originals on duochrome 600 polaroid film red&black, orange&black, yellow&black
The legend says that Konfuzius told his disciple Yan Yuan the words: „What does not correspond with the law of beauty, do not look at. What does not correspond with the law of beauty, do not listen to, what does not correspond with the law of beauty, do not talk about“
[fei li wu shi, fei li wu ting, fei li wu yan]
In the chines original text ‘beauty’ can be understood as ‘appropriate behaviour’.
The western interpretation of the iconography kind of took this aesthetically-ethically approach of ‘release yourself from all bad’ and ironised it’s meaning to an ‘don’t overlook and just go on when something bad happens, take action and be not ignorant.
What if we shake the cord of significance. What happens when we replace one symbolic element and ignore for an while what it stands for? An act of basic perversion shows itself in this ability to produce a gap. We are not turning anymore the coin of significance, we are not longing for an subversion. To produce this gap, means to step back and questioning any ideology. Maybe we will discover that the heights of any ideology is build by an idea which longs for an object, absorbs it’s full meaning. But what if there is no identification possible between ideas and real objects? What if there is always an gap, an empty symbol to fill?
Maybe we will start to re-think our world as an surface, an topology. with seductive objects, rules and woven tracks, miracles and fluctuations rather then the heights and depths of idealistic morality.
Maybe this will grow in us an understanding for each other and the motivation to support each other more then any production of idealistic thinking can ever bring us together.
Let’s make gaps and fill them. Let’s create. Let’s respect each other and be supportive for each other. Let’s play together and not against.
In other words: ‘I just hope that both sides will have fun.’
This series of self-portraits are showing my adaption of the ‘three monkeys’-iconography. An self-reflection about perversion and shame.
