Exploring RELATIONSHIPS: are you art or human?
Damien Hirst, during a conversations with Sophie Calle, once said there are two interpretations of the word relationship: the romantic-emotional, physical-human one, like 'we're having a relationship', a good one or a bad one, with another person, and then there's the very cold formal relationship of things to other things, like art.
At the same time he admitted it’s possible to talk about everything in terms of relationships, for we act, emotion, live and do anything trying to figure out the impact on the other - or at least we should be one of a noble kind.
My beloved controversial artist surprised me once more by defining the relation between art and the surrounding as “cold” and “formal” for it involves, usually, things. At first a little upset I then got the point: art provokes and implies emotions but it is just pictures, paintings, for we see it just as something to look at as basically when in front of artworks we see objects - that’s what Hirst is referring to, that we can for sure be moved my artworks but essentially we’re in front (or, sometimes, into) someTHING.
On the other side we have the prolific relationship type, the one we feel but can’t touch or describe for its colour, structure or form. Those relationships which most of the time we can’t define. How many times have you answered “Don’t know” when your bestie, during one of the famous emotional crisis, asks “What kind of affair is there between you and him?”. But, honestly, wasn’t this “unknown” the most alive feeling ever?
Here is the human: beyond description and definition, beyond flesh and bones, as a pure sensitive creature when in relation with someone else, involving another life, touch-less yet never anything more real.
On the other side, relationships which apparently could seem aseptic hence emotionless, yet actually you can find interaction between things, links which let one to turn into another, to let a urinal to be a fountain just because it’s in a place rather than another.
Things related to things becoming a third one, exploring a relationship in which objects turn into leitmotifs of a lifetime. Establishing relationships which will testify not a cold “being” next to something but rather a different point of view, something прекрасный .
I believe, however, in a third type of relationship: the one between humans and things. I believe in the connection that can exist between an object and its “owner”, between a lady and its necklaces, a man and its hobby, I firmly trust the relationship of an individual can establish with something which helps him survive, I rely on the emotion arising between an object of art and its creator, and, at the same time, I live for the feeling that this object provoke on other human being.
I’d like to share the end of the conversation between the two artists, as humans living for art, as individuals sharing experiences, sharing bad experiences and even worse choices yet realising things are still part of our life. Realising and admitting we’re all looking for what we do not have, for what we do not see, recognize - things we would like to feel.
SC I like relationships.
DH So do I.
SC I don't make them last very long.
DH I'm sure it's not a problem.
SC I like emotion without attachment.
DH I'm greedy, I like everything.
Be greedy, take whatever you like, be whatever you like - be it the cold relationship between things or the warm feeling of emotions, then experience the hybrid one at least once in a lifetime.
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