writing about the research dimension of artistic practice

This a common concern amongst participants in the Thinking Practices module and once again it came up last week during our debate on writing strategies for the module’s essay: how to combine the artistic approach with the academic requirements, how to write in  a creative manner whilst following the need for rigorous referencing and quoting as a way of legitimising one’s assertions? The Journal of Artistic Research (JAR) is used to similar questioning so its interesting to see what they propose as a their format to publish artistic research.

They call it exposition: This can be done with the help of an online editor  that allows one to combine text, image and audio, into a networked nodes called ‘weaves’. What distinguishes it from other types of art writing is that  it “must expose the research dimension of artistic practice. This process of engaging with, rather than simply documenting, artistic practice is essential.” The difference is that in this proposed mode of writing, the art work appears not simply an illustration of the theories, but rather emerges from the art practice, in the manner of the art as research.

You can browse their Research Catalogue (RC): “Given that the RC is a site for artistic research, to add a work is to make a claim that the work can be seen as research; through expositions, comments and articles the initial claim is transformed into an argument. It is believed that the reflective space provided by the RC can become an essential part of the research process by providing a suitable structure in which to develop the relationship between documentation and exposition, whilst also retaining congruence with art itself.”

As this week’s etivity, read more about JAR’s position on art writing, take a look at some of the ‘expositions’ in the catalogue and come back to this blog to post your thoughts on their proposed relationship between artistic research and writing.

new journal “Sensate”

Julia Yezbick left this message for Thinking Practices participants:  “Please check out the new journal “Sensate” (www.sensatejournal.com). It is an initiative by graduate students at various universities to create a forum for the display, circulation and critique of artful scholarship. Thought you might be interested. We also are currently accepting submissions and applications (find out online forms under the “About” heading on our website).”

Globalisation as Artist Theory

The idea of ‘globalisation‘ as a theory to support and critique a practitioners artwork revolves around the idea of cultural, idealogical and of course geographical change based around the focused media used as expression – on a large environmental scale approach encompassing the world.

As a lifelong resident of London, the idea of geographical change is not exactly on a ‘global’ scale, but as Paula said there is ‘glocalisation‘ which covers my perception and experience in this area;

“where people have global and local perspectives at the same time. Glocalised folks zoom in and out. They have tremendous global awareness and insightful local knowledge.” – Seshadri, V.

Although not specifically showing awareness of global and insightful local knowledge, I have tried to extend this in the past and I try [in this post] to demonstrate this understanding.

My own artwork practice is based from my cultural upbringing in London, although my travels have lead me to other globally different locations such as Jerusalem, Israel to produce a short film focusing on the aesthetics and architectural design that I feel is a unique attribution to the cultural landscape on both visual and spiritual levels. On a personal level, this work is my own interpretation of what I see to be a rich cultural ground for development in many areas of media – whilst the information transferral to the audience is also an integral element.

By adapting my approach to the mindset of how a resident might overlook certain aspects of their hometown, my own viewpoint and focus comes in at a different angle of understanding.

By spending up to two months at a time in my own accommodation I have experienced the life of Jerusalem as a basis for residency, as I wish to extend this in the future.

With my upcoming work I aim to stay in theme of my glocality, using geographical mapping of my revisitation photography to contextualise and add quantitative data to otherwise qualitative research experiences. I feel that by adding this underlying and contextualising data informs the viewer as to where the artwork as taken place, and possibly communicating with them further if the locations are known to them.

View Project CrashBack and the Crash Site Map.

essay map: next deadline is january 11 2012

Thanks to all that submitted the research topic for your essay. The next step is to download the Thinking Practices essay map. You may only have a sketchy idea of your topic at this stage, but don’t worry: use it to develop your essay map as clearly as you can.  This will help us move forward.

Essay map: How are you going to develop your topic? A concept-map or diagram can show you how to break down your main idea into the sections of your essay.

Please complete the form and bring it to the Thinking Practices week 6 session: Wednesday January 11 2011.

Artist redefined

Still very much in the process of pinning down how I approach my practice, “Artist as theorist” from  Graeme Sullivan confused me even more or rather pointed out how much reading and integration work is required to theorize my approach to visual art and film making.
One aspect is immediately clear though: “Whether undertaking research in art or about art, the artist-theorist becomes involved in a set of practices that must be defensible. The aim of research in visual arts, as in any other forms of exploratory enquiry, is to provoke, challenge, illuminate rather than confirm and consolidate.” Sullivan, G. (2010). Art Practice as Research: Inquiry in the Visual Arts. SAGE.

