Aaron Williamson was giving a lecture at Queen Mary University. Williamson is a live artist whose deafness appears to be the subject of his practice. This isn’t necessarily apparent but once you’re aware of his disability you realise that his work is all constructed around the idea of isolation and alienation through public interaction. One of his performances that he discussed was a series of formal lectures that were integrated into institutional scenarios and unannounced as performances. The premise of the ‘Collapsing Lecture’ was that the delivery of formal lecturing and conferencing is infrequently fraught with mishap: equipment malfunctions and the lecturer her/himself is subject to unforeseen catastrophes. It is in fact a performance. The Collapsing Lecture illustrates this phenomenon. At first it appears entertaining and funny but once one considers it further and thinks about it within the context of deafness, the piece becomes darker and the humour recedes. Another one of these lecture-come-performances was titled ‘Flannel’. The word ‘Flannel’ has two meanings in English. Firstly it is a small cloth used for washing the hands and face with; but a lesser usage of the word means ‘indirect or evasive talk. ’It’s impossible to estimate the average percentage of lecturing time that is filled with this kind of ‘flannel’. For ‘Flannel’ at Swedenborg House he attempted to give a lecture with a washcloth in his mouth. He was trying to read aloud from a paper about Swedenborg’s dreams but nothing was audible. Instead the aspect, which appeared most prevalent, was the ‘authoritative’ body language of the lectern in the absence of any legible speech. This is another example of a work which on the surface is jokey and light but after deliberating over the fact that he is, in a way, mirroring his life of audible exclusion it becomes almost tragic.
The CSM maths centre is putting on a series of sessions about perspective and geometry. Directly, there’s not a huge amount of correlation to our practice, but learning about it can’t hurt. It’s an interesting way of thinking about art; it’s very focused on the position from which the work will be viewed. A way of messing with this would of course just be to display works at an incorrect height or angle. This is shown in ‘The Ambassadors’, a painting by Hans Holbien, which depicts two men and several meticulously rendered objects (including a lute, the importance of which will be elaborated on later). It also incorporates an example of anamorphosis in the form of a skewed skull. The skull can only be seen as such when the painting is approached in a particular way. The lute is symbolic of how advanced one is at perspective-based drawings since to incorporate it is immensely challenging due to its unique shape. We were able to try out this graphical projection using laser pens and transparent plastic. The second session was more about the idea of the vanishing point, which was described to us as ‘where the eye stops seeing’ and when ‘“things” become parallel’. Both very poetic ways of defining how our vision works in this respect.
We had the first of our ‘XD Toolkits’ that was titled ‘staging an event’ and were taken through the various considerations and scenarios one must consider when doing so. Anthony Gormley’s contribution to the 4th plinth, ‘One & Other’, was the subject of this discussion. The task was to think about certain situations one might find ones self in when generating an event of this kind; what if someone committed suicide. It was basic but laid out a good foundation when structuring a time-based activity, involving a number of people. The most entertaining aspect was when we found out Gormley’s answer to the previous ‘what if’. If someone had killed himself or herself on the plinth then he would have left them there for their full hour (the allotted time period for each individual). This is both amusing and terrifying. The next toolkit was on the subject of craft and even though we disagreed with her on several of her points, there were still some thought provoking questions and statements. For example, ‘craft is applied, art in implied’. This is troubling since it seems to suggest that art has no function because the only function that can ever seem to be measured is direct – a mug exists to hold tea etc. The ‘three types of making’ are then explained, adding subtracting and transforming. Adding, being connecting things together, can be thought of in reference to Tracey Emin’s quilt pieces such as ‘Hate and Power Can be a Terrible Thing’. Damien Hirst is another artist who falls into this category when it comes to ‘Gone But Not Forgotten’ and his other gilded works. An example of an artist who has created art by form of subtraction would be Tom Friedman and in particular his work ‘11 X 22 X .005’. This piece comes in the form of a white piece of paper in the dimensions that make up the title. It is in fact a Playboy centre fold and has been erased by Friedman. This is referencing the work by Rauschenberg where he erased a drawing produced by de Kooning and titled it ‘Erased de Kooning Drawing’. Kara Walker is someone who was also mentioned as her practice involves silhouettes cut out of black paper. When it came to transformation, Simon Starling was mentioned, specifically his turner prize winning ‘Shedboatshed’. He produced this work by employing the original materials themselves to create something new as opposed to the previous artists who either added or took away from it. The next aspect of the talk was the most frustrating; she described craft as ‘anything made well’. This belief is fairly sweeping on its own but when she added the things that were, as she put it, the opposite of craft it was quite disturbing. These were conceptual art, found art and minimalism. Unsure as to whether it was a poor choice of language or ignorance; that someone couldn’t see that ideas are a material just as much as wood or bronze. She went on to talk about how the dematerialisation of art (from autonomous object to contextual materiality) meant there wasn’t any ‘stuff’. In a sense she is correct, with regards to tangibility there can sometimes be less, Random International’s ‘Rain Room’ at the Barbican or Tino Segal’s ‘The Unilever Series’ performance in the turbine hall at Tate Modern, but the language she was using was devaluing these works over others which perhaps hadn’t been ‘touched by the artist’. Another bizarre statement made was that ‘craft is made to last’. Now this is strange because a beautifully hand made chair will fall apart and eventually decompose but ideas, in the words of V (for Vendetta) ‘ are bullet proof’.
