THE BLOG OF ETERNAL STENCH

This class was an apt and beneficial class to end Art School. I think this class has pushed me to actually have an opinion and stay 'present', in comparison to my experiences in previous THAP classes where I have sat as a mind-wanderer, daydreaming of everything other than what is being said in class (like the lovely shade of Dani Mellors hair). Although I did not really voice my opinion in class, it was really enjoyable listening to everyone's comments, thoughts and a certain student's right-winged, kinda neo-Nazi-in-intent monologues (but I won't go into that one). I had a love/hate relationship with the blogs (more hate), but in the end I have decided they pushed me to stay engaged and again, made me form some sort of opinion. However, this class has also questioned my art making process, and I feel some others have experienced the same. I liken this feeling to hearing about someone who donates to multiple charities, or runs MS marathons, or volunteers at hospitals--- you hear about it, feel really bad about yourself for a while, question your whole 'giving' ability but then go back to watching Extreme Makeover with MacDonalds hamburger in your hand (a bad analogy, and I dont do this, but stay with me). This feeling doesn't mean I am going to change my process, or aesthetic-- I am not going to make a three course meal and feed the masses and say that's my art. However, I will from now on look at my work, take a sigh and walk away feeling like I should host a fundraiser for Cancer research.

Thankyouuu Social Relations and Critical Spaces. It's been real.

ARTAINABLE

The Article by Patrick Jones raises a valid and reasonable question about the MCA's recent environmentally themed show, In the Balance. However I think what is important to recognise is that there is a marked difference between being environmental and being sustainable (and I'm not just talking about the difference between having a 3 minute shower to washing yourself with a bucket of gutter water). In the Balance is not a sustainable art show, it is an environmentally 'themed' show (as the MCA purposefully declares) which displays elements of sustainable practice. I guess the question that is raised from a show like this (other than the MCA's failed attempt to save the earth) is whether being a 'sustainable' artist holds more authority or deserves more 'kudos' than that of an environmental artist. It's a hard question to answer as both in their own way are bringing some sort of awareness about environmental concern. As an aside, there are some amazing sustainable practices out there, not just in the art world, and it is quite inspiring. I recently went to an exhibition of graduate sustainable designers, and it was really powerful (that rasputin-bearded gardner "Costa" who has his own t.v show said a lovely speech and gave a sunflower seed to all the designers and told them to 'grow' [which I thought was a little expected but I didn't mind as there was free organic wine]). And what's even better is that these certain sustainable practices and aesthetics can hold up against, if not higher, than those practices that aren't sustainable. It's a slow process, but it's getting there.

No longer does sustainability have to be associated with hemp wearing, rope-as-a-belt wearing, eating-out-of-garbages folk. Not to say that is not apprieciated, it is, I think rope-as-a-belt is quite ingenious.

Here is some environmentally charged nudity for you.

Peace.

ARTOLITICS

A typical PTC performance includes elements of: volxkitchen-staff (whatever that is), info-material, books, computers, sound-system, banners, props, orange overalls and helmets, soldier-uniforms and blue UNO-border-helmets, lots of wheel-tubes (a must apparently), costumes and jonglage-materials (again, what is that, do they mean ‘jingling’ or ‘jangling’?).

I think performances such as the PTC are important. Anything with a political message is (excluding those which fall heavily to the genocide and oppression type of thought). However, I am still unsure if there is a distinction between a political rally/protest and an artistic performance such as these. Is there a difference? Is it the word ‘theatre’ in their branding what makes them artists as opposed to activists, or is it mutually interchangeable? I realise they are performing—hence staging, hence acting, hence ‘entertaining’ (of some sort) But what is important at the end of the day—if people know it is a performance that imitates real life, or people understand the message that it is real life? Does it matter?

Perhaps I am jaded because I work in a theatre and have seen so many politically driven performances fail. I realise the PTC are taking their performances out of the institutional framework of THE THEATRE are taking it to THE PEOPLE... but I'm just not sure anymore... Thankyooooou art school.

http://www.no-racism.net/nobordertour/index_uk.html

Nufin's Gonna Change My World...

I get it...but this is just creepy



...creepy...but strangely awesome.

I particularly like the little boys squatting with mountain walking sticks, and the fish with light bulbs attached to their heads. I think David Lynch and Laibach should team up to create a neo-classical, epic industrial music video (if they haven't already-- did Laibach co-direct Mulholland Drive?)

I'd watch that for sure.

All I want to say is that, they don't really care about us?

