REVOLUTIONARY HAPPINESS - MEDIUM.COM

Revolutionary Happiness Part I: A Tryptic

All of our work can be seen and collected here

https://versum.xyz/board/nDtrf0fqvm

Revolutionary Happiness is the title of an artwork I completed and minted on Teia, earlier this year. It has now become the starting point of a wider collaborative project involving artists whose work I’ve come to know, respect and value.

The original work was conceived as a triptych because in my fertile imagination fuelled by my love of religious art, I thought a triptych would lend itself to contemplation. A simple contemplation of beauty. An idea, not ‘The Idea’. Just an aid that may lift us out of our everyday existence. Affording us the possibility, even momentarily, to step outside of where we currently find ourselves.

Happiness and the Contemplation of Beauty

Generally, I want to show people my work because I think it’s the most beautiful thing that I can make at that present moment. And if you’re experience of beauty is anything like mine, the presence of such a quality makes your day better.

I’ve always felt the transcendent quality of beauty. I’ve always had a kind of gratitude towards someone who makes it their aim. The production of beauty as apposed to the production of nearly anything else has struck me as such a generous thing to do. I remember how thankful I was and am still, when I see someones work as the creation of beauty. Beauty enhances my life and environment.

Left with @rmtrl1https://versum.xyz/board/r1t2fPfL87 : 

Right with @Stashxyz https://versum.xyz/board/a2tGfrfzx0

I find beauty in many places — I used to be a furniture designer so I can find beauty in design. There are some cars that are beautiful, the fuel cancels them off the list though, a lot of Art, architecture, stones and minerals — in every dog that has ever lived and quite a few cats, in nature, obviously … you get the idea.

In recognising the fundamental importance of finding beauty in the world when I needed it most, when I thought there wasn’t any, I’ve now made attempts to figure out and create what I think is beautiful. That is my main artistic goal. For me, the contemplation of beauty and a sense of happiness are very closely linked.

Beauty: Divided and (Re)United

We can all see that we’re divided by wealth and its lack, religions and politics, physical and ideological boundaries. We hurtle towards or are even at ecological melt-down. Oh and I know!, let’s add World War 3 to the list, shall we…?

I called my art practice labelsonhumans because I started to see that it was the compulsive identification and categorisation of everyone into convenient ‘for or against’ groups that was, for me, at the heart of our problems. We become more and more divided with every categorisation, with every step towards ‘understanding’. The world is obsessed with putting labels on me and you. And now we’re all divided, suspicious of one another because our labels are different.

Inevitably, I asked myself: what would be the stuff that still manages to unite us, over borders, regardless of gender or language differences and above and beyond religion?

 with @TheLinearist — The Air Temple https://versum.xyz/board/KGtEfZfvZn

Could it be beauty itself that brings us all together, gets us talking and sharing, swapping and comparing. Like in-the-flesh friends did. Remember them?

Of course a shared idea of beauty is problematic. Think blonde kids waving wooden clubs around in a field. No thanks! What I’m thinking is that we might be united not by a shared idea of beauty but by a shared need for beauty and the happiness that experiencing it can bring to us. There’s a shared satisfaction in having found or made what fits our definition of it.

What constitutes the idea of beauty is as individual as we are. One per soul. But our search is universal. We all value beauty for its metaphysical, aesthetic or psychological properties. Beauty clearly has sociological benefits too.

We can all identify beauty, we know it for sure when we see or hear or sense it in any way. In this sense, beauty has something in common with truth. To exclusively consider the financial value attached to the beautiful leads nowhere. It only gets a lot of money to a very few people and perpetuates division, working against the inherent capacity of beauty to make us feel at one with ourselves and with others. We all have different views as individuals but one thing that brings us all together is the love of beauty itself.

