Matt Matsuda
Seattle, Washington
My work is an expression of emotion, experience, and identity through the manipulation of life. I find my process deeply meditative and prefer to allow work to simply flow from my being. By examining an issue or aspect of self, culture, or life I begin to break it down to the smallest denominator in order to better understand. This is then reflected and depicted through video, sculpture, photo, digital paint, balloon animals, finger painting, and performance.
I will stand upon the meeting point of two eternities and be present in the now. I’m to exist in my daily life, cut off from one of the most important norms in our society. I do this in hopes of better understanding my mind and as a commentary on our culture. By removing intentional communication from the situation and becoming a spectator I feel that my consciousness will change and allow for greater introspection.
Zen teaches meditation practices with the eyes open.
No Speaking
No Commerce except through machines
No Phone/Internet/Text/Email
No Interpretive dance
No Shadow puppets
No communication with the outside world.
The responses I’ve gotten to this concept have ranged from “that’s bullshit, there’s no way you can do it” to “commentary on culture.” I always kind of felt like performance art was hokey, I mean a guy waving his arm up and down yelling “this is art!” is only good if you’re the first one to do it. But art is not my job or career. IT IS MY LIFE! As such, my life is my medium. I’ve found that by applying different constraints or changing/questioning societal norms you can come to unexplored conclusions and learn something more about yourself through performance.
“Currency”
2013 Performance at Cornish College of the Arts
I wrote the following concepts down on pieces of paper and spread them through out the room.
Love, Hate, Rape, Gender Equality, Facebook, War, Pollution, Obsolete Technology, Politics, Lies, Racism, Waste, Slavery, and the Internet.
I then told all the participants to choose one concept they wished to clean up and I would in turn pay them for their efforts.
This piece initially started with the idea of money being this evil grip on my everyday life that I wanted to try and shed. But through introspection and investigation, I realized that it wasn’t money that was the issue. It is the government that uses money to enslave and control the world. As such I wanted to experience it from their point of view. I wanted to dictate “the world’s problems” and tell everyone that they must fix them in order to be paid. At this point I was also very interested in the idea that currency isn’t just a dollar bill. We all perform actions or tasks for things less tangible. Hence the creation of my own universal currency which was then used as payment for the participants (except the teacher refused to pick an issue and instead traded me a rubber band for a bill which I ripped in half).
Ai Wei Wei will be using this painting I made in his 5 year anniversary piece for the children of the Sichuan earthquake!!! Words fail to convey the light that is shining so brightly within my soul today.
“Fear of chance” 2013
This piece is an expression of my fear of the unknown. Society has taught me to be afraid of that which I do not know or understand. So in an effort to unlearn this habit I decided to embrace my fear and use a chance based long exposure photography method. For each picture I used a 4 second shutter and zoomed in/out.
This is a documentation video of an immersive sculpture installation I created with Natalie Kubu.
It’s an exploration in the formal aesthetics of how sculpture effects projection. Performance by Natalie, video and music by me.
2013
I initially started doing a line drawing animation, got sidetracked by some new software I got a trial of and decided to flesh something out before getting back to work.
This piece explores ephemerality. Seeking that beautiful fleeting moment you wish could last forever. But if it did would it retain it’s beauty? Though we live in a culture that’s bent on masturbatory practices, getting what they want when they want. I find comfort in those fleeting moments that leave me wanting more.
As such there is one decisive moment (per Henri Cartier-Bresson) within this composition. Though his concept was applied to photography, it also relates to video and everything!!!
“Sacred algebra”
Using my own sacred algebraic equations based off the golden ratio I’ve mapped out visually how every sixty nine pointed star can be used as a blueprint for any living thing. If you were to use a galactic portal cypher matrix in conjunction with a monocle, the links would be obvious.
