Statement 2017

So, nothing is clear; everything is hidden,
to be absurd is the task;
Is there a name for this?
It’s a question of style!

Normal

As a libertarian agent in cognitive issues and system lab assistant according to Proudhon, Godwin and Ward (-> see also Gibson and Barlow), I treat as a standard answer the phrase of Oscar Wilde: “Blessed are they who have nothing to say, and who cannot be persuaded to say it.” Of course, I have to accept that for myself as well.

The fact that I am not keeping my mouth shut means that I have something to say. If that’s true, I do not want to yell at my counterpart. I want to lead him (you) into a room where there is whispering, nothing concrete spoken and credible, where even lies and deception occur without irony. And you should see it. I want to create little icons with a twist, with double or ambiguous messages, if any, maybe just the title of my pictures. You should not only have to think about them – you have to. The pictures may also contain humor, but it must taste stale. And it should seem relevant to the viewer, yes even important.
In an effort to bring that to the point, I came across a notion that hits:

Hypernormal

Hypernormality can be either the never existing, infinitely ambiguous mediocrity or a captive parallel world. This is derived associatively. So hypernormality is e.g. a social aspect of communist politics in the Soviet Union and other communist states of the 70s and 80s, describing an irrational state of knowledge about and behavior in just these societies, fake society.

There are medical aspects: “It has been noticed that psychosomatic patients are socially very “adapted”, which has also been described as “hypernormality.” Their object relations are related to the real presence of the partner, and radiate a peculiar “relationship blank.” Due to the lack of differentiation of the psychic structure, these patients are not in a position to make permanent inductions, and they are dependent on the concrete and objective availability of the object.” (Walter Bräutigam, Paul Christian, Michael von Rad, 2010, Psychosomatic Medicine)

“Hypernormality would name a tendency in which the imperative of ongoing self-optimization as self-surpassing leads to the subject being able to fulfill the upper exceptional standards that have become the norm only through interventions on the body and psyche (psychotropic drugs).” (Michael Cuntz 2007, after Baudrillard).

If one uses now for the determination instead of the association the bisoziation then other different areas come to bear, such as culturally relevant: “Hypernormality is in literary terms normality aspects to break through and to extend the limits of the normal further in the direction of excellence.” (Silke Horstkotte, Leonhard Herrmann 2000, Contemporary Poetics)

Adam Curtis explains in his BBC movie essay “HyperNormalization” the post-factic era and a broader aspect of this state. (Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fny99f8amM)

Intelligence and creativity are compellingly compulsory together, even if it results in an anarchistic worldview. There is a lurking danger of being caught in your own claim. Hypernormality applies in times of [before | as an indicator of] a system change[s].

As an artist, it is more difficult and more complicated to formalize the above in pictures than in a text. It would be pretty easy to write down but not to paint. I want to try. I have not found myself yet, perhaps thats a way. In the Meaning of hypernormal, my pictures are not realistic, they are normal, hypernormal; do not trust them.

Jens H. Westermann, 2017.