"All ye stumbling sleepwalkers, you were not misinformed. But in these tongue-tied times, this is for the homeless hearts and anxious fingers"
- Know Hope.
NO SOUL FOR SALE
("A Festival of Independents will bring together 40 independent forces from around the world that uniquely animate contemporary art (not-for-profit organizations, alternative institutions, artists' collectives and independent enterprises). From June 24–28, all floors of X Initiative will be utilized by the groups to simultaneously present art, music, performances, and publications." )
Four floors. No swiveling, but I have adopted the head-tilt that comes with intense observation. I went sifting back through my Experimental Film History course, finding many of the video installations harkened back to Harry Smith's Heaven & Earth Magic, the Structurist movement, or maybe some sort of Nouveau Surrealism.
Marwood spray painted his shirt on the third floor.
On the fourth floor, I stumbled across the work of Know Hope, an Israeli street artist. I was fortunate enough to pick up a copy of his mini-paper "The Anytimes," which - prior to NY - was cleverly slipped into local papers in LA.
His work has a certain earnest quality, an innocence, that I have found lacking recently. The avant-garde sometimes seems to be rebelling against prior movements simply for the sake of doing so - our young voices often rejecting everything we can with our own desperation for the ironic. We all have soft little rabbit-souls somewhere, but a lot of us are wearing flippant masks.
Know Hope has been illustrating the narrative of a (darling) nameless figure - a representation of the conflicted, vulnerable, hopeful human condition - for a year. This combination of illustration , poetry, and iconography lend his work a multi-layered narrative quality - a delicate, poignant epic of humanity's struggle. Hearts, tree stumps, birds, and semi-functional manifestations of technology (telephone poles, broken televisions...) are prevalent symbols throughout his work.
I have noted that, in all of these illustrations of the nameless figure, there is a blank silhouette where the heart would be, upon the sleeve the heart has been sewn on (save in one of my favorite pictures in which this character is releasing his heart, like a bird, into the air). Of hearts, he writes:
“I hope to move heavy hearts at least one inch to the side by confessing that I'm petrified and secretly in love with the world.”
In the face of all the lofty irony we've stock piled, it is refreshing to encounter something poignant and sincere with the intent to illuminate the current human condition and to inspire hope in trying times. I don't think I have felt so delicately rubbed raw since The Giving Tree.
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