b r u s h i n g o f f t h e c o b w e b s

Our first curatorial project seemed to go down well! All who experienced it enjoyed it and we got some good feedback. We actually managed to get 6 hours of content from over 70 submissions (big up Curator Space). We had numerous technical difficulties on the day a huge number of them due to the mac-pc divide. However we still managed to show the films and should have a full set of photos once we get them back from the photographers of the event.

We’ve also finalised the payment for the exhibition with the group of us from CSM meaning that we have another exhibition to prepare for on the 28th and 29th of next month at Bones and Pearl Gallery (check em out >>here<<). The initial plans were to have a publication and to stage events over the two nights but how much of that has stuck we don’t know. This could be a good opportunity to exhibit ‘It's the canapés that shade me now’, the work where we get our mothers to prepare the snacks for the event and the table is left until the end of the exhibition. This would be a side work and we would also have a slightly more performative or presented piece if possible. This could either be us turning off the lights and doing a reading of the descriptive texts of famous works for bind people or hiring an actor of sort to act as a school-teacher reading out ‘The White Crayon’ as if it was to a class of 5 year olds.

Something we’ve been considering recently is the renaming of the sims painting works. Perhaps giving them individual titles that the game applies automatically and then have a name for the series. Going back into what we found interesting in the first place was the stereotype that was encompassed if not in forced. The notion that this is what being an artist is and being ‘good’ at making art is making things that mimic the world around you as exactly as possible. There was also this idea that learning is linear; once you’ve attained a certain level of expertise you’re never able to access the lower levels again. So a key concept to the work is learning; the lack of learning about art from anyone playing the game and the bizarre way learning is portrayed in the game. The other is choices that have been made in relation to this learning; someone, somewhere has decided this is what being ‘good’ at art looks like. The quote by Seth Godin “Learning is not done to you, it is something you choose to do” springs to mind so perhaps ‘Learning is Something You Choose’ is a nice reference to that. We could also turn to Socrates, “Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.” ‘Abandon the Vessel, Protect the Flame’ might be something to consider too. it’s on the list…

p.s we still don’t have any internet *crying emoji face*

t y i n g u p l o o s e e n d s

We’re still attempting to sort out the Internet in our new house and therefore having both Wi-Fi and the laptop with the blog posts is a rarity. But the good news is we’ve got the full package for the Brookes and Groves exhibition; managed to get a chair, side table, photo album and booked a photographer!

‘Digital Wasteland’ is coming along nicely too – we’ve collected all the content and stitched it together to generate one massive film. A favourite is Stuart Layton's 'Somewhere Between the Sublime and the Ridiculous' (linked >>>here<<<).

The group show with others from CSM is also looking like it might finally happen too – Bones and Pearl Gallery are free from the 28th-30th of October which should be perfect! We attended the opening of Peter Wächtler’s new solo show at Chisenhale Gallery. It’s always quite a decision to take a huge amazing space, such as Chisenhale Gallery, and only show one film projected onto a wall. We always approach these sorts of shows fairly gingerly since quite regularly it can be rather indulgent or unapologetic. These aren’t necessarily bad characteristics but exhibitions, which consider the viewer’s experience, tend to me more rewarding. The film itself is made through traditional cel animation, soundtracked by a rock and roll song. The animation depicts the central subject’s departure along a country road, set against a backdrop of moonlit landscapes. The protagonist’s repetitive stasis invokes an ambiguous relationship with acts of progress or withdrawal, as well as our own misplaced desires. The film hints towards this notion of leaving; the character in the film is walking away from the audience and then the song itself also speaks about leaving. A thoughtful aspect of the set-up that went along with this was that the film was being shown on a wall that was placed in the centre of the room. The film can only viewed from going around the wall to the back where it is being projected. This allows the viewer to not only to see the film but also the door from which they entered, and consequently they can have a double view of both the departing character on the wall and other visitors leaving the gallery.

