„When I Paint My Masterpiece“
(Bob Dylan, Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits, Vol. 2 LP, 1971)
I. “And I'll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it”
(Bob Dylan „A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall“ 1963)
Narration: You can tell a story about Bo Dylan and within it speak about any other subject!
Storytelling is a fundamental component of my artistic work. Both as a form and as a subject. Storytelling as a form includes verbal narration by the use of language as well as the much more fundamental principle of a development, a change within the single piece of art. This development may be a kind of action or a course of events but also an intended change in the appearance of the work. Almost all videos use a verbal as well as an either reinforcing or contrastive visual form of narration.
II. „It’s Halloween. I have my Bob Dylan mask on!“
(Bob Dylan, Carnegie Hall, New York, 26.Oktober 1963)
Image: The (artificial) character is an image in itself!
Bob Dylan is a fundamental part of my work. Not as a person, but as a metaphor for his body of work and his role as an icon in the context of Pop music. It functions as an image of the fundamental desire to be special and to create something great. And in comparison to this speaks about the failure of this desire. It’s only marginally about an admirer’s obsession towards a genius. To take possession of Dylan as a character in my own body of work is a self-assured, almost arrogant act that defies the failure of my personal utopia. It negates the difference between icon and novice. And by doing so picks it out as a central theme.
III. „Well, anybody can be just like me, obviously |But then, now again, not too many can be like you, fortunately.“
(Bob Dylan, „Absolutely Sweet Marie“, 1966)
Imitation: Bob Dylan imitated Woody Guthrie. I do imitate Bob Dylan.
The principle of imitation is as immanent in Pop music as it is in fine art. Trying to get near an ingenious body of work and to find an individual way of expression in failing to successfully imitate it is a fundamental part of an artistic development. Because the imitation of Dylan’s art is bound to fail by the shift into the medium of fine art, it leads me to my very artistic expression.
IV. “She knows there's no success like failure |And that failure's no success at all.”
(Bob Dylan, “Love Minus Zero/ No Limit” 1965)
Failure: The hopelessness of the advance. Failure has no place in our society. It is only accepted as a temporary step towards the indispensable success. To imitate Bob Dylan and to take possession of his work is bound to fail. No comparison, no judgment can turn out other than ruinous. Like tilting at windmills. And still the failure can lead to something new, an idea or an image. It can lead to the idea to speak about the burden of the teenage vision of the own momentous future and of its loss. And to a multifaceted image of failure and loss of utopia as a general human theme.
I am telling stories about Bob Dylan and me. And I tell Bob Dylan my stories. Or I scream my own stories over his. To tell stories about Bob Dylan means to talk about narration itself. And you can speak about anything to Narration. And Bob Dylan listens.