This class has been one of very mixed emotions not helping that is it being end of term and a major project due. But this semester has been one of the biggest challenges in my Uni life. The ability for so many really big words to be used to continuously explain subjects which potentially could be understood much more quickly and easily without the large words and complicated quotes intrigued me. Though there were some things which I found really fascinating. The topic of ‘The Spectacle’ is something which I have never had a word for and, it may not necessarily be the best thing, but I live my life being a devotee of ‘The Spectacle’ and one day I will be the one running that car shop not putting the bumper bar on the front and I’ll be driving the sports car too.
Though the blog has often not been my friend due to readings with unnecessary words; on the other hand, the concept of ‘Relational Aesthetics’ and the associated Art which relates to social relations and interactions, is something you know about yet is not something often discussed and researched. It is a type of work which I believe is, in many ways, more relevant and appropriate for today and the different changes in technology. In many ways, the disconnection of people from others through the use of technology which causes a breakdown in social and physical face to face relations and interactions is overturned by this type of practice which brings people together and is something which is definitely needed.
‘The Secret Garden’ in the movie of the same name is a garden which has to be unlocked to find what is behind, being planted and cared for so to sprout and grow, and become a beautiful growing garden. A garden which I did not actually know was being grown is at University or is, in other words, SCA’s secret garden.
‘Little Shop of Horrors’ is a movie, as well as a musical, which features a little plant which brings large groups of people together who would not have normally come together. They interact and certain characters are able to grow through the ways which they learn to grow and change from their life without the plant to their life with it.
Lucas Ihlein and Diego Bonetto’s garden or ‘secret garden,’ as I have decided to call it as I know I am not the only one who did not actually know of its existence and its relation to relational aesthetics. The way which they talk about this garden and all the people who come to see them and participate in the project crosses over to the way which the story of ‘The Little Shop of Horrors’ does other than the fact that I do not believe any of their plants are aliens from out of space but instead different plants from people and places.
The garden, in the first place, and their documenting of it bring people to the garden in the same way as they bring people to the plant shop but the thing about it is that the idea of a plant or a garden in a place or an area which seems abnormal ends up bringing people together and ends up leaving behind not only the concept of the plant or the garden but also the people who end up meeting, interacting and changing due to the plants. The social response which occurs due to the garden, in all a social experiment, led by the ability to put a plant in the ground, water it and watch it grow. Their blog talks of the plants but, in many ways, gives you the experiences of the people who visit the garden.
Week 11 ‘Theatre and Caravans’- my blog this week will be based on research and definition of the short paragraph we have on the talk for class as I cannot find/get the readings.
What is ‘Publix Theatre Caravan’? It is a theatre group, as their name suggests, that has been presenting plays for many years including ‘The Threepenny Opera’ which is a play by Bertold Brecht. Ever heard of the song ‘Mack the Knife,’ ‘The Threepenny Opera’ is where that song is featured - I knew I had to have learnt something from HSC drama. So continuing, they are a group that travel around and perform street theatre as well as theatre in staged and other spaces. Street theatre was actually one of the first forms of theatre; it ranges from plays to performers and buskers who are much earlier performers.
The group is part of the no borders network which is a group that “is a tool for all groups and grass root organizations who work on the questions of migrants and asylum seekers in order to struggle alongside with them for freedom of movement, for the freedom for all to stay in the place which they have chosen, against repression and the many controls which multiply the borders everywhere in all countries.”( http://www.noborder.org/about.php)
The group preform/make art theatre where the group travel to different political type conferences and events then present the issues of migration and globalisation.
‘Publix Theatre Caravan’ “shall constitute a counter-proposal to the institutional sites of political theater and join discussion and debate, and the attempt to be theatrical strategies of intervention, provocation and attack to practice on power structures.”http://www.no-racism.net/nobordertour/publixtheatre/publixtheatre.html
They want their message to spread widely over cyber-space and other media.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
When a musician who normally writes music for a piano and vocals takes away the vocal or melody line you end up with a piece of music in which you have to piece all the elements together to get the melody line. In ‘Foreward: They Moved the Underground’ Robert Schumann uses the two piano lines to piece together different elements of the melody as the other piano lines work by incorporating small elements of the melody but staying off the direct line to show the melody where to follow. The incorporation of the two pieced together gives an approximate melody line that we as listeners can patch together.
An even more simple way of describing what is occurring in this is through the use of a bird in cage spinning toy also known as a Victorian Thaumatrope. This is a toy which uses two different images to make one when spun. In the same way the two music lines join together to make the melody. Yet it does not express what would happen if it was played back with the melody and one line removed as it would show in this case.
An example of this which also incorporates pure absence and structural absence is through colour. When aiming for a finished product to be the colour green we can eliminate the green and show the mixing of the two outside colours of yellow and blue which make green. When having the colour green in front of you as well as the outside colour of yellow you may technically know that there is blue in it but there is no representation of this as the green may have come premixed.
Monday, September 13, 2010
Miwon Kwon’s book ‘One Place after Another’ discussed site specific art and public art. It talked about some of the changes through the last few decades. The site specific artworks seemed to start just like other artworks which were presented but with much more freedom as art. Over time this seemed to change into these artworks having to relate to the architecture that surrounded them.
