m a g i c a l c a m e r a s

We attended a lecture last night by Mark Lewis. The only memory we had of his work was at the 2009 Venice Biennale, and it was a foggy one at that! The work in question was a film where a group of individuals were in the stage before a fight would begin; pushing and shoving each other while shouting and pointing at others. However, this was the conditions of the film the entire way through making them a part of the background. So, we remembered this being a relatively interesting idea but being only 14 at the time we probably hadn’t (and if we had we had since forgotten) the context and thinking that went along with this idea, hence the desire to go to the talk. On a non-art related topic, throughout the entire lecture he seemed like such a lovely and genuine person, an example being when someone’s phone went off about 15 minutes in and instead of glaring at them or just ignoring it he said ‘ah don’t worry it’s happened to me before…I don’t like the ring though, could you maybe change the ring?’ Which was met with a chuckle from the audience, diffusing the embarrassment from the person whose phone ran and potentially allowing the audience an insight into his personality. Returning to the main body of the talk, he began by discussing the notion of eliminating typically ideas of cinema such as characters, narrative, dialogue etc. and instead using the limitations of the physicality of film (this was when he originally began making films in 35mm). Therefore, the structure of these moving images is imposed by the mechanism itself, in this sense he was/is very true to the material he’s employing. Time is a big factor in this, his films would last as long as a 35mm reel of film and in addition to this, regularly his films begin as zoomed in as the camera would possibly go and finish and zoomed out. These editing decisions therefore are taken out of the equation, he doesn’t have to think about them.

Another consideration is regarding sound; all but one of the films he shared were silent and he said that his answer to the question, ‘why silent?’, is ‘why sound?’. Sound has no automatic tie with film just like it has nothing to do with a painting or a sculpture. It should be an added extra in the same fashion that if the barista at Starbucks asks if you want chocolate sprinkles on your Venti, sugar-free, non-fat, vanilla soy, double shot decaf, no foam, extra hot, Peppermint White Chocolate Mocha with light whip and extra syrup you consider whether it’s appropriate as opposed to just saying yes because it’s there. The lack of sound also allows you to look and look without distraction. He spoke at great length about the concept of imagery and making pictures so the lack of sound makes perfect sense. It also comes back to a comment about art establishments; museums are not designed to contain thing that emit sound, so removing the sound is making it an ‘art form’ in their eyes. Finally, he discussed how, in his opinion, it actually has to be a really good film if it’s a silent one because there’s no sound to save you or to carry a potentially weak element. An obvious, but still relevant reference point is John Cage’s work 4'33, more specifically about removing aspects of something in order to really be able to pay attention to it.

One of our favourite films he showed was called ‘The Pitch’, which is all about the idea of extras and how they’re what makes a film real. If one was to make an entire film with no extras it would feel strange and alien. Now, this would not necessarily be a bad thing but if the film is intended to be relatable to the lives we all live then extras are essential. However, on the other side, if one was to remove the main characters from a film it would just be life as most of us experience it on a day to day basis. To contextualise this he told the short story ‘On Exactitude in Science’ by Jorge Luis Borges; in the story, it becomes essential to create a map as big and as detailed as the world itself. Yet due to its impracticality it couldn’t be used so instead they went back to just using the world instead. So, in making this comparison what we think he was saying was that truly depicting everyday life is more interesting than a life size version of it.

To return to his obsession with film as a material, he spoke about it as being something which has equal time in production and consumption. In this sense has a life span, which in turn makes film inherently about death or at least mortality. This is applicable when observing that all his films are (or appear to be) one continuous shot. This is another attempt to reduce the cinematic tropes within his works; cuts create a narrative. It also doesn’t allow a viewer any time to breathe, to recap what’s been happening in the previous section. This links in with his desire for the camera to appear magical yet he doesn’t want the special effects too…‘special effects’. We’ve all seen the crazy stuff they can do in Harry Potter and Star Wars (and it looks amazing) and we believe it that its happening in front of us. But Mark Lewis wants you to want to believe it, like you would with a magic trick, even though in your heart you know it’s not possible.

Finally, a beautiful response to the question ‘Why do you take film the things that you do?’ was ‘because I want to see what they would look like as films’. A line which he credited to the 20th Century street photographer Garry Winogrand, who said the same thing but with ‘films’ being replaced by ‘photographs’. A genuinely exciting talk, with thorough works steeped with intelligent consideration.

i n c o m p l e t e s t o r i e s

We've been ill* 

*words that also apply here are sick, poorly, indisposed, ailing, not (very) well, not oneself, not in good shape, in a bad way, out of sorts, not up to par, under/below par, peaky, liverish, queasy, nauseous, off, off colour, under the weather, not up to snuff, funny, peculiar, crummy, lousy, rough, ropy or grotty.

