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.
Monday, September 22, 2008
Relational Aesthetics - Harmony versus Antagonism
Bourriaud, Nicholas, ‘Art of the 1990’s’, from Relational Aesthetics, Paris: Les presses de reel, 2002, pp.25-40.
Nicholas Bourriaud a French writer, art critic, curator and co-founder of Palais de Tokyo attempted to characterize artistic practice in the 1990’s in Relational Aesthetics. He argued that art at this time took on “the realm of human interactions and its social context, rather than the assertion of an independent and private symbolic space”.(1) In other words, relational aesthetics seeks to generate inter-human relations with an emphasis on participation. This collaborative function relies on transmission or ‘relational reading’.(2) Bourriaud does not simply regard relational aesthetics to be simply interactive art. He considers it to be a means of locating contemporary practice within the culture at large. It can be seen as a direct response to the shift from goods to a service based economy.(3) It allows for a system of difference in aesthetic consumption of art relations. The art relations, is the art. The experimental open-endedness over aesthetic resolution is argued to be in perpetual flux.(4) It is dependent on the engagement of the audience to explore the social bond of where they sit in relation to the world and to others. In Bourriaud’s relational aesthetics the work offers togetherness, a positive feel good experience. Relational artist Eve Armstrong sets up trading tables that operate in the production of goods and services to explore the social bonds that Bourriaud discusses. However Claire Bishop, questions whether this feel good art as in Armstrong’s trading table, is art that does not defend itself and can collapse into compensatory or self-congratulatory entertainment. A criticism of relational aesthetics may be that it is unstable as it is beholden to the audience and environment and requires a unified subject. If the audience or social entity does not wish to participate then it potentially renders an artwork as futile.
In contrast, contemporary artist Thomas Hirschhorn (b.1957) uses relational aesthetics to disrupt Bourriaud’s claims for togetherness or harmony. Bishop calls this relational antagonism whereby Hirschhorn’s works expose what is repressed in sustaining the appearance of order and harmony.(5) He rejects the feel good approach and adopts a more argumentative approach culminating in friction and discomfort in political debate. Rather than seeking unity from the audience by fulfilling the artist’s interactive requirements as in Armstrong’s trading table, Hirschhorn poses antagonistic questions that encourage independent thought that is an essential prerequisite for political action. If contemporary art practice dealing in relational aesthetics seeks to be politically motivated it may need to be antagonistic rather than feel good to mobilize a response in the wider culture.
(1) Bourriaud, Nicholas, ‘Art of the 1990’s’, from Relational Aesthetics, Paris: Les presses de reel, 2002, p.14.
(2) Bourriaud, Nicholas, ‘Art of the 1990’s’, from Relational Aesthetics, Paris: Les presses de reel, 2002, p.29.
(3) Bishop, Claire, ‘Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics', October Magazine. Vol 110, Fall 2004. p.54.
(4) Bishop, Claire, ‘Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics', October Magazine. Vol 110, Fall 2004. p.52.
(5) Bishop, Claire, ‘Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics', October Magazine. Vol 110, Fall 2004. p.79.
Nicholas Bourriaud a French writer, art critic, curator and co-founder of Palais de Tokyo attempted to characterize artistic practice in the 1990’s in Relational Aesthetics. He argued that art at this time took on “the realm of human interactions and its social context, rather than the assertion of an independent and private symbolic space”.(1) In other words, relational aesthetics seeks to generate inter-human relations with an emphasis on participation. This collaborative function relies on transmission or ‘relational reading’.(2) Bourriaud does not simply regard relational aesthetics to be simply interactive art. He considers it to be a means of locating contemporary practice within the culture at large. It can be seen as a direct response to the shift from goods to a service based economy.(3) It allows for a system of difference in aesthetic consumption of art relations. The art relations, is the art. The experimental open-endedness over aesthetic resolution is argued to be in perpetual flux.(4) It is dependent on the engagement of the audience to explore the social bond of where they sit in relation to the world and to others. In Bourriaud’s relational aesthetics the work offers togetherness, a positive feel good experience. Relational artist Eve Armstrong sets up trading tables that operate in the production of goods and services to explore the social bonds that Bourriaud discusses. However Claire Bishop, questions whether this feel good art as in Armstrong’s trading table, is art that does not defend itself and can collapse into compensatory or self-congratulatory entertainment. A criticism of relational aesthetics may be that it is unstable as it is beholden to the audience and environment and requires a unified subject. If the audience or social entity does not wish to participate then it potentially renders an artwork as futile.
