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Sister Carrie, 1900 by Theodore Dreiser | ''Sister Carrie,'' 1900 by Theodore Dreiser | ||
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Sister Carrie deals with a young american country girl's realisation of the american dream in the big city, primarily through her use of sex or sexuality and being a bit of a sauce. | |||
Alice suggested that in it there is a general tendency towards things or ideas or stories being vague and open to our knowledge of their occupying a wider world and that this book exists as a template for novels of the american dream, bukowski, etc. As a novel which doesn't take a particular moral stance Alice is interested perhaps in its potential for telling and romanticising a story which not long prior would perhaps have been subject to stylisation as scandalous or a fall or a moral tale for social education. | Alice suggested that in it there is a general tendency towards things or ideas or stories being vague and open to our knowledge of their occupying a wider world and that this book exists as a template for novels of the american dream, bukowski, etc. As a novel which doesn't take a particular moral stance Alice is interested perhaps in its potential for telling and romanticising a story which not long prior would perhaps have been subject to stylisation as scandalous or a fall or a moral tale for social education. | ||
It also seems to speak to its readership about themselves in a particularly live way, as turn of the (20th) century americans it inhabits the spaces that the nascent nation did. | It also seems to speak to its readership about themselves in a particularly live way, as turn of the (20th) century americans it inhabits the spaces that the nascent nation did. | ||
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Media | Media | ||
The American Friend - Wim Wenders - 1977 | ''The American Friend'' - Wim Wenders - 1977 | ||
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Artwork | Artwork | ||
Drive | ''Drive In'' by Stuart Croft. 2007 | ||
http://vimeo.com/35912892 | http://vimeo.com/35912892 | ||
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Again | Again, ''Drive In'' deals with spaces and modes for telling a story, in this case a story is essentially told in the form of a long looping joke, by an american woman to a silent man. The man drives a car at night and the woman is the passenger, there isn't any real indication of the nature of their relationship, but the weight of particular parts of the story and the glances he throws back perhaps suggest that it could stand as an allegory for them. | ||
Within the story a man is caught in a storm at sea, he washes up on a beautiful desert island, alone and without provision. after a while of starving and getting hairy he discovers that a beautiful woman was also washed up, but she is AWESOME. she has a house which she possibly built, livestock, a shower, all sorts and she paints and carves amazing, weird sexy art. | Within the story a man is caught in a storm at sea, he washes up on a beautiful desert island, alone and without provision. after a while of starving and getting hairy he discovers that a beautiful woman was also washed up, but she is AWESOME. she has a house which she possibly built, livestock, a shower, all sorts and she paints and carves amazing, weird sexy art. | ||
they hook up, he writes a trashy novel, she doesn't like it, he has an affair, nothings the same, he leaves on his raft and hey presto, caught in a storm, washes up on an island, and repeats the story. We weren't 100%confident about it being a single unit loop or if the story is told twice as the loop repeats the double telling. | they hook up, he writes a trashy novel, she doesn't like it, he has an affair, nothings the same, he leaves on his raft and hey presto, caught in a storm, washes up on an island, and repeats the story. We weren't 100%confident about it being a single unit loop or if the story is told twice as the loop repeats the double telling. | ||
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Throughout these there is a kernel which interests Alice about the stylisation of a saga, and about the slickness of an American approach and presentation, and possibly how that can co-opt or reorientate a story or location which is outside the mainstream american lineage. | Throughout these there is a kernel which interests Alice about the stylisation of a saga, and about the slickness of an American approach and presentation, and possibly how that can co-opt or reorientate a story or location which is outside the mainstream american lineage. | ||
Though she doesn't feel like the saga (as distinct from the story somehow?) exists explicitly in her own practise, its something which bothers her in other work, and perhaps something which she is interested in bringing into her output, working out how to manipulate the particulars and stylisations of her aggregatory/collage based painting to incorporate the toning of a narrative. | Though she doesn't feel like the saga (as distinct from the story somehow?) exists explicitly in her own practise, its something which bothers her in other work, and perhaps something which she is interested in bringing into her output, working out how to manipulate the particulars and stylisations of her aggregatory/collage based painting to incorporate the toning of a narrative. | ||
=='''Sol Archer''' (by Alice Mendelowitz)== | =='''Sol Archer''' (by Alice Mendelowitz)== | ||
Revision as of 11:25, 8 November 2013
7-11-13
Steve's objects
24 (Fox Network, 2002-2010)
Last week Steve showed a clip from the U.S. TV series 24. In this show the protagonists have access to, or are denied access to, a code. This code will allow our hero (Jack Bauer) to disarm an atomic bomb or neutralize a flesh-eating virus (or any number of 'clear and present dangers'). The plot always centers on Jack getting the code through some clever trick, and finally through torture. The body in 24 might be understood as an encumbrance to the free flow of information, an imperfect medium for information exchange. In the show the body is often disposed of once the information has been imparted. The body is reduced to an informatics.
