 Reproduction Stress and the Death Drive: Go With the Flow
Mixed media sculpture, 2004
My work as an artist is one primarily rooted in nature and the humanistic search for meaning. My goal is to help educate society with an understanding of the scientific reality of nature, evolution, life, and the human experience. I strive to detach myself to an objective position observing the physical and mental happenings of the world and define their processes as a matter of nature and evolution, not political correctness nor ideological doctrine. My work intends to disrobe the tradition and identity of humanity’s self-deceptive conceptual narratives and ground the human identity as a product of evolution in sync with the symbiotic system of the planet. Through this foundation, the Homo sapiens species is an essential part of my work in creating a presence and likeness in order to establish direct relevance for the viewing audience. Ultimately, work such as “Go With the Flow” is not of an independent nature, as I see myself a part of what scientist Edward O. Wilson calls the ‘Modern Synthesis.’ The Modern Synthesis is the union of the social sciences and the humanities fields of culture with science, in order to rationally understand the nature of the Homo sapiens species and our biological context through enlightenment and the dispelling of fear and illusion.
 The natural material choice and language of the work is based on the nature (i.e. birth, life, stress, and death) of the material and that inherent nature of our own bodies. With respect to the natural materials, the wood represents the likeness and life-expectancy time measurements relative to Homo sapiens and all observable species. Wood may best represent this life, stress, and death correlation as having a relatively short lifetime, just as humans do. The limestone wall, on the other hand, is not a living organism, but is ultimately the product of species past, compiled and represented as the fossil record, 350 million years of evolution. What is classified as modern humans emerged roughly 50,000 years ago. Thus, the limestone symbolizes the reality of death and an amalgamation of the natural history of the planet. Consciously, the stone also represents a filter in death by expelling all conceptual meanderings of the human mind.
Evolutionary psychology’s natural revelations of human behavior or nature within the elements of natural selection for evolution, is a foundation of inherent representation in my work. These elements are variation, competition, fitness, mutation, and adaptation. Concurrent with the increasing population, resource consumption, and human competition, the element of stress maintains an important, if not crucial, representation of my work. Through the deep lens of evolutionary psychology, my work aims to objectively question the philosophical and religious doctrines or meanderings created by the human species as a by-product of brain size. This brain size was primarily adapted by necessity as a tool to compete and survive amongst the elements of the natural environment. The consequential size of the brain and, thus, the new and vulnerable potential of what would become the human mind were and remains the greatest adventure in exploitation of any natural resource on Earth.
“Go with the Flow” is representative of a segment, or a generation, in the process of life and emphasizes the connectedness between reproduction, stress, and death or the death drive exemplified in human nature. Elementally, the mannequins represent, as found  objects in human culture, the evolutionary emphasis of fitness and desirability sought in a mate. Mannequins ultimately are ideal forms; however, their evolutionary context is one founded in nature, and there the ‘fit’ form is primarily based on sex appeal for reproduction. Within the installation, the reproductive unit or mannequin couple stares into the biological reality of death, represented by the fossil record, and witness their simple, insignificant time and absolute reproductive purpose. Competition is presented by the stone weapon or tool, which is significant of mate and resource competition. Through this representational context, however, the resources at stake are ideological resources of security and dependency, where as the fossil bed presentation of death competes with other ‘popular' mental ideologies pertaining to the human identity and perceptions of the afterlife. The ‘Caucasian’ identity of the mannequins is an example of the competitive, group-based, sociobiological environment in which the figures were found. In other words, the Caucasian identity is representative of the majority or parent culture of which the mannequins were idolized and created. The Freudian “Thanatos” or ‘death drive’ translation of the work is based on the aggressive animal and/or human temper found both in resource and mate competition. Presented here, however, is the contemporary human hyper-transformation of these behaviors into the observed speed of the intensely violent, competitive, and overpopulated nature of the planet. Concurrent with the increasing population, recourse consumptuion and competition, the element of stress maintains an important, if not crucial, role in my work. The explicit stress element of the installation is the subjective space in the center of the work. Through interaction with this space, the viewer completes the installation and finalizes the narrative of human representation in the work. Here the contextual significance and physical pressure and mass of the fossil bed limestone walls confront each viewer, and in turn, holistically represent the activation of the rest of the system like a detail of life. Reproduction, stress, and death are a symbiotic system of the world, dependent and biologically affected by each factor and inherent in the biological evolution of all life, including humans. Go with the flow. |
