[NetBehaviour] The Jeremy Bailey Interview on the Netbehaviour.

[Jeremy Bailey]

marc,

kickn' it up a notch with the Freud! great stuff.

the truth is, I started art school in the 90s and all of my profs
taught identity politics work. Actually my first EVER studio class was
called women in art (I was the only man in the course). So starting
out I always felt as though I wasn't allowed to make art. I wasn't a
victim of any societal prejudices or discrimination, I was a very
happy privileged white man with very few cares. The type of work I
make now, the type that casts me as an ignorant/naive modern artist
playing with technology, was developed to try and create some
justification for myself in an ocean of those more deserving than I. A
friend of mine once commented in critique, "The more you win Jeremy,
the more we lose." I've always thought that was a nice statement.

jeremy


On Fri, Sep 12, 2008 at 3:19 PM, marc garrett
<marc.garrett at furtherfield.org> wrote:
> Hi Jeremy,
>
> To answer 1.
>
> Many on here (of course) would agree that the artist ego is a fragile
> instrument. There has been much explored around the artist ego and
> Sigmund Freud himself felt a personal connection to the artist
> Michelangelo.
>
> In 'Formulations regarding the Two Principles in Mental Functioning'
> (1911), Freud writes that art "... brings about a reconciliation of the
> two principles [pleasure and reality] in a peculiar way. An artist is
> originally a man who turns away from reality because he cannot come to
> terms with the renunciation of instinctual satisfaction which it at
> first demands, and who allows his erotic and ambitious wishes full play
> in the life of phantasy. He finds the way back to reality, however, from
> this world of phantasy by making use of his special gifts to mould his
> phantasies into truths of a new kind, which are valued by men as
> precious reflections of reality. Thus in a certain fashion he actually
> becomes the hero, the king, the creator, or the favourite he desired to
> be, without following the long, roundabout path of making real
> alterations in the external world. But he can only achieve this because
> other men feel the same dissatisfaction as he does with the renunciation
> demanded by reality, and because that dissatisfaction, which results
> from the replacement of the pleasure-principle by the reality principle,
> is itself part of reality."
> http://www.human-nature.com/free-associations/glover/chap1.html#8.
>
> The above rings true in some respect, yet it also informs us how a
> contemporary culture's dominant values, play a large part in influencing
> perceptions and conclusions. Another thing I find interesting regarding
> the artist and ego, is that (personal) romanticism is an essential
> ingredient. This notion of the artist being a hero is a fascinating
> theme which I have personally experienced when I was much younger. Some
> of these moments are just too embarrassing and too tense to dwell on.
> It's funny when reading older writings, because of the language,
> especially the (unconscious) masculine dominated, mannerisms. For
> instance, 'he' comes up may times in the article. Even though such
> concepts around the artist and ego are from long ago, I think that these
> psychological elements still remain.
>
>  >As I hinted the perception of some kind of
>  >order, some truth in everything that can be
>  >revealed is both interesting and hilarious to
>  >me. Mostly because the process involves a
>  >tremendous amount of abstraction, and therefore
>  >an acceptable amount of error. This error, or
>  >this incompleteness reflects strongly on my
>  >thoughts concerning artist ego. As in, the artist
>  >ego is a very precarious and fragile instrument
>  >that should likely never be played...
>
> ...'this incompleteness reflects strongly on my thoughts concerning
> artist ego'.
>
> I can definatley see this in some of your works, but one particular
> piece that springs to mind is 'Srongest Man' where you try to hold a
> camera at arms length.
> http://www.jeremybailey.net/podcasts/strongestman.m4v - I will not
> explain anything about the video, I think it explains itself. Lets just
> say that there is plenty of angst in it ;-)
>
> As mentioned, I will post a response to the rest of the text later...
>
> marc
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