THE ART FILES

William James wrote that the true is what is good in the way of belief.
Because the ghosts, the demons and the darkness that Agents Mulder and Scully are in constant contact with are disconcerting at best, terrifying at worst, they are not “good in the way of belief” and, by James’s definition, they are not true.

The desire to live a life uninterrupted by challenge, gift-wrapped in false comfort, and tied with an ignorant bow puts the denizens of the world of X-FILES at odds with the Truth as Mulder and Scully find it, a Truth deeper and richer and more necessary to believe simply because it isn’t created to serve a subjective and ultimately false level of comfort. Art exists for the same reasons that Mulder and Scully do – to search.

Happy Famous Artists see themselves in their world, the art world, as Mulder and Scully are in theirs. In both worlds, the objects sought, whether they are ghosts or demons or philosophy or art itself, have the constant potential to shake the foundations of false comfort created to shield the weak from that which they’d rather not see. Can they be seen? Do they exist? Mulder and Scully tell us, “Yes, the truth is out there.” The meaning in this affirmation does not lie in its declarative sense, but rather in its implication that the Truth is less important than the search itself. The Truth is finite but the search is endless and comes in infinite forms with equally infinite challenges.

Yet Mulder and Scully search on.

They shine their torches at the mysterious, the enigmatic, the troubling, the seemingly untouchable, at that which others don’t see. Diogenes van Sinope also lit a lamp, in search of … a human being. What are Happy Famous Artists illuminating? In this image, it's one of their artworks. It isn’t shown. It can’t be seen. It is nevertheless very much there.
The art is out there.

Or is it?

- Ben Dirt, 2006