"Final" artist statement/Introducing the felcan

Artist Statement

   
            Thank you in advance for taking the time to read this; your close attention means a lot to me.

My work explores the intersection of experimentation and discovery, and the mechanics of choice.  We live in a time and place where most seems known. Beyond the realm of science or language lurks that which cannot be known by either, but is palpable nonetheless. These mysteries reveal themselves through the dialogue between living things and their environments. Using scientific discovery as a metaphor for the experience of discovery in general,  the work explores the hidden messages within and without, and the decisions that ensue.

In this series, I am telling you a story.  While some stories are told through books or word-of-mouth, this one is told through a serialized body consisting of disparate works that are like panels in a dimensional graphic novel. These are called ‘episodes’ and are not meant to follow a strict sequence.  The pieces represent a variety of media, from dot matrix to 12 ton shackles. Language and meaning range from Sumerian to maledicta, and implied to abandoned.

Working in this way enables me to invent scenarios and encounters with which I can experiment freely and remain open to the next discovery.    I am thinking about how a being is influenced by its surroundings and also with meaning making. It is my hope, that a viewer who reads and looks carefully will be rewarded.  Part of my process is to incorporate observations of the work by others. In this way, the work is very much a collaboration between me and my environment, which accounts for the presence of found materials and objects.

Thank you

Prologue

The Felcan

         There once  lived a greedy scientist who thought he would get rich if he bred the world's cutest dog with the world's cutest cat.  He set about to do this, and it became his life's work. The research and experimentation involved with this undertaking was nothing short of ungodly. After failed attempts resulting in litters of half-baked fetuses that were ugly even for fetuses, the female became pregnant again with a promising new litter of specimens. Sonograms and amniocenteses were all showing fully developed healthy offspring with all the probable signs of affectionate loyal dispositions and delicate little features that would surely be irresistable to pet-lovers. At the time of these experiments, the scientist became very ill, and shortly before passing, he left in his will the company which owned the patent on this exciting new hybrid, to his only son.

       The son cared little for the wealth or the headaches involved with running the company, but figured he would hold onto it until the arrival of the litter, for no particular reason. Excitement buzzed throughout the the halls of the research facility, and the staff twittered through their routines- performing tests, recording data, and attending to the needs of the super-pregnant female.

       When the female finally came to term, based on digital imaging, a litter of seven was expected. However once her uterus had spasmodically heaved forth its contents, not seven, but one—one lumpen specimen was to be seen! Had it consumed its womb-mates? The researchers peered at the creature, glistening with fluids, and before they could get around to checking its vital signs, they examined it closely for signs of cuteness. The thing was hardly symmetrical. It was more hairless than one would expect either a puppy or a kit. The hair, not being completely absent, but occurred sporadically in thin tufts. But it was alive! And healthy! And they called it the felcan.

     The research staff struggled to reconcile their climactic anticipation with the abortive outcome, and went back to work on cloning aliens. The son estranged himself from the company, but he brought the felcan home. He went about his business, and the felcan stayed out of his way, mostly lingering idly under the couch and surviving only by dint of a complete absence of will.

    The son and the girlfriend came to know the felcan's deficiencies. It cannot hear. Its incipient ear canal closed over like a wound shortly after birth. The felcan makes no utterance, but the it can see well. Like many creatures who suffered from a dimness of one faculty, its others strove to compensate. The felcan's heinously mismatched and seemingly vacuous eyes were uncannily adept at taking in the world around it. They processed the raw data of vision through the gloriously scrambled matrix of its optic nerve. You see, the felcan did not eat its siblings. They had died in utero, and the remaining felcan had absorbed the uber-nutrients from their remains, which has been known to happen.  This is how it became a biological marvel, capable of astral projection, time travel, and incredibly, the felcan is indestructible and has no telemeres on its nerve endings, so it does not age.

     Although the felcan had an amphibious way of standing about inertly, it possessed no lizard brain whatsoever. No fight. No flight. The felcan simply responded to pretty much anything simply by observation. The only thing that kept it alive, was good fortune, and random safety precautions that were meant for other living things. The felcan was not dumb, in fact, it was quite intelligent. It was just not capable of responding to stimuli in a way that made sense to others.

    Once, well, several times, the felcan died. During one such seizure, an ambitious erstwhile lab attendant was able to download imagery directly from the felcan's brain, and recreate a semblance of these images, but the results were fractious and cryptic, their descriptions defying technology. It turned out that the felcan was sometimes able to remove its own gaze to outside its corpus, and observe itself...observing.

   As science observes the felcan, it strives to co-opt that property that allows the felcan to detach its spirit from its meatbag body; an endeavor that is likely futile.