"Dear William Keckler..."

Jose Manuel Rodeiro wrote me this wonderful letter in response to my blog post on Amnesis and Dr. Suarez-Arauz.

Reading this, Jose, I am rather ensorceled.

Suarez-Arauz's theory is sympathetic to me, because I can't really stand the hubris of art, the bourgeois elements of propietary and personal interest, the vanity and vainglorious elements of individuality (the equation of the art with the artist, rendering criticism sadism) and the belief in the individual as the supreme repository of consciousness (artistic or otherwise). Or reliquary, Suarez-Arauz, might say, if I'm reading you correctly.

While I think this is an inspiring and minority viewpoint, and one worthy of further attention, expatiation and exploration, I don't think I would insist that is without (at least partial) precedent.

Some of my favorite artists (writers or otherwise) have often adhered to a position like this.

Deliberately anonymous art often seems to cleave to amnetic ideas and substance. They seem to go together, possibly because of the subtraction of the individual, the subtraction even of the persona. Subtracting the cultural might be a little harder.

I thank you for writing this, Jose!

It's always great to know somebody is listening, and that blogs aren't really monologues as some of the more cynical assert.

Even when I'm bloviating, I'm listening.

And I really like what I'm hearing.

I checked out the website and will add it to my blogroll.

I especially liked this formulation there:


Neo-Latinos explore ethnicity and identity through two philosophical conduits, one is immanent (Amnesis) and the other is transcendent (Latinization). Surprisingly, a significant aspect of Neo-Latinoism is its relationship to Amnesis, which is an art theory developed by the Bolivian poet and theorist Nicomedes Suárez-Araúz that attributes artistic inspiration to metaphorical fabulation(s) or fiction(s), resonating a lacunae of lost objects, bringing forth unpredictable semantic and symbolic interactions or associations. In one way or another, each Neo-Latino artist incorporates Amnesis tendencies within her or his imagery.



Dear William Keckler,

Since 1973, this brilliant Bolivian art theory (Amnesis) challenges typical and traditional theoretical approaches toward artistic inspiration and creativity. Amnesis turns away from ordinary ideas like those of William Wordsworth's in which art is described as the powerful overflow of powerful feeling recollected in tranquility. Dr. Suarez-Arauz is unwilling to settle for that limited description (for just recollecting and recreating); rather he divinely expands the nature of artistic inspiration, by pushing it the other way -- toward something greater: pondering zillions of unremembered things, ideas, emotions, objects, etc., that represent a lost history and most importantly a world filled with lost-objects and lost-things, which are not yet even considered archetypes. That view demolishes Jung, Freud, and other Reverists. Instead, he believes that art is moving in this new direction, away from Mnemosyne and her Muses. Suarez-Arauz is unwilling to settle for typical art theories that over emphasize memory as all classical ideas about the nature of art sadly rely, overly-depending on the nine muses (daughters of Mnemosyne Goddess of Memory) as the typical source of creative artistic inspiration. Suarez Arauz offers us another aesthetic and theoretical track which bravely and poetically explores a void, as though present and future hold little aesthetic currency all that matters in art is either the Proustian near past with its possibility of revery (Remembrances of Things Past) or the further darker, and truer distant past of Suarez-Arauz in-which the haze of ordinary memories drag long-forgotten archetypes into an enormous and vast Amnesis event-horizon at the core of an Amnesis world (which is larger than that of mere memory)affording a powerful enormous source; a blackhole of inspiration, which is art's true, profound, and sublime source of true artistic inspiration. CHECK the Website www.Neolatino.org. Also, research Suarez-Arauz's Book Amnesis ART of THE LOST OBJECT, or hunt for his book on Jorge Luis Borges, research Suarez Arauz deeper. No one has thought about this artistic concept, which he has developed; please research him more.

Sincerely,
Jose Manuel Rodeiro
Artist.