But we did still manage to stay well during a couple of our exhibitions that occurred the previous week; the isthisit? online show that coincided with the start of the Scaffold Gallery one and 'An Art School' at Tate Modern. We decided to produce works specifically for the online exhibition as opposed to merely submitting photographs of the physical pieces we were going to have in the gallery space. With 'Invent Something' we went over a couple of thoughts around looking for a file on a computer and what happens when one searches for something that doesn't exist; either you get a pop-up notification suggesting what you are looking for is not present in the place you are looking or you're merely faced with an empty screen.

We played around with this but it didn't feel like what we wanted to portray - it needed more presence (even though we didn't want it to be ACTUALLY seen but it needed more of a shadow or echo). We therefore went for a file that is visible but one that appears empty within the thumbnail - this felt more in line with the original idea of a layered reality.

For 'Exploit People' we created a similar sort of time sheet to the physical one but this time we were using Microsoft Excel which only came into existence in 1985, over a decade later than the first use of the bar code in 1974. This time the entire sheet has been filled as opposed to it stopping on the date which the historical event took place. This new document isn't viewed in the same way as the one which has a stronger resemblance to what might have actually happened - this is inherent in the way we act with digital objects, due to them being constantly editable, history is never stuck, it has no need to be paused because it can be rewound over and over again. This time sheet may have been completed but that is only to do with providing all the necessary information for a user to then do with what they please.

Both the works in the How to Get Rich Quick exhibition owe a huge amount to the idea of film props and how objects can be used to tell a story. However, because these props are left to fend for themselves, they tell an incomplete tale, one which can only attempt to be complete by the use of ones imagination. This is a relatively big part of what we're interested in - how can we make something which instills a level of uncertainty into the minds of the people viewing it - definitely a big challenge and we're only claiming to try but we think that it might start with proposing or displaying something that isn't totally 'finished' or only contains half the required information and commands some interaction in order to fill it to an amount that makes it legible to the individual.

a r t d o e s n ' t g r o w n o n t r e e s y o u k n o w

We’ve got all the work for ’14 Ways to Get Rich Quick’ finally sorted! Unfortunately we can’t be there for the install due to having to be present at the Tate opening tomorrow. The work we’ve made for the ‘exploit people’ method of getting rich takes the form of a replication of an old clock-in sheet from the 26th June 1974 fixed to the wall using chewed pieces of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit chewing gum. The clock-in sheet will be made to look as if it belonged to Marsh’s Supermarket employee Sharon Buchanan who, at 08:01am on 26th June 1974, served a customer by the name of Clyde Dawson who purchased a 10-pack of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit for $0.67. This was the first purchase ever to involve a product being scanned and registered using a Universal Product Code, UPC, otherwise known as the Barcode.

While the barcode is an extremely beneficial invention it also has many negatives, the image of a barcode is  synonymous with many of these negatives, one of them being the exploitation of cheap labour; one of the considerable aspects of consumerism that are morally wrong. The barcode enabled local supermarkets to become global supermarkets, making hundreds of millions for the people at the top, while the wages for people like Sharon Buchanan only really increased with inflation. The barcode allowed the gap caused by exploitation of labour to increase; the amount the employers make for their company versus the amount they get paid/are valued by the company. Thus fuelling a tiered wage system and creating a hierarchy of class allowing shareholders to profit off their dividends; sitting and collecting as apposed to sitting and scanning.

The title of the work is ‘Woodland’s Bullseye’, named after the incident where inventor, Norman Joseph Woodland, had the idea to create a visual morse code that formed the first barcode. Woodland spent time at his grandparents' home in Miami. While sitting on the beach he ran his fingers through the sand, making dot and dash marks, like the Morse code he had learned when he was a Boy Scout. He realised that it would be possible to encode information using simple lines on paper to signify different numbers. In their first form barcodes took the form of thin and thick lines in concentric circles, much like a bullseye. Prior to having this eureka moment he worked on the Manhattan Project where he was part of the team that worked to develop the atomic bomb, consequently the term ‘Woodland’s Bullseye’ refers to both a military bullseye and Barcodes. The Barcode is now used 5 billion times a day, with the unstoppable rise of consumerism, chain-stores and digital purchase it’s no surprise that it all started with 31-year-old Sharon Buchanan scanning a packet of chewing gum, an impulse buy.