Metamodernism

I took the expression that gave the title to my original piece, ‘revolutionary happiness’, from the book Metamodernism and The Future of Theory by the academic Jason Ānanda Josephson Storm. I have been studying Metamodernism and I have found much-to-be-uplifted-by with this new cultural paradigm. There are a list of books and sites I found really rewarding at the bottom of this article

In his book, Storm argues that happiness not about rolling over, as and when requested by the tiny percentage: it’s about becoming familiar with happiness, understanding and protecting it for the many. I quote directly: ‘Happiness means that suffering when encountered can be learned from or surmounted,’

Look at this, the latest collaborative piece from an artist living in a country where things are very difficult.

with @Mouzenn_ ‘Redacted Happiness’ As-One version.https://versum.xyz/board/2ptNf2fX6j

They write ;

‘you asked me what happened if your work could travel to my country? Honestly I think it will [be] ruptured, destroyed and fade to black. You never could make that work if you lived here. You never could make art without the black in my land. When I see it I ask myself how beautiful, But how far is it? A happy word behind millions of walls.’

You’ll see that this project is about happiness, the psychological state, the emotional condition. It is not about mindlessly being perma-grin happy. This piece ‘Redacted Happiness’ makes clear a situation in which happiness is far from ubiquitous. Rather it is rare and fleeting. This artwork, in a subtle and highly contemporary way represents the impact that oppressive regimes can have on the individual, unable to fully express themselves in a way they see fit, whilst also referencing the beautiful geometric art forms and mashrabiya screens of their culture that stretch back for centuries.

Storm continues, quoting Solon The Wise — ‘I count no man happy until his death’.

I take from this that I don’t want to be lying on my death bed wondering ‘did I really need to screw those people into the ground financially to buy jewelled eggs? Or , ‘am I being reborn into a world with no trees?’ Will considerations such as these help hang the ‘Happy-tag’ on my cold dead toe? No. They will not. It feels like a revolutionary happiness is needed now, and I can start to accrue credits of a different kind to those issued by the bank.

The term revolutionary happiness has, in this way, a political dimension (hence the ‘revolutionary’ bit). It explains that in order to successfully move forward we are going to have to design situations, environments, policies where the many are happy not just the most aggressive few.

with Orfhlaith Egan @orlainberlin https://versum.xyz/board/ArtNf0f1x0

In a rethink of pricing structures artists Orfhlaith Egan and Bay Fragile experimented by turning the traditional pricing structure for Art on its head, making the nft of the whole triptych less expensive than the actual individual, yet equally, if not more gorgeous sections. Needless to say, the ‘As one’ pieces sold out only to appear later on the secondary market. Many pieces in the collection are nominally priced as a way to facilitate and encourage the collection of Art.

with @bayfragile ‘LHBF_10’ https://versum.xyz/board/gNt9fvfvp6

Within a Metamodernism framework, then, the artist’s endeavour to create beauty can shift its ethical goalpost away from individual satisfaction or happiness and on to the revolutionary happiness of all.

Dystopian imagery has its values in expressing and reflecting the fears, violence and anger so prevalent in modern life, there’s an honesty to much of it being created digitally today. But what I am trying to express is an optimism and hope that is even more important because it helps us imagine a better future, or, as Storm puts it: ‘a way of life directed towards human flourishing’.

In other words, I’m sure that the contemplation of beauty is going to be more beneficial for all of us in the long run than the trading of beauty.

So let’s try to imagine how beauty itself might become a revolutionary and unifying Icon for our Metamodernist future…

 with @Metascoops https://versum.xyz/board/LJtNfJfg2P

Revolutionary Happiness Part II: A Collaborative Project

These reflections naturally led me to the idea that my original Revolutionary Happiness triptych had to find a way to develop into something wider, more open to a collective dimension, and ultimately more faithful to its Metamodernist inspiration: a collaborative project.

As you’ve seen, instead of collaborating by erasing two individual works in order to make a third emerge, it seemed appropriate to try to aim at making my piece ‘fit’ with someone else’s work in a satisfying way.

Making room for one another’s versions of beauty has thus become the guiding idea behind the collaborations of this new phase of Revolutionary Happiness.

Artists are invited to respond to the Revolutionary Happiness triptych and to create a new piece. Their own work comes to co-exist with mine and their idea of beauty is of equal importance and utter relevance to the finished collaboration. We mint the pieces jointly.

