Douglas R. Ewart
«Luk de» - Talk and performance
, 14:00
Douglas R. Ewart is represented in the exhibition «File Under Freedom» with three sculptural works and a painting. In this event Ewart will talk about his works in the exhibition and his multidisciplinary artistic practice, as well as perform on one of the exhibited sculptures: a percussive instrument titled George Floyd Bundt Staff.
Do not miss this opportunity to meet Douglas R. Ewart for an informal talk inside the exhibition, as well as a demonstration of the sculpture’s sonic qualities.
The tile of the event, “Luk de”, is Jamaican for “Look there»: to interrogate and scrutinize an idea or thing.
Artist Statement:
I am a composer, musician, instrument builder, educator, writer, conceptualist, craftsman, tailor, inventor, philosopher, and community activist. Over the past fifty-years, my work has evolved into a confluence of indivisible practices. Each discipline aids and acts as a catalyst for the others, with music as the overarching galvanizing agent.
As a composer, I utilize many methods to actualize my works: traditional western notation, graphic and text scores, improvisation, oral directives and gestures, as well as, memorization vehicles and techniques. I have always sought, and continue to honor the inclusion of an intuitive level within my compositions that utilizes many of the innate sensibilities of the artists.
One aspect that I often think and feel is that we communicate with our energy and the waves/vibrations, which are part of the fact that we are electrical and chemical beings entities.
Sensibilities that are all too often neglected, underestimated, misunderstood, and dismissed.
By creating my musical instruments, my sonic devices, I am able to construct and/or access unusual sounds, vistas, and kinetic movements in the development of ensembles that would otherwise be impossible to achieve.
As a community-supported artist, I feel that it is incumbent upon me to aspire to be a beacon and drum major for spiritual, cultural, social, and political change and development. I conceptualize my responsibilities in society from this viewpoint as I strive to balance artistic integrity and social responsibility. For me this balance is achieved through the stimuli of novel sound, language, materials, techniques, technologies, movement, and fresh costumes that nevertheless anchor themselves in many traditions.
Ongoing, my work is also an intended contagious communication of self, manifested in the evaluation and development of expression and self-interrogation inherent in my internal interactions, and, the interactions of and between members of the community. I want to magnify the links and the overlaps of play and work, laughter and seriousness, esoteric and generic, ethereal and earthy, mythology and pragmatism, gravity and levitation, meditation and concentration, the fine lines between child and adult, imagination and realism.
In response to the almost adversarial compartmentalization of the various artistic disciplines, my endeavor is to engage the community in a blurring of the boundaries between artistic practices, such that there is a recognizable unity, and a conscious recognition of the correlation between our treatment of art practices, and, the way we engage in and embrace planetary views that foster global progress and development. My work is inspired, incubated, nurtured, realized and propelled by spiritual, and considerable artistic interactions with the community.
