THE ENEMY
In a two-dimensional space, this work seeks to recreate the aesthetics of the Apple II computers of the ’80s, using a minimalist style limited to text and primitive shapes on a monochromatic scale. “THE ENEMY” runs automatically like a computer virus that greets the user and infects the screen with multiple ironic and denigrating messages, forcing the viewer to maintain a passive and contemplative attitude. As time passes, the virus multiplies and mutates into different forms that become more complex, reaching the point of greatest ecstasy at the end of the work. In this narrative logic that develops over time, the canvas becomes a hostile character that interacts with the viewer by positioning itself as an enemy. Its objective is to infinitely replicate its defamatory message and eliminate everything that it does not consider art. He declares himself judge and sovereign of the sacred ground of aesthetics and attributes to himself the power to banish everything that does not respond to the divine law of beauty.
Technical, aesthetic and conceptual development
In 1917 the French artist Marcel Duchamp signed a white urinal under the pseudonym R.Mutt and sent it to the Society of Independent Artists to be included in its annual exhibition. Although “The Fountain” was taken as an offense and rejected by the jury (of which he himself was a member), this work that emerged as an ironic gesture would lay the foundations of conceptual art and change the history of art forever. So much so that in 2004 it was voted the most influential work of art of the 20th century in a survey carried out by the Daily Telegraph newspaper among the 500 most influential people in British art. “I threw a urinal at their heads as a provocation and now it turns out that they admire its aesthetic beauty,” said Duchamp himself. The act of taking an object of industrial origin and stripping it of its daily use to include it in an exhibition and assign it the category of work of art, shook and questioned traditional aesthetic categories. The jury’s response was forceful: “this is not art.”
For Cesar Aira, Duchamp is the origin myth of contemporary art as the creator of a work of art with two indissoluble parts: work and discourse about the work. “In the ready-made the work is anything, the speech is just the artist’s signature.” This results in the appearance of what Aira calls “the militant Enemy of Contemporary Art” who is responsible for defaming and accusing artists after Duchamp of fraud with the argument that anything is art and that it is sustained thanks to mass snobbery. However, this argument, brandished by its staunchest detractors, could be considered the greatest virtue of contemporary art since it leads to unprecedented freedom for creation. In Aira’s words: “Everything must be allowed so that what emerges from that everything has the liberating value that we should demand from art.”
From this concept of the accusatory enemy that denigrates and trivializes the idea of contemporary art and condemns it to the confinement of infinite quotation marks, the inspiration for “THE ENEMY” arises. This work attempts to reflect on what we understand as multimedia art, which is what calls us together as students today. Many times we face external value judgments that question our productions and our status as artists. Other times we ourselves become that enemy who wields the defamatory argument against our own work.
We live in an overwhelming time that moves faster than we can understand. In this context, our work inevitably detaches itself from time and writes its history in the present. You can do without traditional techniques and the creation of beautiful objects to give way to experimentation in search of the original or the unmade. Our works no longer obey archaic parameters established to prove their value and guarantee their permanence over time, because their time is the present. Our art is disobedient. The figure of the genius remains buried in a past that we do not access even with the deepest of nostalgia. The greatest defense against the attacks of the militant enemy is his own argument: “anything can be art.” The premise that seeks to denigrate it becomes the promise of its realization. We make this declaration a foundation and we shake it to make our way and reaffirm our place as artists, raising trenches to protect this sacred freedom that is lent to us.
Literature
AIRA, César. ([2013], 2016). “Sobre el arte contemporáneo” en Sobre el arte contemporáneo. Buenos Aires: Literatura Random House, pp. 11-56.
Fulwood Lampkin, (15 de Julio de 2015). La fuente. Nada menos que la obra de arte más influyente del siglo XX. https://historia-arte.com/