Blog 1
Tehannaliz0r.blogspot.com
Sculpture in the Expanded Field
If culture is the foundation of everything we know and psychotherapy is the psychological treatment of mental disorders, then Erwin Wurm is an exemplary example of operating in the expanded field of cultural psychotherapy. The way he deconstructs and constructs disorders critiques the way we think and live in contemporary society in a captivating and humorous way, questioning what we consider in the parameters of normal or not.
Blog 2
Tehannaliz0r.blogspot.com
Jean Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge
The last gasp of the past informs the future. Postmodernism evolved with the foundations of modernism. Skepticism is always akin with change. Lyotard's 'slackening', whereby anything goes following a time of modernism with its purity and unity would have as you put it, been a philosophically murky time for art. It needs a delay in time to be appreciated.
Blog 3
Roisin123.blogspot.com
Comments on: WJT Mitchell, excerpt from chapter “What is an Image?”
Semiotics seems to be a logical approach to image versus text as it sees them as signifiers that generate meaning that is signified in the brain and becomes an idea or concept. The result of this whether from image or text is visualization. I agree it is interesting that Mitchell did not address semiotics to understand the relationship between image and text.
Blog 4
Cristinacrits.blogspot.com
Meyer, James, “The Functional Site”
You discussed the functional site as not necessarily a physical site, but one with connections, ideas and processes. A photograph also operates as a functional site, such as Ann Shelton's Lucy's Gully that connects the image with the feelings and thoughts of the darkness of New Zealand landscape that evoke fear and foreboding due to the isolation and lack of civilization. It is more about connections than the physical site.
Blog 5
Tehannaliz0r.blogspot.com
Tze Ming Mok – Race You There
Our identities are socially constructed by the society to which we live. People such as Tze Ming Mok are stigmatised through what they represent based on stereotypes and prejudices. Art can help to raise consciousness of these issues of false representations as it deals with difference in social dialogue in a world in a constant state of flux due to globalisation.
Blog 6
Boram1984.blogspot.com
Contemplating a Self-Portrait as a Pharmacist
The integrity of the artist can remain intact with a trademark style depending on the purpose or motivations of the artist. Not all artists opt for the phony spell of commodity and star discussed by Walter Benjamin. P Mule operates as an anonymous collective far from the sensationalism of Hirst. Her fundamentalist practice operates in a trademark style of installation that investigates integration of multi media and networks that question the authority of the viewer, object and site interchange.
Blog 7
Cristinacrits.blogspot.com
Installation Art and Globalisation
I believe art can contribute to the reinvention of ethics. Politically motivated artists can mediate changes in perceptions through the rewriting of history and its discontents in a contemporary context. The revisiting of past conflicts in today’s context helps to raise consciousness of past actions and serves to create discourse that can contribute to a broader discussion of associated ethics. Post-colonial artists like Fiona Jack have reexamined issues around historical hegemonies on boundaries to readdress past actions in the hope of reinventing ethics in contemporary society and help to philosophically right the wrongs of the past.
Blog 8
Cristinacrits.blogspot.com
Media Control
The power of the photograph outside of mass media in the realm of art becomes more important to politicize and mobilize the masses into action. By presenting in a public context the power of the photograph is intensified as it potentially gains spectatorship to carry out its political role that the media filter or screen.
Blog 9
Cristinacrits.blogspot
Relational Aesthetics – Art’s primary role is to offer a different viewpoint
If art's primary role is to offer a different viewpoint it requires more than participation. It requires independent thought especially if it hopes to go into the political arena and mobilise action and debate.
Blog 10
Cristinacrits.blogspot
Hotel Democracy
Interestingly Obrist comes from the same philosophical perspective as Hirschhorn in that knowledge production relies on collaboration and participation to produce difference and global dialogue that Hirschhorn relies on in his works to break down the so called walls. This can be viewed on www.archive.org/details/HansUlrichObristDoIt Vca Cfi
Friday, October 3, 2008
Knowledge Production and Engagement
Araki, N., Bochner, M., Breer, R. “Hans Ulrich Obrist: Interviews”. Volume 1. Edited by Thomas Boutoux, Charta: Milan, 2003. pp. 393-401.
Thomas Hirschhorn (b.1957) a Swiss born artist produces transient and unstable constructions beyond the boundaries of the museum or gallery.(1) Hirschhorn combines detritus with cultural references in his displays that are spontaneous public memorials. As a creative practitioner, Hirschhorn’s motivation is to investigate knowledge production. His thinking is underpinned with a leftwing thrust that he pursues with a zest to produce difference and have a global dialogue. Hirschhorn’s leftist political motivations grew from his time with Grapus, a Parisian collective of communist graphic designers and are embedded in his work.
Hirschhorn approaches his work as a philosopher and a thinker. Questions are more important than answers in his work. In 'Archeology of Engagement' 2001, Hirschhorn questions what exists outside of the hierarchy of values in the archeological excavation site as a whole.(2) He is interested in raising consciousness of engagement in a value-free, nonhierarchical approach whereby everything has layers that add value. It is the hierarchy of value rather than the hierarchy that he is interested in. The layers added through engagement, are things such as time.
A thinker with a similar energy as Hirschhorn is Hans Ulrich Obrist (b.1968) a curator and art critic, also Swiss born. Time is also important in the thinking of Obrist as it adds new elements that produce difference and have global dialogue.(3) Delays in time translate into new ideas in art. Ideas from the 1950’s can be translated in the 1990’s and they generate new meanings. In 1993 Christian Boltanski, Bertrand Lavier and Obrist had a discussion that focused on the use of written instructions to make works of art to observe the effects of translation based on Walter Benjamin’s essay, The Task of the Translater. It became an exhibition that has travelled to 43 countries around the world.(4) The open and unpredictable nature of the exhibition relied on collaboration in the local context to give difference. Obrist was investigating knowledge production through providing written questions to be explored in the local context, as well as questioning the master plan of the curator and the homogenization of ideas.
