By Carlos Sebastia
ESPAÑOL:
Qué libros leer en mi práctica artística?
Mi trabajo artístico gira en torno al olvido, me interesa comprender los procesos mentales así como sus implicaciones a nivel social. Utilizo procesos creativos basados en la repetición o más bien un uso reiterado de imágenes y conceptos desde diferentes puntos de vista. A través de reproducción reiterada de elementos cotidianos o la añadidura de capas, trato de desligarlos de parte de sus valores emocionales o racionales, dotándolo en ese flujo infinito de transformación de nuevas estructuras formales y entendimiento.
ENGLISH:
My artistic work revolves around oblivion, I am interested in understanding mental processes as well as their implications at a social level. I use creative methodologies based on repetition or rather a compulsive use of images and concepts from different points of view. Through the continuous reproduction of everyday elements or the layering, I try to separate them from their emotional or rational characteristics, endowing them in this infinite flow of transformation of new formal structures and understanding.
Are my work and interests that influence the selection of readings or vice versa? The truth is that everything has happened almost simultaneously. I do not choose my readings following a very rational or accurate selection. I do not have a common goal that prepares me for a Doctorate, but I do have in common a backward sensitivity that can become the end of my practice and creative stimuli. In turn, the days of work and research in the study lead me to a question about methodologies and theoretical concepts that well resolved from a formal point of view.
Here I introduce some of the books or essays that have been very helpful to me structured in 2 blocks:
- Those who have helped me to investigate the most sensitive issues of my work.
Merleau-Ponty - Phenomenology of Perception
Henri Bergson - Memory and life: texts chosen by Gilles Deleuze
Paul Ricoeur - Memory, history, forgetting
Marc Augé - Oblivion
Damian Sutton - Photography, cinema, memory - The crystal image of time
Walter Benjamin - Essays and reflections
Sara Andersdotter - Chocking in the Madeleine (thesis awarded by UAL in 2015)
Milan Kundera - The unbearable lightness of being
As you can see from these readings there is an interest in memory, forms and the reproduction of the image. What we accept or understand the transformation and its implications over time.
- Those who opened a better understanding of what art is, or rather what is the mission of my artistic work.
Jacques Rancière - The emancipated spectator
Simon O'Sullivan - Art Encounters Deleuze and Guattari
Estelle Barrett - Kristeva Reframed
In these texts, they pose a very intelligent way that more than asking what does art, what does this artwork, mean’? But rather, what does art, what does this artwork, do? We are also invited to take a reactive attitude to what happens in our lives through abjection or we are asked to let the spectators get their own impressions, without telling what they are or must see. These are very interesting questions if we think about understanding the art contemporary world slightly better.
I finally invite you to visit my artistic projects on my website carlossebastia.com in case you want to see how these readings connect to my practical work. Perhaps you can establish your own lines of understanding the work, the reading, and artistic practice as a whole.