These are Diego Bonetto's and Lucas Ihlein's blogs (respectively.)
http://www.weedyconnection.com/blog/
http://www.environmental-audit.net/
And here is an article on Ihlein's blog (Environmental Audit)
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEir0-NW9keAoA4OHwuNontH9KKIP0rx0KJjmDRxNgSUgljS9aBFA5t3hgLxZACzMF6BaqLNU9W4Tp5GQJyltZZ2ETZE8cPwefgwQO_-4eMiTbMmwYsRUzq9f7f4ASYIARXxa58hMQCTDTBp/s1600/gwashOCT10prf.jpg
It discusses a question he asks in his blog "In an environmentally themed show, what resources are consumed, and what emissions are produced?"
This is something I actually asked about the In The Balance exhibition, and I'm glad one of the artists actually in the show is making this point.
If instead of having a show about 'saving' the environment, the MCA had turned off all those video loops and lights, how much energy could they have saved a day?
I think this article is fabulous, and brings up a point I'm surprised isn't being discussed more.
Showing posts with label Georgia Banks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Georgia Banks. Show all posts
Monday, October 11, 2010
Monday, September 27, 2010
Antonin Artaud; The Theatre And Cruelty
“Theater of cruelty means a theater difficult and cruel for myself first of all. And, on the level of performance, it is not the cruelty we can exercise upon each other by hacking at each other's bodies, carving up our personal anatomies, or, like Assyrian emperors, sending parcels of human ears, noses, or neatly detached nostrils through the mail, but the much more terrible and necessary cruelty which things can exercise against us. We are not free. And the sky can still fall on our heads. And the theater has been created to teach us that first of all.”
Artaud was a French dramatist, poet, actor and philosopher, who was writing during the Surrealist movement. He believed that it was necessary to replace the 'bourgeois' classical theatre with his theatre of cruelty, a more gutteral and primitive experience- which he believed would liberate the subconscious and reveal us to ourselves.
The pieces would be based in ritual and fantasy, and were attempts to launch an attack of the spectators' subconscious in an attempt to release deep-rooted fears and anxieties that are normally suppressed- forcing people to view themselves and their true nature without the shield of civilisation.
Without even giving a damn about thetre and whether it is or isn't 'cruel', Artaud's writing is amazing. It's entirely graphic and sensual, and vivid.
Well worth a read- especially if you work in film or photography- it's really interesting drawing connections between this idea of the screen Artaud has created between theatre and real human actions and the screen of a video or an image. Particularly narrative based film and portraiture photography.
Artaud was a French dramatist, poet, actor and philosopher, who was writing during the Surrealist movement. He believed that it was necessary to replace the 'bourgeois' classical theatre with his theatre of cruelty, a more gutteral and primitive experience- which he believed would liberate the subconscious and reveal us to ourselves.
The pieces would be based in ritual and fantasy, and were attempts to launch an attack of the spectators' subconscious in an attempt to release deep-rooted fears and anxieties that are normally suppressed- forcing people to view themselves and their true nature without the shield of civilisation.
Without even giving a damn about thetre and whether it is or isn't 'cruel', Artaud's writing is amazing. It's entirely graphic and sensual, and vivid.
Well worth a read- especially if you work in film or photography- it's really interesting drawing connections between this idea of the screen Artaud has created between theatre and real human actions and the screen of a video or an image. Particularly narrative based film and portraiture photography.
OMG TMI
When I walked out of In The Balance I felt completely overwhelmed and disinterested.
The exhibition comprises of over one hundred works by thirty artists and artists collectives, all presenting huge amounts of information about a huge range of sociological and ecological issues that are being faced.
While these issues are important and discussion about them needs to be raised, walking into that exhibition was like being hit by a very environmentally conscious and knowledgeable truck.
There was so much to take in that it was easier to take nothing in. And there were so many things we were being told to care about, it was easier not to care about any of them.
Committed works like this are very much about conveying information, about getting a very specific point across. Having all of these works en mass, I think, made it impossible for any of them to be successful in their aim.
The exhibition comprises of over one hundred works by thirty artists and artists collectives, all presenting huge amounts of information about a huge range of sociological and ecological issues that are being faced.
While these issues are important and discussion about them needs to be raised, walking into that exhibition was like being hit by a very environmentally conscious and knowledgeable truck.
There was so much to take in that it was easier to take nothing in. And there were so many things we were being told to care about, it was easier not to care about any of them.
Committed works like this are very much about conveying information, about getting a very specific point across. Having all of these works en mass, I think, made it impossible for any of them to be successful in their aim.