Obrist sees the ‘role of the curator as a catalyst, generator and motivator – a sparing partner, accompanying the artist while they build a show, and a bridge builder, creating a bridge to the public.’(5) He states successful 'shows are journeys that get written along the way: you don’t know the end point.’(6)
Thinkers like Hirschhorn the artist, and Obrist the curator render visible the deeper meanings of our lives, redefining who and what we are by communicating the layers or strata’s of meaning through engagement and open-endedness. They provide a toolbox for thinking in terms of hierarchies of value that exist externally thereby opening up meaning and value. In their explorations of knowledge production, questions are more abundant than answers.
(1) Araki, N., Bochner, M., Breer, R"Hans Ulrich Obrist: Interviews. p.395. Volume 1. Edited by Thomas Boutoux, Charta: Milan, 2003.
(2) Araki, N., Bochner, M., Breer, R"Hans Ulrich Obrist: Interviews. p.395. Volume 1. Edited by Thomas Boutoux, Charta: Milan, 2003.
(3) "Hans Ulrich Obrist: Interview. http://www.archive.org/details/HansUlrichObristDoItVcaCfi. Interview". Retrieved 4 October 2008.
(4) "Hans Ulrich Obrist: Interview".http://www.archive.org/details/HansUlrichObristDoItVcaCfi. Interview. Retrieved 4 October 2008.
(5) www.timeoout.com/london/art/features/248.html. Hans Ulrich Obrist: Interview. By Sarah Kent. Posted Mon Apr 24 2006. Retrieved 4 October 2008.
(6) www.timeoout.com/london/art/features/248.html. Hans Ulrich Obrist: Interview. By Sarah Kent. Posted Mon Apr 24 2006. Retrieved 4 October 2008.
Thomas Hirschhorn (b.1957) a Swiss born artist produces transient and unstable constructions beyond the boundaries of the museum or gallery.(1) Hirschhorn combines detritus with cultural references in his displays that are spontaneous public memorials. As a creative practitioner, Hirschhorn’s motivation is to investigate knowledge production. His thinking is underpinned with a leftwing thrust that he pursues with a zest to produce difference and have a global dialogue. Hirschhorn’s leftist political motivations grew from his time with Grapus, a Parisian collective of communist graphic designers and are embedded in his work.
Hirschhorn approaches his work as a philosopher and a thinker. Questions are more important than answers in his work. In 'Archeology of Engagement' 2001, Hirschhorn questions what exists outside of the hierarchy of values in the archeological excavation site as a whole.(2) He is interested in raising consciousness of engagement in a value-free, nonhierarchical approach whereby everything has layers that add value. It is the hierarchy of value rather than the hierarchy that he is interested in. The layers added through engagement, are things such as time.
A thinker with a similar energy as Hirschhorn is Hans Ulrich Obrist (b.1968) a curator and art critic, also Swiss born. Time is also important in the thinking of Obrist as it adds new elements that produce difference and have global dialogue.(3) Delays in time translate into new ideas in art. Ideas from the 1950’s can be translated in the 1990’s and they generate new meanings. In 1993 Christian Boltanski, Bertrand Lavier and Obrist had a discussion that focused on the use of written instructions to make works of art to observe the effects of translation based on Walter Benjamin’s essay, The Task of the Translater. It became an exhibition that has travelled to 43 countries around the world.(4) The open and unpredictable nature of the exhibition relied on collaboration in the local context to give difference. Obrist was investigating knowledge production through providing written questions to be explored in the local context, as well as questioning the master plan of the curator and the homogenization of ideas.
Obrist sees the ‘role of the curator as a catalyst, generator and motivator – a sparing partner, accompanying the artist while they build a show, and a bridge builder, creating a bridge to the public.’(5) He states successful 'shows are journeys that get written along the way: you don’t know the end point.’(6)
Thinkers like Hirschhorn the artist, and Obrist the curator render visible the deeper meanings of our lives, redefining who and what we are by communicating the layers or strata’s of meaning through engagement and open-endedness. They provide a toolbox for thinking in terms of hierarchies of value that exist externally thereby opening up meaning and value. In their explorations of knowledge production, questions are more abundant than answers.
(1) Araki, N., Bochner, M., Breer, R"Hans Ulrich Obrist: Interviews. p.395. Volume 1. Edited by Thomas Boutoux, Charta: Milan, 2003.
(2) Araki, N., Bochner, M., Breer, R"Hans Ulrich Obrist: Interviews. p.395. Volume 1. Edited by Thomas Boutoux, Charta: Milan, 2003.
(3) "Hans Ulrich Obrist: Interview. http://www.archive.org/details/HansUlrichObristDoItVcaCfi. Interview". Retrieved 4 October 2008.
(4) "Hans Ulrich Obrist: Interview".http://www.archive.org/details/HansUlrichObristDoItVcaCfi. Interview. Retrieved 4 October 2008.
(5) www.timeoout.com/london/art/features/248.html. Hans Ulrich Obrist: Interview. By Sarah Kent. Posted Mon Apr 24 2006. Retrieved 4 October 2008.
(6) www.timeoout.com/london/art/features/248.html. Hans Ulrich Obrist: Interview. By Sarah Kent. Posted Mon Apr 24 2006. Retrieved 4 October 2008.
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