Sunday, February 28, 2010
Chad Curtis's Topology
Bourriaud's writing about the topology of space and time in relation to art reminded me of Chad's work.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Monday, February 22, 2010
Barcode Benjaminz!
I've been messin around with barcodes lately. These are for Mel Chin's Fundred project down in New Orleans. All the corners say $100, the eagle says "free," Ben Franklin is "Ben," and the White House is "White."
My take on Post Production
Ready-mades can be confusing. Until recently, I had only glossed over the work of Marcel Duchamp. After having studied his work and thinking here and there, I find myself contemplating the notion that choice validates a work of art. Choosing an object and changing its context, viewing it anew outside of the role it was born into, requires the viewer to make a conceptual leap with the artist. This is something I've been trying to get my head around in my recent work. I come from a background in graphic design, woodworking and functional ceramics. I am expert at none of these pursuits, but feel compelled to continue using them as tools to communicate a message. In "Supplemental" last semester, I cast different shaped supplement bottles in porcelain and combined them to make a set of three different pairs of dumbbells placed on a dumbbell rack from a sports store. I used the rack as a readymade object to stage the fragile dumbbells which communicates how we depend on supplements not only for dietary reasons, but also agriculturally and conceptually. In a way, I was making a work in the spirit of Post Production by re-working a symbol of an industry producing supplements and changing it to comment on that industry. I also participated in the dialogue started by Duchamp by using the dumbbell rack as somewhat of a reference to his "winerack."
The Radicant, Nicolas Bourriaud
For M. Bourriaud, art is an optical tool for looking at the world(pp.8). He agrees with Francis Fukuyama that history can no longer be the supreme measure of 20th century art and challenges the obsession with maintaining diversity in a globalized society. He favors a global society integrated in what he terms "Altermodernity," an effort to put a label on what he thinks is happening in contemporary art today. To him globalization is causing an overall homogenization of world cultures. Through the internet, which he calls "the priveliged medium of [the] proliferation of information, the material symbol of [the] atomization of knowledge into multiple specialized and independent niches."-pp. 20, the creative playing field is being leveled allowing people from a wide range of socio-economic backgrounds access to the same information.
The following is a excerpt from a paper I wrote for Contemporary Issues in Clay, Fall 09:
"A seldom discussed common thread in conversations regarding the concept of a Radicant and radicantity is that of trespassing. Trespassing is defined as “to intrude into another person’s property,” but also as "to go beyond.” (Wikipedia). This second definition aligns with the thinking of Nicolas Bourriaud in his most recent book The Radicant, in which he writes about artists moving freely between cultures creating a new shared world lexicon. This theoretical artistic Esperanto, so to speak, allows artists to revert to mankind’s early nomadic tendencies and meld cultures in ways previously thought taboo. With this in mind we can recognize the impact of the world’s current transition away from a provincial world population with large city centers toward a globalized economy. The rise of the internet has provided a democratic platform for communication and expression provided one has computer and telecommunications access. This adolescent growing online community acts as a blank wall for the graffiti artist within us all, allowing us to place any work we wish before a massive audience. This global dialogue that leaves lines of influence in its wake connecting distant cultures has expanded the role of the artist and the role of artwork into new territory, emphasizing the wonderment of art-making and romanticizing its habit of trespassing new boundaries not yet explored. These boundaries are often social constructs that are rooted in the histories of various, seemingly unrelated media. However, this new way of thinking and seeing acts as a tabula rasa which allows us to trespass these boundaries and simultaneously forge connections between different eras of our history and cross-pollinate ideas between contemporary cultures while transcending, or simply accepting, previously limiting stereotypes. It may sound idealistic and utopian, but there it is."
After taking another look at the text, even with only a couple of months between readings, I feel differently about what Bourriaud is saying. He defines Altermodernity as a new way to conceptualize cultural identity. Now I'm not so sure we need a new definition. Cultural identities may shift and change over time, new ones may emerge and affect or eradicate others, but re-conceptualizing it altogether seems like a real long-shot. It almost flies in the face of his assertion in the beginning of Post Production when he says that "the artistic question is no longer "What can we make that is new?" but "how can we make do with what we have?'" Why throw our conception of cultural identity out the window when it helps us define who we are in the present day. My point is that we don't have the choice to start all over with a tabula rasa. My point is that we can't just go severing our roots according to some post-modern conceptual persona. We need to make do with the roots we have and celebrate our cultural identities and the ways they change. We need to live in our own time and use the past as a tool instead of dropping it like a bad habit.
