ChromOrgasm Statement
Pete Driessen/Visual Artist/Panel Chair © June 30, 2006
SECAC Panel: ChromOrgasm: Chromancing the Color Moshpit
Abstract: "Toward a Definition of ChromOrgasm"
The artists romance with color has long been a seductive one. From the sensual
shape-shifting quality of color to its adaptive and assimilative properties,
color often seduces the visual culture producer into a dangerous relationship.
Frequently, as an artist flirts with his/her desire to manipulate color he/she
begins to develop a power struggle with the hidden hierarchical structure of
color and its interlocutors. Yet the deception of traditional theoretical
primary systems, arbitrary linguistical associations, and curatorial coding
frequently restrain the artistic use of color.
Recently academics and artists in many fields have begun to question the
homogenous visual distribution systems and manipulated marketing strategies of
color. Just how can a decentralized, feminine, and nonlinear notion of color
subvert the dominant paradigms often controlled by color corporations, pigment
manufacturers, and color organizations? What preconditions, preconceptions and
prejudices in our personal environs mold the spatiality of our color creations?
What new provocative production strategies, teaching territories and artistic
dialectics can be bridged from today's metamerism movement beyond the spent art
historical two dimensional matrix?
For color to exist it must occupy multiple interdisciplinary vectors moving at
multiple interdisciplinary velocities. This paper transgresses foundational
myths, crosses technical boundaries, fashions interdisciplinary relationships,
and open new hybridic conduits beyond the formal artistic and educational
processes of color. Sociopolitical issues such as globalization, human rights,
war, gender, and the "other" are considered in connection with color
accessibility, color reproduction and color (MIS)management. With the wide array
of contemporary polychromatic visual stimuli, does the continued engagement of
color with artists have a flirtatious future or is color destined to become mere
fleeting romance?
This paper introduces, outlines, and defines a theoretical and philosophical
working model of ChromOrgasm. The term ChromOrgasm was coined by the author over
a period of five years while teaching foundational color theory. It begins with
the age old question: What colors do we see during orgasm?, and expands from
Barthes semiotic "stroke of bliss." ChromOrgasm can be interpreted as the need
to compare and comprehend color via the biological want of the sex drive: the
obsessive need to see color and to have more of it--similar to our American
drives for money, material, and power.
ChromOrgasm encompasses certain sociopolitical and holistic constructs and
aligns itself with systems thinking, Bohm’s holographic paradigm, and Varela's
biological embodiment of color. Included are that romantic color must fall
within the accepted social fabric to continue, otherwise it ceases to be
visible. Color follows certain social codes and norms, and that these access and
marginalization codes must be broken. Color is most often defined and
categorized by a small group of humans in order for its organizational usage to
take place in an capitalist society. These groups occupy and control the
historical development and the institutional memory of our biochromatic
conditioning. Color is defined as geographic, inherent in the choices made by
local and global situations, and is a biologically embodied phenomenon closely
linked to our creative and reproductive capabilities.
Finally, ChromOrgasm defines color as a power distributor and power as a
distributor of color. This paper questions color’s innate connection to power
and highlights ongoing problems inherent with teaching and creating color as
they are broken down into interdisciplinary categories. Each category is a color
sortie--where color is juxtaposed with power and looked at through comparative
lens.