Și-a făcut o cameră pinhole dintr-o cutie de pantofi, la vârsta de 13 ani. De atunci, se tot străduiește să înțeleagă lumea prin artă. Acum ceva vreme, m-au izbit fotografiile lui, gâdilându-mi pofta de a fotografia primordialul. Nu l-am fotografiat. L-am întrebat. Puteți afla mai multe despre acest artist pe www.bearkirkpatrick.com

Chestionarul The Chronicle vs. Bear Kirkpatrick

Rareș Petrișor: What book(s) are you reading now?
Bear Kirkpatrick: All at the same time:
The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell Portraiture by Shearer West
The Malay Archipelago by Alfred Russel Wallace
Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick
American Jezebel by Eve LaPlante

R.P.: What do you fear most?
Bear Kirkpatrick: Departing this world before I have made something wonderful.

R.P.: Electric or acoustic ?
Bear Kirkpatrick: Could we have open tuning on the electric with a little reverb and a little distortion, played with a heavy brass slide, and all laid over the clean acoustic?

R.P.: What is truth ?
Bear Kirkpatrick: Not caring what day it is.

R.P.: Where are you now ?
Bear Kirkpatrick: Thursday, now that you asked.

R.P.: Do you believe in life after death ?
Bear Kirkpatrick: I am sad to tell you that the dead are dead.

R.P.:What is the strangest thing that ever happened to you?
Bear Kirkpatrick: The strangest thing is 4 strange things combined into one.  In order:
1) When I went off the highway in the Arizona desert and the car rolled over and over again, I counted every roll in my head as I went around.
2) My glasses came off in the rolling but when the car stopped rolling (at 4.75 rolls) I found them laying in the broken glass and dirt and sage right next to my head as though I had just put them there—the first thing I did was pick them up and put them on;
3) The fountain drink that I had purchased at a gas station in Gallup and that had been resting between my legs disappeared completely.  I found neither the cup nor the lid nor the straw, and there was a drop on me.
4) By the time I crawled back into the wreckage via the only door that opened–the front passenger side that opened upwards like a hatch–and retrieved my camera from the mess inside, it was too late.  I wanted to get a photo of the whole horrible scene but shock had taken hold and I could not for the life of me figure out how to turn my camera on.  I was shivering and trying to think and just randomly pressing buttons but nothing would happen.

R.P.: The most sentimental song you’ve listened to?
Bear Kirkpatrick: “Dancing In The Dark” as my grandfather hummed it as he remember from fifty years before the dances they used to have on the rooftop of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Boston during the Great Depression.

R.P.: Do you like sushi?
Bear Kirkpatrick: More than pretty much everything.

R.P.: What’s to be done if the end of the world won’t come this year either ?
Bear Kirkpatrick: Well, you can never go wrong just firing up the barbeque grill, putting some ribs on.

R.P.: With what impressions you would leave the Earth today?
Bear Kirkpatrick: Perhaps a very hollow blackness.

R.P.: What are you thinking when you hear about “human rights” ?
Bear Kirkpatrick: A crackly radio.

R.P.: The thing you’re looking for but still haven’t found it ?
Bear Kirkpatrick: A song that will put me to sleep.

R.P.: What is a poem ?
Bear Kirkpatrick: A poem is an organized and written act of aggression in sound and time.

R.P.: Everything is relative ?
Bear Kirkpatrick: Yes, including that question.

R.P.: What is rationality’s purpose?
Bear Kirkpatrick: To draw lines against irrationality.  And I would rather not hear anything more regarding teleology if you please.

R.P.: Are you happy ?
Bear Kirkpatrick: Oh, you know, I bitch from time to time.

R.P.: To what extent Kafka would have had problems with the law ?
Bear Kirkpatrick: None at all.  That man wouldn’t spit on the sidewalk.  He wouldn’t walk with his shoelaces untied.

R.P.: An artist you recommend and a reason to why we should pay him/her attention ?
Bear Kirkpatrick: Jan Van Eyck.  Because he is so goddamn creepy.  And you can tell he is kind of delighted about it.

R.P.: Is life enough ?
Bear Kirkpatrick: It will have to do until it doesn’t.

R.P.: What can you tell us about Paris ?
Bear Kirkpatrick: I can tell you there is a street there called Boulevard Saint-Michel.  And I can you it was October but not yet cold out, and Zoe and I were running across it at night in the rain and we stopped in the middle and grabbed each other and I kissed her like I have never kissed anybody in my whole life.

R.P.: Who killed Kennedy, after all?
Bear Kirkpatrick: Sorry but I really cannot tell you.

R.P.: What significant progress you notice from cave life to the present ?
Bear Kirkpatrick: Well, I can tell you it’s not the smell of my feet after I take my boots off.   It’s certainly not how I get so hungry sometimes.  And it is certainly not what happens when the lights go out.

R.P.: The illusion you refuse to confront with the concrete reality ?
Bear Kirkpatrick: It’s not that I refuse to confront that people will just go on living after I die, making sandwiches and drinking wine, running across the Blvd. Saint-Michel in the rain and kissing.  It’s more like I just do not have the tools.

R.P.: A question for posterity?
Bear Kirkpatrick: You asked it right there.

Fotografii: © Bear Kirkpatrick. Toate drepturile rezervate.

Legendă fotografii: The Thought Of Thinking, The Masts Bent To The Water, The Dread And Fear Of You.

Bear Kirkpatrick is an American artist who began taking photographs at age 13 with a pinhole camera he made from a shoebox.  This device and pursuit became his first means of exploring the mystery of the world through art.  He has published short stories, had a screenplay produced into a full-length feature, has made custom furniture for Bono and Adam Clayton, has exhibited furniture, jewellery, photography and sculpture throughout the United States, including the Society for Arts and Crafts in Boston, and the Rogin Gallery in New York.

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