| “What is the grass? . . . .
And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.”
-Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass. |
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Death & renewal are integral parts of a fascinating creative process. In a cycle of making, new styles are Re/Mixed from the old: appropriated, cannibalized & re-mediated into hybrids and new forms. A favorite pastime of modernity is The Grave Dance: a seductive rhythm of destruction whereby the demode & traditional movement is buried, and a new style, celebrated. Sometimes the new medium fulfills the promises of the old, in uncanny ways. Sometimes it disappoints. Either way, the old is dead. Long live the new. And yet, despite the demise of our dead styles, they continue to haunt. Ancestral spirits are insidious; the old forms live on as ghosts. In an era of perpetual invention, perhaps the greatest of all traditions is our legacy of the haunted mechanisms of innovation that challenge and re-articulate our past, present & future. |
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