Seeking the unknown

I've been thinking a lot recently about the 'romanticised other', the way we idealise places foreign to those we know, and the ways in which these places come to be a part of our own lives, be it subconsciously or in other more overt forms, such as the media, or through the imagery we are bombarded with daily. Often we yearn for these places for reasons we can't quite put a finger on, be it a desire for a taste of foreign cultures or an urge to discover the proverbial 'unknown'. These feelings can manifest themselves in different forms; take, for example, the palm tree, planted proudly in many suburban front gardens and around grey, urban environments, they symbolise the distant, the faraway land, injecting that little bit of tropical island paradise into the sometimes dreary reality of British life. The humble palm tree is a symbol of globalisation, of the post-colonial society that we live in, and moreover a symbol of the desire for the unknown, the other.

The palm tree is also a great symbol of that most infamous of American cities, Los Angeles. Like many of the inhabitants of the city the palm tree is not a native, and the first ones were brought to the city around the turn of the twentieth century.

The city holds one of those unexplainable interests over me, something about the legacy left by artists like Ed Ruscha and David Hockney and the way Hollywood filters through into our upbringing despite the fact we live half way around the world from it. Don't get me wrong, nothing about the artificiality and celebrity culture of the past decade interests me greatly, it is more an idealised, I guess you could say, fixation on a city that no longer exists, a distant, romanticised past when modernism was still new and California Girls was first being played on the radio.

To make artwork around the concept of the unknown, the desired other, is an interesting one that can throw up much discussion, and is something that has possessed artists for many centuries. For some, like Hockney, for example, the fixation reaches the point where fulfilment of the longing must take place, there is a need to experience the culture first hand. Alternatively what may be interesting is the very making of work about a culture that has not been experienced first hand, and is merely interpreted, experienced, through the images and media we receive in the comfort of our own home. In either case, we just might learn something about why we are so fixated on these places in the first place.

If you have a spare fifteen minutes, this is worth a watch.

(Photos screendumped from here)