Object of Desire, Desire of Object
My concern - the unifying theme of my installations - is with objects that represent “urban minorities” in Paris and in New York. An urban minority is a group of persons, living in the city, who share the same minority lifestyle. These people are different from “travelers,” who prefer to live outside the society of consumption and go where desire lends them.
My “chameleon” lifestyle allows me to jump from one “ghetto” (subculture) to another and to discover unusual objects, ones unknown to the majority of people. When I discover these objects, I buy them in large amounts (by the hundreds) to make sculptures or installations with them.
Two reasons motivate my concern with urban minority objects:
- First, my aim is to provide information about “urban minorities” through my works, and not to justify the practices associated with these objects.
Information produces knowledge, which leads to awareness, whereas ignorance
brings fear, which provokes intolerance.
My installations are an attempt to create tolerance for minorities by increasing the majority’s knowledge of minority objects.
- Second, I wish to conserve (or curate) the symbolic (emblematic) object. This, simply because I am persuaded that every sort of object is going to disappear from our society.
Why are all the objects going to disappear?
The 18th Century was the century of philosophy, the 19th Century was the century of industry, the 20th Century was the century of consumption - but the 21st Century will be the century of Spiritual Direction.
When this happens, the “travelers” will form entire tribes, each having its own spiritual direction. (See Manifesto.)
For the time being, in 2001, I am working on minorities that are principally urban; the “traveler” phenomenon is in an embryonic stage and “traveler tribes” have not yet arisen.
My installations are the existential memory, present and future, of “urban minorities,” “travelers,” and “traveler tribes.”
My present work is about “urban minorities” in Paris and in New York. Then, my next project will involve emblematic “traveler objects.”
Finally, I intend to create a series of “traveler tribe” sculptures, made from virtual thoughts. The raw material will consist not of objects anymore, but of thoughts produced with virtual technology (refraction of light and scales of smell). The exhibitions will consist of multiple virtual thoughts and non-concretized, non-material smells.
We are living the last moments of the object. That is why I am saving objects in the form of emblematic installations.
MANIFESTO OF THE NON-OBJECT
The Empty Room:
I had an appointment to discuss a matter of some concern. We met in my empty studio loft in Paris. There, in that space of aluminum and white vinyl, with not a single object apart from the two chairs we sat on, not a single reference to the outside material world - there in that empty space my eyes could see only one thing: the person in front of me.
All the staff was gone. Everything was focused. Everything was in focus.
The 20th Century was the century of consumption - but now that we have all those objects, what is there left to do?
One thing only: free yourself from objects and leave some room for thought.
The Spiritual is the synonym of immateriality and of the non-corporeal.
Thus, after the over-consumption of the 20th Century, the 21st Century will be more detached from the object in general (furniture, appliances, knickknacks, etc.).
In face of the spiritual, in face of future developments in high technology, the object’s significance will disappear. Our room will be empty.
Our turn of the century has created a new generation (“urban minorities”), whose children shave their skulls, wear “bindis” on their foreheads, eat organic food, and practice different kinds of meditation, yoga, and shiatsu.
Hoping, perhaps naively, to find the “spiritual” without sacrifice, they take ecstasy, acid, cocaine, “special K,” and in so doing they forget that the true fight takes place inside.
Even so, some have begun to set forth on the true path of material independence, the path that brings one to the Spiritual.
They are called “Travelers.”
Who are they?
They are small groups of persons (relatives or friends), who decide not to remain sedentary, and go anywhere in the world they choose. They live on small jobs and they organize “rave” parties (or teknivals), with trance, techno, goa, hard-core, new age and world music.
They are the 2001 nomads and they refuse the materialist society. They share a taste for travel and a spontaneous way of life. Sedentary life does not favor a detached (or relative) conception of the object.
The “traveler” phenomenon is the first sign that man is moving away from objects.
The “Travelers” constitute the first step of the 21st century spiritualization process.
When the accumulation of thousands of travel experiences renders the “traveler” phenomenon a mere banality, then we will witness the appearance of a new, and different, kind of nomad.
Why?
Because the principal motivation of “Travelers” lies in the trip, in leaving the society in which we live. There has never been any common “spiritual” concept.
When a large enough portion of the general population assimilates into the“travelers”, there will be a new motivation for staying together and traveling in groups.
This new motivation will be the sharing of common spiritual concepts and ideas about existing through travel.
I call them “traveler tribes.”
Each “traveler tribe” will have its own spiritual and technological identity. No “traveler tribe” will resemble any other “traveler tribe”. Each “traveler tribe’s” identity will appear not in its physical aspect, but in its way of thinking, in its idioms.
The “traveler tribes” will traverse the planet, which will have become “thinking material.”
Based on my observations, this is in the process of happening.
Objects will have ceased to exist for a long time, and human beings will have discovered the supremacy of thought over object.
Soon, I hope we will live the not-object for spiritual thought.