In contrast, contemporary artist Thomas Hirschhorn (b.1957) uses relational aesthetics to disrupt Bourriaud’s claims for togetherness or harmony. Bishop calls this relational antagonism whereby Hirschhorn’s works expose what is repressed in sustaining the appearance of order and harmony.(5) He rejects the feel good approach and adopts a more argumentative approach culminating in friction and discomfort in political debate. Rather than seeking unity from the audience by fulfilling the artist’s interactive requirements as in Armstrong’s trading table, Hirschhorn poses antagonistic questions that encourage independent thought that is an essential prerequisite for political action. If contemporary art practice dealing in relational aesthetics seeks to be politically motivated it may need to be antagonistic rather than feel good to mobilize a response in the wider culture.
(1) Bourriaud, Nicholas, ‘Art of the 1990’s’, from Relational Aesthetics, Paris: Les presses de reel, 2002, p.14.
(2) Bourriaud, Nicholas, ‘Art of the 1990’s’, from Relational Aesthetics, Paris: Les presses de reel, 2002, p.29.
(3) Bishop, Claire, ‘Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics', October Magazine. Vol 110, Fall 2004. p.54.
(4) Bishop, Claire, ‘Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics', October Magazine. Vol 110, Fall 2004. p.52.
(5) Bishop, Claire, ‘Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics', October Magazine. Vol 110, Fall 2004. p.79.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Spectatorship and Social Context
Benjamin, Walter, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, reprinted in Meenaskhi Gig Durham and Douglas Kellner, ed. 5, Media and Culture Studies: Keyworks, Oxford, 2001, pp. 48-70.
Walter Benjamin, a German-Jewish Marxist literary cultural critic and philosopher has been influential in media theory. In his 1936 essay “The Work in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, he wrote a theory of art that is “useful for the formulation of revolutionary demands in the politics of art”.(1) He was a forefront postmodern theorist and discussed how mechanical reproduction was revolutionary and liberated the work of art from its dependence on ritual function embedded in tradition.(2) Due to mechanical reproduction, art became based in politics rather than ritualistic function located in religious and magical realms. This happened simultaneously with the rise of socialism. The result was a change in spectatorship, whereby the audience became the author of the work. Prior to this the aura was located in works of art having unique value of authenticity and deprived of any social function of art. The decay of the aura bought the work of art closer to the spectator. This change in perception gave unlimited scope for the masses. It served to give universal equality by the destruction of the aura making art more accessible and politicized. Art in the age of reproduction was able to tackle difficult issues to outrage and mobilise the masses. The cult value receded and the spectator became the critic, however Benjamin stated, ‘an absent minded’ or distracted critic.(3) The distraction was in the reception of the work of art.
The change in spectatorship as a result of reproduction exemplified the politicing function of photography. David Campbell highlights the importance of social context in the reading by the spectator of the pictorial image. (4) Like Benjamin he discusses the power of photography to provoke the spectator through the representation of atrocities in contemporary media. The Vietnam War photograph of Kim Phuc running down the road with almost two-thirds of her body seared by napalm was credited with undermining support for American involvement. (5) This politicising function of photography according to Sontag depends on the condition of reception as to whether there is widespread passivity or outrage. It is the political context, or larger system that the photograph is being placed into that can fail to induce action. (6) The political context portraying irresolvable situations can create public indifference to injustices. This coupled with the absence of photographs through the media of atrocities serve only to perpetuate crisis. Therefore the photograph has the potential to politicize as discussed by Benjamin, to outrage the masses but only if it can get through all the political and social screens and filters discussed by Campbell that serve to diminish its power to provoke. Thus the politicising function of the photograph is dependent on spectatorship and social context.
(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Work _of_Art_in_the_Age_of_Its_Technical_Reproducibility. 21 August 2008.
(2) Benjamin, Walter, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, reprinted in Meenaskhi Gig Durham and Douglas Kellner ed. 5, Media and Culture Studies: Keyworks, Oxford, 2001, pp. 53.
