A Note On Meditation On Violence

My work is mainly concerned about contaminating existing visuals and remaking them to challenge views and beliefs about violence, its causes and consequences.

Is violence a persona, an ontological entity capable of possessing and expressing itself through and become embodied inhuman analogues?

Violence as a form of self-modification by captured protesters in this video poem does not intend to reveal my essence as the creator manipulating materials for purposes of pre-inscribed notions, but my interest is more about a non-confessional agency that at least disrupts even my preconceived notions of violence beyond its institutional function as a deterrent and systematic violence as tool in a peace-making mechanism. 

Violence; often depicted as a misnomer in society, throughout history has proven to be the prime propeller of all human effort towards self-realized civility. In my art, this spectacle of violence is transformed into a refusal or outright disruption of notions of violence as an autonomously destructive energy. It posits that such as when art destroys and remakes materials towards a creation independent of its creator, it follows that a new energy that dominates the outcome of the process of making the art or protest, exists beyond the logic of the instruments used to achieve the same art or protest.

Whereas, in instances of protests and riots,  the threat of superior forces is said to ensure social stability, individual violence is relegated an exclusion of being a deviance from the same social norms protected through violence.

In protest scenarios, we observe another imperative for violence, where violent action is directly associated with human intention. This intentionality is a spontaneous, authentic moment crystallized in rage of unfulfilled demands for instance, sparked by the patronizing reception characteristic of pompous superiors, thus unhinging restrained tantrums that breach all parameters of civilized conduct.

This is written not to excuse any brutal and banal destruction that ensues by giving some redemptive optimism to the results of violent acts, but to unveil a glimpse at the unrepresentable and incommunicable aspect of violence that manifests itself through disasters, conveying a crude human nihilism that guides all purposes of self-affirmation. I am not writing this polemic to provide some autobiographical reasons for this video poem, as it is important to consider the work devoid of myself as the creator.

This work is not some disinterested appreciation of violence and the behavioral and ethical implications of violence, but rather and investigation of the perceptual experience and its impact and perceptual capacity enhancement that engages the viewer.

A perceptual participation created through aesthetic engagement with a violent event during a protest is not merely a device for exploring the viewer’s psychological reaction to the phenomenon, that which is not merely neutral but involved with the offensive and often painful.