John Cage’s exhibition at Frith Street Gallery ‘Lecture on the Weather’ is a fairly beautiful one, as per by our ol’ pal John. The show is owes itself to Henry David Thoreau and his famous book ‘Walden; or Life in the Woods’. John Cage was devoted to Henry David Thoreau and for ‘Lecture on the Weather’, Cage drew excerpts from Thoreau’s classic texts, which he then cast into a score using I Ching-derived chance operations; additionally, each score was intermittently graced with chance-determined fragments of Thoreau’s nature drawings, which were to be interpreted as music, in the manner of graphic notation. At the start, Cage delivers a softly polemic prelude, and when the readings and musical realisations commence, so also begins a slowly escalating weather soundscape created by Maryanne Amacher. The work culminates with a film by Luis Frangella: Thoreau’s elemental nature drawings, now stark white on black, simulating flashes of lightning on a dark and stormy night. All of the elements – speech, music, film, lighting, and weather – combine to create a stunningly sensorial experience. A lovely idea, produced in a thoughtful manner, again, as per.

r e t u r n o f t h e a r t i s t s

We’re back from our holiday and read some great stuff whilst away. The first of them was Ryan Gander’s ‘The Boy Who Always Looked Up’. Being a children’s book it carries certain childish connotations, however, this book is no less intelligent and carefully laid out than any other. It tells a story of a boy who befriends an architect. The Modernist architect Ernö Goldfinger and his Trellick Tower in London are strongly hinted at through the entire book which falls in line with Gander’s other works where he plays with notions of fiction.

Next up was ‘The Outsider’ which was pretty bizarre. The narrators matter-of-fact tone in which he talks about such emotive things such as love and sorrow gives the whole book such a creepy, nihilistic feel. The last of the novels was ‘Satin Island’ which we felt was a good lead on from Dave Eggers book ‘The Circle’. It has similar themes of technology and a future world (that maybe isn’t quite as far in the future as it may seem) but is maybe more mysterious and dark that ‘The Circle’; there are less characters and more ideas making it a more dense piece of writing. The man behind the famous ‘Pervert’s Guide to Cinema’, Slavoj Žižek, has a book titled ‘Demanding the Impossible’ which is made up of an interview with him. The book covers a crazy number of topics such as the uprisings of the Arab Spring, the global financial crisis, populism in Latin America, the rise of China and even the riddle of North Korea. He analyses Hollywood films, Venezuelan police reports, Swedish crime fiction and much else. He also explores possibilities for change as well as the current state of affairs. What sort of society is worth striving for? Why is it difficult to imagine alternative social and political arrangements? What are the bases for hope? A key obligation in our troubled times, argues Zizek, is to dare to ask fundamental questions: we must reflect and theorise anew, and always be prepared to rethink and redefine the limits of the possible. We weren’t in agreement with everything that he was talking about and he was quite absolute which we find concerning at times but you can’t argue that he has commitment.

‘What Money Can’t Buy’ is a frustratingly logical overview of the markets and how money can corrupt and permanently damage our views of potentially important ideas such as health, education and politics. Another one by Ryan Gander was ‘Ampersand’, a book which coincided with the opening of one of his exhibitions at The Palais de Tokyo in Paris. It consists of stories of a succession of disparate items, ranging from a mushroom knife to a worn blackboard to a pair of pyjama bottoms emblazoned with the ‘I LOVE NY’ logo. Each item is the subject of a brief description and a long essay that have been collected together in this book. Displayed in adjacent vitrines, these documents seem to reaffirm the relationship between the objects and their capacity to form a cohesive whole. It was a strangely voyeuristic feeling since it was a direct insight into Gander’s thought process.

Now that we’re back we’re all into preparing for our upcoming exhibitions. The 63Hz submissions are going well; got about 40 submissions so far which is just over half the content we need if we want to fill the 6 hour set without any repeats. We’ve also got the ‘Intimacy’ show with Brooks and Groves; we’ve purchased the photo album and just need a chair (which is in our sights) and a bedside table.

i s i t s t e a l i n g i f n o o n e o w n s i t ?

We haven’t got any Internet at the moment so bare with us slightly! We’ve also now moved house and were taking a walk around our new area and found a pubic sculpture (photographed below) that has a blank stand where a plaque should be. Previously this would’ve held information about the artist or the piece itself but it’s empty. This feels like a perfect opportunity to claim it as ours. A slightly different idea to finding stuff and making it our art, instead we’re finding art and calling it our art. It’s a readymade that’s already a piece of work but is free from interpretation and we can just plug our own ideas straight in. We’ll go back and take proper measurements and get a plaque made for it. What will be written on it is still being decided but should in some way be referential to the notion of ownership and re-appropriation.

We’ve got the photographs back of ‘Bought Objects’ in Glasgow and we’re pretty pleased with them. The show looked great and our piece was displayed just how we wanted it. The ‘Bedroom Artists’ exhibition have got back to us and said that they require plastic cups for the opening and so we’re going to provide them – continuing the benefactor style position.