See: The Internet Effect, A.R Galloway, Polity, 2012
The Holy Mountain, Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1973
There are some significant differences and similarities to the way the body is treated in The Holy Mountain. Here the ‘thief’ undergoes a process of purification – an array of ‘technologies of self’ - before setting off to find the Holy Mountain. We are introduced to the nine ‘thieves’ who accompany him on his journey. These include an arms manufacturer who makes weapons for hippies and various types of religious armaments; a toy manufacturer who trains and conditions children to hate. Aversion and electro-shock therapy is used to fashion the development of the children’s psychological life. Jodorowsky presents us with a society in which production and consumption is regulated by a huge computer. The economy is ‘vertically integrated’ to produce and condition citizens to continue the cycle of production and destruction. The film was made in the year of the CIA instigated coup in Chile. Allende, the elected socialist president, was deposed. A ‘free market’ economic system was instituted. Resistance was violently repressed by the Pinochet regime.
At the time Stafford Beer (on the request of Allende) was developing a computer system (cybersyn) design to regulate the Chilean economy and facilitate economic and democratic transparency. Pinochet abruptly discontinued this program on gaining power, preferring a ‘free market’, Chicago School economic system, mixed with ‘psyops’ techniques of repression imported from the United States' secret service. For Steve, The Holy Mountain demonstrates the protean nature of cybernetic ideas (control and communication - feedback systems &c). These ideas were active across the divides of left and right – they were simultaneously called into the services of liberation and oppression. These ideas live on in shows such as 24 where the body is, in the final event, a carrier of code (knowledge, DNA &c). The subject is understood as an information machine, exchanging information with other information machines.
See: Cybernetic Revolutionaries, Technology and Politics in Allende’s Chile, E. Medina, MIT, 2011; The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein, Penguin, 2007, N. Wiener, Cybernetics, or The Control and Communication in Animal and Machine, MIT, 1965; M. Foucault, The History of Sexuality (see chapter, care of the self), Penguin, 197?;
Link. Artist Susanna Kriemann interviews Steve about cybernetic ideas in contemporary culture:
http://www.roddickinson.net/pages/pre_reviews/SignalNoise-Bulletin.pdf
Alice Mendelowitz
Sister Carrie, 1900 by Theodore Dreiser
Sister Carrie deals with a young american country girl's realisation of the american dream in the big city, primarily through her use of sex or sexuality and being a bit of a sauce.
Alice suggested that in it there is a general tendency towards things or ideas or stories being vague and open to our knowledge of their occupying a wider world and that this book exists as a template for novels of the american dream, bukowski, etc. As a novel which doesn't take a particular moral stance Alice is interested perhaps in its potential for telling and romanticising a story which not long prior would perhaps have been subject to stylisation as scandalous or a fall or a moral tale for social education.
It also seems to speak to its readership about themselves in a particularly live way, as turn of the (20th) century americans it inhabits the spaces that the nascent nation did.
