Gesamtkunstwerk : Introduction

Self-Mythologization and Becoming a Storyteller

Description

The German term Gesamtkunstwerk, roughly translates as a "total work of art" and describes an artwork, design, or creative process where different art forms are combined to create a single cohesive whole. // From theartstory.org

I have been recently thinking about this term, to the point of trying to apply to my own life. I do not think this term is exclusive to visual art, for it can become a way of living and perceiving our own identity or identities…

Who Am I ?

The question persists. Whether you are a creative or not, the quest of identity is crucial. Who am I ? Is it defined by what I do?

I think that the more we stick to these self-limiting questions, the further we stay from finding ourselves and/or our niche. Everybody wants an identity different from anyone else, but we fail to recognize that we are everything and everyone else. Who I am is also who you are and I can only exist because you do. This is persistent in Art; life imitates art, and art imitates life… Therefore, I become the Art.

Essentially, I am the Gesamtkunstwerk. To be an artist, no matter the medium, is to self-mythologize, whether it is done consciously or unconsciously. However, Gesamtkunstwerk starts when I become conscious of this self-mythologization and take a role of the storyteller, in my own Hero’s Journey. I am the Hero and the Author, the Art and the Artist.

What Is Your Marble ?

‘The sculpture is already complete within the marble block, before I start my work. It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material.’ - Michelangelo

When I am chiseling away the superfluous material, I am getting rid of the need to create, and I am simply becoming. The need to create is greedy, egotistical and oppressive.

When I live my life accompanying Art rather than seeking to own and create it, I am then able to embody this Gesamtkunstwerk that is not defined by subsequent quests of creation but rather an integral mission that allows me to tell my Story in everything that I do and I am.

The sculpture is already there, but what is your marble ? Is it yourself ?

The Invitation to My Mandala

When I tell my story, I invite the audience into my Mandala and that is when I become the Other, a Double. The individuals who are spectators of my ‘creations’ are also the translators of my own Mandala, they resonate with different parts of myself and in return they will translate those parts into their own story to further keep it alive. It is a simple reunification of my own unconscious and the collective’s. It is as If I am constantly breaking the Fourth Wall, while simultaneously rejecting performance. In parallel, to keep my story as mine, I will need a signature and designated patterns. Those patterns can be generated through self-references and encoded self-appropriated symbols.

A Form of Synesthesia

When I do not limit myself to one medium or one discipline, I am able to tell my Story thoroughly. I then suggest a form of Synesthesia, where I can attach meanings, associations, symbols to my different chapters and in return every medium can become a chapter in itself in my Story. This way, I am able to reconcile the problematic of creation.

When I connect these dots, my audience no longer sees me through a process or a progression, and this blurs out the fixation on the creation and the starting point of a linear image of who I am. I want you to think that everything you see has always been here. This esoteric perspective is what made many complex artists complex. That is what separates a success from a sensation.

Storytelling and Synthesis

To become a storyteller is to be able to synthesize all of my experiences into one. This is often referred to as being the ‘mission’ or the ‘purpose’ of the Journey. Whether it is through photography, poetry, performance, or sculpture, I need to be loyal to my story, and continuously retell it, to ultimately tell others’ and form a new synthesis into my own initial synthesis. In time, I drive my audience toward a reaction.

I do not need to choose or to sell, I simply need to synthesize myself to reach others, and the more I reach others, the more I will reach myself.

‘To mount the skies it is not necessary to have the most powerful of motors, one must have a motor which, instead of continuing to run along the earth's surface, intersecting with a vertical line the horizontal line which it began by following, is capable of converting its speed into lifting power. Similarly, the men who produce works of genius are not those who live in the most delicate atmosphere, whose conversation is the most brilliant or their culture the most extensive, but those who have had the power, ceasing suddenly to live only for themselves, to transform their personality into a sort of mirror, in such a way that their life, however mediocre it may be socially and even, in a sense, intellectually, is reflected by it, genius consisting in reflecting power and not in the intrinsic quality of the scene reflected.’

- Marcel Proust

I hope you will stay with me throughout this Gesamtkunstwerk exploration,

Thank you.

- Floesie