<<Man is a shepherd of being. The artist is a hunter of being. And art? In basque, 'arte' means trap: artists are cheaters, creators of traps.>> This sentence of the Basque sculptor Jorge Oteiza (1908-2003), after Martin Heidegger, might initially look surprising. In the romantic occidental conception, the artist is refined like Mendelssohn, delicate like Chopin, or suffering like Schubert, which doesn't seem to match the palaeolithic hunter Oteiza is thinking of.
Nevertheless, if Oteiza pictures an artist who is less developed than his shepherd brothers ‒ who are a metaphor of neolithic ‒ it is in order to explain that hunters, who don't know the stability of growing the land, are forced to a nomad life, always searching. Searching for what? Oteiza says: being.
This agile and nervous prey, must be called in a clever way and captured with extraordinary rapidity. The mechanic tactic of a trap becomes necessary. The artist creates then an art piece, which is both a hunting device and a shelter, paradigm of a labyrinth. An aseptic trap not to alter the being. A comfortable trap not to suffocate the being. A transparent trap to see the being change and grow to become itself the trap. Being, isn't it the first
trap in which we're caught? The artist weaves, braids and sets up a replica, a double who will end up taking his place.
International Society for Contemporary Music