The work for the show at Tate Modern is also complete! The exhibition is titled 'Tate Exchange: An Art School' so we’re setting up a school-photo stand. The viewers are going to be grouped with strangers and photographed by a professional photographer in the style of a photograph taken at school on a 'school photo day'. The viewers will then get to take away a souvenir involving the photo from their interaction with the artwork and with the strangers in the space. There will be a range of souvenirs available, ranging from a keyring which we will print in the space to a 2017 yearbook which will involve images of people from the entire class (all strangers). They will be able to order this and have it posted to them after the class is complete.

The yearbook will involve a fictional school/academy with everything from the school song to a school crest and a word from the fictional headmaster of the institution. This has been influenced by research into distributed networks, especially online where we see individuals signing up/enroling/pledging allegiance to institutions populated by strangers and without a physical location: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram etc. We’ve got props and outfits/school uniforms available as well 'art' objects for the 'students' to pose with; all of which will hopefully encourage people to get involved with the artwork more, and the speed of it will allow more people to experience it.

d o n ' t b e l i e v e w h a t y o u s e e o n t v

A relatively productive few days has enabled us to complete some of the work for Scaffold Gallery’s show ’14 Ways to Get Rich Quick’. Our research into ‘The Next Big Thing’ landed us on a descriptive path; we realised that text was required to ‘set the scene’, as it were, since this is where our interest stemmed from in the first place. This of course is the narrative that was built up around Geoffrey Buonardi’s personality and history to order to increase his artistic value. The work is therefore a standard art gallery plaque stating all the facts that come from the film; price, title, medium etc. included is a description of Buonardi, the same description that raises the monetary value of his work from $0 to $10,000. It accompanies a space on the wall which is marked out with masking tape as to act as a suggestion of the work which isn’t there due to the fact that it was stolen/never existed in the first place due to it being the subject of a film. The title is ‘the act is not culpable unless the mind is guilty’ and it refers to 'Mens rea' which is ‘guilty mind’ in Latin and is a legal term about intention to commit a prohibited act. This relates to both the idea of stealing the painting and the film’s inaccurate depiction artists. We are also involved in unlawful activity as we are, in a sense, acting as thieves; thieving the thieves through invention of an artwork.

‘An evening with isthisit?’ opens tonight and we’ve got a work from the obstructure series in there displayed in a slightly different way to how we originally intended but it’s still conceptually in line with what it’s about. It’s on the wall on the middle of a ring binder (pictured below). It relates to the office imagery/professional tools of Google SketchUp, which is intended to be used by architects, or individuals of similar professions.

r e a l a r t b y f a k e a r t i s t

The exhibition with Scaffold Gallery is fast approaching and we’re beginning to collate our research and decide on what to make. It’s titled ’14 Ways To Get Rich Quick’ and it’s an exhibition styled as an artists’ response to (as you’ve probably guessed) a get rich quick guide. We’ve got ‘invent something’ and ‘exploit people’ which is why we’ve been looking into fictional artists such as Gilda Dent (thinking down the invent path). This research is about looking into how art and artists are portrayed within popular culture. It led us to The Cultural Norms Theory; the theory states that the medium provides a ‘definition of a situation’ which the actor believes to be real. This definition provides guides for action that appear to be approved and supported by society. The theory was born from the notion that television characters do influence viewer behaviours. We’ve also been sourcing various instances of art and artists being referenced in films and TV. Some examples are Rachel Rosenthal and David Hyde Pierce in ‘Frasier’; Jennie Garth and Jason Wiles in ‘Beverly Hills, 90210’; and a possible favourite is Chris Eigeman in ‘The Next Big Thing’. It’s a brilliantly terrible portrayal of an artist and seems to perpetuate the notion that if you’re an honest, hard-working painter who just can’t break into the art world, it’s probably because you’re a boring person. It seems like people want their artists to suffer. The stereotype made famous by Van Gogh, and beaten to death by the media ever since, is basically the entire ethos in the premise of the film. Gus Bishop (Chris Eigeman) is a struggling artist who pays the bills doing clerical work of an unspecified nature. His generically pleasant paintings would feel at home in a hospital waiting room, and like most of us who pass such artworks en route to getting our flu shots, the art world doesn’t even notice them.

Things change when a petty thief named breaks into Gus’s apartment and steals one of his canvases. He pawns it off on his landlord with a made-up back-story about the mysterious and reclusive artist, a drug addict and incest survivor who also served in Vietnam. The landlord then sells it to his friend’s daughter’s gallery, adding that the artists family was killed by a tornado that ripped through his trailer park, and literally overnight, the art world is buzzing with intrigue. This ‘artist’s past’ thing is still something that is responsible for a work being recognised as ‘good’ or ‘important’ and so this layering of narratives and histories onto this one work doesn’t make it good film but it’s an interesting idea none the less. It’s become like an intentional Chinese whispers where no one knows what’s ‘true’ and what’s ‘false’ anymore.