Some new stuff is the music collective 8MANA have very kindly said that we can curate a room of their next event in Leeds. The title is ‘Digital Wasteland’ and we’re going to be doing a call out to artists who would like to be shown on the night – we’re thinking films and other visually exciting content to go along side their crazy sounds. Click >>here<< to check out the event and if you want to get involved then contact us! The other new project is a show organised by Brooks and Groves, who interviewed us recently, and we’re going to be showing a new work ‘just ignore me’ which consists of us hiring a photographer for the private view and displaying a photo album for the remaining days of the exhibition. The install shot is is mocked up below; we wanted a nostalgic, reflective aesthetic to go with the idea of photography being this contemplative medium. We’re going away and bringing a sack of books so expect some mini reviews on our return.

y o u ' l l n e v e r o u t l i v e t h e m e m e

It’s getting closer to the bedroom artists exhibition and we’re thinking more about wanting to in-act some of our more invisible works – changing the light bulbs, making the furniture, hiring a photographer etc. We wanted to try and respond to the space itself and the requirements of the individuals using it. The organisers are going to get back to us about things that might be required we then were thinking about getting a plaque made, making us look like benefactors or something; ‘The white paint for the exhibition was kindly provided by Sid and Jim’. This particular example also transforms the gallery walls into a work themselves, which is something else we’re interested in due to the significance of them in the art world.

We also watched ‘Money Monster’ during the week which was thoroughly enjoyed. It could be coined a 'lite' version of ‘The Big Short’ explaining the financial crisis in a way we can all understand; it allows a beaten-down underdog to literally hold a gun to the head of a banker who wiped out his savings at a stroke. The film was only ever going to end in one place but the idea of everyone suddenly caring about an individual for a day then turning his final moments into a meme only days after definitely had a shade (or two) of reality in it. It captured the idea that we’re heading into a place where we have no attachment or bind to an interest or spectacle. One moment everyone’s encapsulated by Elaine Thompson running 200 meters in 21.78 seconds, the next everyone’s talking about someone on big brother has stubbing their toe. They all just become one unit of excitement – in fact if anything, the meme will long out live the memory of Kyle.

This week has also seen Ryan Gander’s book ‘Culturefield’ finally make its way into our possession. It really is massive but consequently surveys his diverse oeuvre very well. There are all the favourite conceptual gestures in there – an invented word, a chess set, a television script and a children's book.

p l a n t i n g a r t s e e d s

Seeing such a vast quantity of high quality art in Berlin gave us plenty to think about with regards to our own work. Adrian Piper’s transparent grave in the wall of the gallery gave us the idea to perhaps install windows in the fake walls of a space in which we are exhibiting. The white walls of the gallery have serious power when it comes to the value of art objects. When something is placed within them it tells people that someone thinks that thing is important and has made a conscious decision to place it there, which most probably doesn’t have anything to do with its direct functionality. Yet the walls are usually fake ones, which is an interesting metaphor about art establishments already; something that attributes worth is false, perhaps rendering its judgments false also? This work would allow visitors to see through the fake walls to the ‘actual’ walls of the building itself, revealing the grubby, muddled and generally unkempt behind-the-scenes version of the gallery. This piece also nods to ‘The Human Condition’ and other works by the famous surrealist painter, René Magritte, that involve windows or openings that reveal something unexpected beneath. Magritte was bringing reality into questioning with these works, using the semiotics of the window’s portal-like qualities but at the same time their boundaries. Windows are not for proactive people; they are for those who would rather watch than do and depending on which side of the window one is positioned, the view can be either that of a pinhole or one which is expansive.

Something else we’re thinking about is setting up a Twitter account for Millie Place; she was the subject of ‘what you lose on the swings you gain on the roundabouts a recent work employing the use of voicemail recordings. The focus of the account would be that’s she’s the receptionist of a fictional gallery where she is constantly bored being a bored and so continually posts on Twitter. This would eventually paint a disparaged picture of a gallery that is perhaps never seen but described, with a variety of characters and situations becoming familiar to regular subscribers.

Inside the Jewish Museum there are a number of holes in the wall utilised to exhibit different artefacts. We noticed that on at the bottom of the wall directly underneath these were loads of tiny black marks from the shoes of (we assume children) who were unable to see so going right up to the edge of the wall on their tiptoes to see what’s inside the wall. This fell slightly into the same category of works that are invisible but also something else. Making a plinth which had similar shoe marks near the ground creates a story of what has happened before and the height of it would dictate what would go onto – maybe it’s 7ft tall rendering it too high for anyone to see what’s onto. There’s still plenty of stuff to think about.