The 3rd years gave their presentations on what their dissertation research and general practice is based around. It was satisfying to see that everyone, even people who made work that we didn’t particularly enjoy, was eager to engage in discussion about what they were doing. One girl was investigating the maths behind the Islamic prayer times and described a prayer as a ‘formal meeting with God’ which was an interesting way of putting it. The Monday guest lecture was by the two guys from the maths centre, and they spoke about John Milner’s differential topology. This involves huge amounts of qualitative data since its focus is composing space and how said spaces are connected together. This maths is hugely advanced but doesn’t actually flow on from any of the maths that is taught in schools. These points lead to the differences in language and the maths education system (difficult vs. advanced). Many of us are discouraged from participating in maths in school due to its quantitative nature and lack of application in the ‘real world’. It was touched on that this could be different if a maths ladder was climbed in the same way as any other. Any rung should be reachable; it shouldn’t be limited to progressing only when the current level is mastered. We also had a session on writing an artist statement; it involved being given a photograph of an unknown artist’s work and writing an artist statement for them. This was an excellent exercise and encouraged thought about our own artist statement. It forced us to analyse someone’s whole practice based on one photo and the results were fairly accurate. Meaning we should be able to generate our own ones without too much hassle.
We began our seminars this week too. It began with an introduction into Dadaism and the dematerialisation of the art object and then Neo-Dadaism, which is slightly more material based. This comes from new mediums such as film and video that are employed to document certain actions, which attempted to replace more tangible pieces. Films were therefore no longer seen as subjects but objects, inherently anxious objects. This was due to its perishability and obsolescence; every time a film is played it is damaged and it is superseded by the digital. Another reason for its intrinsic instability is that its inception correlates to that of the First World War; film is a machine to aid violence. Viennese Actionism was brought up since Otto Muehl and Kurt Kren collaborated to produce films of certain ‘happenings’. Muehl initially dismissed this documentation since he believed that any attempt to record them would devalue and damage the integrity of the work. Kren managed to convince him by making the argument that is being outlined now – film, as a medium, is just as volatile as the actions and bodies that performing them. We progressed to Walter Benjamin and how he said that ‘the image gains sway over the object’. This relates to artists such as Brâncuși who invested huge amounts of time into the photographing of his work, insuring that the materiality of the object was celebrated as much as possible. Bruce Nauman is also someone who falls into this category; when he’s in his studio, he’s not alone because he’s performing for the camera. The film of ‘Walking in an Exaggerated Manner Around the Perimeter of a Square’ becomes the final product, and not the ‘actual’ happening. The reading for our second session was Paul Virilio’s book ‘War and Cinema’, a hugely, exciting book about the foundations of film and surveillance being deeply rooted in conflict. We were also required to watch Chirs Burden’s ‘Shoot’, a film where Burden is shot by one of his friends. The session began with Dada (again) and how the audience is frequently the target in their work. But in Neo-Dadaism the art object becomes the target. Niki de Saint-Phalle’s shoot paintings reflect this idea; attached to the canvas would be balloons filled with paint and audience members would be invited to shoot a gun at the work. She, therefore, doesn’t know how the final piece will look until the opening night of the show. Yves Klein went through a similar process when producing his fire paintings. In the 1970s, the artist finally becomes the target and Burden performs ‘Shoot’. It becomes this kind of ‘lost object’ and moves from object-hood to event-hood because of its temporality. The historical context of this work would be that the war in Vietnam was expanding and people were demonstrating and consequently being shot. Burden wasn’t able to experience this directly but only through the media. He therefore wasn’t sure what the role of the camera was in the shootings – is it just recording or taking part in some way? There’s a strange nearness in this distance; due to the mass dispersion of imagery we have become desensitised to the feelings of others. This relates to Manet’s 'The Execution of Maximilian’ since he wanted to paint to moment but his only access came through media reports rather than direct experience of the event. Gerhard Ritcher also produced a similar painting, ‘Man Shot Down 1’, which is a blurry depiction of Andreas Baader, who