To return to the story, the thief entangles Gus in a ‘get rich quick’ (which is a nice link to the Scaffold exhib’) scheme to sell more of his paintings under this false identity, convincing him that he doesn’t have what it takes to make it in the art world by himself. He does this by saying ‘you’re not gay, you’re not a junkie, you don’t paint with your teeth. You’re a middle-class white kid from New Brunswick, New Jersey – zero sex appeal.’ Pretty bizarre considering all we seem to hear about is that all artists are white middle class men – he seems to be the ideal candidate! But anyway, the scam works, and the thief positions himself as the artist’s exclusive representative, handling all of his business transactions with galleries and the press so no one ever sees him. We have no idea why people think artists have reps but this could be a potential area to go down – appoint a representative for us or maybe even make one up by using the descriptions from the film. We think that we’re meant to be rooting for Gus through all of this – he just wants to make a living from his art, and it seems the only way to do that is by working the system. But there is nothing to like about him because he is so boring (as the plot requires). He is as humuorless as his art, neither of which makes for compelling cinema. Having once been rejected by the art world, he is a reluctant ‘everyman.’ Looking in from the outside, he condemns it for its duplicity and pretentiousness, jealous of his own alter-ego, and uses this to justify his crime. After his colossal success, Gus finally gets fed up with his role in a corrupt system and exposes himself as a fraud. By doing so, he also reveals the hypocrisy of the art world that fell for his deception. Nearly every art world character in the film is a clown, carrying on melodramatically with an air of silly entitlement. Turtleneck-wearing arts administrators throw around meaningless artspeak in a boardroom. Some favourites are ‘He’s an anti-positivist!’ or ‘He’s a trans-realist!’. All said while catty dealers and collectors trip over themselves trying to get their piece of the glory. The exception is an art critic whom Gus falls in love with because she writes glowing reviews of his work (and she’s pretty).

The film wants to operate as a cultural commentary (before deciding to become a rom-com right at the end). But it’s too unambiguous in its moral position to hold any real depth or complexity, and the cringe-worthy performances make light of any serious critique it might offer. It made us wonder whom the audience for such a film might be when all that’s left is a string of obvious goofs and gaffs about an easy target that’s too specialised to attract mainstream interest. So perhaps that’s where the art happens? It’s not at the inception of the work, but it’s receival. It’s what happens beyond the parameters of the screen. Stuff that might happen if these events actually occurred in the world we live in or perhaps after the film has finished. The work could possibly manifest itself as a conversation/interview between us and all the people in these sorts of films who ask if the wannabe artist is ‘gonna get a job doing paintings once school’s done?’ to quote ‘Art School Confidential’. We’ll do some more thinking about this over the next couple of weeks. 

h o w m a n y a r t s c a n y o u c o u n

In search is a Christmas-y holiday we found ourselves in Stockholm this week and had the pleasure of visiting a couple of their galleries, one a small commercial space and the other one of the biggest public art museums. Loyal had an exhibition titled ‘Toys “r” Us by Louise Enhöring. The show consisted of 5 or 6 close up photographs of children’s toys, a fairly simple premise but the images themselves were aesthetically interesting/thought provoking. There was the whole guessing game happening inside your head, attempting to piece together a puzzle when you’ve only been given half the pieces. However, the work was more about the idea of this synthetic adult world we’ve created for children; tiny cars, tiny ovens, even tiny people. This seemed fairly reasonable, if not slightly cliché. We couldn’t shake the feeling that actually they were just nice looking photographs that they hoped would sell. Not that that’s a crime, they sure would look nice about the mantel piece where great aunt Ruth’s urn sits (RIP-in-peace), but perhaps a bit more could’ve been done to support the thinking behind it. 

