"This means that through the thought of man something totally new is introduced into the world. This designates thought as sculpture. It can only enter the world completely new, from a point of creation. That is sculpture that materialises in speech ..."
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By ro / lu in misc Published: Friday, 17 February 12 - 08:31 AM (GMT -06:00) Last Updated: Wednesday, 28 March 12 - 08:36 PM (GMT -06:00) |
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hey brothers and sisters, claudette the intern here.
there's a robert rauschenberg quote that gets referenced frequently at rolu:
"i am following the process and the process is following me. there is no separation. and we are both bewildering each other."
i love hearing matt recall the moment he first heard rauschenberg utter those words and the impact they had on him. that was over 10 years ago, well before rolu was what it is now, when matt first saw the quasi-documentary video, art meets science and spirituality in a changing economy: from fragmentation to wholeness. it's not difficult to see how extremely influential that video and specifically that quote has been in the evolution of rolu's point of view and its various incarnations. this has happened certainly not forcefully, but rather organically.
the video in question has always been pretty tough to find. evidently, for a long time, it was only available for purchase on junky, used VHS tapes. super underground stuff, so it goes without saying that it remained dormant, unseen or unheard of by many. luckily, it has surfaced again and it turns out it was only the first installment in the art meets science and spirituality in a changing economy series, a five-part video documentation of a now historic symposium by the same name that took place at the stedleijk museum in amsterdam in 1990. the panel included an impressive list of figures in the fields of art, science and economics; folks like robert rauschenberg, david bohm, john cage, dalai lama, ilya prigogine, lawrence weiner, rupert sheldrake, sogyal rinpoche, marina abramovic and jean-maxime leveque, to name a few.
"art meets science and spirituality in a changing economy is a permanent dialogue established by artists to bring some of the world's greatest thinkers together in a discussion over major issues facing the world today. inspired by the spirit of fluxus, it is an intense exchange of views between representatives of the three historically separate pillars of culture - art, science and spirituality."
the mastermind who made this possible was dutch artist louwrien wijers. this permanent dialogue was already a work in progress, dating back to late 1970s with a series of interviews she conducted with joseph beuys (who i believe coined the term "permanent dialogue"), andy warhol and the dalai lama, all of them concerned with the role of creativity in social, economic and spiritual matters.
"french fluxus artist robert filliou suggested bringing not only the works of artists to museums, but also their ideas on society as a work of art. overjoyed with my plan to bring art, science and spirituality together periodically in museums as a 'mental sculpture', he wrote: 'weaving back together the three threads of art, science and spirituality into a new authenticity is what remains to be done."
wijers started out as an object sculptor in the conceptual art tradition, but became less concerned with physical sculpture which she believed reached only few people and was more interested in the mental condition of the world. in an interview with andrej tisma, she talks about this realization: "your mind, as well the minds of many other people, that is what I want to sculpt with and that is what I call the mental sculpture. So you can bring into the minds of people much more broad fuses than were there before." the art meets science and spirituality symposium is perhaps her greatest mental piece…yet.
for the next few weeks, i'll be talking about these videos, one by one.
so here's to the permanent dialogue. i want to participate. i hope you do too.
posted by claudette gacuti
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