was arrested as a co-founder of the RAF. It was only painted 10 years after the event and so the blurriness reflects this lack of translation due to time and the screen between camera and gun. We then spoke about how film has influenced the way in which we remember and the way in which we think about memory. Memory is now seen as this huge storage unit that we assess at the click of a button (depicted beautifully in the film Inside Out). Burden’s performances are now remembered through their documentation. At the beginning of a compilation of some of his performances he states very clearly that ‘what you see isn’t real’ which is a bizarre contradiction. He is attempting to encourage us to see there is a difference between reality and what we believe to be reality.
There are quite a few new works that are either completed or near completion. We’ve printed out the Microsoft Word synonym screenshot piece and photographed it as a wall piece (shown below) but we did want to have the final piece draped over a plinth (plinths being the ‘go to’ for art objects), which goes with the anti-art element of this. Finally printed out the Sims paintings too but are yet to display them in a fashion that would render them complete. But they look great and we’ve settled on employing the name as a method of disclosing the method since this is not only referential but also subtler. ‘Imagine a Plinth’ is a new performance that we were able to try out during a student led crit. It’s a work which involves producing 2 or 3 objects from ones bag and unwrapping them from their bubble wrap (these are easily breakable) and passing them round the audience. Whilst the objects are going round, a story is appropriated to them about them being of incredible sentimental value. Once they come back round the story of value continues and it suggested that if one thing is valuable does situating another valuable thing constitute a combined value or is there something ‘other’ created to produce an even higher one. Once the objects are then stacked up, the audience is told that if we had been more prepared we would have a plinth on which to present the stack but they are asked to imagine one instead. We place the objects above the imaginary plinth and then drop them as if to situate them on top but of course the objects fall to the ground causing them to smash. It is a question of value (attributed or inherent) within both the world of art and in general. Who decides why one artist is more important than another and then why that signifies a monetary increase in his product? We were advised to instead of introducing them as having sentimental value but ‘actual’/monetary value. Starting by saying that we had an exhibition and we presented these as art objects and someone wants to buy them for a substantial amount of money. This therefore takes us out of the equation and therefore the audience are touching things that, they believe, have value that transcends the current owners. We’ve also completed a film titled ‘Anything I Can Do Is Not Art Because I'm Not An Artist’ and is a film made using extracts from various vloggers on the subject of what they describe as 'modern art'. At first the film was intended to be one of satire, how dare they be so ignorant and hateful towards something we’re passionate about. But whilst making the film something changed and it became sort of sad and almost depressing. Is it us that’s created this anger amongst these individuals? And if not who? Why don’t they accept that it’s just something they don’t understand like quantum physics or open-heart surgery? These are all questions that were brought up in the personal tutorial. We landed on the notion of purpose and jealousy; people find it hard to see the purpose of art and can potentially be jealous of others that can find a place for it in their lives. There is also an element of visible labour that people appear to be sensitive about; people want to be able to see that something has taken a long time to prepare. So in order for people to feel involved with the art work they need to be informed with respect to the process. Another question which was posed was what is this for us, something that doesn’t necessarily have one or a constant answer. However, at this moment in time it feels like a body of work born out of our own frustration with the art market and therefore a small portion of the art world. Because we believe in art being, at some level, accessible to all and not excluding anyone but simultaneously leaving something unanswered which relies on an element of uncertainty that in tern can create frustration. So we’re attempting to think through the delivery and receival of art and how that dictates its value. We also discussed the Sims works and realised that the Sims are not able to return to a lower level of skill since in the game the act of learning must be linear. Therefore the paintings produced at the beginning are almost more valuable due to their rarity. ‘Bad Art Good Walls’ was something recommended on watching the ‘modern art’ film, it carries the same level of humour with reference to ‘café art’.
