Jess's What am I doing?

Word count 1500 max.

1 What are you working on now? What are you thinking of making? I am continuing to write and read for my PhD Sex Lies and Videotape. I am simultaneously opening up the box of the stuff that happened in South Africa for the White Horse.

2 How do you plan to make it? With my hands. I have been experimenting with a different (for my practice - not revolutionary for art practice) way of unpacking ideas though objects rather than though research.

3 Why do you want to make it? I want to understand what the White Horse project is and how/if it will continue to grow as a constellation of work.

4 Who can help you and how? I have enjoyed conversations with the tutors and my peers here at PZI and will continue to seek out specfic people to talk to about the various elements of the project/s I am making

5 Relation to previous practice

6 Relation to a larger context

My paper: In the era of neo-liberal capitalism, the art market’s intensified power in historisication and attention to bodies of work that include ephemeral art forms, this paper asks the question; what methodologies are useful in dealing with the relationship between the document and the original?

This question is timely as many contemporary artists begin to intentionally conflate performance and documentation in their practice, whilst at the same time this conflation is happening retrospectively to the work of artists such as Yvonne Rainer who may not have initially intended for this to happen. I will argue that this conflation marks an important turning point in the way performance sits along side other forms and that we need to reflect this in the way in which we discuss such bodies of work.

My practice:

7 References

My paper: In the same way the De Sassure was interested in the patterns and functions of language I am interested in the patterns and functions of the elements that make up a body of work in contemporary visual art, in particular the relationship between the original or spoken (the live) and the document or written, subsequent body of work that may follow the live event. I am interested in understanding where this dichotomy evolved and if in fact De Sussure and Austin are to blame. I am interested in of the development of film and photography as a potential disruption to this binary as well as the notion of queer time as discussed by Elizabeth Freedman.

I want to explore whether Delanda’s Flat ontology as well as Actor Network theory both of which are Delezian, which will lead to a discussion of the assemblage from a Deluzian perspective could be an alternative to system of the status of the art object. This will lead to a to discussion of what a Feminist flat ontology might look like in relation to documentation and performance.

My practice: