so-long/farewell.

To begin with I have to admit how much of a struggle i found the majority of this course, It has basically turned me off the entire institution. I have learnt little, aside from my chosen essay topic, and have not been inspired all too much. To me it just all sounds like bullshit. Why is this art? Why is this not art? The majority of conversations i have had with people over this topic have been all wank. It is almost as if people have lost passion, drive, spirit. Who really cares why he/she does this/that for so on and so forth and because of all this it is worth hundreds of thoundands of dollars. Do we really think the greats were sitting there making art thinking 'I wonder how i will be criticed for this in the future? Is this art? What about this?"

I think we should be about pushing people to do what they love, let them call it whatever they want. art/not art - it's not about that! Try is this your passion? does this make you feel alive? is it simply just what you do or felt like doing? - then great, thats all that matters.

the garden

From the garden class with Lucas & Diego, I left with a mixture of emotions. Personally, i do not see the garden as art - but rather an artform. A few months before this class, i started working with the concept of hanging plants unsidedown - altering natural growth and human perceptions (which, to me was art - but somehow the garden I have at home as purely a garden) It comes down to intention I suppose, and an arguement that can never be won. I still think this way. The only real thing i gained from this class was a depper desire to garden (or more so to give our 300 odd tadpoles a new home in a new garden)
I read a quote (from Gobblieb i think?) that stated that he was sick of people stating that they wanted to go back to nature, and to him, that people seemed more concerened with going back, than about nature - I think this quote sums up the majority of nature based works, and is something we need to think about on a whole.

Aside from this I am mostly worried that this will fall through, that ceramics courtyard seems destined to continue as a graveyard. I only hope that people will continue to care for it, and as well as the animals that will begin to live off it's growth.

Re: 'Legalize LA'

I have such an issue with this topic!

So what is American Apparel doing about this? Their “Legalize LA” t-shirts are sold all over the world, in an attempt to alter the perception of the general public or at least provide them with an alternative perspective. Fashion and clothing are often viewed as an art form in some contexts, art like fashion is often utilised in order to propagate a message to a wider audience, in this way American Apparel has succeeded, they’ve managed to enliven the message of immigration reform throughout all western countries in the world, obviously because this is where American Apparel have their stores.

I think what AA are trying to do is great, but we are looking at American Apparel here. One of the most expensive shops for the simplest cotten basics with the biggest may-as-well-be-porn advertisments I know of.

Can someone please tell me what "alternate perspective" - especially for younger girls growing up thinking this is the way America - "land of the free" (and country most likely to kill you) is meant to look like. To me, this is fucked up on a new level.

Photo's for your enjoyment....

Get your Kwon on

I would say, after reading Kwons thoughts.. that if an artist is to create a site specific.. public based artwork.. he or she would either have to consult the greater community to determine what would or would not be socially accpetable.. as in Ahearns work you have an artist with a clear concept, but at the same time he has created a work of controversy by bringing to the fore what people consider to be the ill-begotten stereotypes that the public do not want to be exalted...
On the other hand with serras work you have a great trial with discussions on democratic public art where only a small minority of people were consulted before its contruction rather than the greater community who were the ones continously exposed to it.. i suppose it depends on ones discourse.. whether they care enough about the general public to consult them or even include them in an artowkrs construction, or they abandon them altogether and let the artwork in all its interruptions speak for itself...
i think the general public are inherently oblivious to the comings and going of artistic trends, so why not disrupt them once in a while to make them question things...whether or not they even know why they are questioning it... or you could assimilate a site specific artwork for the benefits of the public.. i suppose it depends on how much you like people...

working principles.

"I really like this idea that art is helping those who need helping. Not through ideas or concepts but through action. I think this is a very important concept for us as artists to maybe pursue. The idea that one’s art can in fact save or better a life appeals alot to me ..."

http://www.wochenklausur.at/methode.php?lang=en

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I completely agree with Renee. I think art has such power that most of us don't unleash. My mothers fried was diagnosed with M.S and was house bound for months and suffered from depression until she started watching one of those Art shows on tv. She started painting and slowly began to overcome her syndrome. Being able to express herself through art let her gain control of her life again. It's out of this world what art can actually achieve. And it's nice to know that others feel the same way....
Dean Stalham is a Londoner, artist and playwright and also founder of Art Saves Lives, a community interest company that gives marginalised artists a voice and a platform. He recently held an arts awareness day for 20 inmates at Wandsworth Prison who had no interest in art whatsoever. He helped them to realise its potential as a means to rehabilitation. Stalhem states that his inititive 'ASL' is a "lifeline to artists, writers and musicians who are, for whatever reason, marginalised by society. We find space and a platform. We get voices out and heard. We get art out to the people. Real art for real people by real people."

