The apprehension that binds and prevents us from penning a manifesto is rooted in a deeper aversion to the inaccurate representation of the wide range of aesthetics being pursued within our artist collective.
Having realized this, we outgrew our manifesto-seeking anxieties that paralyzed us, and embraced a new understanding of what a group of artists should direct their focus on: something beyond our own personal thoughts and projects. Ours is a community full of debate and misunderstanding, but also a space where we can learn from each other. It is a zone of exchange, a school of sorts.
We enter our project Transformations as ‘raw’ items and evolve, growing to become a ‘refined’ product of this endeavor. It goes beyond our mere individual selves, for other identities and entities can enter and depart from it regardless of the presence of the original founders.
That is aesthetic, that is beauty.
As a group of ‘Emerging Artists,’ we are able to define ‘new art’ in our current moment. However, new artists are constantly emerging to replace the old, and so we find ourselves in a temporal position that, while allocating vitality to our work, is much too precarious to rely on for sustained existence as artists. While we are unable to occupy this position in a state of eternal youth, what we can do is take these experiences and thoughts and crystallize them into something that takes up space. With these objects, we work with the idea of transformation, in order to establish relationships within the communities we create and incorporate them into our own development.
From these transformations, we can begin to assess our own situation in this movement: a movement that we are both defining for ourselves, and being swept into at the same time.