Written in the format of an experimental essay, this project is a constellation of ideas that circulate around a nebulous hole. Struck by the urgency of a moment where language and meaning is disintegrating under the threat of fascism, I have been exploring the potential of fluidity, hereticism, and the embrace of nothingness as strategies for defiance. This project finds its footholes in the throughlines between the parallel histories of Dutch water maintenance infrastructure and the shift from feudalism to capitalism and catholicism to calvinism. In looking at this age-old war against the sea, I speculate that this struggle against unpredictable and unknowable waters has shaped not just the land and infrastructure of the Netherlands and its colonial exports, but also the social fabric through which bureaucratized conformity is deployed. I explore the process of commodification as a form of mystified hardening, wherein anything from an object to an idea is hermetically sealed by the solidification of its living meaning. Finally, I look to the hidden traditions of negative theology, as it has been written and unwritten about by thinkers such as Walter Benjamin, Georges Bataille, Clarice Lispector, Jiddu Krishnamurti, and Pseudo Dyonesis, to explore how heretical experiments in thinking, writing, and art can profanate and liquidate that which has been hardened.
Max Lester is an artist, writer, rogue scholar, retired punk, and actor-for-hire. Max was born in Tkaronto and currently lives in Rotterdam. He spends much of his time walking, often in circles, through the cities he dwells in. This is where he conducts his observational and very subjective research and collects material for sculptures and images. Max is curious about the mysteries of power and the power of mystery. He believes that if he looks closely at the surfaces of things and tends to the waste and commodities of the world, he might come to understand how ideologies of this racist-colonial-capitalist system we live in, are encoded, sublimated, and maintained. Max received an MFA at the Piet Zwart institute and a BFA in Integrated Media at OCAD University He has held solo exhibitions at InterAccess and Bunker 2 and has also exhibited at TENT, A Tale of Tub, United Contemporary, and Eastern Bloc.
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