Barmecidal Remedy

Our visions are images captured onto the back of our minds. They are a formation and a collision of atoms forming this sort of, body of memories.

Lately I've been experiencing constant nightmares. These nightmares, however, don't necessarily haunt me. In the weirdest way, I'm usually grateful for them. When you have a beautiful, exciting dream, you eventually get dissapointed that the dream is only a barmecide. You wish everything that happened in that dream --- the new Disneyland in Australia where it rains toys or money, or getting a kiss from your crush, or anything as bizarre --- happened. You wish that all the butterflies you caught translated to the good news you'd get on the next day. Let's face it, sweet dreams set up a rather impossible goal for a realistic matter. However, your nightmares, eventually they put out the best in you for the next day. Apart from being very cautious and protective to your loved ones(which may be involved in your gruesome nightmare), you get to live life to the fullest, to be grateful that none of those bad things actually happened. Nightmares put you to the worst perspectives as a stepping stone to learn. You can call these visions intuition or just a metaphorical imagery of our days, but eventually, these weird sh*t put the best visions for The Photographic Sense.

I utilize art and photography as a medium to truly express myself in a judgemental-free world. In the name of aesthetic and subjectivity, I'd have to say that my works are both influenced by inspirations from real-life experiences and my very own dreams.

Barmecide |ˈbärməˌsīd|(also Barmecidal |ˌbärməˈsīdl|) rareadjective [ attrib. ]illusory or imaginary and therefore disappointing.

Through the denotation of barmecide we view above, the word leads to disappointing illusory or imaginary. In particular, benefits that are disappointing. This juxtaposition leads to my vision of reality itself. You get offered by thousands of opportunities, but eventually, you'd have to sell your creativity(or some prefer, soul) to the mass to be mainstream. To eventually give up the rest of your experimental vibe for the public who knows nothing about a good picture. These series leads to an experimental outtake on how I really see things. The distortion of beauty, social commentary, and last but not least, youth.

All of these artworks are not photographed, they are scanned. I teamed up with my long time muse, Irene Wihandi, in producing images which are truly unusual. The usage of scanner, traditionally utilized for documents and papers, is instead, used to take selfies, or whatever you call it. Distorted beauty, whereas I believe beauty comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes, even with faces pushed against a solid medium, is a beauty of its own. The image represents a person's daring style of promoting aesthetic beauty through their own wilderness. This is my barmecidal remedy, in other words, a remedy towards all the disappointing benefits you can get from being a commercial artist. Yes, I am commercial, but I am far from trying to please everyone and producing images I don't necessarily believe in. So yes, even if I didn't get a camera, I can produce unusual images with an unorthodox method. 

That's what makes the photographic sense, it's not the camera, it's the mind utilizing it. On the upmost, I usually am disappointed by seeing so-called-photographers running around, taking ratchet(not the good kind of ratchet) pictures like they're Mario Testino. With all the fake-lensed models that does the whole model 101, our future in photography requires the mind, not the camera. Go buy a CANON EOS 1D but if you don't have that sense, you're going to make an HD version of your iPhone photographs, not the good VSCOcam types, but the extremely noisy(not intentionally), blurry(not the good kind of motion), and the whole package of an unusual attire. So please, don't blabber around your extremely advanced DSLR when your photographic mind isn't advanced, at all. 

Growing up.

That would be my ultimate “barmecide”. Sadly, it’s more of a realistic approach than being simply, an illusion or an imagination. As we grow up, we get disappointed, a lot, to be honest. You see, people come and go, and then things just start to fall apart. Luckily, apparently the remaining pieces fall back together to form a magnificent mosaic from imperfections, representing our lives. However, there will be a lot of things that linger too close and too deep that will end up being bullshit.

You see, as you grow older, you seek more into the world. Our capabilities is then exceeded onto, you know, the utilization of the human body to the fullest. Our minds to be a medium to perform in the very best way. But eventually, these global situations are just as unstabile as your high school life.

I need something that’s for forever. I try to put a perspective that it would be God and my beliefs that I would cling to.

This world is full of people who just aren’t real enough you know. Hypocrites who vomit their mind, then eat it all up again. People who don’t act the way they speak their mind. People who are just way too superficial to be trusted. That is why living with THAT much lingering to the people you love, or loved, is pretty much a hard thing to do. Because you’ll never ever know how things turn out. Trust is such a big value, at least that’s what validity taught me.

I confess I woke up like this.

Being a complete douchebag is one thing, but being completely unapologetic is another matter. Sometimes you’ve just got to pick yourself up, you know. In fact, quoting Queen B and Gags

'Trust is like a mirror, you can fix it if it's broken, but you can still see the crack in that mother fucker's reflection.'

Definitely foreshadowing my high school days.

I’m literally just so tired that everything just becomes numb. As dumb as that may sound, that might just be a sign of being strong. Being able to withstand the oddities in life that may arise and fall in it’s own Alaia value, luxurious but with a price to pay.

In fact. Barmecidal Remedy is also about being angry. About losing it. About scanning your whole emotions in metaphorical pieces in it’s eerie and ethereal values, yet also a collision of being tired. It’s like an Azealia Banks record, artsy and angry, yet not emotional. You get it?.

I'm angry. Yet I forgive. I forget. You see. Life is supposed to be like that. To embrace your emotions to the very fullest. To make sacrifices to make things right. But to always put yourself first. You are beautiful, remember that. My ultimate remedy however, is.

To be happy. 

x

Scanography portraits featuring the one and only, Miss Irene Wihandi.