Alice comment: What I meant to explain was that I was interested in how this book is considered to be such a template for writers like Bukowski and John Fante. And yet whilst theses writers effuse their work with fiction and metaphor, Dreiser's style is very direct. What happens - happens. In the present, artists and writers have moved towards a more ambiguos language.
Media
The American Friend - Wim Wenders - 1977
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06hIZ76Zlds
one of many adaptations of many Ripleys novels (Patricia Highsmith). The American friend, played by Dennis Hopper, is an auction house price gamer, he is involved in an artwork forgery ring and appears at auction houses in order to bid on forged paintings to push up the price. The key protagonist though is a hitman with an unspecified (probably) terminal illness who performs hits in order to accumulate money for his soon to be widow. He is commissioned by Hopper to murder first a rival art gangster and then a second man after Hopper character fakes his medical report to suggest his illness is more immediately terminal than it is.
Alice was particularly interested in Wenders particular stylisation of the novel and of Hamburg, the location. He shoots light in a particular (painterly?) way which fictionalises Hamburg as a beautiful location, which She (Alice) doesn't understand to be the case with actual Hamburg, as it exists.
Artwork
Drive In by Stuart Croft. 2007
Again, Drive In deals with spaces and modes for telling a story, in this case a story is essentially told in the form of a long looping joke, by an american woman to a silent man. The man drives a car at night and the woman is the passenger, there isn't any real indication of the nature of their relationship, but the weight of particular parts of the story and the glances he throws back perhaps suggest that it could stand as an allegory for them.
Within the story a man is caught in a storm at sea, he washes up on a beautiful desert island, alone and without provision. after a while of starving and getting hairy he discovers that a beautiful woman was also washed up, but she is AWESOME. she has a house which she possibly built, livestock, a shower, all sorts and she paints and carves amazing, weird sexy art.
they hook up, he writes a trashy novel, she doesn't like it, he has an affair, nothings the same, he leaves on his raft and hey presto, caught in a storm, washes up on an island, and repeats the story. We weren't 100%confident about it being a single unit loop or if the story is told twice as the loop repeats the double telling.
The camera work is very stylised, very slick, tight shots of the man and woman with rainy windows and out of focus lights from the street and city at night.
Alice feels that something about the piece is perfectly contemporary, or is the best example she has seen lately of how to tell a story as a short film in a contemporary way.
Throughout these there is a kernel which interests Alice about the stylisation of a saga, and about the slickness of an American approach and presentation, and possibly how that can co-opt or reorientate a story or location which is outside the mainstream american lineage. Though she doesn't feel like the saga (as distinct from the story somehow?) exists explicitly in her own practise, its something which bothers her in other work, and perhaps something which she is interested in bringing into her output, working out how to manipulate the particulars and stylisations of her aggregatory/collage based painting to incorporate the toning of a narrative.
Sol Archer (by Alice Mendelowitz)
Text = (http://www.vurdalak.com/tunguska/witness/witnesses.htm)
Sol was looking at eye witness Statements of the Tunaska Events in 1908, when it is thought that an airbust of small asteroid caused an explosion in Russia. These are primary sources, where the statements are very subjective and personal as opposed to being scientific.
Media = (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztrU90Ub4Uw)
The media that Sol was interested was a conglomerate of footage of a meteor shower in present day Russia. Grainy film shot on a combination of car dashboard cameras, security cameras, and newsreel. Art piece = (http://theactofkilling.com/trailer/)
“The Act of Killing” is a stylized documentary about “gangsters” in North Sumatra, who in the wake of a failed coup in the 1960’s went from selling black market movie theater tickets to leading the most notorious death squad. These “gangsters” re-enact some of their killings for the film, doing so in the style of their favourite movie genres.
How does the medium the story is told with add to the tale ? Sol chose historical events in a combination of primary and secondary source material. Looking at the embodiement of stories, and how they can be told both objectively and subjectively.