By identifying how artists explore creative practices in making in systems, making in communities and making in cultures, Sullivan reinforces the “artist as a hybrid identity”.
The artist-theorist participates in a transdisciplinary practice involving participation in the fields of science and technology, engaging communities by making new connections, broadening perception by including broader histories and also critically examining and questioning knowledge within a cultural context.
I like the idea of defining the artist as experimentalist, using various methodologies and defining concepts as they go along in their practice depending on the project they are involved in at a specific moment in time.

Then as Celia http://thinkingpractices.wordpress.com/author/celiayixie/ questions in her blog entry “Can artist be theorist?” how can artists theorize a creative moment, the spark of creativity, be witness of the genius within but after creation by reflecting on the work rather than during the practice itself.
I understand “Artist as theorist” as a wonderful and complex attempt to define the changing roles and evolving practices of artists and “extend from a focus on the artist-as-theorist to encompass constituent practices more clearly identified with empiricist, interpretive, and critical traditions.”

The work of Yong Son Min, Defining Moments (1992) is reflective of how artists are now taking; transporting and broadening their practice cross culturally.

                                             Yong Son Min, Defining Moments (1992)

Min’s work bears similarities in its approach with Chen Zhen, the prominent contemporary Chinese artist “whose work is characteristic of those who move between and among.”
Chen’s legacy includes the notion of transexperience that characterizes “the complex life experiences of leaving one’s native place and going from one place to another in one’s life.”
As an artist, activist, humanist, multimedia artist, scholar and curator, Min has been a voice and visual stimulus behind the emergence of multiculturalist and decolonial art activism in the ‘80s”. In Defining moments (1992) she shows how history has defined her, she uses a critical approach to history and culture: how much are we defined by our social set up and travels? What impact does it have on our bodies, the visible part of our soul and mind?

Min’s work has informed my work at various levels. She has reminded me that artist as activists also work cross culturally and not only within communities since themes approached are usually universal: human/animal rights, political movements, environmental issues…
At an aesthetic level, the use of Min’s own body to reflect critically on the history of Korea and the US brings about how the creative process can be organically demonstrated and also discursive between mind and physicality.

This was illustrated by Joe’s intervention on one of the six-part photographic installation where Min wrote on her body various words in the shape of a spiral. Joe was wondering to which part of the body the words corresponded.

To me the meaning was very much into the spiral itself. In the Celtic tradition, It is believed to represent the travel from the inner life to the outer soul or higher spirit forms; the concept of growth, expansion, and cosmic energy, depending on the culture in which it is used. To the Maori, it signifies a new beginning of life and is also a symbol of hope.
Professor Graves worked for 50 years on the spiral of life used within Universe Spirit, it refers to human consciousness development: Professor Grave’s work has been popularized in the Book Spiral Dynamics. http://www.spiraldynamics.net/about-spiral-dynamics-integral.html. Each of these levels of human consciousness development produces a worldview and each worldview produces values and personal and cultural results.

                                               Yong Son Min, Defining Moments (1992)

Artists use transdisciplinary practices and cross-cultural references within their own practice with or without referring to it consciously.
Did Min mean to use the spiral of life by referring to its historical meaning? Did she use it instinctively without being aware of the discourse she was opening for some of us? Does it matter?
There is a point where the artist touches our soul and above or beyond theorization, when we experience immediate knowing of an intention or just a thought generated by the work of art.
Contextualizing and defining the work of Artists as theorist offers a legitimization of wide arrays of practices and approaches that has become their playground and changed how we define Artists as a society.

Transexperience and Artist’s life

While reading the Chapter “Artist as the theorist” I came across a phrase “transexperience” which is very much relevant to artists like me who came from a different art framework, transforming them to new environment. As Sullivan expresses it in this way, ”transexperience“ summarizes vividly and profoundly the complex life experiences of leaving one’s native place and going from one place to another in one’s life.” This condition, characterized by in-betweenness, has similarities to many other descriptions of the diaspora, but the departure from convention lies in the way that Chen considered transexperience as a creative catalyst.

As this idea was also explored during the conversation, I feel Sullivan is very true in expressing this term “transexperience” serving as creative catalyst. Putting myself as an example I agree completely because changing environments not only mean a physical change but it also leads a change to experiences, ideas and their effect, which later changes our future art practice. Either the art project has roots from native life, like truck art in my case but yet it transforms between new experiences. For my project, truck art I am using an idea from my previous life journey but the medium that I am using is from new journey life, either the physical medium or my research study.

