Barbara Hammer: tender fictions

Barbara Hammer: tender fictions

The Marco Polo Syndrome

It has been very inspiring to read about Jose Bedia’s work by Gerardo Mosquera in the context of the Marco Polo Syndrome.

By practicing palo monte in Cuba,  an Afro Cuban cultural complex of Kongo origin, the Western artist “appropriates “primitive” techniques but not in order to reproduce their programmes: he creates elements with them that articulate his personal discourse and iconography.” Because he is creating Western culture from non-Western sources, he is making a step towards de-Europeanisation.

The reason why this is important is because Art and Culture have been defined from a European standpoint or Eurocentrism which is the main “symptom of a disease that perceives whatever is different as the carrier of life threatening viruses rather than nutritional elements.” This is what Mosquera defines as the Marco Polo Syndrome.

Bedia’s art is relevant in the context of the Kongo culture itself, far from any foreign or European references. He opened himself to the so-called ” primitive” cultures – that opened themselves in return – in what he has called a “voluntary transculturalisation in reverse: from his “high art”education to a “primitive” one.”

The problem with Eurocentrism is that it is rooted in colonialism and colonialism stopped traditional societies in their natural progression, instead it imposed forcefully a different way.  The result is that today, these societies struggle to deal with their own issues and have also adopted the problems of the West. For example, in Trinidad & Tobago, 9/11 was felt as if it had happened in Port of Spain. It  was lived as a Trinidadian disaster, people adopted it, they owned it.

Eurocentrism has also affected the West in that there is no connection capable of transforming this unhealthy relationship  into one where both sides benefit of their own interests and values, in a global situation. But this is changing and the critique of Eurocentrism is part of the possibility of a global dialogue among cultures.  Artists being adopted by other cultures and adopting other cultures to create a narrative satisfactory to the West and the “primitive” in its pure form are a big part of the dialogue.

I will conclude with a beautiful quote from Mosquera: “The cure for the Marco Polo Symdrome resides in overcoming centrism with enlightenment from a myriad of different sources.”

Sophie Meyer 2012

World as Archive

We make, gather, compile archives and create a world of archives so that we remember, so that we don’t forget our history and the stories of others. Human beings have taken great care in recording and storing the product of their work throughout history. It is gathered mainly in National Libraries whose access is limited and carefully monitored. Alain Resnais’ film “La mémoire du monde” shows the gigantic French National library in Paris with its 100 km of walls covered with books. It is like entering an immense fortress, a sea of documents, it gives vertigo and we can question how many of us will ever have access or any interest in engaging with this well protected world of knowledge and memory.

I would rather look at the World as an Archive myself and see the land and landscapes as repositories of memory like Susan Hiller does in “The J project” where she scans the German landscape for remaining Jewish street names. She then created a visual inventory of 303 roads, streets, paths referring to a Jewish presence. As opposed to a traditional public memorial that suppresses collective memory by freezing meaning rather than preserving it, Hiller offers a living memorial. She creates a space for memory, a visual archive where the memorial is not immediately visible. Careful study, close reading and contemplative immersion are required to understand her work so that remembrance becomes possible.

Hiller’s work “promotes an ethics of memory rather than teaches a lesson of history”. Her interpretation of the archive is alive, poetic. She thinks the landscape as archive and captures its evocative powers.

Sophie Meyer – 2012

 

Globalisation as universal Art

When addressing the issue of globalisation, the immediate correlate seems to be homogenization.

Colonialism globalised the idea that the West was superior and civilized in opposition to Indigenous cultures still very close to Nature. There was the West and the other, the oriental as Said explained. The world was separated in two and the model to thrive for was the West but in the post modernist era a third space is becoming prominent in Art, the Diaspora. It is a world where people move simultaneously though the visible and the invisible.

Mohini Chandra’s approach to globalisation via vernacular culture is one that puts the experience of the Diaspora at the centre of the dialogue. She uses photos of her own family to explore histories of migration and cultural identities shifts in post colonialism. In “Travels in a New World”, she tells her own story, conducts a “personal anthropology” in exploring her family’s past to inform a wider view of the South Asian Diaspora. In remembering her childhood, she connects it to the history of the places and cultures she lived in and takes us on a journey questioning cultural identity.

Chandra’s look at globalisation through the vernacular prevents the subversion of the dominant culture through appropriation in Homi Bhabha’s words. She connects her viewers to the universal through her individual experience and escapes globalisation.

Her work is beautifully summed up in Sean Cubitt’s thought: “Either globalization severs us from one another permanently and to the point of disparate isolation; or it must be challenged by these other nets of interest, care and memory.”

Sophie Meyer – 2012

 

Travelling Images: Memory, Time and the Analogue Media Experience.

In mid-2011, I accessed a vernacular archive of slides which contained hundreds of images of Chile. These images were sent to England during the 80s to connect Chilean exiles (who were living in Britain at that time) with the changes that were taking place in their ‘homeland’ during Pinochet’s dictatorship (1973-1990). The archive contains images of social change. Overall, it reflects the increasing obsolescence of the Chilean socialism embodied by Allende’s government, the perpetuation of Pinochet’s neoliberal model, and the struggle against those changes.