This links in slightly to another idea that was triggered by seeing Joseph Beuys’ ‘Das Kapital Raum’, a works that uses multiple chalkboards on which have a variety of scrawled notes. If we were able to exhibit in a school or a site with a lecture theatre, a whiteboard for lecture we constructed would be fun to do. Giving snap shots of information and small facts that all link together in some way, again creating a narrative using a certain visual language.

Whilst in Berlin we also saw something we had never seen before…adverts on toilet paper. This wasn’t in an art context but just in a pub that we happened to go into. We could very easily print our own toilet paper and have it installed in the toilet of the gallery (it wouldn’t even need to be a gallery we were ‘technically’ exhibiting with ;) or require difficult installation shots because there are toilets everywhere!) What to put on the toilet paper is yet to be decided.

We also have a new ‘show’ in Istanbul in conjunction with The Institute of Fictional Exhibitions Art Foundation. Check out the press release below.

a r t f o r b r e a k f a s t l u n c h a n d d i n n e r

So we’ve returned from the Berlin Biennale wholly satisfied by what we experienced. There were a huge number of artists involved showing all number of works. We started off with Amelia Ulman and her Snapchat stories; unable to tell what imagery is genuine happenstance and what is fabricated coincidence the audience is taken on a bite sized journey of documentation-worthy happenings. We also see familiar content such as memes and fashion label ads’ restaged and re-filmed by Ulman.

Next was Cécile B. Evans’ monumental, hour long, film, commissioned for the exact purpose. Viewers were invited onto a platform surrounded by water with a giant projection of ‘What the heart Wants’ in front of them. Its beautiful CGI and bizarre non-linear, story line reduce the hour to what feels like a few moments and continues to stun the audience with lines such as, ‘most of the future hasn't happened yet’.

Heading down into what felt, very appropriately, like a bunker of sorts, we came across Josh Kline’s film, ‘Crying Games’. We’re faced with a number of individuals all weeping into their hands saying phrases such as ‘I can’t believe it’ or ‘so many people’. They look similar to people we recognise but with a slight twist; using open source software Kline has swapped the faces of the actors whom originally performed the role with alleged war criminals such as George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld.

‘Everything #5.1’ is a tombstone-shaped section of wall that has been removed. It’s a work by Adrian Piper. Covering the resultant cavity, a transparent sheet of plexiglass reads, ‘Everything Will Be Taken Away.’ A demonstration of a negative understanding of freedom, the equivalent of having ‘nothing left to lose.’ It is the liberty that results once the weight of signage, markers, and labels is removed.

Camille Henrot, responsible for the amazing film ‘Grosse Fatigue’, was exhibiting emails from a number of environmental charity organisations, printed onto rubber, along side her proposed responses and 11 large-scale paintings of animals. It felt slightly cruel to almost target these organisations with her ostentatious replies; they’re only trying to provide help to things are people that need it. If these had been from banks or network providers it would’ve been slightly clichés but it would have been more understandable. The paintings felt unnecessary also, obviously these animals are ones which show affection and the idea of paintings has this romanticism associated with it but the style was very particular and there didn’t seem to be any known reason for it.

Throughout the transitional spaces, stairwells and corridors, Puppies Puppies invited visitors to make use of the Purell hand sanitiser dispensers that he has placed around. A sneaky intervention that could easily have gone unnoticed and probably did by many. He also is creating a video everyday that the biennale is on.

‘Blockchain Visionaries’ is the work being shown by Simon Denny, which showcases three real companies – Ethereum, 21, Inc, and Digital Asset Holdings – at the forefront of digital monetary platforms and the application of the blockchain, a decentralised transaction database technology that is the backbone of the denationalised cryptocurrency BitCoin. Denny has created a trade-fair-like information booth and a postage stamp for each company, which individually embody a future direction in blockchain technology.

An idea, which we hope to eventually directly steal, is having a viewing of a film on a boat; no one can leave, there’s nothing else to do, you’re on a boat. All these points were clearly on the minds of Korakrit Arunanondchai and Alex Gvojic whose futuristic/dystopian film took on the form of an installation on board a boat. Another idea present in this work that was reinforced during the entirety of the biennale was that if you’re showing a film that’s more than 2 minutes, provide comfy seating.