I was walking around Newtown the other day and outside the Commonwealth bank (in hindsight probably a deliberate choice) there was this guy/girl (couldn’t tell as they were covered entirely) wearing a gas mark and the names of Middle Eastern countries pinned to her/his shroud. The performer stood still, covering King Street with a kind of black cloud. Going up to him/her a sign loudly stated, “This is an artistic performance”. I’m pretty sure I understood this before I read the sign but I internally thanked the performer for allowing me not to confuse his/her display with a bank transaction or a Commonwealth bank employee. I was walking around Petersham too, and on one brick wall facing a main road was a mural of some sort, picturing butterflies, skyscrapers and (what seemed to me) an attack of a 50-foot woman. Under the painting was a note that stated “This is a HSC artwork, please respect”. Surprisingly, no taggers have touched it (this is also similar to the sign posted under the iconic indigenous flag wall in Newtown, which the public [and teenage vandals] seemingly respect). Now, I raise these ‘public’, site-specific art works as examples because we as an audience are told they are artworks. There is no second-guessing, no confusing it with council initiative, modernist architecture or cooperate branding; there is no destroying it, or disrespecting it, or degrading it--we understand that before us we are digesting art. Do we need to? Is Meryline Fairskyes central trippy train tunnel installation (although commissioned) for me, or is it just to make Railway Square a pretty place? Do we need tags under every public work to know it is for us? Is it for us?

Monologue

Although communicative dialogued artworks seem pretty good in theory (just like communism and decisions made after 6 glasses of wine) I cannot help but wear my Negative Nancy hat and question the success of certain artistic collaborations. As an aside, I was doing further research on this topic (okay, I was just googling, but I feel I should wear my 'good effort' hat now) and written in bold black text about art based dialogues was that no artistic experience is required for these processes (it was not italicised but is stresses their point, right?) . I am not going into this argument again as I am pretty sure we have had this discussion for the past three years.

Back to questioning collaborative/communicative processes [*removes good effort hat*]. The idea of instigating conversation between an artist and a group (be it marginalised, oppressed etcetera) seems wonderful-- I like the idea of positive change and people working together to make something in the end. BUT (bold capitals are effective aren't they) I cannot help wonder if it works, does it really wipe out stratification? (think I just made up a word). At the end of the dialogue and conversation and after all this wonderful 'process', does one person speak for all? Does the process really overshadow the result?

I am not sure if I am talking about this weeks topic anymore. Perhaps our government [pending] should try finger-painting or collage together-- I'm sure something positive would come out of an afternoon spent with abstraction and decoupage.

People try to put us d-down (Talking' 'bout My Situation)

A guide on talking like a Situationist.

1. Learn French. No self-respecting situationist would dream of not knowing it.

2. Always use the most obscure language possible. Get lots of big scholarly words from a dictionary and use them often.
Poor: "Things are bad."
Better: "The formative mechanism of culture amounts to a reification of human activities which fixates the living and models the transmission of experience from one generation to another on the transmission of commodities; a reification which strives to ensure the past's domination over the future."

3. In particular, the words "boredom" (as in "there's nothing they won't do to raise the standard of boredom"), "poverty" (of the university, of art), and "pleasure" are important tools in the young situationist's kit, and use of them will greatly enhance your standing in the situationist community.

4. Make frequent reference to seventy year-old art movements like Dada and Surrealism. Work the subject into your conversations as often as possible, however irrelevant.

5. Vehemently attack "The University" and "Art" whenever possible (phrases like "the scrap-heap of Art" or "the stench of Art" are particularly effective). Attend as prestigious a school as possible and make sure your circle of friends contains no less than 85% artists.

6. Cultivate a conceit and self-importance bordering on megalomania. Take credit for spontaneous uprisings in far-flung corners of the world, sneer at those who oppose or disagree with you.

7. Denounce and exclude people often. Keep your group very small and exclusive — but take it for granted that every man, woman, and child in the Western Hemisphere is intimately familiar with your work, even if no more than ten people actually are.

8. Detournement: Cut a comic strip out of the paper (serious strips like 'Terry and the Pirates' and 'Mary Worth' are preferred), and change the dialogue. Use lots of situationist language. What fun!

9. Use Marxian reverse-talk. This is a sure-fire way of alerting people to the fact that you are a situationist or are eager to become one: "the irrationality of the spectacle spectacularises rationality," "separate production as production of the separate."

10. Invoke "the proletariat," factories, and other blue-collar imagery as often as possible, but do not under any circumstances associate with or work with real proletarians. (Some acceptable situationist jobs are: student, professor, artist.)

