psycho atlas

I don't have a clear idea of why I make the work I make. I make that work that I can make, and the only way to have it be made is if I make it myself. I don't remember this fact when I'm writing manifestos, but I sense that manifesto-writing has very little to do with art and I trust that impulse. I can't think for a while and then go do a few hours of challenging but fun whatever I do to make my work to make my work. the work makes itself.

why call it a manifesto anyway? because something should appear if I write it down? that's not how the work makes itself. writing isn't really a part of my artistic practice. writing is thinking my brain enjoys with words, which let me think. art is something my body likes to do, because there are no words and art doesn't want me to think.

thinking is something that happens elsewhere, and what it makes - what language makes - is absence. I have a body, and what I want it to make has everything to do with what I think a body is. but. I want to think my work is about sex and death (which are the thematic focuses of my work.) the work doesn't want that. the work wants to make itself, not the work I make with words.

my body is more honest than I am, which is why I have to let it do it's job. ethical art is letting the body do its job. it doesn't lie. if I was asked to write down my passions in list form, my body would absolutely stop working and I would start thinking about sex and death. I would start thinking about memory and the personal vs. the political. I might start to think about limitation, disjuncture, knowledge/power, and ethics. 

but sometimes by coincidence I might think about how I can be a good person, then almost accidentally pick up some charcoal, make a mark, and be made good.