ARTwire
a project by Rolf Steffens
Peace-Birds by Hans-Georg Türstig
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" 'I have tried in my way to be free.' Song of the peace-birds, bubbles of hope, oh so beautiful and yet: bubbles, nothing but bubbles, emerging from the ocean of consciousness, floating for a while and bursting, thereby returning to the ocean. Peace, so the peace-birds chirp, is not just a beautiful bubble. The arising, the floating, the bursting. the returning, yes, and not the bubbles. Each bubble reflecting the world and the other bubbles, yet the birds are behind somewhere, seen as reflection inside a bubble, the idea inside of us, such as peace, love, joy, justice, grace, meaning, contentment, satisfaction, silence - perhaps spherical overtones or more concentrated the sound of om, the eternal vibration, the foundation of all including the internet, essentially pure consciousness and we add only awareness. Only? Peace and freedom, like a bird on the wire, like these images on the net, fast as the light yet present here, floating, suspended between past and future, where being exists before becoming. Peace inside and outside, a subtle balance, floating does help, you see. It does. And suddenly you hear it, something hit the water and sank into it, splash, concentric waves, and silence again, not just the absence of noise, more, much more, of a presence than absence. Like peace is not just the absence of war. And war is not just the absence of peace. So peace-birds, neither flying nor sitting, neither going anywhere nor coming anywhere from. They too suspended in mid-life, floating in mid-air. Peace at last is unavoidable like the eternal presence of the divine as all there is and is not." © Hans-Georg Türstig, PhD
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Rolf explains ARTwire:
The
most well-known method of the surrealists was called ecriture automatique,
automatic writing. An author begins with an article, another continues with a
noun, without knowing the beginning, which creates a surrealistic, collective
construction of a sentence, which the rational mind of each individual can no
longer reconstruct or control.
Breton
defines automatism as the artist’s relinquishment of the differentiation
between emotions and thoughts with the aim to portrait the inner need for
shaping a subjective idea as unadulterated as possible. With this project the
attempt is made to develop with the help of the internet a gallery of different
pictures, texts, pieces of music etc.
The
project ARTwire starts here at my website with a wonderfully abstract and
digital artwork by Karin Kuhlmann. I
have extracted from her image a portion and used it as basis for my own
illustration. A part of the predecessor-picture becomes a component of a new
artwork, the statement changes. I now email my image to another artist and ask
that she or he may take any part of my image and use it for a new picture. Once
the new image is finished, it is uploaded to her or his website and I place a
link to it on my website. The new image is now emailed on to the next artist
etc. By way of these links - forward to the next and backwards to the previous
image - over time a fascinating
gallery is created, which spreads perhaps through all continents, connected via
the internet.
Following
the surrealistic automatic writing method, texts should be based on the last
sentence of the predecessor’s text, music would quote the last notes. Thus in
this project alternately image, text and music is presented, either all together
in unison or separately – we will see, read and hear …
Already
now, however, one thing is certain: the entire project will be at no time
static, but rather a creative firework of ideas and works, i.e. art on the wire
– an invisible ray which travels through the internet, at least in theory, if
all participate. If not, one of Karin’s pictures has at any rate stimulated my
own work. And that is already something, isn’t it?
Roots
of the Project
A.
Breton: ”Surrealism is the invisible ray that lets us conquer our adversaries
one day.”
Surrealism:
A pure and psychological automatism through which one attempts to express the
actual flow of thoughts - either orally or in writing or in any other way.
Thought-dictation without mental control and outside of all questions of
esthetics or ethics. This is based on the belief in the higher reality of
certain forms of association, in the omnipotence of dreams, in the pure and
simple play of thoughts. It aims at the final destruction of all other psychic
mechanisms and replaces them to solve the main problems of life.
Encyclopedia:
Surrealism is based on the belief in a higher reality of certain forms of
association which have so far been neglected; the belief in the omnipotence of
dreams, in the pure and simple play of thoughts. It aims at the final
destruction of all other psychic mechanisms and replaces them to solve the main
problems of life.
The
discovery of the subconscious in modern psychology expressed itself in the world
of art as well. The inner world of a human with his or her dreams and
irrationalities became visible and understandable. In 1924 in Paris the first surrealistic manifesto of Andre
Breton was presented to the world. The hyper-reality was described, that which
could not be reconciled between reality and dream, reality and irrationality was
dissolved. A mystification of the absurd came about, and as a description of it
served amongst others the automatism. Surreal artists use abstract means and
techniques to visually express what lies beyond the perceptual capacity of our
senses. These methods flowed into other currents of art and today have become
the decisive foundation of modern art.
See also Rolf's website at http://www.rost-digital.de/artwire