Saturday, September 11, 2010
Once a place, now the quintessence of five-star luxury
In Auge's Prologue of Non-Places I misread the quote 'once a palace, now the quintessence of five-star luxury', mistaking the word palace for place. Even after I realised that wasn't what Auge had written, it stuck with me as an idea that surmised a lot of what he was talking about.
Once we had places. Now we have super freeways and chains of stores, and hotels, where every one, no matter where, all look alike- Have the same paint,the same lay out, the same products. This is part of the shift towards non-places being a huge part of our lives.
I think Auge also feels there is a certain amount of freedom in being in these non-places. He talks about fear of the self, and of the other, and it almost seems that he feels existing within non-places gives people an opportunity to escape that. Travelling on a plane, you feel no responsibility towards the strangers on the plane with you. When you're stuck in traffic you don't care about anybody else stuck in traffic with you, you just want to get from A to B.
And just quickly, here is a proposal I wrote for a theory class last year. I re-read it last week, and found it rather amusing.
My Strangers House – Claiming Space
“A world where people are born in the clinic and die in hospital, where transit points and temporary abodes are proliferating under luxurious or inhuman conditions […] a world thus surrendered to solitary individuality, to the fleeting, the temporary and ephemeral”
Marc Auge describes a ‘non-place’ as “a space which cannot be defined as relational, or historical, or concerned with identity” . A foyer is a non-place. It is a transitory space, where no memories are formed, which is simply assigned a classification, a purpose and then for the most part ignored.
In 1974, Joseph Beuys did a performance called I Like America, America Likes Me where he lived in a gallery with a wild coyote for seven days. In 1996, Tracey Emin, in Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made, lived in a locked room in a gallery for fourteen days. Both of these artists took command over the gallery space and created an intimate and personal relationship with their surroundings.
In My Strangers House – Claiming Space I propose an interference with the traditional role of this place, by transforming the SCA foyer into a home; a complete reconstruction of the function of the SCA foyer. A group of people living in the foyer for an allocated amount of time, perhaps 24 hours, and changing the space into a temporary home. Through doing this not only will we successfully establish a personal relationship with an impersonal space, we will also question what makes a space significant, a query that is often raised in regard to institutional spaces, such as the gallery, but less often in regard to foyers. While living in the foyer the group would be isolated, and would only interact with the people they were living with, and anyone who passes through the space briefly.
The exhibition would then take place in the foyer, and would consist of documentation from the home-making process, such as photographs, film footage and remnants, for example wine bottles and dirty plates.
Once we had places. Now we have super freeways and chains of stores, and hotels, where every one, no matter where, all look alike- Have the same paint,the same lay out, the same products. This is part of the shift towards non-places being a huge part of our lives.
I think Auge also feels there is a certain amount of freedom in being in these non-places. He talks about fear of the self, and of the other, and it almost seems that he feels existing within non-places gives people an opportunity to escape that. Travelling on a plane, you feel no responsibility towards the strangers on the plane with you. When you're stuck in traffic you don't care about anybody else stuck in traffic with you, you just want to get from A to B.
And just quickly, here is a proposal I wrote for a theory class last year. I re-read it last week, and found it rather amusing.
My Strangers House – Claiming Space
“A world where people are born in the clinic and die in hospital, where transit points and temporary abodes are proliferating under luxurious or inhuman conditions […] a world thus surrendered to solitary individuality, to the fleeting, the temporary and ephemeral”
Marc Auge describes a ‘non-place’ as “a space which cannot be defined as relational, or historical, or concerned with identity” . A foyer is a non-place. It is a transitory space, where no memories are formed, which is simply assigned a classification, a purpose and then for the most part ignored.
In 1974, Joseph Beuys did a performance called I Like America, America Likes Me where he lived in a gallery with a wild coyote for seven days. In 1996, Tracey Emin, in Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made, lived in a locked room in a gallery for fourteen days. Both of these artists took command over the gallery space and created an intimate and personal relationship with their surroundings.
In My Strangers House – Claiming Space I propose an interference with the traditional role of this place, by transforming the SCA foyer into a home; a complete reconstruction of the function of the SCA foyer. A group of people living in the foyer for an allocated amount of time, perhaps 24 hours, and changing the space into a temporary home. Through doing this not only will we successfully establish a personal relationship with an impersonal space, we will also question what makes a space significant, a query that is often raised in regard to institutional spaces, such as the gallery, but less often in regard to foyers. While living in the foyer the group would be isolated, and would only interact with the people they were living with, and anyone who passes through the space briefly.