The beauty of digital art is that you can always work with the primary edit. A work doesn’t need to be destroyed in order to integrate it into the work of another digital artist.

In this way the project is hoping to show and demonstrate how, by including one another rather than keeping each other out, we may achieve a degree of happiness that is not contingent on fighting your way to the top of the pile.

 with @leevel ‘Revolutionary Happiness, A State of Remembering’ https://versum.xyz/board/JjtefWfzRy

As an artist I make something as beautiful as I can and I still think that it can be improved by others. That is also beauty: being an imperfect human who can look back on their life and say they were happy because they honoured the beauty in themselves and others.

The beauty of making digital art and making it available through ‘Clean’ (very low emission) block-chain technology, surprisingly not taken up by all nft-creators? is that all of our studios feel like they are ‘right next door’, therefore digitally, they are right next door. Our Revolutionary Happiness collaboration has not taken into consideration one single border.

Only a few months after the first collaboration, there are now artists from all over the world getting involved using NFT collaboration contracts. And inevitably, we have some work being made by a human artist telling an AI what it needs to do. I have seen a few samples and I cannot wait to show everyone.

 Stills from animated series with left: Gill@GMcrop00 https://versum.xyz/board/0et3fKfP2W and right Michael Hughes @HughesMichi https://versum.xyz/board/nDtrf0fqmP

It’s great to see that already, artists within the project are setting about further collaborative projects independent of this one, in which they have recognised an affinity or shared interest. I hope our project can ease the introductions.

I want to actively include artists whose cultural codes and behaviours I frankly don’t understand and am unfamiliar with in a spirit of basic and decent inclusion and to learn.

This feels new, it feels like we are coming together to make something that familiarises a positive attitude for the future. Even if that’s just a basic friendliness to folks we don’t know. It is a start. This is growing project and I’m not sure where it’s going to grow next. That’s alright.

 with @DDO__xyz ‘DDO-RH1 and DDO-RH2’https://versum.xyz/board/mptvf7fVLX

Revolutionary Happiness is an attempt to celebrate a unifying need for beauty in todays Metamodern society. It’s at once an artistic endeavour, a metaphor for acceptance and integration, respect and mutual appreciation. Mutual benefit and support. It is welcoming.

Simultaneously however, Revolutionary Happiness has also become a curatorial project. All of the works engage with one individual piece of art in exactly the same way as many exhibitions focus on a particular theme. In time, I am sure that many more projects will emerge for like minded collaborations.

 with @rmtrl ‘rhmtrl001’ https://versum.xyz/board/r1t2fPfL87

Revolutionary Happiness Part III: Universal Entitlement.

We make Art.

We are enjoying each others skills and artistry in a visual discussion that is progressive and creative and artistic. It’s also imaginative, employing faculties with which the artist excels; creating beauty. Giving us a bit of contemplation space. Helping us to see what might be.

If we hadn’t even sold one piece then at least we tried to make one another happy by engaging in a meaningful way to share our ideas, artistic skills and our capacity for friendship.

But the great thing is we are being willed on by our collectors and friends to continue to employ our artistry, our enthusiasm, hope and ingenuity to create something good and futuristic. Two terms that have hardly ever been seen in the same sentence.

We hope you really like them and are inspired to make some Revolutionary Happiness of your own.

You can see and collect from The Revolutionary Happiness Project at  https://versum.xyz/board/nDtrf0fqvm

Books that may help save us yet, hardly an exhaustive bibliography but a start none the less.

Metamodernism and The Future of Theory. Jason Ānanda Josephson Storm

Metamodernism and The Return of Transcendence. The Midwife. The Emerging God. Building The Cathedral. Gospel. A series edited by Brendan Graham Dempsey

Metamodernity. Lene Rachel Andersen

The Mission of Art. Alex Grey

The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible. Charles Eisenstein

Fully Automated Luxury Communism. Aaron Bastani

The Spiritual Dynamic in Modern Art. Charlene Spretnack

The Listening Society. Hanzi Freinacht