Sol responds, or adds from discussion
I wanted to present the witness statements and the videos as two very different means of presenting what is in essence a very similar occurrence and as collections of multiple stories surrounding one enormous event. I am interested in the embodiment of the data in the specific actual bodies of the witneses and in their conversion of it into something mundane and focussed in the observations of its effect on their world, their livestock, houses, furniture, furs, and family health. I think there is something odd about the relationship between these embodied/human stories of the event when compared to the steady blinkered view of the dashboard camera in the 2013 event, which shows the fireball crossing the sky, but nothing of the weight of the event, just its video-recorded 'accuracy' and particularly in the footage from security cameras which observed only the shockwave hitting, or the reaction of people in offices without the subjective narrative of the trauma.
the Witness statements from 1908 mostly come from a marginal northern Russian tribal group and so were collected as a partly anthropological exercise. They were recorded a few decades after the event and some are already secondary and recount the stories of the subjects parents experiences.
The meteor was quickly incorporated into the religious story of the people and some of the witness documents are transcriptions of shamanic songs, passed down orally from shaman to trainee, becoming an embodiment of the event or memory in the particular ritual or voice of the shaman performing it. we perform memory to ourselves, at the point of recollection as much as we ever perform it to anyone else and in each performance it becomes more a story, more an epic with ourselves as character. I have a half eye on Walter Benjamin (as we always do) for his essay on the story teller which talks about changes in the technology of telling and the news as a mode, the alienation of death from our daily lives and the dominance of the written word and the form of the newspaper as dividing us from a history of storytelling. The writer, Leskov, who Benjamin presents as the last novelist as storyteller, incidentally, is a right good read.
http://slought.org/files/downloads/events/SF_1331-Benjamin.pdf
There is something extraordinarily weird which happens throughout the act of killing, but particularly with the witnesses being the perpetrators and the re-enactors of the crimes. the Bruegels painting Landscape with the fall of Icarus was raised as both a direct example of life just getting on with going on around the catastrophic event and as a direct visual connection with some of the security camera footage.
Breugel Landscape with the fall of icarus
Breugel Cencus at bethlehem
magnolia, amores perros, Werkmaster Harmonies, satantango, close encounters of a third kind, and independance day all came up as films to be looked at
Sriwhana (by Vasiliki)
Object
A letter written by the dancer and choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky entitled “Letter to mankind”. This letter was written during a time that Nijinsky began displaying the symptoms of what is now thought to be schizophrenia. It is unable to be translated from its original French into another written language as the letter reveals an interest with the sound of particular words and their rhythms, rather than the delivering any specific meaning or sense. Words mimic the sounds of cats and birds, while meter resembles the sound of bombs and cars. Although stuck in its original French this letter seems to offer up a scenario for a different type of translation—such as movement. How might this translation from one medium to another be approached, how might one form draw near to, and try to interpret, another?
Media
A youtube video of a recreation of the Rite of Spring, created by Nijinsky in 1913. His choreography performs an abrupt inverse of traditional balletic structure by turning the movements of his dancers inward, rather than outwards. This ruptures the lines of his dancers, creating a greater relationship to the floor/the stage; this sense of physicality highlighted by his use of the stomp within the work. In order to learn this choreography a process of unlearning had to take place—the refusal of a specific tradition of movement that most of the dancers would have been instructed in since childhood. As most of the Ballet Russes' performances were never filmed, many of the original choreographies have been lost. The fact that some have remained reflects the nature of choreography to be transferred from one body to the next, its lines and forms shifting as it encounters each new performer.
The second art piece she was interested in the book of Djuna Barnes particularly a sentence
… “time crawling” broke into uncontrollable laugther, and thought this occurrence troubled him the rest of his lif he was never able to explain it to himself.”… as a respond to something that she didn’t know but she was drown to it.
