Puppy draining a teat

For the second installment of Utopia: Sleepwalking, I’ve asked young artist Robert Langenegger to contribute, in this case, two drawings. The first time I encountered Robert’s work was in Mag:net Katipunan – Poklong Anading curated a program of recent video art from the Philippines, and included  works by the likes of Louie Cordero, Lena Cobangbang, Cocoy Lumbao and myself. Robert’s work, entitled “Emotional Intelligence,” combined drawing, sound and stop animation to create a surrealistic montage of images that resonate with life and death, violence and desire. Figures and scenes swiftly dissolve from one to the next like torrential rain, as though the in/stability of nature itself (and our perception of it)  hangs in the balance. There is no closure, no exit; only transitions and rebirths.

An online conversation is similar in this aspect. As a regular conversation is a model for the fruitful exchange of ideas, online chatting also produces a generative relation — a  virtuality that simulates a soft “seeming” of ideas and attitudes, open to mystery, multiplicity and mutation. In a way both the “conceptual structure” of Robert Langenegger’s work and the “feel” of this online conversation reflect an approach that is both  systematic and emotive, factual and fictive, dissolving in-between the precipices of thought and form.

Young Star: Hi, Robert, where are you doing this e-mail conversation?

Robert Langenegger: I’m at a doctor’s house.

Really? That’s interesting. What kind of a doctor?

An aspiring neurosurgeon specializing in lobotomy

Now that you’ve mentioned neurology and lobotomy, do these medical fields, or medicine in general, bear a strong influence on your art practice, if not a significance on your view of the world?

I am more versed in the field of veterinary science so I treat humans as mere mammals with the same basic organs and bodily functions. I value canines higher than primates. My influence is nature, particularly Darwinism or evolution.

In 2003 you had a series of photographs of animals, dead or on the way. There was a puppy sucking on a teat, and someone’s finger inside a reptile. There was also a gecko, an ostrich, a rat — all in various states of death and decay.

I just wanted to document the various evolutionary dead ends or the process of achieving our imprinted evolutionary code, which is to contribute to the gene pool of the natural world. In other words to prove your mettle as a specimen able to adapt and contribute to the world’s evolution.

In my photos I wanted to cover the pre-infancy (stage) all the way to the very end where the atoms dissipate into convertible energies of lower life forms in no way less important than  the ones in the photos.

How does the grotesque play in the evolutionary process, do you think? I mean, on one hand there is the idyllic scenery, and then on the other there is your photograph of excrement forming a heart in a field of grass. It’s as if the feces has offered the earth a gift of what the future could be like.

Grotesque only applies to humans. There is no such thing in the natural world.

Nature is violent, even virulent, and in representation, including art and science, the grotesque does play a role in evolution. In your work “Untitled 9,” the numbered drawings seem to indicate another transformation of some sort. Was it based on a surgical procedure or did you conjure the sex operation yourself?

That work was the sum of all my rationality and understanding of mammalian functions. I see it as a crude short cut to a similar end.

What do the scribblings say?

They are a vague guide to muscular inversion.

There is quite a lot of  inversion going on in this work, but not in a way that is grotesque or perverse. It’s like a surreal scientific method, odd but nevertheless convincing.

It lacks the grotesque element for me because it is done in a systematic manner. For me it isn’t the process which is surreal. It’s the person doing or willing to do it.

Yes, the artist is a scientist in a way. Who are other surreal figures you find possessing a systematic manner in creating work — be it art, music, or other forms that interest you?

Everyone I know is a surrealist to a certain extent. For me it’s safe to say that everyone’s a surrealist if we look at it relatively.

I am not really discerning when it comes to what I like or not. It just has to connect at a certain level like a private joke or if you get that feeling of “why didn’t I think of that?” you see the genius of the work. I can appreciate all kinds of music except R&B. The heavier  the better. Films with dogs make me cry.

Yes, whatever gets you through the moment, or gives you one. Can you talk a bit about the other work, “Untitled 08”? The girl’s expression is quite ambiguous, as is what’s in the plastic packet.

It was a plate for my class in Kalayaan College. The sachet attached is full of my pubic hair when I got infected with pubic lice. I had shaved it all off and applied Quell to the stubble.