(3) Benjamin, Walter, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, reprinted in Meenaskhi Gig Durham and Douglas Kellner ed. 5, Media and Culture Studies: Keyworks, Oxford, 2001, pp. 63.
(4) Campbell, David, “Horrific Blindness: Images of Death in Contemporary Media”, Journal for Cultural Research, Vol. 8, No. 1, Routledge, 2004. Pp.55.
(5) Campbell, David, “Horrific Blindness: Images of Death in Contemporary Media”, Journal for Cultural Research, Vol. 8, No. 1, Routledge, 2004. Pp.59.
(6) Campbell, David, “Horrific Blindness: Images of Death in Contemporary Media”, Journal for Cultural Research, Vol. 8, No. 1, Routledge, 2004. pp.63.
(7) Campbell, David, “Horrific Blindness: Images of Death in Contemporary Media”, Journal for Cultural Research, Vol. 8, No. 1, Routledge, 2004. pp.70.
Walter Benjamin, a German-Jewish Marxist literary cultural critic and philosopher has been influential in media theory. In his 1936 essay “The Work in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, he wrote a theory of art that is “useful for the formulation of revolutionary demands in the politics of art”.(1) He was a forefront postmodern theorist and discussed how mechanical reproduction was revolutionary and liberated the work of art from its dependence on ritual function embedded in tradition.(2) Due to mechanical reproduction, art became based in politics rather than ritualistic function located in religious and magical realms. This happened simultaneously with the rise of socialism. The result was a change in spectatorship, whereby the audience became the author of the work. Prior to this the aura was located in works of art having unique value of authenticity and deprived of any social function of art. The decay of the aura bought the work of art closer to the spectator. This change in perception gave unlimited scope for the masses. It served to give universal equality by the destruction of the aura making art more accessible and politicized. Art in the age of reproduction was able to tackle difficult issues to outrage and mobilise the masses. The cult value receded and the spectator became the critic, however Benjamin stated, ‘an absent minded’ or distracted critic.(3) The distraction was in the reception of the work of art.
The change in spectatorship as a result of reproduction exemplified the politicing function of photography. David Campbell highlights the importance of social context in the reading by the spectator of the pictorial image. (4) Like Benjamin he discusses the power of photography to provoke the spectator through the representation of atrocities in contemporary media. The Vietnam War photograph of Kim Phuc running down the road with almost two-thirds of her body seared by napalm was credited with undermining support for American involvement. (5) This politicising function of photography according to Sontag depends on the condition of reception as to whether there is widespread passivity or outrage. It is the political context, or larger system that the photograph is being placed into that can fail to induce action. (6) The political context portraying irresolvable situations can create public indifference to injustices. This coupled with the absence of photographs through the media of atrocities serve only to perpetuate crisis. Therefore the photograph has the potential to politicize as discussed by Benjamin, to outrage the masses but only if it can get through all the political and social screens and filters discussed by Campbell that serve to diminish its power to provoke. Thus the politicising function of the photograph is dependent on spectatorship and social context.
(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Work _of_Art_in_the_Age_of_Its_Technical_Reproducibility. 21 August 2008.
(2) Benjamin, Walter, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, reprinted in Meenaskhi Gig Durham and Douglas Kellner ed. 5, Media and Culture Studies: Keyworks, Oxford, 2001, pp. 53.
(3) Benjamin, Walter, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, reprinted in Meenaskhi Gig Durham and Douglas Kellner ed. 5, Media and Culture Studies: Keyworks, Oxford, 2001, pp. 63.
(4) Campbell, David, “Horrific Blindness: Images of Death in Contemporary Media”, Journal for Cultural Research, Vol. 8, No. 1, Routledge, 2004. Pp.55.
(5) Campbell, David, “Horrific Blindness: Images of Death in Contemporary Media”, Journal for Cultural Research, Vol. 8, No. 1, Routledge, 2004. Pp.59.
(6) Campbell, David, “Horrific Blindness: Images of Death in Contemporary Media”, Journal for Cultural Research, Vol. 8, No. 1, Routledge, 2004. pp.63.
(7) Campbell, David, “Horrific Blindness: Images of Death in Contemporary Media”, Journal for Cultural Research, Vol. 8, No. 1, Routledge, 2004. pp.70.
