ANIMATION
34”

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The Shyness Project departs from the physical/mental exploration of the boundaries of shyness and its relation with the production of artistic expression.The project is build from a group of physical and mental practices and routines which create artistic works as derivatives.

Shyness goal is to achieve invisibility and its strength cannot be measured by its capability to affect others (anger, angst or shame do search to create social change) but by its tenacity to protect the subject’s psychological survival. To disappear is to negate oneself the capability to exist and its anterior to any social activity. A shyness centered art project does not seek to impact political structures, but its a more pervasive reflection on death and the right to live.

The artist exploited an over-rationalization of simulacra to create a persona called Maigret to execute the projects. Although the artist and Maigret are identical copies, Maigret does not have social connections, its existence is unknown by any but the artist, she/he/it exists in an ambient that simulates time before existence. This partition on the individuality of the subject is aimed to offer a replacement for the protection that shyness gives. As shyness executes large amounts of control to achieve its agenda, the copy -Maigret- must relocate this energy into strict tasks to prevent a drastic change that could alarm the subject. Maigret tasks where aimed to produce spontaneous creation and/or activities never performed before.

The energy used to perpetuate the control was relocated into a methodical execution of work as a constant duty of persistant energy. Maigret draw 10 consecutive drawings a day, everyday and without the possibility to look back on them. Once finished a sequence (aprox 360 drawings each), they got edited together, allowing loops or extensions.

The first result of this set of exercises is Shyness or 5:30 in the morning, a delicate nightmare about anxiety and childhood made of anemic lines over blackness with a heavy sound design.