Adding to Commerce Intimating Art:
Cecilia Paredes camouflages herself within two-dimensional, floral patterned environments. Paredes explores the boundaries of blending and vanishing into a background – disguising herself with paint to challenge the notion of identity, belonging and displacement.
3D Street Art by Kurt Wenner
pixelated fluidity - east village
culture for the masses - west village
‘nough said.
Skimming across this week’s Sunday Times, I noticed the paper favoring independent thinking opposing the popularized notion of collaborative creation.
In “The Rise of the New Groupthink” Susan Cain states: “Collaboration is in. But it may not be conducive to creativity.” She argues that the greatest geniuses, inventors and artists of history have created in solitude. That in fact, people are more creative when they enjoy privacy and freedom from interruption and the most creative people see themselves as independent and individualistic (which are traits of the Inventor archetype coined by Maraget Marks and Carol S. Pearson). The best artist and greatest thinkers were and still are socially inept and naturally introverted. She sites Steve Jobs’ secret weapon genius wizard: Stephen Wozniak co-founder of Apple, Picaso and Newton and higher powers like Moses, Jesus and Buddah as prime examples. She also reveals data that suggests open space office environments and brainstorming meetings slow down the process of efficiency and creativity.
In the same NYTimes issue, “Two People, One Identity”, Austin Considine discusses the power of a singular identity taken on by two people. He highlights digital designer’s, Nate Mueller and his identical twin, Kirk, who have gained heavy recognition capitalizing on being twins to shape their image. New York Magazine crowned them the “twinliest twins ever” and Gawker chimed in, calling them “twee, twin 20something designers” that “everyone has a crush on.”
Twins have always been an easy iconic target, especially when they’re talented, smart and successful, and especially when you consider the countless innuendoes one cam conjure up. But this article was different. Rather than being “different” and having distinctly individual traits and personalities, Considine highlighted the opposite.
“’Teachers, parents were always trying to keep us separated to have two separate identities,’ states Kirk. ‘Fusing their identities publicly was partly an act of rebellion.’ Nate added, ‘There’s always a competitive nature for most twins, I feel but we decided to get together to form one really great body of work.”
So, being an individual in the context of two people, fused into one in order to make something greater, is modern day rebellion. (I’m confused too.)
In a world where the collaborative process is the zeitgeist of creativity, buzzwords like co-collaboration, mash-up and mass-participation are king and the difference between content generators and creators are a struggle to define. The idea of originality and propriety ownership is minimizing in the ever-connected, sharing community and the historical concept of the Great Man Theory is no longer gaining traction. The connection between the idea and the man who created it is dissipating and it is no longer about the genius of one man’s work (Freud, Leonardo, Einstein, Marx). The twins embody identity fusion and collaboration. Because of this, the individual point of view, introverted genius is becoming a counter-trend in the proliferated world of collaboration. Ideas are no longer attached to any one person. As ideas get thrown out into the abyss and are built upon, remixed, re-purposed, re-contextualized, the value of an idea lies in the use of that idea and the medium in which it’s communicated, rather than the original idea itself and person attached to it.
If Cain’s theory is true, the notion of a secret genius has an even harder time surviving in this modern age of extraversion, exhibitionism and sharing. Artists too, are questioning what defines the aesthetics of art in the networked era, how mass collaboration is changing notions of ownership in art and how micropatronage change the way artists produce and distribute artwork.
The Future of Art from KS12 on Vimeo.
