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“I am an artist because I am uncertain,” says Givan Lötz. Seeking to blur the line between design craft and contemporary fine art, Lötz has worked on projects ranging from creative design solutions to live performance and self-initiated works for galleries since 2005, when he graduated with an Honours in Information Design from the University of Pretoria.
“The moments of obsession involved in my art-making aspire to achieve not only a mood of catharsis but act as a critical inquiry into what makes us human,” he goes on. Realising that a binary interrogation could not encapsulate Lötz, Design Indaba decided to invert the interview. We selected 10 works and asked Lötz to write the questions.
What does it mean to be conscious? Where am I? Or is the sense of self just an illusion, a useful fiction only as real as a rainbow?
I Love You Sometimes.
How can subjective experiences arise from an objective world? Does this relate to the contradiction between our sense of significance and a cold unbiased universe? Is this even the right question to ask?
Stag Night Mare.
What causes the self to fragment? What are the ways of crossing the borderline into the psychotic condition? Can we even make sharp distinctions between sanity and insanity?
Head Over Heels Over-the-top.
The new image of humanity emerging from genetics and neuroscience is strictly un-metaphysical and forces us to confront our mortality like never before. Does life become more authentic the more death becomes absolute? Why does magical thinking continue to retain a strong hold on humanity despite the advances of science?
Loose.
Will humanity ever dispense with artificial paradises? How does the fallacy of transcendence sustain our obsession with mysticism, sex, drugs and suicide? Is a criticism of escape through the devotion involved in the art-making process simply another form of escape?
On a Quiet Night.
Why does the tradition of the transcendental aesthetic continue to seduce not only contemporary fine art but visual communication in general? Would it be possible to create a sensory experience that could function as some sort of neural distillate of mystic enlightenment, ecstatic intoxication and coital orgasm?
Trans Fatty Acid.
Can we explain how chemical intoxication is a substitute or accomplice for the mystic experience of religious zeal? What happens when we lose the infinite reward?
Like There's No Tomorrow.
When does a flight-from become a plunging-into? Can we conceive of the folding void of suicide not as self-injury but as self-escape?
The Vacation.
Isn’t art easy? Why make it? Isn’t it an effort to conquer time, a vain attempt at immortality?
Fool's Gold.
Who are you? Why are you so obscure? Why can you not answer the questions?
Easy Now.