Saturday, August 9, 2008
Globalisation and its Discontents - Generosity and Exchange
Fisher Jean, "Toward a Metaphysics of Shit", Documenta 11. Platform 5. The Catalog, Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz, 2002, pp. 63-70.
Jean Fisher lectures critical studies at Middlesex University and the Royal College of Art in London. She is editor of Global Visions: A New Internationalism in the Visual Arts and Reverberation: Tactics of Resistance, Forms of Agency in Trans/Cultural Practices. Her discussion on Globalisation and its Discontents alludes to Sigmund Freud’s book on Civilization and its Discontents, where the individual quest is for freedom, and civilisations contrary demand is for conformity and repression.(1) According to Fisher, the by product of globalization (and civilization) is the production of ‘waste and wasteland: an abject excess of unproductive expenditure – of shit, garbage, disorder, discarded ideas, histories, ideologies, and people’ as a result of the global world of capitalism'.(2) The discontents or otherness expose unresolved conflicts and disjunctions in cultural flow in different contexts. The complexities of globalization and the disjunctures between economies, cultures and politics have been given a framework of cultural flows by Arjun Appadurai. As professor of Social Sciences in New York he explores the fluid nature of the five dimensions of cultural flow as categorized by ethnoscapes, mediascapes, technoscapes, financescapes and ideoscapes.(3) The suffix of scapes points to the fluid nature of these cultural flows in a disjunctive global world resulting in cultural chaos, fractal societies and discontent. Fisher comments that this is fertile ground for art that deals with untranslatable, postcolonial, transcultural issues that attempt to connect a past with the present through lost histories, ideologies and people.
Fisher posed the question of whether art can function as an effective mediator of change or resistance of hegemonic power.(4) Art can act as an effective mediator of change through the universal desire for exchange. This can be achieved through actions of forms of expression and collaboration to contribute to a reinvention of humanist principles of ethics and justice. Politically motivated artists like Fiona Jack desire to rewrite history through ‘tricky tactics’ as a potential agent for change. She seeks to do what Richard Serres identifies as the universal desire for exchange that depends on networks of communication, differing methods of communication, for translation of concepts and the expansion of vocabularies and experiences.(5) Jack’s ideas around borders and boundaries are played out, or translated in projects both on the local and global front. Her work is marked by anti-authoritarianism, often a protest action or critique on post-colonialism. In April 2008, Jack explored ideas about land ownership and Auckland history in collaboration with iwi from Ngati Whatua o Orakei as part of a documentary by TVNZ. The tribe were squeezed by urban encroachment and lost the last remaining block of tribal land at Okahu Bay. With the exchange of knowledge with local iwi, Jack rewrote the history of the people and ‘brought to life the ashes of Ngati Whatua o Orakei’.(6) It was a grass roots protest action of rebuilding a palisade at Okahu Bay that had been burnt to the ground by the Crown in 1943. The project connected the past to the present to mediate the production of new insights and relations through exchange of knowledge of the histories and ideologies. Jack works through generosity and exchange to produce a new language. She has long engaged with the use of mediascapes, such as TV or billboards to achieve a political voice to expose unresolved conflicts and cultural exchange through the media. Her art is a successful mediator that anchors the actions of the hegemonic power of the past in the present, through generosity and exchange of knowledge.
(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_and_its__Discontents.htm. 10 August 2008.
(2) Fisher Jean, ‘Toward a Metaphysics of Shit’, Documenta 11. Platform 5. The Catalog, Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz, 2002, pp. 63.
(3) Appadurai, Arjun. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalisation, ‘Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy’. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996, pp.37.
(4) Fisher Jean, ‘Toward a Metaphysics of Shit’, Documenta 11. Platform 5. The Catalog, Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz, 2002, pp. 64.
(5) Fisher Jean, ‘Toward a Metaphysics of Shit’, Documenta 11. Platform 5. The Catalog, Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz, 2002, pp. 64.
(6) http://www.nzherald.co.nz/topic/story.cfm?c_id=355&objectid=10505261. 10 August 2008.