These days you still find a lot of the pieces have to relate to the architecture or, more commonly, the concept for what the architecture is used.
The Government Philip Tower has public and site specific artworks all around the buildings. The artworks that are displayed around and in the building came from commissions but for this a group of artists were found by Macquarie Gallery?? These artists had to propose artworks and make replica models of the pieces. The works which were chosen to be presented were the artworks which related to the site or the architecture. An example of this was, for Museum of Sydney, the work “Edge of the Trees’ by Fiona Foley and Janet Lawrence which was designed specifically to fit its site. The work complements the building as well as being used to purposely to cover the architecture (row of Victorian Terraces) situated behind the artwork.
Recently a temporary public work was presented outside the Conservatorium of Music. This work was different to the Miwon Kwon’s later ideas as the work did not visually go with the buildings and seemed very out of place; instead it followed a concept. The piece was meant to work as a wind harp and make noises when the wind went through the piece. There was a slight problem; as the Conservatorium building blocked the flow of the wind the piece was left useless in regard the sound it was supposed to make – it was completely silent. The work was created by an architect Joe Snell yet its colour, shape and form felt very out of place.
When reading “conversation pieces; community and communication in modern art”, in the first few pages Grant H. Kester goes in to describing the discussion pieces of work. Where he talks about ‘boat talks’ in which the vast group of people from different walks of life took part of it. Then he goes on with ‘the roof is on fire’ and then on to the bus drivers. It goes on to say “Despite these differences, these projects all share a concern with the creative facilitation of dialogue and exchange. While it is common for an artwork to provoke dialogue among viewers, typically occurs in response to a finished object. In these projects on the other hand, conversation becomes an integral part of the work itself.”
After reading this area of the reading and that last particular quote made me think of a documentary which I had viewed several months ago which a guy made a piece ofwhat hecalled art which sometimes provoked discussion in many forms, but also did other things as well. This work I thought was interesting because in the documentary of it u could see that it would cause groups how knew each other to talk but also others. Which were from different country’s backgrounds and religions to interact. But in a different way instead of though talking through righting in the form of a journal.
“The project officially launched in August of 2000, with the release of the first 100 journals in San Francisco. I gave them to friends, and left them at bars, cafes, and on park benches. Shortly thereafter, people began emailing me, asking if they could participate. So I started sending journals to folks, allowing them to share with friends, or strangers.” http://www.1000journals.com/index.php?view=Journals%2FIndex
The journals latter grew in number to a thousand.
The journals then moved on to a list form where it was sent from one person on the list to the next. The journals could be written and drawn in pretty much what ever u could think off. When watching the documentarily this is the thing that became apparent people had read others entrees and put responses or even looked at the list of people to come and made comics based on these people they had never met.
This work is “the object based artwork” which is not entirely by the artist but given to the viewer.
This particular experiment sits in the middle of this reading sitting itself on a fence between the reading and what it talks about as being different to the readings pieces. The work is not a discussion it is the object which provokes discussion through out.
For more information on this go to http://www.1000journals.com/
This week’s reading says that we are going to look at the ideas and the various ‘situationist’ practices that occurred before Debord’s key text ‘The Society of Spectacle’. For this week’s reading I started reading ‘The Society of Spectacle’ so as to know a bit about what he said.
The relationship between the spectacle in reference to situationism.
An original definition of the spectacle is relating to something being a spectacle worth watching like an event, a shooting star, etc or someone making a spectacle of oneself. For my reading I started Debord’s ‘The Society of Spectacle’.The book goes into the spectacle and what is the spectacle, something which sort of confused me. The book explained the spectacle by going into descriptions of it through what it is and what it isn’t, some of it seeming a bit contradictory.
For those who did not read this book or the beginning of the book, chapter one ‘The Culmination of Separation’ starts with a quote which makes the parts of this chapter which I can understand make sense.
“But for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality, appearance to essence . . . truth is considered profane, and only illusion is sacred. Sacredness is in fact held to be enhanced in proportion as truth decreases and illusion increases, so that the highest degree of illusion comes to be the highest degree of sacredness.”
—Feuerbach, Preface to the second edition
of The Essence of Christianity
This Chapter talks about the spectacle in very many ways, some of which sound contradictory to themselves. It starts on how the spectacle simultaneously presents itself as society and a means of “unification” then it goes on and focuses on awareness and vision. It then goes on to say “But due to the very fact that this sector is separate, it is in reality the domain of delusion and false consciousness: the unification it achieves is nothing but an official language of universal separation.”
What is this sector in which is seen as separate and why when it is the unification of society can it go on to talk about it being “a universal language of separation”
Though it talks a lot about the idea or fact that the spectacle in many ways refers to the image over the original event and how this changes the view of the world, at the same time it is not so much the images as it is “the relationship between people which is meditated by images”
It seems the spectacle is multi-media. It features news, television and movies where the images have become more important than reality.
