Author: lilokuo

In an age where man has evolved to be great master of both culture and nature have we exercised our power in excess causing disruption as a result of abundance? The three artworks that I have created/compiled aims to examine the nature of over saturation and the loss of meaning thereof. The first piece is “Cultural Petri”, a fully physical piece that consists of a traditional picture frame and ceramic bowls. “Cultural Petri” should evoke the feeling of a bird’s eye view, giving the viewer a chance to withdraw from our cities and see the world from a higher perspective. The second piece is “Message From a Keyboard”, a semi-abstracted piece given that rather than focusing on earthbound materials the piece is concerned with words and symbols. The elements of the piece are: Victorian flower meanings, keys for encryption, and concept of cultural inheritance. The third piece is a full abstraction: it is composed of sound and movement, a contemporary piece of lyrical music performed with sign language. The driving force for this last piece is to, apart from the lyrics, explore different mediums of communication. The three pieces should offer various ways of interaction given that it presents itself in all forms: sight, sound, movement, and words. As a narrative, the three works should give a sense of humanities’ trajectory from nature to culture.

Based on the defunding of the Arts in public schools, we can deduce that STEM has been placed higher than the Humanities in instilling skill sets we deem important for the future. If we base the premise of our discussion on Heidegger’s understanding of the meaning of the work of Art, the Artist, and the Truth thereof, then perhaps we can come to a better understanding as to why the arts have been regarded as a lesser channel of knowledge and what these implications might mean for a future devoid of the Humanities. The methodologies for this research will be a phenomenological approach to art/work/truth and a Marxist critique of the economic forces driving out the arts in favor of STEM in education. Keeping the Hermeneutic circle in mind, this thesis will have two components: that of the Matter and that of the Form, in the un-concealment of truth (aletheia); the being and the thing itself. These two forms will further demonstrate the importance of meaningfulness in creation and creating. Neither one will be able to be understood alone for one is meant to manifest the other. The dialectical process of this dual thesis is meant to encourage a different mode of communication and understanding; one that is responsive, adoptive, and aesthetically alive.

Ancient discourse of the Clay: Mother of all human creation

If Art were to be talked of as simply art then we must understand its origin in the essence of its being. The first human creations of thought-contained objects were; among a few, the clay tablets that held the first attempt/system of communication. The initial discovery of the clay body that birth the scientific discourse of manipulating nature might be more significant in foreshadowing a path to agriculture than we give it credit. The resulting play from clay that allowed man to think, to rest, to cook is merely one of the many manifestations of art and culture that resulted from our ancestor’s first set of play dough. Through clay we can understand once again how we discovered the world through this experience we call art (which you will see is far more familiar than we might be willing to acknowledge)

Continue reading Lilo’s clay talk