die ablenkung

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Hello!

Beuys is surely not a Sartre follower but of course there are many parallels. Most of all: the keyword “creation”.

But Beuys did not mean “creation” with regard to the very own existence. The sentence “Jeder Mensch ein Kuenstler”/”Everyone is an artist” is likely one of the most often misunderstood sentences in (art) history. It does not mean that everyone is as artist (literal). Also it does not mean that everyone has the ability to become an artist that creates scultpures, paintings, music … Furthermore it does not mean that the kind of creativity that is reflected in the word “artist” is something everybody obtains just by being a human being.

The context in which Beuys said “Everyone is an artist” is that in every society many questions and problems arise. Sometimes they are big and might have general impact (Shall we got to war? Shall we increase taxes?), sometimes they are small and a matter of private life (Shall I marry this woman? Shall I take the train or a plane?). And no matter if we are scientists, politicians, workers, children, musicians, painters … WHAT WOULD SUIT/LOOK/FEEL BEST? — We always ask for the BEST POSSIBLE FORM we could apply to the current situation.

And to look for the best possible form is the most central question in art. From a more general point of view it is a question of aesthetics: good - true - beautiful. (E.g. see Schleiermacher)

With regard to that everyone is an artist, because everyone tries to find the most applicable form - in private as well as in public life. In the best case, everybody tries to come up to the expectations reflected in the criteria “good, true, beautiful”. And by making decisions - or drawing distinctions, as Niklas Luhmann put it* - everyone generates impacts on the social environment.

This social environment has “a form” to. It is the Social Sculpture everyone works on just bei being there. The old statement of Watzlawick/Beavin/Jackson: “You cannot not act” means, that already just by being there you get reconized by the environment. So everyone is responsible for a (smaller or larger) part of the sculpture and therefore should be responsible to arrange himself in relation to the others in a way, that lets the interactions in society lead to a “best possible form”.

At this point, you might also think of “the best of all possible worlds” (Leibniz), allthough Beuys made no allusions to it.

Kind regards,

Thorsten Scheerer

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Taylor Dupree is back under the new moniker Ando, and in surprisingly good form with this mini-album on Raster-Noton relative Bine Music. Four tracks of looped micro-melodies that are spun so finely they could be carried away in wisp of a breeze. They reference both the much maligned ‘minimal’ of recent techno and Dupree’s work in harder days as a member of Prototype909 in the early ninties. (Prototype909 are still active, incidentally, if their Myspace page is anything to go by).

But Habitat is probably closer in spirit to the work from late nineties on Raster-Noton - the wonderful miniatures of polr, for example, but with more funk. In fact, the two tracks of the  second half, ‘Optal’ and ‘Templ’ have a degree of swing that earns them the brand new portmanteau MICRO-DUB as in microhouse and dub-techno combined. Indeed, the first track ‘Cyte’ has dancehall tropes in the form of a version of the ubiquitous foghorn sound. Dupree’s recent 12k productions have been much more folk-ambient oriented, acoustic guitars etc, so Habitat is something of a surprising return to abstraction, rhythm and danceability. The beautiful cover artwork is by Benjamin Brunn, of recent Songs from the Beehive [Smallville] fame. 

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Buy: [Habitat]

Tracklisting:

Tags: Ando, Benjamin Brunn, Bine, Habitat, micro-dub, Taylor Dupree.

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