Artist Residency - a Digital Art Journey and Diary - Land of the Dead

 

A Digital Art Diary record of an artist residency that was spent as a journey with no destination which was simultaneously its own aimless memory and reverie, art without any further destination other than its own destiny. These manifest digital art-works are an exploration of dialogue between the two artist's that shared this residency concept, myself, Andrew Johnson, and artist and psychotherapist, Ger Staunton.

Working collaboratively we have been testing intuitive discoveries empathically (as cognitive discoveries are tested empirically). To facilitate this process we have explored universal concerns involving: death, loss and complications relating to identity. These are personal enquiries that are generally difficult to articulate and share, resulting in a style of work that is evocatively minimal.

What we have hoped to depict is the powerfully compressed excitement attendant upon very slow, almost invisible, transformations of consciousness uniting conscious and unconscious realms of experience. We have pursued this empathy through a controlled programme involving a series of visual and verbal testaments. A high degree of mirroring and echoing has proved important to this and has been achieved through placing methodical restrictions on how far a testament once ventured can be later modified. The environment we have chosen has enhanced this work symbolically and functionally. In keeping with-our focus on transitional and intermediate spaces, rather than choose a travel destination, we prefer to select a passage of travel with no destination. Hence we elected to spend the residency aboard a ship and in a process of ongoing transit, symbolising for us the passage into the land of the dead. The testaments we recorded symbolically related to our lives from the vantage point of being spent and over. Modes of transport were, walking, two taxis, one bus, one ship, one aeroplane and a train.

All work and text on this artist's residency is a collaboration between Andrew Johnson and Ger Staunton