 

Can artist be theorist? (Week 4- Artist as Theorist)

To the best of my understanding, to claim “artist as theorist” is to try to discover how artist theorize their art works both for the notion and the working process.

I think Sullivan’s work Artist as Theorist gives us a clear direction to analyze artists’ work as well as how could an artist become a theorist.

As it’s shown in the graph above, theoretical artists mainly meet the features of Transformation, Reflection, Relational and Site-based. Meanwhile, they are in a essential position among Communities, Systems and Cultures, which influence the art work by Ideas & Agency, Forms & Structures or Situations & Action.

Sullivan’s interpretation gives me a clear way to theories my own work. To be “Making in system”, artists need to “move beyond discipline boundaries”. In my project of the flash-mob, I reply on the form of performance art to carry on my concept by body language. In order to pass the information to mass audiences, I also need to turn to video sphere. To call in participants and work with them to put a conceptual idea in to reality is obvious a process for “Making in Community”. As for “Making in Culture”, I’d love to say the whole theme based on the Chinese “Family Planning Policy” (which is mostly known as “One-child Policy”) is a connection of the Western and Eastern culture. These are just example of how I can theories my art work, and I believe the other sections mentioned in the graph can be referred to.

However, I still doubt that can all artists be theorists? I mean, if all the art works or art working procedure can be theorized in a scientific way? For some of the artist, the art work comes from their brain storm which may be just a spark when they are in a daze. As Brian said in seminar, “…after watching tons and tons of films, someone may come up with a good idea and make a great film but fail to express it in words by article or theory”. In my opinion, to theorize, to a certain extent, indicates to make things logical and rational. If it’s a crazy, innovative, occasional idea, how can artists theorize it? So maybe the analytical system is something to be used afterward when we have to put the art work into an understandable or academic environment.

Do I understand it properly? What’s others’ opinion?

etivity 2: artist as theorist

Some of the topics discussed in the week 4 seminar included:

• the notion of transexperience
• artists who work between cultures
• ways  of thinking about artistic enquiry
• the artistic way of conducting research
• how the artist theorist moves between disciplines (such as history and critical theory)
• academic vs open education

posting: As a follow-up to  seminar, write two networked or connective paragraphs* about the artist as theorist. Give specific examples related to the suggested readings, namely Graham Sullivan’s text  Artist as Theorist [ Sullivan, G. (2010). Art Practice as Research: Inquiry in the Visual Arts. SAGE.]

deadline: monday 21st november

commenting: read your colleagues posts and choose one to leave a comment by wednesday nov 23 at 2pm

This is my presentation:  week4-artist-as-theorist

* connective writing consists in using hyperlinks to connect your writing to the sources of ideas expressed, namely if you talk about specific authors and artists, search their websites and create links to them in your post. More about this type of blogging here

The Artist as Theorist : Practical Theory

The seminar class focusing on the discussion around ‘Artist as Theorist’ pulled on several important strings relating to my own practice – certainly in the way that we [as artists in media] develop our work according to our subjective aims or focuses to communicate our ideas.

Seeing the image based work of Yong Soon Min with ‘Defining Moments’ not only inspired me further to proceed with my photographical idea for my project – but also reinforced some of the theoretically based structure I hope to produce. The mapping of experience on her own biological form is something I have already decided upon for part of my work, whilst ‘Body Image’ [pictured below] also incorporates literary and numerological data almost as a graph of life.

Interesting to note is that in class, Joe mentioned and wondered about the placement of numbers/text on Yong Soon Min’s body in relation to the experience referenced. For example, “Is there any reason why one number is placed above her kidney?”

As I continue and develop my own work, I hope that my photographical images will hold some power over its own visual; i.e. the meaning will come across beyond the obvious body and image overlays. This placement of image is a crucial element to my own work and I am glad to hear this is a consideration given by other viewers. Thanks Joe! I do believe that using practical work to create art theory is beneficial to a viewing audience as the foundations of the artwork can be viewed at the same time as the finished article – almost as if revealing the working methodology. Seeing Yong Soon Min”s work in the light of ‘Practice as Research’, I note the strong sense of cultural and indeed historical critique of experience, informing the personal and of course the subjective approach to media work.

on visuality

Following from our seminar last week, where we discussed the term visuality, here is a text that could be useful to position the term in its proper historical and discursive context. Visual culture theorist Nicholas Mirzoeff (2006) wrote the essay On Visuality (downloadable here:  Mirzeoff-on-visuality), Journal of visual culture, Vol 5(1): 53–79, 2006. This  essay scrutinises  Hal Foster’s (1988) edited book Vision and Visuality,(700.1 VIS in the Harrow LRC) that researched visuality in the context of emerging art and media theories of the 1980s and goes beyond it by researching its genealogy in the earlier writing of Thomas Carlyle.