fair enough this situationism avoids the 'autocratic market economy' but i still dont think it has an impact on society. 'This new ideology and philosophical theory we have called situology. It is based on the principle of social democracy in as much as it excludes all artificial forms of privilege. It is the only existing guarantee which ensures that human life can develop in all its cultural variety and without crushing the special abilities of the individual in an anonymous society designed for the unfit. Sartre says that we should always ask what would happen if everyone acted like me. Our answer is that we should all die of boredom. We want to make it possible for man to be able to gamble his life. This can only happen if everyone is allowed to have indvidual freedom of action.'from a situationist manifesto...
there is no such thing as democracy, nor freedom of action... and i doubt there ever will be. being an artist is a job, making statements on different situations and the relations of human existence is fruitless in this world i think... at least to the extent that is realy is only artists and people who choose to be in the art world that are involved.. whats it saying about such critical thought in relation to the rest of society... no onnnnnnnnnessss liiiisteniiinnngggg......

Institutional Critique

it frustrates me the stereotype of the 'left-wing' artists views,, just getting political here with the debate coming up and everything... but in rejecting capitalism so much 'artists' of today (some not all) are simply thriving in it.. making it ridiculous and contradictory.. its almost as if one is living within a perpetual parasitic social structure but live contently because they can rather than acting for a greater benefit... i think there is much ignorance and not simply enough 'knowing' of things... knowing of the things around you.. when you can know you can understand, when you understand things you can discuss and you have a greater peoples thinking on the same wavelength.. that perhaps would induce social change. on an institutional level, more specifically art institutions, its not so much as a common practice that should be enacted, but a certain position and mindframe...refernece or set of beliefs for art practice..
I think the tragedy here is the desire to create art solely as a means of self-expression is totally valid, but that leads to a greater breakdown of the artist/art world link.. furthering that thought it comes back to the idea of art that has been institutionalised like that of museums rejects a great majority of artists that simply make art for its simple nature. why does it specifically have to respond to the art world or society to be recognised as art?

Reflections

i think such art practices relating to RA are not effective in or to a degree unclear of purpose... at least to my understanding. If you look back to the modernist avant garde you have certain ideas and movements that arise from a magnetism between like-minded individuals whether it be the impressionists cubists surrealists or the constructivists etc...
if u think back though global interraction was nothing compared to what it is today with the internet and globalisation and what not... and with a higher population u have many more people creating art much of which may or may not go unrecognised by demand of the art market... In relation to RA, some time ago three german artists came to the uni and exhibited similar works... their aim in travelling abroad was to search for likeminded individuals that share or contrast ideas concernig their practices and ideas of art..
society today is internationally connected, and it makes sense that artists all over the world who conduct in a similar practice should share their reasons, express as a global group the position of their art. make it a movement reflecting any given individuals microcosms within socety, but cnnected to the world by means of digital networking. in the world today you have a heightened global consciousness and awareness on a great account of access to the internet, so contact with likeminded artists seems to be a better way to address relational aesthetics globally but all relative to being human and the similar trends that make us human, or the similar frames of mind the create art reflective of an element of soceity or many, many elements of society..

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For the most part i find Bourriaud's writing a struggle. Although i do like many of the artwork's discussed in the reading, i think that if social relations is the trend to contemporary art than is it really art at all? All you are doing here is forcing art as society! To me art is an expression of an individual, no matter if it is completely personal or if is a blatant social/political/whatever statement. Who are we to judge an expression of another individual? Or, god forbid, determine it’s worth?! Overall I don’t agree with this type of art. I think that if art is to be social that there then should be breaches to its own self, as the ‘vandalism’ by Yuan Chai and Jian Jun Xi to Tracey Emins instillation My Bed or Pierre Pinoncelli to Marcel Duchamp’s Urinal, and once again Yuan Chai and Jian Jun Xi to the Urinal. These artist’s have been condemned by the ‘art world’ - the gallery owners, the people who put a price on art - often being made to pay the legal fee’s/charges/replacement of the original work because it is not considered by them to be ‘good’, ‘worthwhile’ or ‘important.’ If it can exceed the boundaries of society, then it can exceed the boundaries of art.
On another note, one of the biggest question that the reading brought to mind of me was as Jean-Luc Goddard explained that it takes two to make an image? Does that mean that art needs to be seen to be art? Or that what we see, for example a tree resembling a naked woman to our subconscious, art/not art? To me it's rubbish, the most beautiful images to come from our world may never be seen by the human eye, let alone in the art world.