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Writer's pictureRivka

Language as bridge between perception


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This is a bit of a detour from the things I have been looking at in my art, but I have been thinking about the titles of artworks. I sometimes find myself enjoying the name or title of art a whole lot more than the actual art work, (or sometimes the opposite happens as well - when the name is a letdown from what I perceived the art to be able to be). It tells me so much, it makes me think well beyond what I can see. It lends me some sort of perception into the vision of the artist who had created it. An object is just an object, we all see it differently based on how we have individually be conditioned to perceive life and based on our previous encounters with them and our life experiences or conditioning.

I have a love-hate relationship with text, both in artwork itself and with titling my work. I usually enjoy it when used by others but in my own usage of it I find it a difficult line to tread.

I want the audience to be open to what is in front of them without having to be exposed to my perception - or what I want them to see. However if perception is a big theme in my work, an item is only an item as long as I leave it as that. everyone is only going to see what they want to see, possibly without the awareness that everyone else is seeing something completely different. In that case I am just pushing everyone further into this cave that I am trying to explore the way out of - not as a means to destroy it - which would be impossible - but as a means to understand that it exists and to make the individual aware of it.

In a sense a title of a work can be a subtle and smarter way to bring to light something bigger than a 'thing'. But that is tricky too, it is just a line. Just words.

There is a whole little world in a piece of art. A exploration of ideas that so much broader than a line, a sentence, an essay. Isn't that why I have created imagery instead of writing essays? Because it it is here, you can see it, you can explore it, it is real, it exists.

It is just words. Within the 'Theory of Language' by Ludwig Wittgenstein, there seems to be this ambiguity in language and words. I would say in a sense words conceal and create a gap between perceptions, as we can all be speaking about different things. We are communicating, but we are all behind a screen, the screen of our beings. In a sense words are a further mess created by that disconnect. (Makes me think of the Dada performances such as Hugo Ball's Karawane: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_8Wg40F3yo)Yet we are communicating. The disconnect is there, but it serves a bridge of some sort.


I love words. I like text-based art. I like a good title in a art work. But like everything else it just needs to be done right (Maybe?) Still working on that.


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