Jean Fisher lectures critical studies at Middlesex University and the Royal College of Art in London. She is editor of Global Visions: A New Internationalism in the Visual Arts and Reverberation: Tactics of Resistance, Forms of Agency in Trans/Cultural Practices. Her discussion on Globalisation and its Discontents alludes to Sigmund Freud’s book on Civilization and its Discontents, where the individual quest is for freedom, and civilisations contrary demand is for conformity and repression.(1) According to Fisher, the by product of globalization (and civilization) is the production of ‘waste and wasteland: an abject excess of unproductive expenditure – of shit, garbage, disorder, discarded ideas, histories, ideologies, and people’ as a result of the global world of capitalism'.(2) The discontents or otherness expose unresolved conflicts and disjunctions in cultural flow in different contexts. The complexities of globalization and the disjunctures between economies, cultures and politics have been given a framework of cultural flows by Arjun Appadurai. As professor of Social Sciences in New York he explores the fluid nature of the five dimensions of cultural flow as categorized by ethnoscapes, mediascapes, technoscapes, financescapes and ideoscapes.(3) The suffix of scapes points to the fluid nature of these cultural flows in a disjunctive global world resulting in cultural chaos, fractal societies and discontent. Fisher comments that this is fertile ground for art that deals with untranslatable, postcolonial, transcultural issues that attempt to connect a past with the present through lost histories, ideologies and people.
Fisher posed the question of whether art can function as an effective mediator of change or resistance of hegemonic power.(4) Art can act as an effective mediator of change through the universal desire for exchange. This can be achieved through actions of forms of expression and collaboration to contribute to a reinvention of humanist principles of ethics and justice. Politically motivated artists like Fiona Jack desire to rewrite history through ‘tricky tactics’ as a potential agent for change. She seeks to do what Richard Serres identifies as the universal desire for exchange that depends on networks of communication, differing methods of communication, for translation of concepts and the expansion of vocabularies and experiences.(5) Jack’s ideas around borders and boundaries are played out, or translated in projects both on the local and global front. Her work is marked by anti-authoritarianism, often a protest action or critique on post-colonialism. In April 2008, Jack explored ideas about land ownership and Auckland history in collaboration with iwi from Ngati Whatua o Orakei as part of a documentary by TVNZ. The tribe were squeezed by urban encroachment and lost the last remaining block of tribal land at Okahu Bay. With the exchange of knowledge with local iwi, Jack rewrote the history of the people and ‘brought to life the ashes of Ngati Whatua o Orakei’.(6) It was a grass roots protest action of rebuilding a palisade at Okahu Bay that had been burnt to the ground by the Crown in 1943. The project connected the past to the present to mediate the production of new insights and relations through exchange of knowledge of the histories and ideologies. Jack works through generosity and exchange to produce a new language. She has long engaged with the use of mediascapes, such as TV or billboards to achieve a political voice to expose unresolved conflicts and cultural exchange through the media. Her art is a successful mediator that anchors the actions of the hegemonic power of the past in the present, through generosity and exchange of knowledge.
(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_and_its__Discontents.htm. 10 August 2008.
(2) Fisher Jean, ‘Toward a Metaphysics of Shit’, Documenta 11. Platform 5. The Catalog, Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz, 2002, pp. 63.
(3) Appadurai, Arjun. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalisation, ‘Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy’. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996, pp.37.
(4) Fisher Jean, ‘Toward a Metaphysics of Shit’, Documenta 11. Platform 5. The Catalog, Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz, 2002, pp. 64.
(5) Fisher Jean, ‘Toward a Metaphysics of Shit’, Documenta 11. Platform 5. The Catalog, Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz, 2002, pp. 64.
(6) http://www.nzherald.co.nz/topic/story.cfm?c_id=355&objectid=10505261. 10 August 2008.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
What happens to the author when you trademark yourself?
Lury, Celia, “ ‘Contemplating a Self Portrait as a Pharmacist’: A Trade Mark Style of Doing Art and Science”, Theory, Culture and Society, Vol.22, No. 1, London: Sage, 2005, pp 93 -110.
