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Despite both of us being ill this week (btw you can stop sending flowers guys) things really stepped up a gear. After spending the last few weeks mulling over ideas and limply ticking the boxes of the ever-thrilling Pratt assignments, we finally managed to achieve some space to start making these ideas into things. Having actual objects seems to be a necessity at Pratt; heaven forbid that you turn up to a class with just research! Questioning why one is making what they’re making isn’t really a thing that is encouraged here, at least not by most tutors. Anyway, we’ve discussed the bizarreness of Pratt before; we shan’t bore you with anymore.
We recently went to Gavin Brown’s enterprise to see a show by Thomas Bayrle. Dominating the room was four of Bayrle’s recent paintings from the ‘Carravaggio Series’; on a trip to Rome Baryle went to the Contarelli Chapel in San Lugi dei Francesi to see Carravaggio’s famous painting ‘San Matteo e l’angelo’. In response to his experiences on this trip Bayrle repeated images of this work in iphone screens that themselves were twisted and distorted into the forms of ‘San Matteo e l’angelo’. While the reference to hyper-communication and the smart phone acting as extensions of human body is a path well trodden, we enjoyed these works, they didn’t seem to take themselves too seriously and aside from the fact that these images really didn’t need to be painted (they could easily have been made using the very tools it was critiquing) it was a nice idea. This format was repeated over four large canvases, all of which were variations on the same image with different backgrounds or different configurations of iPhones. We didn’t really believe that it was necessary to have so many of these as all it did was nod towards small aesthetic modifications of the same image, thus dissolving one idea over four works. Perhaps that was the point, but it was equally unclear whether this was purposeful. The arrangement was also rather odd, there did not seem to be any progression running through the works. Accompanying the ‘Carravaggio Series’ were three video works, the first two greet you as you enter the space. Shown on two old reel-to-reel super 8 projectors, they project small collage animations that continuously loop. The clicking sound of the projectors can be heard throughout the space, we assume that this sound would be nostalgic to people of a certain age; reminiscent of home movies and DIY film nights. The third video in the space sitting uncomfortably between the ‘Carravaggio Series’ paintings is created using rubber stamps and stop motion. It shows an aerial view of two people pulling up in a car, leaving the car, returning and then reversing off. As this loop repeats itself we get closer and closer to these figures until they are just spots on a screen, unrecognizable as figures, resembling images of cell division. This process then repeats itself in reverse, and loops, creating and dismantling totalities from individual cells merged together to create narrative.
In the same building was a Gregory Edwards exhibition at 47 Canal, in which he attempts to tackle the “contextless place inside of the screen”. Instead he creates paintings where the only link to the screen are renditions of recognizable computer icons, symbols and emojis. The works seem to be painted renditions of a vapourwave/PC music aesthetic which has always existed online, it seems absurd to remove these from their habitat when you have easy access to it; by all means look at these aesthetics but painting them and putting your ‘style’ into it seems ridiculous, Edwards has missed the point – even Rhianna stole online aesthetics better!
At Sperone Westwater there was a retrospective in painting, sculpture and installation by the late Otto Piene. Red Sundew 2, 1970, an inflatable sculpture, (installed for the first time since its initial exhibition at the Honolulu Academy of Arts) inflates and deflates within the space on its own accord. The fluctuation of this process gives life to the sculpture; it draws in deep breaths and releases this air as long exasperated sighs. On the second floor of the gallery is an installation of Piene’s ‘Lichtballette’ works; rotating bulbs are placed inside various containers with hundreds of small holes. The light, projected onto the gallery walls, moves around the room colliding with light projected from other similar boxes.
It has began to become clear that in quite a few of our recent works we have been operating as a company; hiring people to accomplish tasks that we may not otherwise be able to achieve, or in general appearance (the shutterstock aesthetic on this website is an early and perhaps previously unrealised example of this). A recent work involving the twelve disciples’ names on cooperate name-tags is an example of this; the badges are to be laid out on a table in a similar manner to that of the entrance to a cooperate event. Historical events (especially those that were recorded in paintings or books) are intricately planned; everything from the people who attended these events to where everyone is sitting is planned. With this in mind the church is no different from a company intricately planning a children’s book or TV show to analyse the best set-up to make the most profit; what characters are children going to respond to positively, what format and what sort of story. It is said that history is written by the winners, CEOs of large companies are definitely the winners of today.
While thinking about this relationship between producer and consumer we have begun to expand this children’s book analogy and actually make one in an attempt to understand the process behind items such as these. There is also an interesting relationship between children’s books and art; an artist is expected to make work while holding a correct moral stance. You rarely get any artworks that are immoral, and if you do then they are generally immoral for a reason, rather than as a by-product of another action. A children’s book has to hold a similar position; they generally teach children how to be morally correct; a curious relationship exists between artist and children’s book author. In an effort to understand this we have written a children’s book about a white crayon who is shunned by her community because she cannot draw on white paper, she eventually finds out that she can draw on black paper and draws the night sky. We have now hired an illustrator to help us complete the book and the preliminary drawings look really great. The company-style method of making work has led us to be interested in hiring people; we recently hired a film-maker to help us make ‘All Art Begins With Shopping’. It felt suitable to make a film about buying art materials by buying it from someone else, we paid Sarah Harvey £30.00 to make us the video. Now we have the video we have begun to think about how it is displayed; the plan is to project the video onto a pre-stretched canvas bought from an art shop still in its shrink-wrapping. The email discourse with Sarah will also be displayed next to this essentially informing the viewer that the video was bought and not made – questioning the distinction between the two.
Making video’s using vloggers is essentially recycles material that we do not own, making art upon art, bringing up the internet authorship debate again – can you own anything online? Should the ‘owner’ of online content be precious about how it’s used? The notion of ownership is slowing dying; uploading content instantly makes it part of the public sphere, in partaking in this act one relinquishes control of these objects. Users are able to download, share, link, remix and (most importantly) repost. Originality has finally met its match! In highlighting the fact that nothing is original the online world not only questions the validity of the ‘author’s’ possession of content but also demonstrates the perpetual repetition of simply being. We only build on what others have built for us; any new discoveries, inventions or artworks are facilitated by the previous work of others. Hollywood boomed because it was physically far away from the patents of the east coast of America, the patent system doesn’t recognize the value and importance of building upon the ideas of others in order to further accelerate the process of innovation. We are hindered by the myth of the ‘genius’ sitting in solitude creating something that is entirely original and unique. Our social structure treats these people as icons while in reality they re-mold the past into a future that has the appearance of originality. With this in mind we are going to sweep up the studio floor, collecting the dust and debris of student’s artworks over the years and placing it on a pedestal. Art upon art, idea upon idea.
In terms of other work we have bought a large job lot of keys off eBay, which we are planning to use for a performance involving testing these keys on various locked and un-lockable items – also bought online. We have also been thinking about using these keys for a participatory raffle-style work where the viewer buys a small set of keys which they can then attempt to unlock a series of locked boxes containing prizes of some sort. Another idea came form parents measuring the height of their children over their childhood; this tracks a child’s progression in relation to their own body – something that they can instantly relate to when they’re older. We thought we could start offering a service where we use a child’s school textbooks to make a font using their handwriting – thus tracking another form of progression that’s relative to other technologies. As children that have grown up with computers we have typed more than we have written, making a font using our own handwriting removes the universal appearance of documents made using 12pt Times New Roman and replaces them with the ability to be misread ie. The ability to be a human.