UnMasterclass 32

In contemporary life we often look to films for life guidance on how to live, dress, behave, aspire or want to be. Science fiction films often provoke debates over what filmmakers perceptions of how the future will be, may actually come to pass.  The Matrix is an example of a film that has sparked much debate. The eminent and popular Slavoj Zizek even devoted an article to it in the Philosophy Today journal, beginning his text by saying he first watch the film sat next to the ideal viewer of the film….an idiot! He goes on to discuss, both the influences on the film and how different people have read these influences, “My Lacanian friends are telling me that the authors must have read Lacan; the Frankfurt School partisans see in the Matrix the extrapolated embodiment of Kulturindustrie, the alienated-reified social Substance (of the Capital) directly taking over, colonizing our inner life itself, using us as the source of energy; New Agers see in the source of speculations on how our world is just a mirage generated by a global Mind embodied inthe World Wide Web.” We know through discussions and through Zizek’s observations that the film can be read in different ways by different people, a common enough trait for cinema, and science fiction films in particular. Here at UnMasterclass we are much taken with one particular notion brought up in The Matrix, that of accelerated learning, Neo learns kung fu in seconds, we would request to think like Zizek or paint like Rembrant. And here we finally get to our point this week. All too often we believe aspiring painters want to produce masterpieces straight away, to get the metaphorical plug-in-master-painter-accessory, just like Neo ‘learns’ kung fu learnt with no learning. Of course at the moment we cannot acquire new skills in this way, so we suggest if you want to paint then you go out and learn how to do it the old fashioned way, lots of time in the studio testing and trying and lots of time in the galleries looking and learning from past masters. If you try the Neo way or the UnMasterclass way you are doomed towards failure. So if you want to unlearn painting tune in the latest example of it online here at http://vimeo.com/27306174 or learn the old fashioned way in the studio and gallery.