Anna
Anna began her presentation by showing the class a clip from the 1966 film Daisies, a Czechoslovak comedy-drama written and directed by Věra Chytilová. Banned upon release for it’s radical portrayal of female subjects, the film follows two young pranksters who, tired of their dreary lives, embark on a quirky, destructive journey. Along with conversations of female subjectivity, Anna is interested in the analog materiality of the film, as actual cutting and re-assemblage of the physical film itself create visual tricks for the viewer.
Full Movie: http://vimeo.com/63689570
Still, Daisies, 1966
Anna then showed a video produced by the Tate about the work of artist Lucie McKenzie who participated in the group show (held at the Tate) A Bigger Splash: Painting after Performance in 2012-2013. In the video, McKenzie discusses the importance of her place as a woman painter within the historical framework of classical, specifically decorative, painting. Anna is interested in Mackenzie’s methodologies and choice of training—her artisan leanings combined with contemporary awareness force her work into a fascinating limbo between the innovative and the traditional.
Full Movie: http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/video/tateshots-lucy-mckenzie-bigger-splash
Lucy McKenzie, May of Teck, 2010
(Pipilotti Rist film Pepperminta http://www.pepperminta.ch)
('Morgiana' Czech film by by Lubos Fiser)
In response: It was discussed afterwards some links between the 'handmade', 'touched' or crafted aesthetics of both the paintings of McKenzie and the actual interior of the rooms and sets of Daisies (and to a degree Holy Mountain). Then also on the subject of decoration, Steve wanted to clear the air around the discourse of decoration initiated in the Modernist period (that which Lucy McKenzie has engaged in - ref text Ornament and Crime by Adolf Loos http://www.gwu.edu/~art/Temporary_SL/177/pdfs/Loos.pdf) and the decorative, and they should not become confused. This distinction is important as within discourse artists can strategize by using its parameters as building blocks to turn it upon itself or perhaps create slippage or interference with another discourse, and I feel that this is a crucial tool that I try to enable in my own work. Another observation from Steve: that all the sources mentioned (including Holy Mountain) illustrate how sculpture can perform. Where I can see this clearly in the set and prop design of the Holy Mountain, I guess Steve is referring to the sculptural bodies in Daisies, and perhaps too the sets. This applies also in Lucy Mackenzies paintings within the exhibition included in the above linked video, but also particularly in the work which I initially wanted to discuss, her replica of Adolf Loos' house - which, at a glance, ties in nicely with the previous point around discourse. The press release can be found here : http://www.stedelijk.nl/upload/persberichten/2013/Press%20Release%20Lucy%20Mckenzie_Something%20they%20have%20to%20live%20with%20ENG.pdf Also: http://www.stedelijk.nl/en/exhibitions/lucy-mckenzie-something-they-have-to-live-with
Sighle BC
Text
http://clockwatching.net/~jimmy/eng101/articles/goffman_intro.pdf
'The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life' is a text written by American sociologist Erving Goffman in 1959. He uses a dramaturgical approach to analyse human interaction. By describing the individual as an actor, he highlights the heightened awareness and performance of everyday behaviour. The individual will try and control or manipulate a social situation by both conscious and subconscious actions.
Video clips
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbWBrlT1NBA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89d4jnbfzi4
This clip shows a 13 year old contestant being eliminated from the American 'X-Factor'. Her reaction is that of a bitterly disappointed child. She cries loudly and falls to the floor. I am interested in how for a moment the scripted 'reality' that is presented in gladatorial manner to a live studio audience as well as millions of viewers is for a moment disturbed. The host and judges slightly panic as they seem to be more aware of how the incident could be reported in the media than any genuine concern for the child. She quickly regains some amount of composure by the end of the clip, thanking her fans and exclaiming that without them she is nothing.