Baule fetish figures
Bourriaud refers to these figures as symbols in an argument he makes against modernist universalism. He calls them "Authorless, the product of an obscure tribe, mere kindling for the furnace of progress," They exist outside of Thomas McEvilley's model of a single ahistorical line of history which excludes "nature and the undeveloped world around it"-pp19, The Radicant
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Friday, February 19, 2010
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Post Production, Nicolas Bourriaud, 2002
Reasoning out creative licensing seems murky at best when considering the artistic field as "a storehouse of images and ideas to be used as tools...stockpiles of data to manipulate and present." Does anybody really own anything they make? We're all influenced by what we encounter in our lives, so how can we claim ownership over any creation?
pp.18 Semionauts: those who produce original pathways through signs. How is a pathway original if it's based on existing signs? Of course, my answer to this question is that making new connections between existing entities(which communicate through symbolism, i.e. signs) is what artists have done an will always do. One of the artist's roles in society is to uncover existing truths or issues by comparing things from different realms and responding to that comparison. But how do we make new signs? Are these connections new signs?
I like that Bourriaud brings up challenging passive culture. Coming from the rural South, this is a big issue for me. Passive media-based (television/pop movies/pop music) culture overshadows creative culture in my hometown. Every other conversation overheard in the supermarket or even at gallery openings revolves (in my opinion) around living vicariously through the athletes and characters in the mass media ingested on a daily basis. Some of this passive culture is changing and more and more people are using blogs and other ways of intercommunication as a means of response.
Now I see this passive culture as an entity with which to interact. Sports and pop culture are significant cultural entities worthy of consideration and response.
Now I see this passive culture as an entity with which to interact. Sports and pop culture are significant cultural entities worthy of consideration and response.
One of the main threads among all these issues so far is summarized in Dominique Gonzalez-Forester's quote on pp. 19:
"Even if it is illusory and utopian, what matters is introducing a sort of equality, assuming the same capacities, the possibility of and equal relationship, between me - at the origins of an arrangement, a system - and others, allowing them to organize their own story in response to what they have just seen, with their own references."
"the act of choosing is enough to establish the artistic process, just as the act of fabricating, painting or sculpting does: to give a new idea to an object is already production"pp.25
"to create is to insert an object into a new scenario, to consider it a character in a narrative"pp.25
If this is where post production was in 2002, where are we now? How does the ongoing global financial crisis and the US's continued occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan fit into the realm of the post-producer? One interesting comparison could be between the 1st decade of the 20th century and that of the 21st. Where are we headed? Will the US take the same historical and economic path Western Europe(specifically France, England and Spain) took? Where is the new frontier? Bourriaud would say the new frontier is between cultures, in the intermingling of visitors with the indigenous. The visitors being Radicants of a new global culture making heterotemporal, heterospatial connections as they explore new cultures and return to their own.
If this is where post production was in 2002, where are we now? How does the ongoing global financial crisis and the US's continued occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan fit into the realm of the post-producer? One interesting comparison could be between the 1st decade of the 20th century and that of the 21st. Where are we headed? Will the US take the same historical and economic path Western Europe(specifically France, England and Spain) took? Where is the new frontier? Bourriaud would say the new frontier is between cultures, in the intermingling of visitors with the indigenous. The visitors being Radicants of a new global culture making heterotemporal, heterospatial connections as they explore new cultures and return to their own.
Walter Benjamin's A Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, 1936
"...that which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of a work of art."
Benjamin talks about the impact of mechanical reproduction on art, artists, and film, in particular. He fixates on the idea that works of art had an "aura" that traveled with them and spoke of the time in which they were made, when art was less available before the advent of industry. This aura withers with the dissemination of mechanically reproduced objects so much so that perhaps it does not even still exist. The aura has transformed into something new and different since Benjamin's time. Perhaps a better word for it would be the artist's energy or persona, or even their style. Whatever it's called, it's what remains after a work has been exhibited and discussed in the public realm of today.
