – suatu pengalaman tubuh yang sering kita abaikan – dalam memulai sebuah hubungan etika antara manusia dan lingkungan sekitarnya. Maklum, belum baca sampai habis. Tapi dari beberapa halaman selanjutnya yang sudah saya lihat sekilas (ha!), ada kaitannya dengan pemikiran Casey tentang ‘tempat’. Lebih spesifik, Casey sepertinya akan memberi penjelasan tentang pengertiannya akan apa yang dimaksud dengan ‘landscape’, ‘horizon’, ‘layout’ dan ‘surface’. Di beberapa posting selanjutnya, saya akan menuangkan tanggapan saya.

Relics

Pengantar untuk pameran Relics oleh Arkiv Vilmansa, Manila, December 2011

For more on Arkiv Vilmansa, click here

"This exhibition marks the artist exploring the felt abstraction of memory, trying to capture the spirit of the Phillipines as he remembers it, rather than representing it figuratively. These works communicate the retained fragments of times past, that are now returning - as relics – to the present. Memory is inaccurate and prejudiced, but they bestow depth to experiences and make them unique. These paintings do not directly show us coastal lines, palm trees and the turquoise sea of the tropics, but the experience of these phenomena as they are preserved in the artist’s memory. His unique, curvaceous lines and luscious colours dance elegantly on these canvases as if to a graceful rhythm. A rhythm we cannot hear, but feel. Memory is a wild terrain, where one could so easily lose their way. The current show presents Vilmansa’s way of taming the wilderness, to make sense of his memories, in order to share that experience with others."

The Space that Art Creates: The Evolution of Darbotz's Storytelling

Untuk pameran The Boy Who Became a Monster oleh Darbotz Vivi Yip Art Room, Jakarta, 3 December 2011

Vivi Yip Art Room

Darbotz

"What difference does it make, where a work of art is located? This question becomes important when the work of a street artist is exhibited in an art gallery. On a global level, for over four decades we have witnessed the birth of a new kind of art that are now colonizing cities worldwide. Beyond the hype attached to it, the steady progression of street art indicates its powerful role in testifying to a culture that defies mainstream understanding of what art is supposed to be. Street art is subversive – this is why it is a bold critique of the art world, as well as of the world of everyday urban life.

As a general rule, street artists feed off the creative buzz of cities. But each city is unique, and one would find it hard to compare Jakarta with any other cities in the world. When he started out, Darbotz literally used Jakarta as his canvas – its rundown, jam-packed, dilapidated streets and building walls, alleyways and bridges. In the Indonesian street art scene, Darbotz is hardly a new name, and his relentless, consistent attitude to work has earned him the respect of his peers. Working in Jakarta, and driven by the struggle that characterizes its everyday living conditions, Darbotz’s graffiti becomes his personal testament to the city.

In the spaces of Jakarta, Darbotz works provide a way for us to reconnect with our everyday spaces by bursting open their dull banality with his trademark monochromatic imageries. When we are stuck in traffic, for instance, the momentary pleasure of looking at Darbotz’s images – heads with oversized, sharp teeth, octopuses with tentacles that spread out the length of flyovers – revitalize our experience of the city. When his works are taken out of the context of the urban surrounding to the gallery, the gallery does more than legitimize the status of his art – the status of Darbotz works have already been secured by the streets of Jakarta.

Rather than legitimizing Darbotz works, this exhibition provides an insight into how these artworks create a space different to that which he produces in the streets of Jakarta. In the flyovers and alleyways, his works create a space in which we escape – however temporarily – the dreariness and alienation of urban living. On canvases hung in the gallery, these works create a space for Darbotz’s storytelling, for the production of a narrative that is not possible in Jakarta’s streets. As the artist says, “What I have with gallery works that I didn’t with graffiti is more time for exploration – of ideas, of materials, of execution. This is one of the biggest difference for me”. More time to explore, more time for Darbotz to tell his story.

These new works clearly display how Darbotz have taken full advantage of the luxury of having more and thus more opportunity to explore. Here, we can see how the artist has progressed beyond previous tried-and-tested techniques. Instead, we see the emergence of new characters and the introduction of a new colour scheme, in order to create a bold visual narrative that remains unmistakably his.

In Monster Inside of Us #1 and #2, for instance, Darbotz tells us the story of freakish creatures that exist within us. The figurative renditions of a human face show an artist exploring new visual directions without necessarily erasing the old path that led him there. In terms of form, the way the human face is depicted is new for Darbotz, but the characteristic image of the squid (Monster Inside Us # 2) remains apparent. With these paintings, Darbotz is claiming that it is Jakarta that turned him into a ‘monster’, though this is neither good nor bad, as the resin sculpture The Rest depicts. Rather than signifying repulsion to the city that makes him, this work conveys a critical acceptance of the conditions – no matter how rotten and corrupt they may be – that make Jakarta what it is. Conditions whose effect mercilessly twists and frays our nerves, as the entangled spirals of Body Mind Trick #2 – monochromatic save for the unexpected pink undulating curves - shows.

Darbotz’s works do more than simply portray negative sentiments attached to the ugly degradation of cities. For cities are potent concoctions of paradoxes, and this is an element that makes them enticing. Pollluted #1, #2 and #3 – as well as being interesting works in this collection for the vaporous cloud of smog executed in purple and pink acrylic – convey this clearly: the contaminated environment that surrounds us in the city are strangely the very thing that binds us to it. Cities are also alluring for the paradoxical co-existence between the old and the new. Looking at the Mess and Shadow speak of the layer upon layer of histories that mark our everyday spaces, where the most current is often built upon what was already there before it. Darbotz shows us that to create is not necessarily to create from a blank slate, but from pre-existing things and ideas. This is a discovery that the artist made through graffiti, which he is now translating into artworks made specifically for the gallery.

From the street to the gallery: are we simply echoing issues that others have questioned before? In the relatively recent development of street art, this has no doubt become a classic story to tell: the struggle an artist faces in translating truths found in the public space of the street to the private space of the gallery, and how they mold those experiences into new gallery-specific works. But, as is often the case, it is not the story as such but how that story is told, which leaves an impression on the audience and stirs their own imagination. This exhibition brings us Darbotz’s own way of telling the story of cities that ceaselessly inspire him, in their raw and gritty glory."