A work
In 'Die Familie Schneider' Gregor Schneider produced a disturbing experience by installing actors into neighbouring terraced houses and creating in detail physical surroundings that are uncannily familiar. The audience can only access the work by collecting keys from the ArtAngel office in pairs. They have ten minutes to go around the house individually, then they swap keys and enter the neighbouring house. Each house appears identical. A woman washes the dishes, a child sits in the corner of a bedroom with a bin bag over his head, a man masturbates in the shower. The viewer is always ignored by the actors (who are identical twins). The viewer becomes acutely aware of their presence in the house as a voyeur to this depressingly mudane and painful repeated domestic scene.
See: Perform or Else, Jon McKenzie (steve has pdf)
Reality TV: The Work of Being Watched
'Ways of Seeing' by John Berger
Andreovitz
'Better Living Through Reality TV' by Laurie Ouellette and James Hay
'Archive and Aspiration' by Arjun Appadurai
'Governmentality, Biopower, and Everyday Life' by Majia Holmer Nadesan
'We Live in Public' - Josh Harris
'Status Anxiety' by Alain de Botton
Cartesian
Whereas the X-factor clip portrays a glamorised scripted reality, Schneider's work could be compared to the fetishisation of 'normal people' in shows such as 'Here Comes Honey Boo Boo' and 'Wife Swap' or the popularity of amateur/real pornography. Schneider's piece makes the viewer physically become a voyeur, with the safety of viewing through a screen. They are still ignored though, almost as if they are watching a programme. The doubling, repeating of the experience could potentially be read as the idea of experiencing something then forever having it written into our memory, to be repeated. The family are supposedly behaving as they would if they were not being watched.
Vasiliki (by Sriwhana)
A collection of mushrooms
Vassiliki passed around a collection of mushrooms in various states of dehydration and decay. All of these mushrooms had been grown in her studio on a log bought at the market. Vassiliki is interested in their material properties and observing the way that these funguses find form. Time seems to have an impact at objects that is not observed in the everyday notion. A common state is observed between objects and organisms that it leads to the transformation of the matter, in such understanding, time, as part of the equation maybe finally be perceived as an objects as well. Maybe the limits of describing entities or reality is somewhere between the meaning of space, world, self, others, possibility, matter, function, meaning, time.
A postcard of Gabriel Orozco’s photograph ‘Sleeping Dog’ 1990
Vasiliki found this postcard in a museum bookshop. She has had it taped to her studio wall because it is a peaceful image to look at every morning, and she is drawn to its simplicity. The direct way of isolating/observing everyday moments.
The opening of Charles Dicken’s A Tale of Two Cities and some lines about process philosophy
‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way…’
Vasiliki sees these lines as imparting an understanding about the everyday where nothing is stable or fixed, but in constant flux between different states of human as individuals or as members of a society.
''Thus contemporary process philosophy not only holds out the promise of an integrated metaphysics that can join our common sense and scientific images of the world. It is also of interest as a platform upon which to build an intercultural philosophy and to facilitate interdisciplinary research on global knowledge representation
Philosophers analyze becoming and what is occurring as well as ways of occurring.''
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/process-philosophy/
Process creates different relationships and associations between various entities both material and immaterial, at both a macro and micro level. Process philosophy is about reflecting on how these processes interact and finally recreate a concept of process through these relationships and interaction a constant flux of unstable circumstances that deepen upon each other.
Steve mentioned morphogenesis, which carries with it the idea that entities are always in a state of becoming, rather than in a state of being, where forces are emergent rather than imposed as ‘laws’ (Royal Science).
Manuel De Landa
DeLanda's lecture pon morphogenesis and art
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HSMTUZ64bY
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manuel_De_Landa
Susanna Browne
Susanna began her presentation with a 3-odd minute video retrieved from Youtube that shows a baby responding to its mother singing a Rod Stewart torch song. The footage is shot from the mother's point of view, thus the baby appears to be looking directly at the viewer for the duration of the video. The emotional response of the child is uncannily adult - as it appears to well up with joyful tears at its mothers performance, which is indeed quite powerful. Susanna's interest in this viral video reflects both her interest in popular culture and the economy of emotion. She has keenly observed the contemporary phenomenon of emotion becoming commodity, across platforms such as reality television and amateur video. Susanna is also interested in the position and power of authentic emotion in contrast with its virtual veneer, in particular the moments when she herself is deeply 'moved'. This video is exemplary of such a moment. Susanna is interested in the collective learning of emotion and how as a larger community deciphering when that emotion is authentic and examining the when it is unclear whether it is real or performed.