I began to manipulate the slides, to interrogate both their materiality and their hidden stories. Since the archive’s images were mostly taken during the 80’s, during my childhood, I could also recognize in these images my own recollections of a dictatorial past and my own childhood experiences. It was irrelevant to me whether that recognition was valid for others or not. I was much more interested in the opportunity to reflect on myself as taking up the role of an anthropologist while investigating these images.

At the beginning of this year Kodak announced the end of its production of reversal film, which is the film used to make slides. I found it compelling that today I was watching this archive about the increasing obsolescence of a political system through an obsolete medium. And I found it compelling that I was looking at this ‘obsolescence’ today in London; at a time when, in Chile, a socialist utopia seems to be being reborn through the student social movements. In the same way, the obsolete medium of film was being reborn through my digital camera.

The outcome of this research process is this video named diapofilm-1 elaborated out of the projection of the slides and sounds from Chile. It is an invitation not only to connect with the exiles’ experience of watching the archive and their possible concerns at the time. But also to the sensorial and tactile dimension of the analogue experience, in which the slides as objects, the mechanical sounds and the projector also count. The piece involves a complex relationship with temporality and space, creating a dialogue between past and present, here and there, that includes the media used.

In the film, the slide machine apparatus is like the ‘pre-cinema’ technology of the magic lantern. Like in Proust’s ‘Swann’s Way’ when the boy projects the images with the magic lantern in his room, the projection of the slides transforming the space into a series of legendary and historical scenes. These scenes, by triggering memories and fantasies in the viewer, produce a connection between the past and the present through the mechanical apparatus.

This process is not only represented through digital video and audio, but also it is translated into other media, it is a “media translation”, in this case through digital video. This dual operation opens the discussion on two very contemporary subjects, which are media convergence and media obsolescence.

The current moment is conceived as one of convergence: a moment in which different media can be “transcoded” into the new digital one. It has been said that this media convergence eliminates notions of medium specificity. However it has brought into existence, as Raymond Bellour has proposed, two kinds of crossbred works. Firstly, those that produce new images by an exchange and collision between different media images. Secondly, those that makes an old medium apparatus go beyond its traditional formations, while absorbing the formations of the new digital media. Diapofilm-1 belongs to the first group, because through digital video, the slide apparatus is dissected, analyzed, halted, reanimated and reassembled, so as to serve as a means of producing formal and conceptual expressions.

There has been a special interest in the “outmoded”, discarded media, in recent times. In fact, there has been a contemporary obsession with the obsolete and with ruins. Andreas Huyseen points out that this obsession hides a nostalgia for an earlier age that had not yet lost its ability to imagine other futures.

In the last few years, this obsession has become especially tangible due to the political and economic uncertainties and the lack of alternatives that the economic crisis has shown up. When we think about other futures, it reminds us immediately of the social utopias of the XX century. In the case of the Diapofilm-1, that is the socialist utopia of the Marxist government of Salvador Allende.

Through the digital camera, it is not only analyzed and reassembled the obsolete photochemical medium of the slides, but also the obsolete political utopia of Chile in the 70s, which definitively disappeared in the first decade of the XXI century. In the film, both the obsolete medium and the obsolete political system are reborn as a frozen moment of the past that speaks to the present through the space of viewing and the slide apparatus.

Thus, like the boy watching the images of the magic lantern in Proust’s novel, the slide projector triggered memories and fantasies of my childhood in Chile, bringing back images of those times, and at the same time it transformed the sensorial space in the new home that I am building day by day in London.

by Pablo Mollenhauer

——————

Huyssen, A., 2006. Nostalgia for Ruins. Grey Room -, 6–21.

Shaw, J., Weibel, P., Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie Karlsruhe, 2003. Future cinema : the cinematic imaginary after film. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.; London.

 

(to be presented in the conference “Journey Across Media”, University of Reading, 2012)

 

Indian Arts on Film

Some of the themes approached during the discussion with Arun Khopkar and John Wyver at Ambika P3 was objectivity in documentary making, the documentary method and documentary evidence.

Both  filmmakers worked extensively with artists and it took, for some projects,  years before a film was even envisaged. It was the time necessary for the filmmaker to understand the work done by the artist and to build up a trusting relationship. “The contemporary documentary approach in the visual arts has buried once and for all the myth of the “disinterested’ or “objective observer” as Vit Havranek mentions in “The documentary method versus the ontology of “documentarism”.

Answering a question from the audience, Khapkor said he wasn’t worried about objectivity, “there is a moment when you feel that the voice is speaking to you. You have to respect the poetry of it.”
For Wyner, “the notion of subjectivity is not a concern” in art either. His motto is “the desire to evoke, create and experience an artwork.”
Author and director of 45 films on different artists, he regrets that television sees documentaries as “evidence” rather than a shared experience:  “the BBC is dominated by the concern  of documentaries “being about Art, knowledge and not about giving you (the viewer) an experience about Art”.