Our next stop was Moderna Musset, similar to Tate in London with regards to its size, content and the fact that it’s publicly funded. We took a look round the permanent collection which is always fun in any big art museum; getting a glimpse of the classic including perhaps 30 works by Marcel Duchamp. Another great aspect of this was that, again similar to Tate Britain, their collection goes through different time periods and consequently different movements in art history. We definitely find this process of reflection and hindsight hugely beneficial; the lineage of art is something that comes into our practice and general research fairly frequently. They also had a special exhibition on titled ‘THE NEW HUMAN’. It was exploring our human condition in a fast-changing world. How do we perceive and understand ourselves? How do we live, socialise, organise and control each other? And what kind of future awaits us? These are all the sorts of questions that appeared to be being thrown out there at the same time as offering insights into a global war-zone of religious fanaticism and political extremism but also highlight examples of solidarity and compassion. As we watched each film the content seemed to oscillate between the hysterically absurd and the deeply serious, almost as if it was like a metaphor for mankind skirting the borderline between ultimate disaster and the emergence of something new (which really summarises the whole show). It was a superb line up of artists including some favourites including Ed Atkins, Harun Farocki, Frances Stark, Hito Steyerl, Superflex and Ryan Trecartin. The Superflex film was not one we were aware of and was certainly in the top of our list. It was called ‘The Financial Crisis (Session I-IV)’ and it’s all about the financial crisis and meltdown from a therapeutic perspective. A hypnotist guides you through your worst nightmares to reveal the crisis without as the psychosis within. During 4 sessions you experience the fascination of speculation and power, too fear, anxieties and frustration of loosing control, economic loss and personal disaster. In Session 1 "The Invisible Hand" you’re introduced to the backbone of capitalism, the idea of the 'invisible hand' as the benign faith in self-regulation that prevents markets and people from spinning out of economic control. Under hypnosis you are asked to interrogate that faith and to imagine a world no longer governed by the invisible hand. In the following Sessions we go deeper and deeper into the financial crisis. A truly thorough work and one that was genuinely thought-provoking but without being didactic in its delivery.

We’ve also got round to tweaking The SketchUp Residency website so go check that out >>>here<<< if you have a second and read the press release for Bob Bicknell-Knight’s work. Also if you’re interested in taking part them please do email us for more information, the next open call will be published soon! Something else that’s now up is our interview in Art Reveal magazine so head over >>>there<<< and give it a read.

a r t a b o u t a r t

So the launch of The SketchUp Residency went well! We’re still attempting to iron out some issues with the model but the site is up and running! We’re also in the process of writing a press release that goes with the work on display. We’ve also sent off our answers to our interview that will be published in Art Reveal’s next issue so will post a link to it when it’s out.

Another episode of Artists and Friends has been recorded and will be up by the end of the evening so head over to that area of the world wide web to hear our thoughts on the Carroll Fletcher show ‘Looking at one thing and thinking of something else: An Exhibition in Four Parts, Part 2: Observations’ and the Evan Roth talk that went with it. We also recommend going to see Martin Creed’s ‘Work 409’ in the lift at the South Bank Centre and deliberate over some of the works in the pop up show by Hayward Gallery titled ‘The Infinite Mix’.

Some new research we’re embarking onto is that of fictional artists. This is a slightly different idea to that of William Cost or Millicent Place since we have not invented these artists; Gilda Dent is a good example of this. For those of you who don’t know, Gilda Dent, occasionally referred to as Grace instead of Gilda, is a fictional character that has appeared in Batman comic books. Associated with her fiancé (later husband) Harvey Dent, who becomes the criminal mastermind Two-Face, she has since been a recurring character throughout various Batman stories involving Two-Face. In her first appearance, Gilda is the fiancée of Harvey Dent the brilliant and handsome district attorney of Gotham City. Gangster Boss Maroni throws acid in Harvey's face during Maroni's trial, scarring half of his face and consequently warping his mind. (Now this is where our interest beyond that of the narrative lies); because Gilda is a sculptor, Harvey believes that she worships beauty; therefore (in Dent's mind), neither she – nor anyone else – could ever love or accept a person with such a monstrously ‘hideous’ face as his. Gilda creates a bust of Harvey, which he smashes with a mallet to symbolise his new, ruined self. Even as Two-Face begins a dual career of crime and Robin Hood-style philanthropy, however, he still longs passionately for Gilda, and she for him. So here we have what appears to be a somewhat mild character, with respect to others that surround her, yet she has a huge effect on the entire storyline. This has conceptual ties to other works we’ve produced that explore how art and artists are represented through popular culture. Bob Kane and Bill Finger (the creator of Batman) have decided that art is something which is aesthetically pleasing and conforms to traditional notions of beauty. This is not so bizarre since quite a large percentage of people definitely think this way. However, Kane and Finger have created this character which fulfils the stereotype, which I think we can all agree is a step up from just thinking something in ones head. This is a particularly interesting example due to her significance to the story – Gilda being this symbol of Harvey’s insanity due to her affiliation with the art world; it’s because she’s an artist that he doesn’t think she’ll love him despite his deformed face, maybe if she’d been a musician it wouldn’t have been so bad. We’re not sure how this will pan out into a work (or works) but it’s just some research we’ve been mulling over...