Susanna adds: I am most interested in the moment when the fake or performed emotion becomes authentic or real, and especially in how these slippages can be intangible even to the subject that is having the feelings. I am also interested in the language of emotion that reality tv/youtube has produced. Finally, I wonder why I am sometimes so moved, when seemingly I should have the tools to resist manipulation.
The work that Susanna shared with the group was the album Plantasia conceived and composed by Mort Garson in 1976. The material written by Garson is about plants, for plants - which Susanna expressed as romantic. It is performed form the Moog synthesizer, which was typical of the period from which this album emerged, although Garson is considered a pioneer and master of the style and medium. Susanna recommended the music for study and reflection in the studio. This second article of Susanna's interest made a great segue for her final item, the text The Language of Flowers or Flora Symbolica by John Henry Ingram.
Susanna adds: I like how a decided personification of plants has led me to have, suddenly, a deeper connection to the flora and fauna around me. For example, I felt real sadness when the chestnut tree outside the school was chopped down, as over the course of the weeks past I had spent time thinking about it's presence in a way I wouldn't have prior to my engagement with the language of flowers. I also like the idea that one could speak through music to another physiological layer of the world.
See: The Secret Life of Plants, Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird
The Language of Flowers is an index to the symbolic meaning of flowers. Published in 1887, the comprehensive listing associates - in alphabetical order - botanical specimens directly to what they signify in the act of exchange. This text relates to Susanna's interest in romance and its history, in this example reflecting upon the 'slow' romance of the 19th century provides interesting contrast with the pace of todays emotional economy.
Susanna adds: I liken this text as a kind of secret code for love, a slow, archaic, needless code that is somehow still beautiful, despite it's redundance and difficulty to dechipher. I find it especially potent when communication today is so easy, what with the advance of technology.
Alexandra Sarkisian (by Hunter)
hood ornaments
Play between time and space
what happens to the performance?
enhabiting an act
[steve adds to the conversation: pan-dimensional octopus from The Mighty Boosh]
Car wash - gender rolls
The hood ornament AKA car mascot
An small model usually made to symbolize the car company. It is located on the front center of the car's hood. We see a video going through both classic and custom hood ornaments. Flashy and extravagant hood ornaments were more popular during the 20s to the 50s. The idea of creating a symbol for one's car is an extension of the car as a symbol for oneself, car as identity.
John Forté – Ninety Nine (Flash The Message) ft. Wyclef Jean
In this video the hood ornament sings the hook - the flashy part of the song, the part which usually sticks in our head, in a way the hook is the symbol of the song. This song's subtitle is "flash the message" which is literally what the hood ornaments roll is, flashing the message "look, I have a nice car…........... bitch"
In this video, gender rolls are not challenged in the format of the song but maybe in the specific ornament. Murcury - a man is given a woman's voice.
Hilary Lloyd's Car Wash
[Alex mentions gender reversal] I see it more as a shift between fantasied gender rolls and reality. What Lloyd seems to show is that the everyday car wash is not a glamorous place, rather a place where guys are just washing cars. From what I understand the work is quite simply documentation of a functioning car wash. What Alex notes is that this is not the flashy/spectacle car wash we might think of with girls in bikini's. In the video the gaze is surely shifted to the mundane and through this, the male workers and the cars they wash become sexualized. The carwash itself is not reversed but rather our understanding of it through its mediated version.