As a professor of Sociology at Goldsmiths College, University of London, Celia Lury research interests are in the sociology of culture. She has researched the brand as new culture media and the changing authorship of the modern world. Artist Damien Hirst, a graduate of Goldsmith College who emerged in the late 1980’s, states ‘becoming a brand name is an important part of life. It is the world we live in’. (1)
So what happens to the author in all of this? In the contemporary brand the author function is transformed by the emergence of a brand name. A world comes into existence through media or as Hirst puts it, a response ‘to the world we live in’.(2) Or in other words a response to culture, which is everything we know.(3) Global culture is the mediation of things, or a set of relations between things.(4) A brand, according to Lury, works through a range of artworks, and it must have some ‘flow’ to actualize it. The brand name or identity of the artist acts as the ‘interval’ between works to create ‘flow’ of experience of the world as staged by the artist. Globalisation is a way to increase that flow. It showcases works as ‘effects’ or feelings, rather than representations. The brand is a source of domination, or power.(5) The power of the brand is in consumption and its domination is in its speed and intensity of this mediation.(6) So where is Hirst in this brand? Hirst, as author is subsumed in brand loyalty, as the interval between the works, staging his view of the world through his commentary on art and science. He is part of the sequence between his various works and operates as a brand name. He acknowledges a different position in art by adopting a trademark style.
Another way of looking at this is through Walter Benjamin, a German cultural critic who predicted for capitalist society there would be a need to compensate for the lost aura of art and artist with “the phony spell” of commodity and star.(7) This redefinition of aura as “the phony spell” is how artists like Jeff Koons and Hirst have operated their art careers. The use of a brand name as new culture media, to launch an art career through media sensationalism is the contemporary substitute for artistic aura. Hirst as author becomes the name that triggers the desire for consumption and his artwork becomes a fetish. The aura is created through media sensationalism and celebrity around his artistic provocation. Media complicates the author.
In the case of Hirst the author function has been transformed into a brand name, as part of the ‘flow’ of experience of the brand, subsumed in brand loyalty. Hirst aspires to corporatism as a way to make his brand accessible. The provocation of his work is sensationalist in media culture and this has elevated him to celebrity status. In this he looses his individuality and is thereby culturally constructed by the society we live in. Like Warhol, the next step for Hirst may be to sell his ‘aura’.(8)
(1) Lury, Celia, “ ‘Contemplating a Self Portrait as a Pharmacist’: A Trade Mark Style of Doing Art and Science”, Theory, Culture and Society, Vol.22, No. 1, London: Sage, 2005, pp 93.
(2) Lury, Celia, “ ‘Contemplating a Self Portrait as a Pharmacist’: A Trade Mark Style of Doing Art and Science”, Theory, Culture and Society, Vol.22, No. 1, London: Sage, 2005, pp 94.
(3) Belsey, Catherine. Culture and the Real. Routledge: New York. 2005. pp.10.
(4) Lash, Scott. Global Culture Industry: The Mediation of Things, Cambridge: Polity, 2007. pp.7.
(5) Lash, Scott. Global Culture Industry: The Mediation of Things, Cambridge: Polity, 2007. pp.7.
(6) Lury, Celia, “ ‘Contemplating a Self Portrait as a Pharmacist’: A Trade Mark Style of Doing Art and Science”, Theory, Culture and Society, Vol.22, No. 1, London: Sage, 2005, pp 104
(7) Foster, H., Krauss, R., Bois, Y., Buchlol, B., Art Since 1900 : Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism. London: Thames and Hudson. 2004. pp. 600.
(8) Foster, H., Krauss, R., Bois, Y., Buchlol, B., Art Since 1900 : Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism. London: Thames and Hudson. 2004. pp. 600.
As a professor of Sociology at Goldsmiths College, University of London, Celia Lury research interests are in the sociology of culture. She has researched the brand as new culture media and the changing authorship of the modern world. Artist Damien Hirst, a graduate of Goldsmith College who emerged in the late 1980’s, states ‘becoming a brand name is an important part of life. It is the world we live in’. (1)
So what happens to the author in all of this? In the contemporary brand the author function is transformed by the emergence of a brand name. A world comes into existence through media or as Hirst puts it, a response ‘to the world we live in’.(2) Or in other words a response to culture, which is everything we know.(3) Global culture is the mediation of things, or a set of relations between things.(4) A brand, according to Lury, works through a range of artworks, and it must have some ‘flow’ to actualize it. The brand name or identity of the artist acts as the ‘interval’ between works to create ‘flow’ of experience of the world as staged by the artist. Globalisation is a way to increase that flow. It showcases works as ‘effects’ or feelings, rather than representations. The brand is a source of domination, or power.(5) The power of the brand is in consumption and its domination is in its speed and intensity of this mediation.(6) So where is Hirst in this brand? Hirst, as author is subsumed in brand loyalty, as the interval between the works, staging his view of the world through his commentary on art and science. He is part of the sequence between his various works and operates as a brand name. He acknowledges a different position in art by adopting a trademark style.
