transcending complex perception

"There is a dialectical exchange between simplicity and complexity, like the one between self-revelation and self-concealment. The first truth is that every situation is extremely complicated and that anything one thinks about thereby becomes more complicated. The main mistake people make when thinking about something, whether an historical event or one in their private lives, is that they don’t see just how complicated it is. The second truth is that one cannot live out all the complexities one perceives, and that to be able to act intelligently, decently, efficiently, and compassionately demands a great deal of simplification. So there are times when one has to forget—repress, transcend—a complex perception that one has."

-Susan Sontag

Ever since graduating at what is now known as the Willem de Kooning Academie (Rotterdam, The Netherlands), Susan Sontag has remained an absolute fascination to me. Her linguistic and narrative ability to express complexities in such condensed ways has kept me always unearthing more of her..

This week one of my FB followers asked me how a previous live-art performance had changed me, after I had re-posted some post-performance photos of "I am because you are" captured in Portugal (2018). I was grateful for this question, as I still needed to condense this residual complexity into words. My seemingly simplistic answer to this was "it was the first live-art performance that ripped me open. I hadn’t yet understood that trusting at this deeply embodied level could reveal so much of my-self, to myself."

I was, in some rather strange way, surprised that I was answering this complex question in such a simplistic way, and more importantly, that I was OK with it. I didn't feel that I needed to edit it, as the reveal of writing had shed the exact and necessary light on what had remained hidden to me for a good 8 years. The complexity of the self-concealment had been dissolved in embodied time, sprouting in self-revelation just as a young shoot in the earliest of Spring. With this visual in mind, I am reminded of how Susan Sontag likens the relationship between self-revelation and self-concealment as dialogue that exchanges conflicting ideas, in order to arrive at a deeper understanding or truth.

Collaboration, as a creative complexity, is admittedly complicated. How to successfully experience and 'live-out' such complexity, is, as Susan Sontag suggests, not always entirely possible. There will be times where given complexities will simply need to be transcended, perhaps to re-shoot or re-birth into other fertile Lands.

Currently, a very fertile space is my exhibition "what remains through time, slowness and stillness' on at the Oliewenhuis Art Museum (Bloemfontein/Mangaung) up untill 24 August. I will be sharing more of this complex exhibition in a simplistic newsletter, so if you'd like to receive that in your inbox, subscribe today as it goes out within the next day or two!

Camagu!

image captured at Kleinmond Beach (Western Cape) during a walk with my dogs