Essay by Luke Foster
“The advice I’d give to somebody that’s silently struggling is, you don’t have to live that way. You don’t have to struggle in silence. You can be un-silent. You can live well with a mental health condition, as long as you open up to somebody about it, because it’s really important you share your experience with people so that you can get the help that you need.”
Demi Lovato
Last year for the first six months and a few months the year before I was extremely unwell mentally but out of this painful confusion was a silver lining. I sent off between 30-40 hand written letters, brown paper bag drawings while I was in Brooklyn New York and most importantly instructions on how to build multi room postmodern installations.
“A work can become modern only if it is first postmodern. Postmodernism thus understood is not modernism at its end but in the nascent state, and this state is constant.”
Jean-Francois Lyotard
I am so embarrassed about this weird behaviour that I shall only mention two of the recipients. One was the head of the World Health Organisation and one for the White House.
Most of them were about how to create peace in the world.
I don’t have any of the answers to the worlds most pressing problems but I hope that those that do organise peace treaties in the world. I never point the finger at anyone or take sides in conflicts but rather I plead world diplomats who have the respect of both sides to get the two parties to come to the, bargaining table and make peace.
“Having a mind that is open to everything and attached to nothing seems to me to be one of the most basic principles that you can adopt to contribute to individual and world peace.”
Wayne Dyer
I really feel the best art wrestles with complex problems in the world.
I like the aspect of modernism that groups of artists band together and created isms such as, cubism, dada, futurism and surrealism. In this I mean an art community working towards the same ideals rather than the lone artist struggling away alone.
I wish other artists would join me in a post, postmodernism ism and my idea is an ism called: conceptual art mash up where a set of complex disparate ideas are brought together like the way music sampling created music mash ups starting in the 1980’s.
“I have forced myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste.”
Marcel Duchamp
Duchamp was the most famous dada artist. He created the idea of the found object that I still use in my installation art designs.
In conclusion I think creativity is one of the best ways to solve complex problems so perhaps artists are some of the best diplomats. I am not talking about myself but all those artists I admire and look up to.
