Carcass

Carcass is currently both answering and creating new questions regarding digital positioning in regards to artistry and in ‘being’ an artist. Acting as a digital artist book of sorts, but essentially can be seen as a basic html page, it is slowly shifting into a work by simply becoming an “avatar” of various observable phenomena.

Ever since the emergence of Web 2.0, numerous technological developments and its digital infrastructure has fundamentally changed the way we produce, consume, distribute and perceive information. Information, in this context, is understood broadly: whether it comes via an image, a text, a video, or a stone lying in a field somewhere. Whether digital or not, most things seem to increasingly become perceived through a consciousness that couldn’t exist prior to Web 2.0.

The work has a personal interest too. I’ve long been questioning myself on how to function within these digital environments. One small example would be my innate contempt for the ‘hashtag’ which started from an early age. And which, as my professional practice grew, gradually became a more substantial critique of what the hashtag represents. To me, hashtags take away an object’s open-endedness. The transference of something physical into the digital already obscures a large enough part, but subsequently having to place it further within an intentionally designed commercial framework reduces it even further. As if a work has to be reduced to nothing more than its aesthetic qualities within a specific Zeitgeist or genre’s niche.

Carcass, in that sense, becomes my art practice visible in its totality. This includes me, Rink, as nothing but an existing factor within, but without demoting myself to becoming merely use-able material only. Because it is something I cherish, as I often consider it obtuse to consider historically significant works and characters without their context: this is whether we speak of Jung’s Black Books, Beuys’s little shamanistic lies, or even Ali-B’s wrongdoings, or delve into the painting depicting Cleopatra’s poison story or an ancient piece of biblical writing.

Ironically, I sometimes wonder whether this desire for context stems from the rise of the internet and the possibilities that ‘metadata’ seems to offer. You can know everything about a person without necessarily knowing the person or their actions themselves. But what there is to be known remains within structures outside our control. And God, in that sense, it truly becomes a dystopian horror show. The disillusionment of an existing individual, mutated together through the blinded will of Others, still steered by only a select few. Thrilling, disgusting, and a little bit Orwellian. This, however, is a type of beast only my meandering thoughts can currently deal with.

Returning back to me, Rink, it becomes currently mostly interested in further understanding my art practice and the digital landscapes in which we are so deeply embedded.