Jean-Michel Crapanzano

Tuesday November 18th :

Today is a good day to show the answers of all the people who generously gave me their thoughts and personal histories. That's a great honor for me to be invited by Toon Hezemans, director of the Art Center Signe in Heerlen. The project "Invisible empire : ghost / remembrance" is an extension of a serie of exhibitions who started in New-York at the Bronx River Art Center, in 2007. The first version of the concept of "Invisible empire " began there, in this incredible en dynamic city. I was invited by Jose Ruiz, director of the programation of the art center, just after an exhibition in Signal 66 galery in Washington DC, where I was in 2004, and curated by him and the art organisation Decatur Blue. I was impressed to see how life in america is different than European’s media’s would like to present it, and different than opinion’s people in Europe . In 2003, I received a grant from a French Cultural Art Institution who gave me the chance to live three months in Los Angeles for an art project. I exhibited there in Raid Project galery the result of my research : how media’s influenced people’s opinions, and what are the effects on the incousciousness of people’s mind ? A publisher decided to show my work in my first personal publication “ Survival projects”.

My first questions came directly during the artistic residency. I felt the American culture deeply, directly, without TV screen between me and them. It was strange to feel the reality there, when my subconscious was totally full of remembrances of old American movies and TV series. It was strange to feel how the borderline between fiction and reality was extremely thin, and see that what you see on TV and the contact with people can be really different. There is everywhere the same clichés. The Los Angeles project was the first step of my research, when my exhibition in New-York was the begining of the project “Invisible empire “. Now I present this exhibition in Heerlen. The first step is maybe to introduce me to you. And because I ask to the people of Limburg their own stories, remembrances, memories, I thought it was also a good thing to tell you, not in details, but shortly, what is my background and why I finaly moved in Parkstadt. I would like to capture the “spirit” of Limburg, how people’s feel about their lives, their region, their country, how they perceive reality, how they can also transformed reality with their personal history and background. There is so many subjects I would like to tell about, so many remembrances who scrumbled on my mind, I just need to concentrate on the essence of my life as artist.

My first remembrance is my encounter with my wife Nathalie. How my encounter with her can have an influence on my life as artist ? Generally the cliché about artists is that they “live” somewhere where other people and society don’t have any influences, out of time and space. It can be like that during the process of creation, time out of time at the studio, alone with yourself. But my process of creation include the entire world. I need everything around me to feel the links between all things. Intertextuality, inter-dependance, interactivity, virtuality, exchanges and discussions. This is a gift, this is about to give and receive. This is about exchanges and transformations, transformations of reality and transformations of yourself. Of course, my life as artist began sooner : one of my first remembrance is when I was 3 years old. I standed near my father, who sat on a chair near an easel. He was occupied to paint a canvas, a landscape. I still feel the smel of the oil paint, and I see him concentrated to play with the paintbruches, the lines, the colors, the surfaces. I was watching him, absorbed by his work, I analysed the way he painted, the way he SAW. That’s still one of my most impressive souvenir of him. I knew inconsciously that that will be my life : ART. I never changed my goal, my wish. ARTIST. I follow the natural way to reach my goal: college / lycée ( specialisation artpractice/art history/philosophy), then the art school in Strasbourg in France. No doubts for it. Start my own artpractice, reveal my own questioning, try to find the right form to present it... that’s a lot of efforts, doubts, errors, but also revelations and certainties. All the background was there. My parents gave me all the support to established this basis, this first draft of my life as artist. I will be always extremely grateful for that.

When I turn my eyes in the past, I see her, in front of me for the first time. I knew instantly that I found the One who will give me all the power to understand the world better. She gave me all these years the love and the support to fullfilled my dreams. She was here to encourage me, even it was not easy to live as artist, and I mean, what does it mean to be artist in this society obssessed by economy, money and sterile performance of productivity ? When the world concentrate his efforts to accumulate products, objects, who seems to be so-called important, when the dream of society is to show how good is the last accounting period, how we can be proud of our "high cicilization", I made art. Artists made art. We built an underworld. An invisible empire beyond society. Scientists built an underground world too. In fact, all people who wants to walk above the borderlines, above the clichés. She still the One who give me daily attentions, love and encouragements to go further. I can not tell all the discussions we had, and we will have, about art, life, love, relations between people, society, litterature, music, cinema, history, philosophy, astrophysics...this is an endless list. I live now in Limburg because of her, I followed her and her new job as French Teacher. Limburg have all my interest because of it relation with Belgium en Germany. If we look at the history of the region, it seems impossible to clearly define the “spirit” of Limburg : so many influences, cultures, immigrants, in such a way that it make this spirit blury, un-defined, finaly extremely interesting. That is why nationalism don’t like this kind of project : they dream about “purity”, when the world is an entire mix of feelings, ideas, cultures. It make everything more interesting. I am self a “product” of this immigrant wave : I grew up in France, but my father come from Italia/Sicilia, when my mother is French but with Romanian/Hungarian origins. Three cultures in one mind. Three different memories, three looks to see the world.

“ I dreamt about a place above all things and borderlines”,that is the sentence who host visitors at the exhibition in Heerlen. I am a man of the world. My world is a part of the world, as well as the others. We can feel as one with a country, we can think that our thoughts is related to a certain culture, we still stay individuals : our memory through generations don’t have a static definition, a clear form. The world is a picture of our mind and our memory : a world on mutation. Art is mutation. Our remembrances change constantly, they are transformed by addition of new feelings, new experiences. Layers of interpretations can be contorted, deformed by time and culture, by politics and religions. Where is the truth in that way ? Who can pretend to be objective ? We moved, we changed, we can feel something else than politics and nationalisms would like to impose on us : one way to think, one opinion, one look in the past. So, who can say that identity, wich is built in a certain way by memory, is a static phenomenon ? Where are the borderlines?

This project is yours Nathalie. I would like to officially thank you for all these wonderful 13 years with you. I like to say : this is only the begining ! Et puisse la vie nous donner encore beaucoup de plaisir et de complicité, et nous donner aussi toujours cette même énergie pour nous aimer...

This is not only a look back, this is also a look in the future, wich is exiting to think about. I would like to see my art as an art for the future, concerned by future. With conscience of the past. The concept of augmented reality. Interactivity. Sharing experiences. Learning. Gift. The invisible part of society, our mental and psychological structures. A world of mutation. Art as mutation. Art as transformation.

We expect our first child really soon, he will born in Limburg, so Limburg will have definitely a link with me, with us, in the next future. And even we always can decide to move in an other area or country, Limburg will always represent for me the area where he's born. Limburg is already incorporated in my future remembrances.

I hope this story will give to the people of Limburg / Parkstadt the energy to write their own story. I hope to have great responses that we can share to each other.

I hope to hear from you soon,

Sincerely

Jean-Michel Crapanzano

Jean-Michel Crapanzano

donderdag 20 november 2008

dinsdag 18 november 2008

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