It was very exciting to be able to encounter another of Jon Rafman’s VR pieces. It involved huge amounts of destruction, falling through and into things, whilst being visually stunning too. He also had some of the subject of his previous films, deferent animals of different sizes consuming each other, turned into sculptures. These weren’t to our liking at first; it looked as if he was merely capitalising on previous success in a different medium – O.K but not that interesting. Once we started the Oculus piece however, we learned they were props for what was happening within the world he had created.

Will Benedict’s music video for ‘Wolf Eyes’ had a pretty incredible an alien/sea creature main character and when combined with the lyric ‘I burn my dreams just to stay warm’ was enough to keep us amused for the duration.

Slightly disappointed with Ryan Trecartin & Lizzie Finch but perhaps that’s because we’ve seen quite a few of their works now and they are very similar in their insanity and nonsensicalness. Obviously that is the entire point of them but staying for the whole hour is a rather herculean task. Saying that, there was a rather poetic line in one of them – "who's time are we wasting?" – suggesting that if it was one persons time and not someone else’s they could merely be refunded by another.

Simon Fujiwara had worked with his brother (who works in ‘happiness economics’) to create ‘The Happiness Museum’. Creating a portrait of Germany through products and collections that nod towards what we call ‘happiness’.

After seeing Hito Steyerl’s astonishing film, ‘Factory of the Sun’, in Venice last year we were initially slightly let down by the stripped back aesthetic of the setting for ‘The Tower’ and ‘ExtraSpaceCraft’. Nevertheless, both films did prove to be well told stories, with ‘ExtraSpaceCraft’ shot at the actual site of the former National Observatory of Iraq, now in the territory of the Kurdistan Regional Government, proving quite an exception.

That's it for the Berlin Biennale highlights but we gave ourselves an extra day to see what else Berlin had to offer. One of these things was a show containing 50 works, and 150 poems by Carl Andre. It’s always fun to be able to walk on excessively expensive art so the floor works were greatly enjoyed. We haven’t really seen much of his poems before so it was interesting to be able to see so many at once. Most of them involve singular words repeated. Was a lovely connection between the text pieces and those of a tangible nature; they’re both true to the 'material' in question. There is nothing else present but the things itself and in this case the word is all that is required, pure and unadulterated. There was also an interview with Andre himself were he spoke about how people think his scatter works are very different from his more systematic, precise ones. He was suggesting that, on the contrary, there is a ‘generalised irregularity’ of his scatter works making them just as uniform or irregular as the other pieces.

In the same institution was Marcel Brodhauser’s film ‘The Rain (Project for a Text)’. In the film Brodhauser is trying to write while the rain constantly washes away the ink. In the final scene, the artist gives up and drops his pen concluding the exercise in futility.

In the grounds there was another piece very similar to the ideas we’re hoping to put into production soon; ‘The Right To Be Lazy’ - John Knight is an intervention into the existing architectural, social and political fabric of the place. The formal agreement between the institution and the artist was that the rondel, the circular lawn in front of the entrance to the building, was never to be tended and left to grow naturally by the command of the seasons. 

Erwin Wurm also had an exhibition, which we couldn’t miss. ‘Narrow house’ is a to-scale model of his childhood home, a building typical of Austria’s post-war suburban architecture, only the sculpture has been shrunk to 1m width. This goes along with his whole ‘alter the everyday perspective’ thing which he uses in a all number of mediums. There was great attention to detail inside the house, even photos and fridge magnets had been stretched/squashed. It also succeeded in making us feel overly oppressed.

His famous ‘One Minute Sculptures’ were also present in a way…the viewers were given objects that had been used previously to perform these sculptures and were invited to reenact them themselves. This was great fun to interact with whilst also watching others.

His beautiful instructional diagrams were on display too. His new sculptures had a similar theme; large scale domestic items such as a soap dispenser or a phone appeared to have been destroyed by use, buttons pushed in too far etc., but this was due to the fact the weren’t made of their original materials but a far softer one.

A funny/bizarre painting we saw, that we just couldn't not share, depicted 2 cigarette butts sitting in an ashtray smoking a matchstick. It will be our background to all our electronic devices for quite some time. 

The final thing we saw whilst in Berlin was a fairly gloomy albeit remarkable film, made using exquisite architectural models, of what the Nazis wanted to build over Germany. The scale of it was incredible – fountains and statues 30 meters into the air. When it cut to the map and it was revealed that what was being bulldozed to erect these new structures was hundreds of domestic properties. This film is also not available anywhere online but feel free to give it a search if you want – it’s called ‘Word of Stone’ and was made by a guy called Kurt Rüpil.