About

“Real art” is a contradiction, because art is not the real thing but a fake. A real landscape is not art, but a painting of it is; real love is not art, but a film about it is. The gap between the real and the fake is what makes art art.

An artist is one who makes fakes out of the real—born of lies and dying inside them, masked at school, disguised at home, stacking camouflage on camouflage; whose craft is crafty, whose work is a forgery, whose confession is a deception; who loves the dream more than the waking world.

—MMM_Memento Mori Machina, HIKIKOMORI NOTE (『ひきこもりの手記』). My translation.