On The Artistic Ethos of Being
Crawling through the pages of Jean-Paul Sartre's Being and Nothingness, you cannot help thinking about the qualities of being, and initially, considering the qualities of negation, or not being. It has not been too taxing for me to ponder the things relating to performance that I did not want to be now, or do now, in the new work. I did not want to be an actor. I no longer wanted to be a mime, at least in the conventional sense.
To perform or to act seems inconsistent with just being, without doing. But imagery is nonetheless created, and the pictures are worth a thousand words. So is this installation art? Perhaps, except it is not only visual. It, he, the creature, has a living soul, a personality, and states of being which are sincere, if in limbo.
Not only observation is engaged here, but also recognition. Something is familiar while also being strange.
There is a knowing sense of relationship and truth which doesn't necessarily have to be 'real'.
Shakespeare writes that the purpose of 'playing' is to "hold the mirror up to nature". As a mime I knew and embodied this, that a mime reflects as a stylish, true-if-unreal representation of human nature. But now I prefer to think of myself as a spectra... a vision of someone who isn't, but might be. He is an odd alternative, a sort of benign monster, showing us who we are not, but could be.
In this, he plays the fool, he manifests becoming. He is zen baka.
LIMBO
Adrift... without More-ings
on a Sea of Tranquillity,
Moon-lit.
Left Somewhere ---
Not Arrived Somewhere Else.
Buoyant in Levity,
a-fool-a-loof.
Silent in Stillness,
Alertly Asleep.
Diver,
Strokes of the Deep.
Fearless & Innocent
as an Octopus.
Acutely Alive.
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