the end

For me this course has made me think about my own artistic practice, what I want to achieve through my art and, what little contribution or change I can give.
This course reminded me (particularly the last half) that artists don't just have to rely on techniques of subversion to initiate change. Change can be introduced in a subtle and non-subversive way, allowing it to to collect everyone's interest along the way through a snowball effect. When I talk about this, I'm thinking of Diego and Lucas' work.
Also, looking back at the first week on Relational Aesthetics where we looked at Rirkrit's work where he cooks noodles for everyone to eat, I don't think Rirkrits work brings people together as much as Diego and Lucas' work. Diego and Lucas' work invites anyone and everyone from the community to engage in an activity that is familiar to people and also fairly easy to pick up. Anybody can do it, it is for the public, you can even do it in your own backyard.

Potted slant on urban jungles

A couple years back I read an article about a project Diego Bonetto set up at carriageworks. I didn't think I'd hear his name again because after reading that article I just sort of forgot about it. I managed to find the article I read again: http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/potted-slant-on-urban-jungles/2008/07/08/1215282835469.html

The article is talking about a project called The hanging gardens which was collaboratively put together by Diego Bonetto, Karl Logge and Tessa Rapaport. For the work they collected pot plants from the people living in Redfern to show the relationships people have in Redfern, with their plants and the whole community.

"It's like going to the park with your dog and you have all of these dog friends that you just know by the name of their pets," Bonetto says. "Garden relationships are very similar: 'Ah, you know that lady who owns that bougainvillea along the fence …' "

As well as showing the relationships in a community through pot plants, the work is also making an environmental comment. Bonetto, Logge and Rapaport all agree that there are green spaces in urban landscapes and, it is possible to turn urban landscapes into green ones by even simply growing a few pot plants.

I remember when I read this article I felt happy and glad to be studying art.

aesthetics and politics in the age of ambient spectacles

From this reading I understand that Nikos Papastergiadis wants to explore how art works in and with political and, aesthetic structures and context. Papastergiadis looks at the writings of Ranciere and Raunig for possible answers. I found a few points from Ranciere interesting to me:

Ranciere was able to outline the three basic modes of representation:
1. "naked" images that serve as a depiction of the original
2. "ostensive"images that transform themselves as they react again to the original referent
3. "metaphoric" images that play on the "ambiguity of resemblances and the instability of dissemblances, bringing about a local reorganisation, a singular rearrangement of circulating images...It aims to play with the forms and products of imagery, rather than carry out their demystification".

Ranciere also goes on to say "he or she always has the capacity to not just observe and follow the line of a story, but also the ability to see another storyline, which may in fact depart from the intended message and create a new narrative". Then Papastergiadis adds: Hence, the task of the artist is not limited to helping the viewer to be active in their own condition of spectatorship..... they still reinscribe the presumption that the primary position of the audience is passivity, and that it is only though the force of the artist's hand that their critical faculties are awakened.

Laibach

I have just finished reading the foreword written by Slavoj Zizek in Alezei Monroe's 'Interrogation Machine: Laibach and NSK.' The two examples used to illustrate an image of what Laibach is all about helped me really understand their aims and purpose during the final stage of Yugoslav socialism. The first example: Schumann's "Humoresque" refers to the "inner voice". In the second example : the Abu Gharib tortures, Zizek points out the unspoken guidelines/acts in the US army forces. Zizek then goes on to naming Donald Rumsfeld who addressed the relationship between the known and the unknown: "There and known knowns...There are known unknowns...there are also unknown unknowns and also unknown knowns (which Zizek added). For Zizek the most dangerous out of all the above is the unknown knowns. These are the things we pretend not to know and rather not confront at all. These are the things Laibach flushes out into the open.

One place after another: Notes on site specificity

Having read Miwon Kwon's 'One Place after Another: Notes on Site Specificity'
I now have a better understanding of the aims of site-specific art. An artist who is working on a site-specific art project would have to take into consideration of the physical elements that will affect the work. This means site-specific art will always be determined/directed to a certain degree by the environment that it is installed in. Therefore creating a relationship between the work and the site. A little text from the reading:

Robert Barry declared in 1969 in an interview that each of his wire installations was "made to suit the place in which it was installed. They cannot be moved without being destroyed."

Richard Serra wrote in a letter(15years after Barry's words) to the Director of the Art-in-Architecture Program: commissioned and designed for one particular site: Federal Plaza. It is a site-specific work and as such not to be relocated. To remove the work is to destroy the work."

Serra continues to add to this in the same year(1989): As I pointed out, Tilted Arcwas conceived from the start as a site-specific sculpture and was not meant to be "site-adjusted" or "relocated." Site-specific works deal with the environmental components of given places. The scale, size, and location of site-specific works are determined by the topography of the site, whether it be urban or landscape or architectural enclosure. The works become part of the site and restructure both conceptually and perceptually the organisation of the site.

The reading also goes on to talking about the many forms of site specificity that challenges the space in which an artwork is viewed. This form has been developed from the ideas of Minimalism and the various forms of institutional critique, and conceptual art. After Barry and Serra artists began to see the site defined by the constraining institutions of art rather than just the physical elements. These artists include: Michael Asher, Hans Haacke, Robert Smithson etc.

Some more text from the reading I found interesting: The seemingly benign architectural features of a gallery/museum in other words, were deemed to be coded mechanisms that actively disassociate the space of art from the outer world, furthering the institutions idealist imperative of rendering itself and its hierarchisation.

