artist

Artist-musician: Collecting images for piano compositions.

 

A playful exhibition at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum made me contemplate my process as an artist-musician. The exhibition titled “Collections and so on” is an interactive installation which invites viewers to participate and contribute to the outcome of the exhibition. Viewers can interact with the exhibition through assembling a number of personal belongings on an allocated surface. A picture can then be taken by pressing a huge red button mounted into the counter top. Once the image is processed, your collection forms part of a series of images projected on a screen during the exhibition.

The items assembled for my “collection” included most of the gadgets I use to gather source material when I go hiking and explore in nature. My collection include; a notebook and pen, a smartphone (which I used to take the image), a mini tripod (not included is a selfie stick I can mount on top of the mini tripod and a clip-on wide angle lens for smartphones), a USB cable and adapter, a 5000 power bank with an extra USB cable, a USB for extra storage and a set of headphones.

Over the years, I have learned to constructively deal with intense emotions by immersing myself in nature. The combination of exercise and beautiful natural surroundings create a space where I can easily work through these emotions. In the process, I project my emotional state onto the landscape. To make sense of these emotions, I make connections between my emotional state and natural elements or phenomena in nature through associations and metaphors.

Nature invigorates me. The natural flow in nature always reminds me to stay in the moment. I seek wisdom and comfort in nature. Trees grounded steady while swaying in the wind, teaches me about the ambiguity of personal growth. Water flowing gracefully sometimes viciously, teaches me about the flow of equanimity. Seasonal changes, life and death, light and dark, all represents the binary nature of being human. Opposites intrigue me.

I try to capture natural elements or phenomena in nature through video and photographic images. The gadgets I use are easy to manage when I go hiking and fit comfortably in my small backpack. Even though a sufficient outdoor camera will provide better quality, I prefer using my smartphone at the moment. Images and videos are spontaneously captured as I actively yet mindfully explore nature. I try to capture my surroundings as close as possible to how I perceive it when I make mental and emotional connections.

The visuals represent elements or phenomena in nature that correlates with my inner state and emotions. Besides making mental associations, emotions are being translated through music on the piano. Through a combination of video and piano compositions emotions are conveyed. As a performer, I am interested in the “transmission” of emotions between images and music as well as the “exchange” of meaning between live performance and an audience.

The “gadgets” in the photograph above (with the title ‘processing’) represent processes which begin with an emotional state. The emotions are then made comprehensible through a cognitive process. The mental association are processed through music composition and performance. Essentially, it is about making the inner world transparent. It is about turning the inner towards the outside, bringing the inner chaos to the surface and rearranging in into a comprehensible whole.

For me, these processes are never concluded. It will always be in process, in-between, moving back and forth, stuck between performer and audience. Perhaps this “in-between processing” is the correlation between opposites. It is never the one or the other; it is always the one becoming the other.

[embedyt] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Be6ncrn2Zwc[/embedyt]

Why I am not an artist anymore.

A few months ago I gave up on the notion of being an artist (or musician).  The reason why I want to share my decision of letting go of the label “artist” is to open a discussion on what it means to be an artist. Maybe you have had similar experiences and I invite you to share your thoughts.

I studied art with the idea of becoming a professional artist. As many of you know, it is extremely difficult to be a self-sustainable artist in a socio-economic driven society. After I completed a Master’s degree, I was employed at a private school as an art and music teacher. I decided to become a teacher with the hope that I could become financially independent and pursue my career as a practicing artist-musician.

20160717_185712After a few years, I realised that my productivity and creativity were subsiding. I felt depleted and visionless. My energy, time and money were being sucked into this teaching job. I became a battery plugged into the system as some narcissistic asshole were gaining all the benefits. In the meanwhile, my dreams were being flushed down a toilet. Desperately clinging to the last strand of hope, I knew I had to make a drastic change.

A friend of mine mentioned teaching TEFL in Asia. The salary and working hours seemed reasonable as I would be able to work, save money, pay off outstanding debt and have enough free time to create art. Besides, the challenge of living in a foreign country seemed to be the ideal opportunity to break from stagnation and grow as an artist. After some hefty contemplation, I decided to take the plunge.

As I didn’t know how long this foreign endeavour would last and I needed the financial backing, I sold and gave away most of my belongings. Surprisingly, it wasn’t hard to let go of my generous accumulation of stuff. I sold all of my homeware, furniture, plants, equipment, tools and even my piano. I kept all of my books (which I am not ready to let go of yet), some art materials, my laptop, clothes and a small box with sentimental items. Getting rid of all these things felt liberating and promising.

After the huge transition and initial culture shock, I felt terribly anxious. I still wasn’t making art or writing music. In fact, I had no studio, tools or musical instruments. Even worse, I was detached from the art community and connections I had in my home country. I was paranoid that I might be sabotaging my career and that my worst fear would realise. I was afraid of becoming a failed artist.

Within this uncertainty I found stillness. I asked myself: Why is the idea of “making it” so important to me? Why do I feel worthless as an artist if I am not “selling” or being recognized by others as a “good” artist? Why do I connect my worthiness to success? It was then that I realised that all these ideas are only attachments. These ideas are created by a society of what we think things should be. Fuck it. If these ideas make me anxious and paranoid, then fuck it. Fuck the institutions, fuck the organisations and fuck the system. Fuck the definitions and fuck the labels. Within this uncertainty, I realised possibility and a potential to reinvent myself.

20160605_121723The making of art didn’t vanish completely. For the last year, I have been drawing mandalas almost every day. I discovered mandalas a few years ago when I did research on projects for my private students I had at the time. Eventually, mandalas became a means for me through which I could centre myself when anxiety, frustration, and self-doubt took hold of me. It is through the making of mandalas that I began to understand the potential and power of creativity. I began to understand that we create from our soul and that we are all creative beings. I don’t need to label myself as an artist or musician to be able to create. I don’t need accomplishment or recognition to be an artist. I am not an artist, I make art. I am essentially a creative being and I need to learn how to create for myself without judgement and the need for acknowledgement.

On this journey of reinvention, I have learned that the reason why most of my creative endeavours haven’t flourished is because it sprouted from weak and unnourished soil. It grew out of fear and were being sustained by negative energy. If I want to develop a creative practice that is self-sustaining, it should be built on a strong foundation. I should be grounded from within. I have to trust the source of energy that inspires creativity, I have to trust myself.