|
Initially, the idea was to confront the republican triptich : Liberté; Egalité, Fraternité.
Not so much in order to praise it, but rather to denounce the way it's drifted,
the way it frustrated its pretentions, its meanless ambitions, its means with no ambition.
Then I went to New York and shot a serie of photos of these "living statues" posing still for tourists.
Inferior version of the Liberty Statue they were exhibiting all the symbolic attributes,
but were able to transgress its symbolic meaning by their funny poses.
Then, the rags had to be undone, skinned, twisted, torned to pieces
until all these activities destroyed the naked liberal meaning of it,
until perhaps other meanings emerged like water pouring through pebblestones
and it was called "work in progress".
Work in progress because this work is progressing with associations,
reactions, reflections, rejection and desires,
by bust of passion or anger, and refusing our capacity to be offended.
Work in progress because if a job cannot be stopped,
it's this job which puts you on the way to freedom, either freedom for one or for all.
Thirty years ago, in New York, I met that word : work in progress :
a small poster glued on the door of a contemporary art gallery
while inside a team of youngsters were busy setting up the show.
There it was in the States, in the heart of the Big Apple, in the Art business.
In the middle of the flow of all these contradictions,
in the melting pot of this improbable freedom and yet...
In the world center of creation and in the very place
where the setting up of "pragmatic and efficient" ready-made thinking was organised.
But also a place where a candid faith was active,
in terms of a possible sens of responsability,
in the eventual practice of an individual morality,
and the possible action of a collectiv ethic...
In this paradise of liberalism, and « contre-culture », all questions remain.
The material vulgarity did’nt solve anything : sex, desire, love, hate, power, property, transmission…
And specially stays the research of meaning,
or in a sort of eyewash, the implacable need of reassurance.
Then, in order to try not to be duped, those rubber masks, sleek or sunken,
open eyes on nothingness, through grimaces or smile, ape in an immobile posture
the world comedy and the miracle of Art… |