Jan Verwoert on Hilary Lloyd's "Car Wash"
http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/body_language/
Glamping
Glamping (a self explanatory hybrid word Glamorous Camping) Alex presents a series of advertisement blurbs for glamorous camping retreats designed and tailored to folks in a higher income bracket. Potenital clients are clearly niched out as those who want to enjoy "nature" but who cannot bare to risk a few days without the luxuries of daily life to which they have become accustomed.
"This yurt village has been set up in a wildflower meadow on an organic farm, surrounded by long grass and crooked paths… Each yurt comes with a copy of Annie Bell's excellent The Camping Cookbook"
Another form of performance, another form of decoration. Those participating are not camping, they are glamping. Posers. A 'dressing up'
(Mating rituals of humans and animals)
HUNTER (by alex)
Hunter presents
Hunter talks
Hunter reads
about….
Mark Leckey’s proposal for a show.
Projecting ourselves onto unanimated objects. Projecting ourselves onto dumb things. Dumb things that are universally accessible. And through this projection we give life to these dumb things. And through the arrangement and rearrangement of these dumb things a communication is created between man, animal, and machine. Arrangements and rearrangements presented much like one long, drawn out 3 o’clock in-the-morning perverse Internet search. An overblown presentation of our ‘Technosis.’ Our overblown attachment and dependency on technology. A word that is much more real to us than these dumb things.
Carol Boves’ exhibition “The Foamy Silva of a Horse”
There is a large rock supported, suspended in mid air. Acting as a symbol for time and an encompassment for life despite its existence as representation of the inorganic. Arrangements = heightened symbolic meaning. Place something where it’s not meant to be and it’s impossible not to think about it differently. Parallel to the pattern of arrangements and rearrangements in Mark Leckey’s proposal. Bove presents disparate objects, Leckey presents disparate objects. They both present a situation in which we are given the opportunity to find cultural, spiritual, mystical and even psychological relationships with these objects.
A quote from JG Ballard’s “News from the Sun”
“…the silent runways with their dusty jets sitting on flattened tyres, in the over-bright hills waiting with the infinite guile of the geological kingdom for the organic world to end and a more vivid mineral realm to begin.”
Ballard presents the intelligence of a world that we have always strived to outthink.
The bodies of Leckey’s man, animal, and machine all meet the same fate of Ballard’s geological kingdom. We all love to involve ourselves in the dumbness of things in a world where things inevitably become the dust on Ballard’s jets.
The lack of movement due to the flat tyres of JG Ballard’s jets, soon to be a more vivid scene of Carol Bove’s rocks. Alex Hubbard makes movement by pushing a car, a sculpture that is a car. Drawing restraint 7 takes places in the back seat of this car. Where Afex Twin joins for his ‘window licker’. Mark Leckey talks about it. There is a mockery of these objects, but in the end the joke’s on us. These dumb things will most likely outlive us displayed in a glass case somewhere, preserved by someone or something due to the impulse to document the infinite guile of our bane nonexistence.
All three pieces Hunter presented, talked, and read about act as placeholders for time. Time as something we struggle to coexist with, yet it is the only thing that defines our existence. And in the end it’s the grit between your toes that outlives us all.
The 80s film 'Mannequin'
Tiffin
Hilma Klint
Tiffin presented Hilma Klint, a Swedish painter belonging to a group of five female artists known as “the five”. The five used methods of group meditation, led by Klint, to create automatic drawings that developed from an “uncoscious” state. These drawings were thought, by the five, to represent ideas of philisophical thought and a communication with higher spiritual beings. In her later work Hilma creates large scale oil paintings of intense color and boilogical motif. These paintings were created in the same state of trance or unconsciousness. The artist would prepare for painting by mediation and fasting to induce a hypnotic state of mind. The creation of the works is not remembered bye the artist. Later in her career Hilma meets with Rudolph Steiner and they discuss her work. Influenced by his thought, she is convinced to denounce her previous paintings as the method of their making becomes more fraught. She moves into representational drawings of plants and flowers and studies color with Steiner.