Another way of looking at this is through Walter Benjamin, a German cultural critic who predicted for capitalist society there would be a need to compensate for the lost aura of art and artist with “the phony spell” of commodity and star.(7) This redefinition of aura as “the phony spell” is how artists like Jeff Koons and Hirst have operated their art careers. The use of a brand name as new culture media, to launch an art career through media sensationalism is the contemporary substitute for artistic aura. Hirst as author becomes the name that triggers the desire for consumption and his artwork becomes a fetish. The aura is created through media sensationalism and celebrity around his artistic provocation. Media complicates the author.
In the case of Hirst the author function has been transformed into a brand name, as part of the ‘flow’ of experience of the brand, subsumed in brand loyalty. Hirst aspires to corporatism as a way to make his brand accessible. The provocation of his work is sensationalist in media culture and this has elevated him to celebrity status. In this he looses his individuality and is thereby culturally constructed by the society we live in. Like Warhol, the next step for Hirst may be to sell his ‘aura’.(8)
(1) Lury, Celia, “ ‘Contemplating a Self Portrait as a Pharmacist’: A Trade Mark Style of Doing Art and Science”, Theory, Culture and Society, Vol.22, No. 1, London: Sage, 2005, pp 93.
(2) Lury, Celia, “ ‘Contemplating a Self Portrait as a Pharmacist’: A Trade Mark Style of Doing Art and Science”, Theory, Culture and Society, Vol.22, No. 1, London: Sage, 2005, pp 94.
(3) Belsey, Catherine. Culture and the Real. Routledge: New York. 2005. pp.10.
(4) Lash, Scott. Global Culture Industry: The Mediation of Things, Cambridge: Polity, 2007. pp.7.
(5) Lash, Scott. Global Culture Industry: The Mediation of Things, Cambridge: Polity, 2007. pp.7.
(6) Lury, Celia, “ ‘Contemplating a Self Portrait as a Pharmacist’: A Trade Mark Style of Doing Art and Science”, Theory, Culture and Society, Vol.22, No. 1, London: Sage, 2005, pp 104
(7) Foster, H., Krauss, R., Bois, Y., Buchlol, B., Art Since 1900 : Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism. London: Thames and Hudson. 2004. pp. 600.
(8) Foster, H., Krauss, R., Bois, Y., Buchlol, B., Art Since 1900 : Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism. London: Thames and Hudson. 2004. pp. 600.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Self-Portraiture - Collecting Ourselves
Clifford, James, On Collecting Art and Culture, in The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth Century Ethnography literature, and Art, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1988, 215-251.
James Clifford trained as a historian and is currently a professor of History of Consciousness at the University of California. His research interest is in understanding the forces and interactions that shape cultures. He discusses how acts of collecting or ‘gathering’ embody hierarchies of value, exclusions, rule-governed territories of self. The gathering involves the accumulation of possessions, and the idea that identity is a kind of wealth. This wealth can be objects, knowledge, memories or experience. Collecting, as a strategy of desire, uses a ‘possessive self, culture, and authenticity’. (1)
Walter Benjamin believes collecting appears as an art of living intimately allied with memory, with obsession and retrieving order from its binary opposite, disorder. Benjamin says ‘every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector’s passion borders on the chaos of memories’. (2) The threat of loss generates desire to record and collect in order to keep the past visible, so all is not lost.
Frederick Butler, who lived most of his life in New Plymouth was a self confessed obsessive collector who imposed order on disorder. He spent sixty years, until he died, selecting newspaper clippings that had particular personal relevance and arranging carefully in books and displaying in his private museum and house. The volumes compiled of clippings were on subjects such as antiques, nudists, crime, education and Second World War casualties. He spent his lifetime compiling his archive of 80,000 index cards, 50,000 books in his library as an attempt to preserve the past and memorialise its. According to Francis Pound, he intended for his private collection to be public as twice he approached established museums, ‘with the proviso, they remained as a permanent entity'. (3) Wanting visibility to the public, along with the taxonomic nature made his collection cross the boundary from fetishism to collecting according to Susan Stewart. (4)
The obsessive collecting of clippings of topics of interest to Butler made this library a cultural construction of his identity or self-portraiture, in the same way as Isabella Stewart Gardner who was an avid collector of art. Both left their collections in their entirety to be viewed in museums with conditions that they remain intact, fully embodying the intentions of the collectors.