Film, in particular has had a massive impact on the viewer's perception of art. Since film and it's forbear, photography, emerged as methods of mechanically reproduced art, the viewer has had different issues to consider when contemplating a work. Is it a limited edition? Where else have these been exhibited? What kind of camera was used? How long will this film be running? Can I get a copy to own personally? All these questions address issues surrounding these media. They can be endlessly reproduced, if the artist/producers choose to do so. They can continue to be shown indefinitely because of their reproducibility and the nature of the venue in which they are usually shown(gallery, cinema). There are a variety of methods with which to produce photos or movies, so the making process becomes part of the viewer's consideration. Films can be shown over and over again, days or generations apart, depending on the willingness of the artists/producers and the demand of the viewers. Today we can find/download a copy of nearly everything we see, especially the newest works in video and digital photography which puts the viewer into the mindset of the collector and therefore, to a certain degree, the role of expert. Connoisseurship is big now because there is so much more being produced and reproduced. Culling through the massive amounts of media from the 20th and 21st centuries is many people's favorite hobby. So in a nutshell, film and photography has challenged notions of authenticity, enabled mass criticism and opened the imaginations of the masses while stretching the aura of an individual work into transleusency.
All of this brings me to a point about how mechanical reproduction has freed art from its dependence on ritual and the occult. It used to be that if you wanted to see a great work of art, you had to know a collector or a high priest, go into their art storage and view their works of staggering virtuosity that they kept out of the public's eye. This "cult of art" has been overthrown by advent of mechanical reproduction and its celebrated penchant for exhibition. This freed art from the traditional confines of its perception, so that the individuality of a work of art has been substituted by a cultural pleurality.
New processes today have once again reinforced Benjamin's message. Rapid prototyping methods such as 3d printing, laser cutting, 3d scanning, cloning(!) and many other means of digital fabrication take the hand of artist further and further away from the end result. Publishing, exhibiting and curating online is more popular than ever. Where this is taking us, there is no way to know. Perhaps in another 10 years, artists with the skills and means will be digitally producing works in their studios and the notion of the aura of the individual work of art will have withered completely. For some reason, that feels a little sad, yet liberating.
Benjamin talks about the impact of mechanical reproduction on art, artists, and film, in particular. He fixates on the idea that works of art had an "aura" that traveled with them and spoke of the time in which they were made, when art was less available before the advent of industry. This aura withers with the dissemination of mechanically reproduced objects so much so that perhaps it does not even still exist. The aura has transformed into something new and different since Benjamin's time. Perhaps a better word for it would be the artist's energy or persona, or even their style. Whatever it's called, it's what remains after a work has been exhibited and discussed in the public realm of today.
Film, in particular has had a massive impact on the viewer's perception of art. Since film and it's forbear, photography, emerged as methods of mechanically reproduced art, the viewer has had different issues to consider when contemplating a work. Is it a limited edition? Where else have these been exhibited? What kind of camera was used? How long will this film be running? Can I get a copy to own personally? All these questions address issues surrounding these media. They can be endlessly reproduced, if the artist/producers choose to do so. They can continue to be shown indefinitely because of their reproducibility and the nature of the venue in which they are usually shown(gallery, cinema). There are a variety of methods with which to produce photos or movies, so the making process becomes part of the viewer's consideration. Films can be shown over and over again, days or generations apart, depending on the willingness of the artists/producers and the demand of the viewers. Today we can find/download a copy of nearly everything we see, especially the newest works in video and digital photography which puts the viewer into the mindset of the collector and therefore, to a certain degree, the role of expert. Connoisseurship is big now because there is so much more being produced and reproduced. Culling through the massive amounts of media from the 20th and 21st centuries is many people's favorite hobby. So in a nutshell, film and photography has challenged notions of authenticity, enabled mass criticism and opened the imaginations of the masses while stretching the aura of an individual work into transleusency.
All of this brings me to a point about how mechanical reproduction has freed art from its dependence on ritual and the occult. It used to be that if you wanted to see a great work of art, you had to know a collector or a high priest, go into their art storage and view their works of staggering virtuosity that they kept out of the public's eye. This "cult of art" has been overthrown by advent of mechanical reproduction and its celebrated penchant for exhibition. This freed art from the traditional confines of its perception, so that the individuality of a work of art has been substituted by a cultural pleurality.
New processes today have once again reinforced Benjamin's message. Rapid prototyping methods such as 3d printing, laser cutting, 3d scanning, cloning(!) and many other means of digital fabrication take the hand of artist further and further away from the end result. Publishing, exhibiting and curating online is more popular than ever. Where this is taking us, there is no way to know. Perhaps in another 10 years, artists with the skills and means will be digitally producing works in their studios and the notion of the aura of the individual work of art will have withered completely. For some reason, that feels a little sad, yet liberating.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Thursday, February 11, 2010
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