The exhibition would then take place in the foyer, and would consist of documentation from the home-making process, such as photographs, film footage and remnants, for example wine bottles and dirty plates.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Communicative Collage
Grant Kester's intention in this book doesn't seem to just be to define and place community and communicative art into a discourse, but also to place it within Modernist and Postmodernist art traditions. It almost seems to me as though he feels this will give it an artistic relevance of sorts. 'Oh, of course this bizarre new and different practice is art, they're simply doing what Hannah Hoch was doing decades ago- but without objects/images.'
I don't think that validating this sort of art by comparing, or concocting, similarities with Modernist art practice is going to help anybody.
Yes this area of art is (was) new and messy, but trying to explain it away in this kind of way takes away from what the practice more than it explains it or makes it easier for people to swallow as 'art', which is what I think Kester was trying to do.
People are going to struggle with accepting this as art no matter what you say about it.
I don't think that validating this sort of art by comparing, or concocting, similarities with Modernist art practice is going to help anybody.
Yes this area of art is (was) new and messy, but trying to explain it away in this kind of way takes away from what the practice more than it explains it or makes it easier for people to swallow as 'art', which is what I think Kester was trying to do.
People are going to struggle with accepting this as art no matter what you say about it.
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Art and Life
'In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation.'
From my understanding, what Debord, and the Situationists, were saying is that art should move away from being representational- from reflecting life- and instead simply be life.
They believed that rather than art speaking to situations that occur in life they should rather be constructed situations of real life.
But in my mind this doesn't work at all. The Situationists (as far as I know, and I'm certainly not an expert)didn't simply wonder about cities pointing at things happening on the street and say 'this is art'. This doesn't even work in thoery, because if somebody was to do this it would be the pointing and calling that makes it art, not the situation that exists. A degree of mediation- constructing- is still necessary, will always be necessary.
The same is true of Relational Art. They couldn't simply point at relationships that exist already between people and say 'that's art.' There has to be the construction of the situation, of the opportunity for relationships to be made.
Not that I'm saying that Relational artists are running around taking credit for discourses that exist between, say- middle aged women at McDonalds- I just thought it was worth saying that life can't be art without mediation. In my opinion.
From my understanding, what Debord, and the Situationists, were saying is that art should move away from being representational- from reflecting life- and instead simply be life.
They believed that rather than art speaking to situations that occur in life they should rather be constructed situations of real life.
But in my mind this doesn't work at all. The Situationists (as far as I know, and I'm certainly not an expert)didn't simply wonder about cities pointing at things happening on the street and say 'this is art'. This doesn't even work in thoery, because if somebody was to do this it would be the pointing and calling that makes it art, not the situation that exists. A degree of mediation- constructing- is still necessary, will always be necessary.
The same is true of Relational Art. They couldn't simply point at relationships that exist already between people and say 'that's art.' There has to be the construction of the situation, of the opportunity for relationships to be made.
Not that I'm saying that Relational artists are running around taking credit for discourses that exist between, say- middle aged women at McDonalds- I just thought it was worth saying that life can't be art without mediation. In my opinion.
Friday, August 13, 2010
Synopsis
Echoes of the Readymade: Critique of Pure Modernism.
Therry De Duave
Therry De Duave discusses Duchamp’s Readymades concerning three major subjects. The beginning of art in general, the conditions necessary for the Readymades make the transition between “here is an object” and “this object is art”, and the instigation of the museum-without-walls.
De Duave argues that by turning the “essential conventions” of Modernist art into his subject matter, Duchamp was able to deconstruct the belief that being an artist required technical skill in a specific field, such as painting, sculpture, music or poetry. He also “achieved the reduction of art in general to its necessary and sufficient conditions [...] Duchamp went straight to the most primary convention, the most elementary of all modernist artistic practice, namely that works of art are shown to be judged as such.” (96)
The “necessary and sufficient conditions” are what validate an object, such as a urinal, as an artwork. These conditions are an object, an author, a public, and an institution. The object is a given, it pre-exists solely as an object. The author’s role is to choose- not create- this object and to inscribe, or register it as an artwork. This inscription involves the author’s hand, and replaces the art object fabrication. However this object cannot successfully transition from object to art until its status is named by the public, or critics. The role of the institution is to sanction the objects art status. However, as proved in the Richard Mutt Case, the “institute can refuse to validate object as art, but nonetheless effectuates the concomitance of the first 3 conditions, and registers it.” (117)
With the loss of the Readymades, and incidental replicas, collector’s items and images, a certain ‘cult value’ now surrounds them. Through this De Dauve believes the institution has become symbolic, and that an objects status, determined through the ‘museum-without-walls’, such as magazines, rather than quality can earn it the label of art.
Therry De Duave
Therry De Duave discusses Duchamp’s Readymades concerning three major subjects. The beginning of art in general, the conditions necessary for the Readymades make the transition between “here is an object” and “this object is art”, and the instigation of the museum-without-walls.