Visuality has become a keyword for the field of visual culture. However, while many assume that it is a postmodern theoretical term, the word was coined by the Scottish historian Thomas Carlyle in his lectures On Heroes (1841). The centrality of Carlyle’s discourse of visualized heroism to Anglophone imperial culture was such that any claim to subjectivity had to pass by visuality. Here lies the contradictory source of the resonance of ‘visuality’ as a keyword for visual culture as both a mode of representing imperial culture and a means of resisting it by means of reverse appropriation. Reading Carlyle in the imperial context leads to a distinction between Visuality 1, which is proper to modernity, and a Visuality 2 that exceeds or precedes the commodification of vision. This tension was played out in the work of Carlyle’s admirers Oscar Wilde and W.E.B. Du Bois and in the politics surrounding the abolition of slavery.

‘Practice As Research: Approaches To Creative Arts Enquiry’

‘Barrett, E. & Bolt, B. (2007) ’Practice As Research: Approaches To Creative Arts Enquiry’, I.B. Tauris & Co LTD

This book is a great inspiration for artists working in the media production field, as soon as I opened it I saw some extremely relevant sections that jumped out at me, such as the subjective approach I am becoming aware of in my research and indeed video production,

“Since creative arts research is often motivated by emotional, personal and subjective concerns, it operates not only on the basis of explicit and exact knowledge, but also on that of tacit knowledge.” (p.4)

Setting itself in experience, I believe my work is more focused on narrative personal lives and interest than it was before I realised it could be so. I hope to extract deeper meaning to my practice as I delve further into the literature laying open in front of me…

 

My reflection on Documentary work

Listening to Arun’s and Wyver’s conversation and later remembering the dialogues of my fellow members, it gives me the impression that documentary has a very well built and indistinguishable relationship to the artist/director before it comes off into a material shape.

Visualisation, self-reflection, impressions, exploring narratives, and experiences, (as expressed by participants) to me revolve around same notion. Documentation is the artist’s relationship with the focus and it further progresses by his or her participation with in the scenario, how he interprets this information or evidences into perceptible form. Participation does not need to be material; it begins when he/she sets off for witnessing the document and cultivates during process of listening or viewing the process itself. Vit Havranek explains in “The Documentary method versus the ontology of documentarism” as “Documentarism in film and photography could be described as a genre in which the director/artist transmits other people knowledge, stances and experiences by articulating the medium and technology he or she uses”.

Articulation of media and technology are groundwork for producing good documentary work. It is the way an artist experiments with his theme or concept and puts his/her individual reflection in it. Moreover I feel documenting can never be universal and absolute truth as it represents a certain percentage of public, views or facts. During the process of formation, at one point the artist him/herself becomes part of the process, as similar thoughts expressed by Arun as well.

For my work “Pakistani truck art and cultural identity” I am looking the concept both objectively and subjectively. My individual reflection will surely mark my work, as I am a partly participating and partly observing. By participation I mean my personal perception of the art and later by collecting evidences of related facts and figures about art form.

My pragmatistic thoughts on documentary

I suppose by now I have a rather strange opinion of what “documentary” could or should mean, primarily due to my influence of philosophical pragmatism. Many of the later American Pragmatists wholly reject the notion of ‘truth’, and so this makes it quite difficult to set apart an account of the real from that fabricated scene of the imagination in mainstream cinema. I took a great interest in Pragmatism because I firmly believe human culture in all forms: science, art, and politics will continue to distance itself from notions of hard-fast truth and objectivity. So it’s no surprise to me that we would see documentaries start to walk this line in contemporary art. Even television documentary has long since departed from its traditional method of narrating a list of facts.

Kitty Zulman gives us a clear account on just how documentary evidence is changing forms. It blurs boundaries between hard evidence and “image manipulation”, and directors string together an emotional journey of “real life” footage. As we saw in Arun Khopkar’s work, (particularly in that first film, was it “Figures of Thought”?) some interesting methods are used to mirror the documentary style with the documented subject. He follows the work of his painters by literally following the camera along every stroke, fluid in motion and seamlessly connected to an analogous musical score. In effect his work is not an objective account of “what’s going on,” but a recreation of what’s going on through an alternate, more easily transferable medium.

