This page unfolds a collection of  artist statements which were written to provide a theoretical direction and context to artworks and creative projects. They represent the span of my activity, starting from my early works and vision as a young performance and multimedia artist.

(c) Dr Lila Moore, All Rights Reserved 

 

 

Artist Statement or Confessions of an Ancient Soul

 

Introduction to The Rent-Gene World

 

By Lila Moore (1985-1986)

 

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In the performance 'Rent-Gene', a world is gradually transpiring on the skeleton of a reality, which is projected sometimes vividly and from time to time in a distorted and blurred manner.  The reality's decapitated body-parts and daily fragments become the substance from which are fed new life compounds that become the foundation for the development and spreading of mutations partially monstrous and partially magnificent in their beauty.  The process takes place in a deserted zone, long forgotten place, that becomes inhabited again by entities that move in and treat it as their natural environment. These beings are constituted from fundamentally human, animal and mechanic components, blurring the borders between them, and distracting the ordinary and familiar human functionality.

 

The Rent-Gene world is revealed through Anima, the meditating entity and the leading character. Anima represents, first of all, the living force that exists everywhere, the eternal soul that can endow the birth of life in anything she chose to inhabit. In the performance, she is personified as a combination of woman, bird and machine. The plot unfolds the events in her life. The other entities or characters that accompany her offer additional information on the environment, the customs of its residents, whilst the dominant atmosphere is that of a dream and, occasionally, nightmare.  This world is a kin to a garage where the flesh and tissues of machines, animals and humans are reassembled following a creation process led by the fantastical visions and hallucinations of its leader. Times – past, present and future are being swollen by one another and become a unified time – the time of the performance.

 

 

The conflicts in Anima's personality are caused by her unique physical and psychological constitution, which represents intellectual issues in a society that strives towards advanced and powerful technological age. Anima's life mirrors the life in which the individual lost its sense of vocation or special calling.  Ordinary behavioural patterns are emptied of their meanings and take on new, absurd or other meanings. Interpersonal relations are hard to fulfill, and the differences between genders become blurred and interwoven into androgenic or asexual forms of existence. The old religions do not comply with the spiritual requirements of the individual, but ritual is maintained.  These symptoms that are being expressed in contemporary urban society are brought to extreme in the fantastical and imaginary Rent-Gene world. It is a world with unique internal rules, way of life that is adjusted to all its inhabitants, despite its illogic, and rituals created by the fusion of torn pieces of myths and ancient ritualistic behaviours mixed with current local behaviours.  This world is utilised as an inspiration for speculations on the future of humanity and whereas human, animal and mechanical elements and principles fight one another over hegemony.

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Performance  1982-1985

Artist Statement 

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Performance constitutes for me a meeting point where the various arts collaborate and unify harmoniously. They don't contradict one another but their integration creates a world in which its parts are unified and is enriched by its diverse components.

As a performance and multimedia artist, I am not satisfied with cloth (canvas) and colour alone. I need the live character, the character that moves to sound, and the inevitable development and transformation of any existing situation, as well as the energy that is induced from what's happening during the performance.

The framework of performance allows me to fulfill dreams and manifest fantasies; illusive events are being realised with the assistance of a mixed technique.

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I built my works as a series of pictures that evolve from one another, but not necessarily through the logic of a plot-based story or linear narrative but through associations.  The events evolved from one another, and developed until they reached a point where a new development constituted the beginning of a new work.

In these performances, I created a world that was alive, breathed and acted, only within the restricted limits of its existence. It was a different world that grew from known reality, but assumed a different appearance through the tactics of imagination and the absurd. These works included: sculptural accessories, daily tools, performed photography projected via slides, texts, music-sound, and stylised characters moving in stylised movements.

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I wish to utilise reality as a logo in which its part can be disassembled and reassembled in endless variations. I see this as a goal which I attempt to manifest in my works. This manner of thought corresponds with the mixed technique, which selects elements from various artistic mediums and puts them together in the framework of one work.

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I salute the Futurists and the artists of the Dada movement that paved the road to the art of multimedia performance. I see myself as their successor, stepping in their footsteps and beyond, moving forward on the warming grounds that lead to the twenty-first century.

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Artist Statement on Multimedia Performances

1986

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In the performances that I created in the last year, I built an absurd world wherein its skeleton embodied the contents of reality and in its vein fantasy was flowing. It was a different world that evolved from actuality but through mutations transformed its skin.

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The acting characters, the plastic accessories, the lighting, slides/projections, the sound and text turned the illusion into a manifested vision.

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The main motivation for my creative practice was the stubborn urge to fulfill a dream, to animate illusive pictures. In addition, I was aspiring to build an artistic language that would fit my needs. In a spontaneous manner I began creating in the language of multimedia, and my last performances could be defined as works that rely on a variety of artistic fields. The themes with which I engaged includes: stories from daily life that despite their simplicity they are filled with physical and emotional energy; dreams in which reality is blurred and becomes a journey in the spaces of the imagination; mythological themes and elements from the collective unconscious of humanity; gliding in the vastness of time and space towards an unknown future. These themes occupied me personally, and as an artist they were utilised as content for ideas and creativity. My works were part of a long, continual and perpetual process of thinking and making, streaming on an infinite stairway.