Jimmie Durham had an exhibition at the serpentine. We'd forgotten how much humour (specifically irony) he utilizes in his work. His piece ‘Balancing Rock Goes On Tour’ was hilarious! It was a series of images (beginning with that of a balancing rock which appeared to be atop a mountain). The next images were a selection of tourist locations (big ben, Eiffel tower etc.) that the rock had been, scantly, photo-shopped into. This piece is a good example of his word play and how he comments on the forces of colonialism that constructs our contemporary discourses and challenges our understanding of authenticity in art. Rachel Rose also had a show at the other Serpentine Gallery titled ‘Palisades’. The show is essentially one work with two sub-works within it; 2 films and a sound piece that links the films together. The first film one encounters, ‘A Minute Ago’, embodies this relationship between catastrophe and collage through how ones perception changes due to certain architectural tools such as glass. ‘Palisades and Palisades’ is the next work and it too addresses ideas of outside and inside and perhaps a merging of the two. Some of my favourite shots in the film are when the camera goes from being very far away to very close up. This is an indication of the film’s connection to time – when things are far away they only appear to be images of themselves where as the same thing closer, or in the present, becomes very pure and material. She also used a montaging technique of matching shots to others, which weren’t necessarily connected, to create this fictional narrative from factual clips. The architecture of the gallery itself appears to be prominent also; Rose has kept all the windows open to draw natural light in as the projected light goes out. An unmistakable continuation of the ‘outside-inside’ theme.
There was a live art event at Toynbee Studios titled ‘The Youth Board Presents...’ An evening of performance, spoken word, film and illustration. All the work was excellent but we were particularly struck by an incredible spoken word piece about racism and being brought up wanting to be white. There was another interesting work, which involved a woman searching for chicken nuggets in plant pots full of dirt and subsequently consuming them. While this was going on there were various soundtracks from fast food adverts playing on speakers. The next part of the performance was her hunting giant jelly babies with an iPhone wire, the piece was collectively titled ‘What’s for dinner, Mum? Dad, Can we have takeaway tonight?‘. Spill festival was also this week and therefore there was a huge variety of performances on show. ‘Moving Stories: Moving Mountains’ was a film by Robert Pacitti in collaboration with Angela Dawn Wright, Giovanna Maria Casetta, Rowan James, and Tonny. It’s a work investigating issues of disability and the following affect this has on power. It manifests itself as a series of performances to a camera. The disabilities it covers aren’t just physical but mental too, but the main focus of the work is to ‘piss on pity’ with reference to disability. The next work we encountered was ‘Stone Tape Theory’ by Sarah-Jane Norman. Its name is derived from an obscure paranormal hypothesis in which ghostly presences are explained not as discarnate souls, but as electro-magnetic “imprints” in space. When experiencing the work, the viewer walks through a door into a pitch-black room (unable to see a hand in front of your face) with a concoction of noises and the occasional flashing light. The sounds are tape recordings that are being recorded over and over each other and will eventually degrade due to their delicate nature. The work is about memory and its volatile nature and asks what is a haunting, if not a memory in space? And what is a memory, if not a haunting of the body? FK Alexander’s piece was called ‘No Where // Now Here’ and was about the destruction as a process of construction and it’s futility. ‘Site’ was a piece by Poppy Jackson involved her straddling the roof of Toynbee Studios for 4 hours, completely naked. Although this sounds fairly striking it’s almost as if she’s become as one with the building, part of its very architecture, as if her body is an extension of the brickwork. Zierle & Carter was the final performance we saw. The viewer was asked to remove their shoes and then to keep six pomegranate seed in their mouth before entering the genuine, masonic temple. The description will not do it justice and therefore cannot be told as to do so would reflect badly upon the work.