eluxoroma: Trump l'œil - foundations
Q: How do you map the tenets of trump l'œil onto political comedy?
A: The core goal of “tricking the eye” with visual art is to convince the audience a representation is real. A typical response to being tricked by art is some mixture of astonishment, reverence, humility, and reflection on the nature of (the) illusion. Our Eluxoroma pieces will use hyper-aware storytelling techniques to shift perspectives of the characters we write, our audiences, and ourselves towards the aim of empathy and inclusion.
With a twist of the kaleidoscope, we have entered the Age of the Trickster.
As the population is held captive by algorithmic echo chambers, an arguably areligious bankrupt billionaire socialite xenophobe is voted in by the Evangelical lobby, Wall Street, middle-class consumers, farmers, and immigrants. Who is using who, and for what? Is it a more harmonious and beautiful future for all? Are we creating the place we want for future generations?
Trump is a useful trick. Not to mention his Never-Trump Vice. In an attention economy, a “reality” TV star pulls focus via the American brand of celebrity cult(ure) and turns the cameras on the “the most powerful seat in the world,” exposing the illusion of centralized leadership and authority.
The President plays fast and loose with the truth to usher in a post-fact era, a key line from the fascist playbook.
Simultaneously, MAGA members wear pro-Putin paraphernalia in a fight against the cabal of Satanic pedophiles led by Clinton and Soros. Theories capture interest, consuming families and communities to the point of dissolution.
Whether consciously or unconsciously choosing a variety of mind viruses, the societal fractures put all into question. People lose faith in institutions. Instead of trying to make them better, they abandon them, leaving them vulnerable to hijacking by power mongers who sell them off for private profit. Should we be placing faith in institutions that have been corrupted by self-centered careerists and pernicious causes? Our politics has arguably been corrupt since day one, as the founding documents were never intended to serve everyone they govern.
We are watching democracy being consumed from the center. The paradox of tolerance allows for parasites. What happens when you give the parasite all the power? Similarly, the spaciousness of love and abundance allows for our capitalist constructs to impose scarcity and its controlling mechanisms. Perhaps we are being asked to create something new and more effective, and perhaps this goes far beyond politics.
Consensus reality comes apart at the seams as both sides of the supposed political polarity go through the looking glass.
Do we see the contradictions we feed?
How do the representative bodies prop up leaders and convince the average voter to invest their identity?
How do we cherry-pick sites of skepticism?
Are we reinforcing blind spots?
To varying degrees, the great majority of contemporary politicians on the main stage operate in the same manner as Trump. In many ways he is a hyperbolic example of what centralized power can do. They hide the truth and appeal to emotions, say what the populace wants to hear, make promises they cannot keep, make excuses when they come up short, focus on demographics and identities, further dividing and conquering hearts and minds for personal empowerment.
To have voted in a career con man, America has exposed its darkness on the world stage. Let us gaze upon it, accept it in all its horrific humor, as a sad clown runs an anachronistic circus.
We can delve into the collective shadow and position this as an opportunity to transcend any notion of “fighting the good fight,” and find common ground with our interconnected community members as a warped perspectivism pervades this age of high weirdness.
If the paradigm of battle keeps us stuck in pendulum swings, we must slip through the false binary by embracing illusion, paradox, trickery, and our own inability for sense-making.
When we release this tension, and step into creating more harmonious pathways forward, we realize our generative powers and unbind ourselves from the past in all its victim/victimizer merry-go-rounds. To avoid perpetuating the age-old cycles of abuse, we follow the ever-emerging cracks to alternate realities, allowing for ingenuity gifted by the trick.
With a foundation of absurdist Surrealism, Dialectics, Nondualism, Ecopsychology, Hyper-illusionism, Satire, Slow Art, and Trickster Myths, this show aims to shake loose new possibilities.
“the trickster is the black sheep of the pantheon—not because his/her jokes are bad, but because he/she embodies the primeval generativity and diffractive ingenuity of things. The trickster is balance—not in mathematical terms of determining aggregates and averages, but in terms of entanglement. Psychic life is always poised in the middle of things, as the co-agentic mattering of “good” and “bad.” There is no solution to the dark. We are never not broken; we are never not whole.”
“In the contradiction lies the hope.”
“And we took to them.
And they took to us.
And what do you think they took?
Oil from Canada, gold from Mexico, geese from the neighbor’s backyard.
Corn from the Indians, tobacco from the Indians, Dakota from the Indians, New Jersey from the Indians, New Hampshire from the Indians, New England from the Indians, New Delhi from the Indians, Indonesia for the Indonesians...
But we couldn’t do it alone.
No, we needed the hope, the faith, the prayers, the fears.
The sweat, the pain, the boils, the tears.
The broken bones, the broken homes, the total degradation of-
Who?
You. The little guy.”