I’d like to think filmmakers are also working to merge fact and fiction from the other end, that is by presenting our traditional narrative plots as real-time footage of actual events. These are the types of films I most typically enjoy, as they seem to connect my view with the here and now, developing a perspective of one’s place in modern society. In my work I hope to create an immersive film environment that ensnares its viewers so deeply in plot development that it appears downright voyeuristic. I wish for them to feel they are standing in the very room where events are taking place, so that a film can further its impact on a person and more importantly, on the relation between people.

Art Documentary Reality (week two- Indian Arts on Film )

Documentary is one of my favorite media forms. People can gain information as well as experience entertainment during a documentary. To most people, they take what they see in the documentary as a “real” story. To those audiences, “documentary have a claim to truth, a claim to honesty, objectivity and veracity”(Kitty Zulmans, Documentary Evidence), documenters need to fine a way to maintain the original idea as much as possible. However, no matter how “real” it is, a documentary is no doubt a result of personal intelligence and media technology. As Kitty Zulmans claims in Documentary Evidence : what the viewer takes as reality is in fact a reality seen by someone else; it is a second order observation.  When documentary comes to art works, this theory seems to be more obvious. The art work itself is the original information given by the artist. If a filmmaker wants to make a documentary about that, he or she is actually re-creating the work. They more or less put their thought and understanding of the work in the documentary. As I as I’m concerned, a successful documentary about art conveys proper idea of the initial work and is wisely reconstituted by logical organization and creativity.

Back to those tow documentaries directed by Arun Khopkar, I should say, I really like them. In Figures of Thought, the idea of placing the three artists to work on a glass mural then zero into each one is creative and reasonable. In this way, Arun relates the individual smoothly. Turn visual art, which is still, into documentary film is not easy. Arun uses sound, music, light, animation and oral introduction to give information about the paintings and relevant artists. Then, the still, untouchable, abstract work becomes alive and understandable. As for Volume Zero, many more narrative methods have been used. Arun broads the information through interview, live action, diagrams, animation etc. Though it is a documentary about an architect and his work, the documentary not only pays attention to the life story and architectural structure, but also the society background and culture or science demands. These extended information is what the filmmaker believes important to express, is his understanding of the work.

To sum up, documentary needs to be relatively real and creative. When documentary come to associate with art works, the other art and data methods are counted in, as animation, music and graphs.

Indian Arts on Film – David Itzcovitz

From spending the time viewing the media work and listening to the filmmakers discuss their intentions behind it, I gathered that a great deal of the inspiration or drive behind the concept was the idea of sharing experiences or cultures from across the world to the viewing audience. The artist, filmmaker or photographer defines the visual form way in which the content is communicated – however the similarity between them all is the broad contemporary art structure that they uphold.

This use of the documentary in contemporary art expresses a particular focus on experience, knowledge and understanding in the form of whichever media the artist uses. For example, where Arun Khopkar’s film Volume Zero is a form of art in itself, being that it exists as its own platform of media, it hones in on and explores the architectural skills and visuality of Charles Correa; therefore setting the sub-layer of documentary content (physical) using film (projected). It is to be noted that by creating this kind of art, where devotion and involvement by the filmmaker is essential, creates a link that connects the creativity and indeed subjectivity of the artist and the subject or theme they are communicating.  My own filmmaking process is in this manner, by allowing myself to become immersed and involved in the subject so that my focus in the media is contextualised by experience (mine and others) rather than just a short amount of research into the area.

Similarly, documentary visual arts leads on from how the ‘look’ and ‘feel’ of the documentary in film furthers the viewing audience connection to what they see onscreen. Aesthetic considerations when creating the documentary films may be forefront at the mind of the filmmakers, as the subject – whether this be a person, landscape or artwork – must be shown in a light that does not break the ethic codes set about between filmmaker and subject. Certainly in the discussion with John Wyver regarding his visual approach to filmmaking did he discuss the difficult nature of “filming a painting”, instead preferring to focus on the brush-strokes of the painter rather than the whole piece at once. Artists are being recognised as having this conscious process of ‘engagement’, or the dialectical relationship, where the ‘documented’ is by default becoming a subjectified matter of interest, where the ‘documentarist’ becomes a crucial element to the narrative, visual and communicative process.

new book on “artistic research”

I’ve just been emailed the information about the new book in the series  Büchs’n’Books — Art and Knowledge Production in Context  by artists and theoreticians who write of their work as a specific contemporary production of knowledge. It is titled Private Investigations – Paths of Critical Knowledge Production in Contemporary Art  with texts by Andrei Siclodi (Ed.), Alfredo Cramerotti, Judith Fischer, Geoffrey Garrison, Alison Gerber, Ana Hoffner, Brigitta Kuster, Ralo Mayer, and Alexander Vaindor. Check it out!

