Umjetnički manifest

The Gateway to Otchuda’s Mind

This Artist’s Manifesto serves as a portal into the multifaceted, always dynamic and intricate world of Otchuda, formerly known as Vesna Mačković. Embark on this chaotic and vivid journey, unlike any other, through the mind of an artist who works under different alter egos. Unravel the artist’s realm of vision, context, influences, ongoing and past projects, and infinite inspiration that transcends language.

  • Why do I create art?

    For me?

    Art is a new religion. It is a way to reach transcendental spaces both for the artist and the audience. It is a secure path to intuitive, basic goodwill and the benevolence that exists in all human animals. It can be brought to life without much overthinking or moralizing.

    With art in my daily life, this life can never be boring. I create or I absorb – therefore I am. If I can do that every day, then I have a critical amount of motivation for the next day.

    For an audience?

    My audience is citizens of the world, who fly the vastest universes of mind and emotion and need no brainy cognitivity to feel or understand an artwork. Primal senses with Neanderthal curiosity and imagination are the only prerequisites for a truly valuable audience. Everything else is a mix of arts and philosophy or arts and entertainment. Most widely approachable artworks are those that combine all three. But the most approachable is rarely the most truthful.

    About obstacles 

    I came into the professional art world on the wrong foot, and that was a foot of fake and false inclusive dance. It took some time for me to extrude my art out of a world in which no institutionalized art education means you are not worthy of being noticed.

    It is better to be alone than to be wrong. This motto works well both in arts and life in general. 

    If you ask me what obstacles I had in my arts career, or in a specific work creation, I might start listing things like funding, space, media, audience, being noticed by field experts, etc. But the absolute truth is that the main obstacle to any art path is the artist her/himself and their earthbound thoughts about the ways something should or could be done. An artist’s most truthful artwork is created when they forget everything they know and ignore everything about the ways other artists do it.

    True art must not make compromises. We live in a world of materialism and financial systems where this is mostly impossible. Sometimes, I prefer not to bring to life some work if too many compromises must be made in terms of deadlines, quality of materials, size of the collaboration team, or bluntly put: money.

    About inspiration 

    To be an artist in this technological age, it is almost unavoidable to be multidisciplinary and intradisciplinary. To be a master of one skill for me would mean a huge creative boredom and self-deprecation considering the available tools, methods, languages, etc.

    Nature and the universe are the best muses and sources of inspiration. There is no need to be inspired by other artists who were inspired by the same source as you. It would be like eating a plant-eating mammal instead of eating the plants themselves. To be inspired by other artists only means to be in good company. After such fun, the artist should forget everything about other artists’ thoughts or ways. Unfortunately, most of the time this mission is impossible since we are human, meaning imperfect, unfinished beings and most of the time not in control of our own minds.

    Who am I to the audience?

    The audience should not be interested in the persona of the artist. Artwork should be accepted, absorbed and comprehended without the biographical information or character of the artist. The artist is an imperfect being, capable of creating and delivering true artworks; therefore, the beholder of an artwork must not dirty up the artwork with irrelevancies of earthly whereabouts or thought processes of the artist. The true audience should also never seek explanations, analyses or theoretical essays, at least not before absorbing the art work with an empty, open mind. What the poet meant to say must stay unknown to the audience, and in a perfect situation even to the poet themself.

    To avoid corrupting my artworks with my private identity and characteristics of my ego, I decided to remove my private self from all media appearances. In the case of stage or camera performances, I remain in character. My alter egos or pseudonyms are standalone art pieces by themselves, disconnected from my biography or physical description. Going forward, I no longer exist in the eyes of the audience or media. My messengers are my invented characters and talking objects. My artworks exist without me.

2017 Watermill residency - 2017 07 25 New York 0064 Watermill IMG_4623
Watermill residency, Long Island, New York, 2017, Photo: Mladen Ergić

B/V/Log

  • Kategorije, kutije, okviri

    So, where do I fit in? https://welearnwegrow.medium.com/what-is-transdisciplinary-13c16eacf57d