It seems to me that the site-specific works tend to return to the ordinary real space of the everyday, disconnecting itself from the artificial environment of the galleries and museums.

dialogical art

In Conversation Pieces Grant H. Kester introduces the term dialogical art. Dialogical art refers to works which he feels generate conversation involving multiple interpretations, feelings, ideas etc. Although I think all art is capable of bringing up such conversation, Grant refers to specific types of works. Grant discusses the work of artists that create art that exist outside the gallery/museum. These works are mostly performance based and involve no object. These performances are not performed by the artist themselves but invite people from varying races, ages, status' etc. The people aren't exactly random but are those who are associated or are part of whatever issue the artist/s is addressing/wants to generate a conversation about. I'm excited to see that the work of these artists such as the WochenKlausur collective has led to the development of a safe haven for drug-addicted sex workers. The artists talked about during the Relational aesthetics week I feel were unable to achieve such a community feel and generate such conversations like these ones involved in making dialogical art.

The Situationists

The SI's have their ideas rooted in Marxism and in Surrealism. They found that the life they and everyone else lived in being too confided, and was constantly being degraded by Capitalism (Marx argued that under Capitalism we are continually being depleted). Capitalism created struggles amongst the working-class, it portrayed fake models of life advertised by the mass media in order to cover up the reality.

Th SI's developed a way to analyse life and live an alternative life, disconnected from Capitalism. To Derive (drift) is an attempt at analysing and living this alternative life. Derives often involved one or more persons who temporarily abandon their work commitments, relations and etc. Derives encourage the person/s to become drawn to and more familiar with their city's surroundings/terrain, offering a stimulative experience for the deriver.

Institutional Critique

Just finished reading The Institutional Theory of Art by Robert J. Yanal and within the first lines I read:

Danto's offers this solution to the paradox (the paradox which is found in Warhol's Brillo Boxes when one looks at these Brillo Boxes as art in a gallery but those in a shop are not): "To see something as art requires something the eye cannot descry - an atmosphere of artistic theory, a knowledge of the history of art: an artworld."


I don't completely agree with this as art is not only for the eyes of those who have studied art/studying art. Whether the work is going to be placed in gallery/site-specific space/the streets etc it is going to be accessible by all sorts of different people, and no doubt there will be people who have little or no knowledge of artistic theory that are going to see that work and going to feel or think something, or not feel or think anything at all.
I understand that it requires some knowledge of background history of the artist or whatever techniques he/she has used to read the work but sometimes I believe people try to hard to read in to a work, desperately trying to find something and solve what is presented to them. When really all the work requires you to do is stand back, look, and feel something. I think I'd prefer to hear feedback about my own art from the general public rather than some critic. I don't want to read an essay about my work when all they really need to say is 'Your work is crap, you need more colour' (I'm not saying everything a critic or whatever a member from the art community writes is useless but I just feel this way sometimes when things can actually be pretty simple if you just let it)

Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics

Claire Bishop talks about 4 artists in her essay:
Rirkrit - the guy who cooks for everyone
Gillick - the guy who alludes to hypothetical relations
Sierra - the guy who pays people to make his art happen
Hirschhorn - the guy who uses cheap material like cardboard and brown tape

Bishop mentions Sierra and Hirschhorn as examples to challenge Bourriaud's two guys; Rirkrit and Gillick. I found Rirkrit and Sierra most interesting.
While reading about Rirkrit's work I felt sort of warm and happy, and wishing I had been part of these hybrid installation performances described by Bishop. I don't know how to respond if someone asked me if this was art or not. Being a printmedia student and having always/usually producing an end screenprint/etching/lithograph/woodblock print etc I find it difficult to wrap my head and fully accept something like this. BUT having read Bourriaud's Relational Aesthetics and this piece of writing by Bishop I'm starting to see something more in all this cooking done by Rirkrit. I have a feeling though that I might be taking a liking to Rirkrit's work simply because he is cooking for everyone and creating a relaxed atmosphere where people can enjoy his food and meet other people. Although most people I believe enjoy the idea of being part of the making of a work eg. Spencer Tunick's work seems to always bring out a large number of participants. There is this good feeling inside you when you knowyou've helped an ARTIST in creating their work no matter how big or small your contribution is, and it doesn't bother you that you are NOT getting paid for it. This is where I start to find Sierra's work interesting as he pays people to help execute his idea. Not only is he paying them, but he usually specifies a certain type of person/s. Bishop also notes in her writing that Sierra himself is being paid to do these works by his galleries, dealer and collectors. This makes me think back to Spencer Tunicks work and the many many people who have stripped down naked for him so that he could become as well known as he is now.

Relational Aesthetics

What I know: An artwork does not necessarily need to be in a gallery to be considered an artwork. Some art can only be activated in a space outside the gallery walls.

What I got from the reading: So an "arrangement" is made between the viewer and the artists work and without the viewer/participator the work is incomplete/won't even exist. Therefore, the relationship between the artist, artwork and audience is very important, especially when it determines the works existence. In the reading Bourriaud gives Angela Bulloch's work as a a good example illustrating this.

For her show at the CCC in Tours, Angela Bulloch set up a cafe. When a certain number of visitors sat down on the seats, these latter set off the broadcast of a piece of music by Kratwerk (1993)

It also seems like it is preferred that the participants be completely random (random as in these people have no connection or limited knowledge of the art world/didn't even choose to be part of an artwork). Though, by all being at the same place at the same time such as at Bullochs cafe these random individuals become unintentionally contributing to the creation of the work and also unknowingly become connected through such an event. - I find this is an interesting way to form a relationship, where people are brought together by one shared experience.
In Stephen Willats work, he revealed this type of connection by mapping the relationship between a group of people living in the same apartment block.