De Duave argues that by turning the “essential conventions” of Modernist art into his subject matter, Duchamp was able to deconstruct the belief that being an artist required technical skill in a specific field, such as painting, sculpture, music or poetry. He also “achieved the reduction of art in general to its necessary and sufficient conditions [...] Duchamp went straight to the most primary convention, the most elementary of all modernist artistic practice, namely that works of art are shown to be judged as such.” (96)
The “necessary and sufficient conditions” are what validate an object, such as a urinal, as an artwork. These conditions are an object, an author, a public, and an institution. The object is a given, it pre-exists solely as an object. The author’s role is to choose- not create- this object and to inscribe, or register it as an artwork. This inscription involves the author’s hand, and replaces the art object fabrication. However this object cannot successfully transition from object to art until its status is named by the public, or critics. The role of the institution is to sanction the objects art status. However, as proved in the Richard Mutt Case, the “institute can refuse to validate object as art, but nonetheless effectuates the concomitance of the first 3 conditions, and registers it.” (117)
With the loss of the Readymades, and incidental replicas, collector’s items and images, a certain ‘cult value’ now surrounds them. Through this De Dauve believes the institution has become symbolic, and that an objects status, determined through the ‘museum-without-walls’, such as magazines, rather than quality can earn it the label of art.
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Bishop Vs Gillick
Bishop's Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics, while not the best (actually a rather dull) article, was very brave. Taking the opposing view of a new and rather popular artistic phenomenon isn't an easy thing to do. I know Bishop's article was a muddled mess of journalistic style, bad references, and wrong information, but the goal of the article was to set up a foundation for theoretical discussion about Relational Aesthetics, to have both sides of the argument being represented. So maybe next time Claire wants to do this sort of thing she should consider commissioning another writer to do it for her, I still say props to Bishop for trying to initiate what potentially could have been a very interesting discussion.
Gillick's Letters and Responses, however, while very well written and astute kind of made him sound like a whiny little bitch boy. Yes Claire's article had wrong information in it that needed to be corrected, but I don't think such a personal attack was really necessary. Gillick's article reads a little like 'Claire said mean things about me and plus she's a big fat stupid head'. In the art world not everybody is going to see the same things in your work. And people are sometimes going to say things about your work that you had no intention of bringing up. But if you go around writing articles saying that your work is only about this this and this and that everybody else's views and opinions are WRONG, you're not going to make very many friends. Especially when your work is like a fridge, and the light only goes on when people open the door (and, I'm assuming, form their own opinions about the contents of said fridge.)
Gillick's Letters and Responses, however, while very well written and astute kind of made him sound like a whiny little bitch boy. Yes Claire's article had wrong information in it that needed to be corrected, but I don't think such a personal attack was really necessary. Gillick's article reads a little like 'Claire said mean things about me and plus she's a big fat stupid head'. In the art world not everybody is going to see the same things in your work. And people are sometimes going to say things about your work that you had no intention of bringing up. But if you go around writing articles saying that your work is only about this this and this and that everybody else's views and opinions are WRONG, you're not going to make very many friends. Especially when your work is like a fridge, and the light only goes on when people open the door (and, I'm assuming, form their own opinions about the contents of said fridge.)
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Micro-Utopias
A Dialogue With Myself.
Side 1: While the term 'Relational Aesthetics' is still quite new, the idea is not. In his book Relational Aesthetics Bourriaud tells us that 'the artworld is essentially relational'. Every work that has ever existed is about instating a dialogue, a relationship between the work and an other, whether that be a man in the sky or, more commonly in contemporary art, an audience of viewers. No art can exist within a vacuum. So my question is, if a relationship between art and the viewer is inevtible, an integral part of every work, why do Bourriad's 'relational artists' feel the need to make it such a literal part of art? Why make work about something that already exists within all works?
Side 2: Bourriaud also discusses art as a commodity, a popular topic among every artist and his dog. He says that art began as being 'universally available', but as value and rarity became synonymous art was commodified and made precious, and therefore more difficult to see and experience. One of the ideals of relational art is to turn away from the 'art as commodity' mentality, to decentralise the idea of ownership and authorship, and to return to the purely experiential. Which is sweet.
Side 2: Bourriaud also discusses art as a commodity, a popular topic among every artist and his dog. He says that art began as being 'universally available', but as value and rarity became synonymous art was commodified and made precious, and therefore more difficult to see and experience. One of the ideals of relational art is to turn away from the 'art as commodity' mentality, to decentralise the idea of ownership and authorship, and to return to the purely experiential. Which is sweet.
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