So, the little voice in my head that operates on instinct and background machinations keeps speaking up about Eric Staller. Maybe it’s because of what I see as similar artistic processes, although of a much less global and “multi million dollar” scale.
Just read his book “Out of My Mind” and while reading I found that most all of the emotions and thoughts he expresses about his process etc….ring very true and familiar to Che and I’s artistic development and past.
The easiest similarity to spot is that we have have done massive, ridiculous art cars for the Art Car Parade for 8 years in a row with our “family” of friends. Eric is a Grandfather of the Art Car movement with Lightmobile. His descriptions of seeing reactions to the car in New York in the 70’s read like memories of our riotous trips through the streets of Houston in monstrous, motorized contraptions that shock all the “everyday” people out of their insulated caccoons. The immediacy of the reactions that our insane cars cause in folks is like a great Rorschach test. Making eye contact with people when they first see a crazy art car rolling up next to then on a perfectly normal day is a magic moment. The times we have taken “joy rides” in our Art Cars are all permanently etched into my mind/emotions. There is something indelible about experiencing the moment of discovery, questioning, (fear?), joy, surprise and wonder with unsuspecting pedestrians as they cope to integrate our spectacle into their world view.
There is an almost tangible energy that manifests between us and the on-lookers. We get to experience the power of our art in a very immediate way. But it’s not just the object of the car, it’s what our radical presence and passage implies. We represent something wild and uninhibited physically and psychologically. Our message is one of freedom, a message of empowerment and re-contextualization. A not so gentle reminder that the world outside ourselves is an exciting place that should be explored actively.
Our comfort zones should be avoided….regularly.
It seems that Eric Staller’s art pushes people out of their comfort zones. I see that he seems to recognize that art is a perpetual action, a manner of approaching the world mentally that causes all the input stimuli to be re-amalgamated into what always ends up as a new artistic “expression”….
Art is active and the “appreciation” of it should be physical as well. As bio-mechanical machines we respond on the cellular level when we are flooded with emotions. Our biochemistry literally changes with our emotions and those changes have a profound effect on our thoughts and emotions. When art shocks people and pulls them in like a monster magnet….when it causes an involuntary physical/emotional reaction in the viewer….then it has done it’s job. When the state they are shocked into is a state of pleasant wonder and active engagement, then the artists has given a gift.
The gift is a chance to feel what many of us loose in the “rat race”…a chance to give ourselves permission to break out of our everyday bubbles because the spectacle/experience is so far outside the self constructed limitations of our “daily routine”. When presented with something like a Lightmobile in some random street at night in the middle of NYC in the mid seventies what else can a person do except stop in their tracks in surprise and wonderment? That moment for the viewer is an instantaneous transformation, a threshold crossing, from one emotional reality to another. The place they exist in while interacting with the art is a state that they know, somewhere inside, that is possible to inhabit every day in every moment. Maybe the pedestrian lacks the courage to live wild and free…maybe they have convinced themselves that they are “on the right track” and are not involved with a daily self transformation. But the artist is there is remind them that our true state is one of power, creation and joy.
So, in Luminary, these concepts are present as well. The process of making Luminary is “gonzo documentariansim” and my job is to get into the experience, to live it and re-present the realities I inhabit along the way. Ultimately, I think the light painting images have the same power on the viewer as seeing an art car that is a 20ft octopus attacking the Alamo drive by with a monstrous sound track of sub sea battles and musket/cannon fire projecting a benign insanity on the onlookers.
In the same way that it may be hard to imagine how/why/where someone would build such a monstrosity car, the light painitng images can stop people in their tracks and hold them, rooted, while they enjoy the sensations they are flooded with.
I hope that I am transfixed by the process and the objective is to create a product that reminds me and everyone else that we should be pushing forward, accumulating experiences, integrating concepts and having shit loads of fun while we’re alive.
Bring the light…bring the noise…leave your mark…..
matt
Tags: art car, earsaregood, Eric Staler, Gonzo Documentarianism, Light Drawing, Light Graffiti, light painitng documentary, light painting, Lightmobile, Luminary, shock to the system, {tcb}