Much contemporary art explores fetishism and collecting. Artist, Ann Shelton documented the collection of Butler by photographing the library to scale, enabling the titles of the books to be read by the viewer. The titles of the book provide a biography of Butler, giving information on the motivations of his collecting and culture. Her work articulates his desires to ensure the past was not under threat of loss, but instead to remain visible. Visually Shelton’s images reflect the binary notions of order and chaos that underpin this collection. Shelton's work explores the desire of the possessive self, culture and authenticity in collecting, thereby constructing the identity of Butler.
(1) Clifford, James, On Collecting Art and Culture, in The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth Century Ethnography literature, and Art, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1988, 218.
(2) Benjamin, Walter, “Unpacking my library: A Talk about Book Collecting”. Illuminations, Eng. Trans. London: Fontana, 1982. 59-60.
(3) Pound, Francis. Library to Scale : The Reflecting Archive, Govett Brewster Gallery. 2007. 7.
(4) Clifford, James, On Collecting Art and Culture, in The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth Century Ethnography literature, and Art, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1988, 219.
James Clifford trained as a historian and is currently a professor of History of Consciousness at the University of California. His research interest is in understanding the forces and interactions that shape cultures. He discusses how acts of collecting or ‘gathering’ embody hierarchies of value, exclusions, rule-governed territories of self. The gathering involves the accumulation of possessions, and the idea that identity is a kind of wealth. This wealth can be objects, knowledge, memories or experience. Collecting, as a strategy of desire, uses a ‘possessive self, culture, and authenticity’. (1)
Walter Benjamin believes collecting appears as an art of living intimately allied with memory, with obsession and retrieving order from its binary opposite, disorder. Benjamin says ‘every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector’s passion borders on the chaos of memories’. (2) The threat of loss generates desire to record and collect in order to keep the past visible, so all is not lost.
Frederick Butler, who lived most of his life in New Plymouth was a self confessed obsessive collector who imposed order on disorder. He spent sixty years, until he died, selecting newspaper clippings that had particular personal relevance and arranging carefully in books and displaying in his private museum and house. The volumes compiled of clippings were on subjects such as antiques, nudists, crime, education and Second World War casualties. He spent his lifetime compiling his archive of 80,000 index cards, 50,000 books in his library as an attempt to preserve the past and memorialise its. According to Francis Pound, he intended for his private collection to be public as twice he approached established museums, ‘with the proviso, they remained as a permanent entity'. (3) Wanting visibility to the public, along with the taxonomic nature made his collection cross the boundary from fetishism to collecting according to Susan Stewart. (4)
The obsessive collecting of clippings of topics of interest to Butler made this library a cultural construction of his identity or self-portraiture, in the same way as Isabella Stewart Gardner who was an avid collector of art. Both left their collections in their entirety to be viewed in museums with conditions that they remain intact, fully embodying the intentions of the collectors.
Much contemporary art explores fetishism and collecting. Artist, Ann Shelton documented the collection of Butler by photographing the library to scale, enabling the titles of the books to be read by the viewer. The titles of the book provide a biography of Butler, giving information on the motivations of his collecting and culture. Her work articulates his desires to ensure the past was not under threat of loss, but instead to remain visible. Visually Shelton’s images reflect the binary notions of order and chaos that underpin this collection. Shelton's work explores the desire of the possessive self, culture and authenticity in collecting, thereby constructing the identity of Butler.
(1) Clifford, James, On Collecting Art and Culture, in The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth Century Ethnography literature, and Art, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1988, 218.
(2) Benjamin, Walter, “Unpacking my library: A Talk about Book Collecting”. Illuminations, Eng. Trans. London: Fontana, 1982. 59-60.
(3) Pound, Francis. Library to Scale : The Reflecting Archive, Govett Brewster Gallery. 2007. 7.
(4) Clifford, James, On Collecting Art and Culture, in The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth Century Ethnography literature, and Art, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1988, 219.
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