^{In much of Rural West Africa, Coolio’s haircut means “I am a girl who is single but too young to be considered available”}

In the same spirit as Chuck Closterman’s dialog on what is really real (which Shelly says is not really about reality vs. not, but about the spontaneous vs the scripted), we have Terry Pratchett’s look at authentcity in his book “Making Money” an economic comedy:

He took up a black walking stick, topped with a silver skull, and tugged at the handle.

‘This curious thing was in the possession of Cosmo Lavish,’ he said, as the blade slid out.

‘I know. Isn’t it a replica of yours?’ said Moist.

‘Oh really!’ said Vetinari. ‘Am I a “sword made of the blood of a thousand men” kind of ruler? It’ll be a crown of skulls next, I suppose. I believe Cosmo had it made.’

‘So it’s a replica of a rumour?’ Outside the coach, some gates were swung open.

‘Indeed,’ said Vetinari. ‘A copy of something that does not exist. One can only assume that it is authentic in every respect.’
p. 383

So, as I learned in West Africa (2.5mb mp3 story), authenticity usually equates to matching expectations. And, of course, no conversation about romantic myths of authenticity is complete without at least a cursory delve into my favorite ‘post’: Post Colonialism.

First, a telling dichotomy from Trinh Minh ha, in which authenticity is the energy used to produce to artificial:

“When one says man-made is all artificial, one is not necessarily implying that nature is truer. For ultimately, it is in producing the artificial that one manifest “truth” and gives shapes to one’s situation…”

“it turns everything into a matter of techniques in the process of totalizing meaning.”

“Perhaps the only “natural” element or event is this energy, this force that exists in no single material form, but thank to which things materialize, take form, mutate and disintegrate.”
from an Interview of Trinh T. Minh-ha with Marina Grzinic

and

“This widespread tendency to condemn beauty in certain political and artistic milieus should be situated in an ideological context, which views beauty and politics, beauty and politics, beauty and life as being mutually exclusive. Both those who believe in beauty for beauty’s sake and those who avoid it like the plague partake in the same ideology. Much, not all, of the anti-aesthetic trend in the avant-garde scene today can be viewed as nothing more than another form of aesthetics. Instead of trying to understand show beauty functions in dominant ideology and drawing a possible difference with this same notion in your own or other non-dominant contexts for example, many merely censor it, indulging in the illusion that if you break with dominant narrative traditions (plot, dramaturgy, emphasis on technical sophistication and perfection as formal beauty), reality will yield itself up in its spontaneous, most authentic form.”

-Minh-ha, T. T. (1992). Professional Censorship, an interview with Rob Stephenson in Framer Framed, London: Routledge. p. 221.

Then, we must remind ourselves that bad aboriginal art does exist, at least once it is framed and painted with authentically natural earth toned acrylics. Which means that value judgments about authenticity are very different from those of good and bad.

Then decolonize your methodologies, find your own perpetual outlier, and you are on your way to becoming a recolonist.

But I am just rehashing my old line without extending it. So, what’s the summary of what I’ve learned from this new quote: Reality is not the same as authenticity. Everything is real. Authenticity is a myth. But even that myth is real.

And to bring that down to earth: a story is realer than proof, as long as it’s true.

There: doesn’t that effectively skirt the whole aura of documentation thing?…

So, now I need to go back to that previous post and figure out how a mobile unit that slices a piece of life into a perpetual outlier can help you find authenticity in a self-reflexively fabricated life experience.

Quite a mouthful, that, but worth adding to my list of Artist Statements