As I watched Khapkor’s second film “Volume Zero” on the architect Charles Correa, I  learnt about his work, his ideas, his life and the impact of his genius on architecture. It was very informative but documentaries are primarily made to inform about a specific topic. If we look at the meaning of  a document, “the basic unit of documentaries… etymologically speaking, (it) is defined as something to instruct” says Sophie Berrebi in” Documentary and the dialectical document in contemporary art.”
Far from being neutral though despite the apparent unobtrusiveness, documentaries plunge the spectator in the intimate universe of the artist filmed from the camera’s point of view. In the case of Khopkar’s  “Figures of thoughts” –  a 33 minute film on the work of three Indian contemporary painters – the director follows the artists in their own space, reconstructs their work environment and  in some cases films the making of the paintings. Khapor chooses a specific cinematography for each artists and concentrate on either the work or the artist.
Documentaries are ” the result of observation and dual process of selection: in the “real world” and in the edit suite. What the viewer takes as reality is in fact a reality seen by someone else, it is a second order observation.” observes Kitty Zulmans in “Documentary evidence and/in artistic practices.

The debate between informing, giving an “objective” account – still seen to some extent as being the first goal of documentaries – and the given “subjective” approach of the director is at its high when speaking of documentary Art. As Wyner concluded, the notion of subjectivity is a problem in News and current affairs but not in Art.

November 2011, Sophie Meyer

My approach to documentary making

As I am embarking on making a documentary on a ritual from a foreign tradition: Stick fighting in Trinidad, I am studying documents, evidence, factual reports made by historians and ethnologists. Kitty Zulmans speaks of “documentary evidence”, she says “documentary and evidence have a claim to truth, a claim to honesty, objectivity and veracity.” Gathering, selecting knowledge and also making my own by conducting interviews and asking specific questions to selected interviewees, then cut the gathered information, put it back together with my own interpretation is far from objective.
Objectivity doesn’t exist since any information collected is already filtered; gathered by subjective minds, various people with different truth, education, approach to life. Objectivity is clearly not the point. Does it make my work less valid?

Like Arun Khopkar shared during the discussion in “India Arts and film” at Ambika P3 in London last week, “I am not worried about objectivity, there is a moment when you feel that the voice is speaking to you. You have to respect the poetry of it.” The filmmaker’s truth, his/her genuine approach and integrity, letting the poetry drive the collection of knowledge is what has made the best piece of work and Art. Even in Science, an area well known to be widely considered as objective and cradle of true reality, the biggest discoveries have been based on what I would call “informed instinct”, moments of “poetry”.

As a filmmaker, I want to share a visual “document” that I made with an audience. “Etymologically speaking, a document is defined as something to instruct” Sophie Benebi reminds us in Documentary and the dialectical document in contemporary art.
My aim is to instruct, give knowledge but in order to open the possibility for the spectator to get an experience of the Art of stick fighting. Conveying enough knowledge so that the viewer can experience the object of my research based on the relationships that I am developing with my subjects is key to make documentaries. I see knowledge as a process not an end and documentaries as “creative treatment of reality” to take John Grierson’s words.
V. I, Havranek describes very accurately how the “contemporary documentary approach in visual arts has buried once and for all the myth of the disinterested or objective observer.”
I am interested in showing the beauty of Stick Fighting and its spiritual African roots, my stance is clear. I am “engaged”. Havranek remarks, “in essence this term simply labels an approach in which the observer’s position is established as a conscious process.”
The relationship between the people I am featuring and interviewing, the documented and myself is key since my approach is grounded “in the relationship between the artist (myself) and the subject, which is perceived as bearing, enduring and gauging of the political and social matrixes to which it is connected or to which it connects itself.” Havranek insists on “the importance of dialectical ties to the documented and media criticism in the documentary method versus the ontology of “documentarism.”
The documentary approach in visual arts is based on the process resulting from the relationship between documented and documenter. It reflects this very process.

Sophie Meyer
November 8, 2011

Project CrashBack – in The Everyday

On brief reflection of the session a few weeks ago on ‘The Everyday’, I have been putting some of its critiques and concepts into application with my own work.

Being that I am creating a photographic artwork project set over both time and space, I see the physical landscape that ‘users’ access on a daily basis as my creative area and my digital reflections of these are my supervisions of a system through shared experience. Setting in place a link between the real (the landscape) and the pseudo-revisionation of events (my re-photography) invites others to share in experiences that have taken place perhaps without their knowledge but in an area of familiarity.

In short – pushing the boundary of landscape photography and communication of experience through digital means (interactive mapping, viewer participation) creates my art mixed with the world and the automotive culture we live in. After all, cities are built entirely around the system of roads for transportation and we are travellers along these paths sharing proximity… Why can’t we claim a small section of these areas as integral parts to our memory and schematic perception?

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 https://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.