“For some time now, one aspect of contemporary art has been en vogue in theoretical discussions: art as a field of, and medium for, the production of specific knowledge. Especially in relation to the discipline that the academic establishment calls “artistic research,” the persistent need for a stable basis for artistic knowledge production has been continually emphasized—above all in academia; knowledge production in art, so the mantra goes, must go hand in hand with a socially critical (self-)reflexive approach toward art and its producers. In the globalized knowledge-based society of the twenty-first century,we are told, art must position itself quickly in order to assert its own
social relevance and insure itself in the long run.With such arguments, the academic standardization of artistic criticality is aided and “tenured” by national educational policy. Yet can this top-down criticality, standardized through academic curricula, have any real impact outside a self-referential framework? Despite all its good intentions, does this not rather serve to entrench existing hegemonies and (distribution) economies of knowledge? And what alternative strategies might be used to counter an increasingly dominant discourse on the theory and practice of “artistic research?”

etivity 1: the document in practice

Download the pdf  “documentary strategies” from week 2 page and read it before attending the session at Ambika P3.

Some of the concepts discussed in these three essays include:

• documentarism in contemporary art
• documentary visual arts
• the documentary method
• ethical dimension of documentarism
• documentary evidence
• documentation and archives
• dialectical documents

posting: Use one or more of these concepts to analyse the work screened and debated in the programme Indian Arts on Film. After attending the session at Ambika P3, return to this blog and post  250-500 words on this topic. You can add a reflection on how you work with documents in your practice.

deadline: monday nov 7

commenting: read your colleagues posts and choose one to leave a comment by wednesday nov 9 at 2pm

a short tutorial on how to post in the wordpress platform

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And what will you be posting about? thats the topic of the next post: etivity1!

Thinking Practices 2011-12

Hi and welcome to thinking practices blog for the 2011-12 edition of the module.

I am paula roush and I am the module leader. You can find out more about me and my work here and download the module guide from here.

I’m looking forward to working with you.

peace & love

paula

ps- visit me this thurday or friday at the london south bank university, from 2 to 6, where I will be looking after the exhibition The artist book in Slovenia (the exhibition closes friday so its your last opportunity to see this great show)

WAVE/ING JINI RAWLINGS

WAVE/ING by JINI RAWLINGS
18 NOVEMBER 2011 – 8 JANUARY 2012, LONDON GALLERY WEST
New video and mixed media installations exploring themes of journey and thresholds. Shot on location in Iceland, the journeys are linked by location and personal witness but separated by time, class and gender.

PRIVATE VIEW
Thursday 17 November 2011, 5 – 8pm

GALLERY TALK
Tuesday 29 November 2011, 5 – 6pm
Jini Rawlings in conversation with Christie Brown, ceramic artist and Professor at the University of Westminster.

VENUE
London Gallery West, University of Westminster, Watford Road, Harrow, Middlesex HA1 3TP. Northwick Park, Metropolitan line. Car parking available.

OPENING TIMES
Daily 9am – 5pm

Image: Still from ‘Exploration/Occupation/Refuge’ 2011

the edge between things

Ian Monroe in the essay “Where Does One Thing End And The Next Begin? for “Collage: Assembling Contemporary Art” (Blackdog Publishing, 2008) explores the various edges that exist in the material world and the way collage is used to address the nature of difference and being. He describes collage as “a methodology that deploys this ‘edge, this elemental difference between materials, objects, images and subjects as its core concern. It is this active boundary, where previously disassociated material is amalgamated, that gives collage its frisson, its efficacy as a technique. Any artist using collage, be it found film footage or magazine clippings for example, is confronted with the discreet point at which two or more previously distinct bodies collide, and here a a decision is made and a difference is expressed. Thus what unifies all these practices is not just the literal  and metaphotical gluing togethr of things; it the functions, the transformations performed at the edge that gain significance” (p.32)

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