01/2019
An essay on the "intimate" and "projectional" representational systems of artist Stephen Willat, and how these begin a reframing or reshaping of the realities they depict. Written with Lucie Kolb and Bernhard Garnicnig, these writings attempt sympathesize with the systems view, as our ways of life become destabilized or unhinged by the hegemonic forces that claim to regulate them. Willats' "systems thinking 'from below'", albeit simplifying, map distances, intimacies, and projections onto the everyday worlds and complex relations, cybernetic tools become institutive of counter-conformist counter-consciousnesses.
'Counter-conscious' Ways of Life is the opening essay of the book Artwork as Institution, published by ARCHIV & UC BOOKS in Zurich. The volume for the first time brings together the 'Mosaic' works by the British artist Stephen Willats, created in Great Britain and Finland in the 1990s, which redefine the web of relationships between artist, artwork, audience and society.