11. By all means avoid such repugnant proletarian accoutrements as: novelty baseball hats, rock group T-shirts, 'Garfield' or 'Snoopy' posters (no matter how "political"), and vulgar American cigarettes like 'Kent' or 'Tareyton'.

http://libcom.org/library/how-to-talk-like-a-situationist

Scum Bucket With Flies

Although institutional theory is technically a way of distinguishing art from non-art and classifying what is apart of the 'art-world' and what is not apart of the 'art-world', it holds no relevance to my actual experience of 'art' and this so called 'art world'. I say this because I stood looking at a bucket and mop for more than a minute at Cockatoo Island only realising that it was not actually a work of art with social and political undertones but actually a real life bucket and mop with no social and no political undertone. This also happened to me at a local gallery. I read the artist statement and looked at what I thought was the work right beside it. I looked at the artist statement again and then again at the work beside it. My head rallied for a good thirty seconds and I decided that what I read and what I saw loosely married...In the end, this 'work' was actually the gallery's fully functioning ventilation system and the work of art was out of my peripheral vision, and on the floor.

If I look at this 'institutional theory' and the noted 'typical' characteristics of spotting and defining and understanding art (or 'artifacts') my encounter with the bucket and mop and ventilation system seems slightly... acceptable. It is without this theory where my encounter with these objects (that were seemingly artistically placed in the context of a standard art 'institution' I swear!) seems rather pathetic and truthfully shameful.

P.S How does one become a member of this 'artworld'? Do we have to have an understanding of art theory and art history as written in these 'texts? Obviously, my appreciation, understanding and current knowledge of contemporary art failed me in these given examples (yes, this does suggest there have been others) so there must be another way. Perhaps there is an initiation process involving paddles and beer...? I hope so.

"Hearty Party" (or George had already coined "Farty Party", so I had to find another rhyming word)

Jessica Cassar and Friends, Hearty Party, 2010 [approximately 4 hours with food, wine, sound, social/political banter, candlelight and sound].


Tonight I sat around a table drinking wine and eating some pretty great cheese. We were forced to light candles as the backyard had no other form of light, and in the end none of us really complained about this. People were milling in and out, joining the discussion when necessary and taking food that was offered to them. Someone even made a beetroot/hummus dip (which we later renamed Bummus). We spoke about the impending election (someone announcing they were going to write this is bullshit across the ballot form), various recent births and the idea of placenta (I had an ex boyfriends whose family ate their baby’s placenta [free to insert feelings/comments about this here]), films we had seen and wanted to see and other random thoughts and feelings that usually occur on a Sunday afternoon/evening when you’re eating cheese and talking about placenta. We, glass in hand collaborated in creating a beautiful installation of sociable/political/'consumerable’ art (there was even a sound element as we had music playing). Or did we? I mean, were we not publically installing, obscurely performing, communally archiving, ephemerally ‘offering’? Were we not making, showing, talking and being? Or were we just sitting around a table on a Sunday night eating cheese, drinking wine and talking about the promises of politics and the perplexity of placenta? I’m honestly not quite sure. No one was around to ‘view’ or critique us (except the self-doubting , self-assessing child within us all)…so maybe the latter.

I, Spectator.

I am at the MCA. I am there to see the Olafur Eliason Exhibition. I see a table FULL of white lego. Is this the artists work, or is it the MCA's childcare initiative to allow single parents a proper and full experience of contemporary art? I do not care. I do not bother to look or find an artist statement or brochure or ask one of the MCA staff (who seem to be sitting blankly, probably half-wishing they had thought of a giant table of lego posing as art for their previous years graduate show) to explain the work to me. All I care about at that moment is making the tallest lego 'thing' in the room and note that everyone around me seems to be on a similar mission as well. Making sure everyone at the table was over the age of 5, I join the group to begin making my work of art. In the end, it's harder than I imagined and more boring than anything-- my skyscraper is as big as a pencil and everyone else's robots, buildings and objects seem to belittle mine. I look around for help-- do I keep going? Is there a time limit to how long I sit here? Some people are destroying what they've made, do I do that? Does this have a food element because I've heard some other artists are into that? I leave the questions in my head and walk away unscathed, feeling no different from when I arrived. I leave not knowing what the work was about (concluding that even if I did it wouldn't matter), seeing no difference between looking at the lego and playing with the lego. As I exited the MCA, I could only imagine Olafur Eliason was laughing on a throne in a mansion on top of a mountain somewhere made entirely from coloured lego pieces...