“Emphasis on construction, manipulating and channeling spectatorial situations reverberates in many artists’ projects notes and statements” this is a quote from the reading ‘Situational Aesthetics’ in relation to the exhibition spaces.
“Experience is all”
A Magician is “an entertainer whom performs conjuring tricks and illusions” or a conjuror (Encarta Word English Dictionary) or as an illusionist is “a person who produces illusions; a conjuror” (The Australian Concise English Dictionary).
Both are terms which are used to describe people who work under the same profession. These artists also manipulate their audience or viewers into perceiving what they wish them to experience normally in the form of a performance or presentation using some type of illusion to alter their perception of the truth.
These works or instillations which were explained in the reading ‘Situational Aesthetics’ transforms artist from a presenter of work which is viewed or interacted with into the artist as a magician or illusionist or even an anti-illusionist to try and trick the audience into a state in which they (the artist) make them try and believe what they want them to believe.
An artist has gone from its original definition of someone who creates art whether painting etc to an artist in the form of an artist using the performing arts without even being in the room. The works within the reading usesthe skill of altering the viewer’s perception to make them perceive something from the original.
The use of manipulation as a main area of the art form is used within lighting techniques and sound in Asher’s ‘La jollas’ room. This work alters the perception of the room making the sound minimised in certain areas whilst multiplying in others, playing with the audience and their perception and lack of knowledge to the underlying ability to do this.
“A similar emphasis on construction, manipulating and channeling spectatorial situations reverberates in many artists projects notes and statements”
As a bird is pressed between the bars of a cage as a perfectly 3D square compresses in to 2D leaving the small creature without hope of surviving; our perception is then able to be altered into believing that it has disappeared but only when it reappears from behind the illusionist’s back. The artist Asher “cut a one-and-a-half-inch-deep groove into the bottom of the gallery walls where they meet the floor, creating a separation that evoked a sensation of floating between the walls and the floor.” It is not the reality of what has been done as the bird had been compressed to death or the one and a half inch hole that has been made, it is the after effect in which the audience perceives that you have the ability to feel as though you’re in an area which does not meet the ground leading our experience of the room to change our perception of the space to the idea that we can see an identical live bird so it must be the same one.
These artists have used the same principles and ideas of illusions and the altering of perception to trick the audience into the magic of the experience transforming their work into more than merely artworks, into magic tricks. In this experience we instantaneously want to know the definition and the trick that is hidden beneath the illusion.
Important words and their meanings:
Illusion: Deception, delusion…or a misapprehension of the true state of affairs. (The Australian Concise English Dictionary)
Presentation: An act of presenting something or the state of being presented or a performance put on before an audience. (Encarta Word English Dictionary)
Perception: An attitude or understanding based on what is observed or thought…or the ability to notice or discern things that escape the notice of most people…or any of the neurological processes of acquiring and mentally interpreting information from the senses. (Encarta Word English Dictionary)
Experience: Something which happens to somebody or an event that somebody’s involved in… or knowledge acquired though the senses rather than through abstract reasoning. (Encarta Word English Dictionary)
(Piece inspired by the reading and the recent watching of the movie ‘The Prestige’)
The use of the readymade such as Marcel Duchamp’s works in art has been present in art since the mid nineteen-tens. His readymades being items in which he finds and presents or finds and puts together. The readymade within the dada style is something which seems to reoccur in my essays at uni and something which I am not sure if I like but have always been intrigued by. In my research for my essays I have talked about contemporary artists who use ready made objects or found objects, like Simryn Gill with works like ‘Roadkill’, though I have never talked about or thought about readymades in the terms described in the paper ‘Arty Party’ by Hal Foster.
He talks about, in terms of the artworks, transforming the found or readymade idea to incorporate things such as TV shows and Hollywood films as being found images. The paper talks about Pierre Huyghe who re-shot parts of ‘Dog Day Afternoon’, an Al Pacino movie with a real life bank robber/protagonist, as well as the idea which presents itself in this quote. “It’s true that in a world of shareware, information can appear as the ultimate readymade, as data to be reprocessed and sent on”. This is the idea that the ready made can be more then an object but instead an idea or moving feature.
Nicolas Bourriaud’s ‘Relational Aesthetics’ talks about the use and participation of the audience in many of the artworks. Though the artists all seem to state the audience that they planned their works for, many of the pieces seem to include the audience as being randomly selected or just whoever was in the proximity of the pieces to interact with them. Such as Ben Kinmont randomly selectiong people to do the washing up as well as Rirkrit Tiravanija and his piece in which the water is boiling and the audience has the opportunity to interact and make and try the soup.
Even though they are aiming at getting the same sort of interaction to the style and the pieces some other artists, including Tiravanija, whose piece “Surfaces de reparation show (Dijon 1994)” which is mentioned later under ‘Conviviality and Encounters’ was a piece of work in which he provided a relaxation area that was specifically intended for the exhibiting artists which included a fridge and a table football game. In the same way Christian Boltanski sent SOS letters to a few of his acquaintances. In contrast to the works in paragraph one, these two works were designed to include a very specific audience being in Tiravanija’s work, the group of artists in the show or in Boltanski’s work, his acquaintances.
