Does Reverse Psychology Really Sell?

There is an advertising trend at the moment capitalising on 'the real'. Are we really a generation now so savvy to the edited image that the unedited solicits a greater reaction (if the unedited is even possible)? There is a Dove advert where a woman is de-photo-shopped. Then there is Bing.com – the search engine with the slogan, 'what has information overload done to us?' Not to mention the proliferation of celebrity 'natural' photo-shoots; Sadie Frost for Grazia, Britney for Candies. So why does the seemingly natural sell more? When an audience is made to feel enlightened, empowered by inner knowledge, are they more likely to buy into this construction? This is still a mediated reality – still emitted from a TV or computer, via technology. It is perhaps more of an illusion. More masked for its transparency, it is selling itself as a reality that no longer exists. There is no such thing as an unedited photo. From the moment an eye is raised to a lens choices are made – the angle, the aim, the light. Why then, does this version sell better than others? In an age of technology, is it merely the promise of a unified reality that sells?

Hello external examiner

I am not sure how much I managed to express in the meeting so I thought I would jot down a few rudimentary points about this particular piece, my research and the course in general for you to read if there is time.

TITLE – The majority of my work this year has fallen under the all-encompassing title ‘Framing Control’. Some pieces exist separately however I find it very difficult to locate boundaries between individual works and past, present and future works. The same subjects crop up time and again, the same imagery too, and an object in one location may become a performance prop in another. The all-encompassing title is referenced in the demonstration I have just given; our understanding of the confinements and defining features of separate entities have become blurred by the age of technology.

RESEARCH – I no longer feel that it is relevant to attempt to pin point an origin to every idea, to organise thoughts and map them chronologically. Instead, my research is situated within the medium that I discuss – the computer, and comes in the form of this blog. This works like an on-line diary with a non-hierarchal structure keeping track of the world as it happens. Writing itself forms a strong element of my work offering a variety of expressive mediums.

DEMONSTRATION – A demonstration is not a transfer of knowledge or information. Some of my discussion topics are entirely fictional. The performance intrigued me as I believe that art has an ability to make people see the world differently but I no longer believe that it is enough just to make work, there also must be an element of proactiveness in pushing the ideas onto people (this proactivity is offered in the performance). I thought a lot about what to call this form of dissemination. ‘Performance’ implies an inherent theatrically, ‘lecture’ denotes a transfer of knowledge. I decided on ‘Demonstration’ because it holds an ambiguity between a political connotation and a cookery display.

THE SET – Cardboard city. This is built on a series of signifiers. The set itself is something that the audience has to enter emphasising the set as a signifier of a fictional space. The flashing images, wires, cameras and TVs all become signifiers of our time and props in the discussion. The set itself is supposed to give an overall sense of unease, confinement and discomfort which is then mirrored in my discussion. It is also terribly important that the set could exist as a fully interactive piece when I am not inside it. It has enough to offer the viewer in the fact that it has the potential for something to happen.

OTHER WORK – The meticulous drawings illustrated in my research book Escaping the Wall form the other side to my work. I do not see them as totally separate to the set, the demonstration etc – in fact they often become props in themselves. They do, however, require a different part of my brain to produce. They are more intuitive, less researched. Time consuming to make, they have a calming effect which allows my mind time to wander so that when I return to the other side of my practice I attack it in differently.

THE COURSE – The overall course for me has really relied upon locating a balance to suite my personality to prevent feeling confined – hence the methods I use to split my time – separating reading and writing, drawing and building, then bringing them all together. These multi-layered levels of self-expression again are why I give everything the same title. It is also why I pushed so hard to be allowed the six month exchange period to Czech Republic – a motivating balance. In such a totally imbalanced era, constantly moving, constantly bombarded by information, knowing how to locate and balance yourself is the most important skill.

I first heard about Johan Grimonprez in a contemporary art course I took a few years ago, in the context of his 1997 piece Dial History - an ominous pre-emption to 9/11. The notion of appropriated imagery was new to me at this time, having yet to really get my head around any postmodernist literature on the matter. Two years on, I am a great fan of Grimonprez’s extensive archive and am just about to start work at the gallery for one of his rather rare solo shows. The intriguing set up for this show is that while much of his work is about re-visiting and re-inventing old material, through a solo show he has the possibility to re-visit and re-invent his own previous re-inventions. Dial History is played off against another more recent work, Double Take re-enforcing the common themes of reality, masquerade and serendipity, or ‘happy accidents’ consistently nodded to in these films. Grimonprez’s true uniqueness lies in his ability to take a well known film or media snippet and re-position it back into the unknown, more often than not, by referencing the media’s ability to shape reality. He discussed at length today, what he called, ‘the zap generation’ - since the eighties we have had the remote control and our ability and, indeed, our taste for zipping and zapping from one thing to the next is expanding at an alarming rate. The zap generation has increased the gap between reality and a media masquerade of reality. Or as he said, ‘reality is suffering from misrepresentation.’ This is subtly reflected in the design of the show. As you move from Dial History to Double Take a quote on the wall walks you through the multi-layered significance of birds, flight, the threat from the sky (he returns to Hitchcock imagery and metaphors time and again) as a metaphor for mediation itself - TV, the threat from the sky. Yet many events can be signified and linked through one clever signifier.

Hello Assessment Panel!

Welcome to the machine! I have just left the room and you are free to browse around. Just remember that you are on camera 80% of your life, anything that you say may be given as evidence in a court of law. Anyone can install a CCTV camera (including me) as long as they conform to the licensing standards. Information may be stored as long as it is deemed necessary. You may question what you are agreeing to every time you sign a document but how often do you really check the freedom that you relinquish every time you leave the house? Tread with care, speak with caution, you never know who might be listening!

Behind the Screens

I got up this morning to write about Johan Grimonprez and his up-and-coming show at the Fruitmarket Gallery (opening in a few weeks). I have however failed to do the required research due to the degree show life-takeover and, as a result, am going to have to write about this instead. I was mulling over this huge set that I've created for my demonstration, Sam Burns scrap yard relocated to ECA as I am now thinking of it, and this idea of audience involvement or 'participation'. It has always been my plan to build some kind of screen to project images onto as a sort of back-drop for everything else, however it was not until I was reading about Gob Squad's Kitchen that I considered the possibility of using the area behind the screen as a second space with a totally different function. The space behind counter-balances and counteracts, to some extent, what goes on in front. It is essentially a place for my research – the space in front acts to confuse, the one behind to explain, the space in front is cluttered from every angle, the space behind is simplistic and ordered, functional rather than decorative. How does this change the work in front of the screen? It emphasises it as a set, a performance, just one interpretation of reality rather than an attempt to preach an unknown, unitary truth. When people can get inside the set, can move in and on the stage itself it emphasises the 'falseness' of the set up itself. I want people to know that what I say and do during this performance is not FACT, some is, but there is also much unjustified opinion thrown in there. The problem with the lecture style demonstration was always going to be that people merely absorb and accept the information given without really contemplating it, I hope that getting into the space behind, digging around and seeing the cotton wool inside the brain, will make my audience realise that there no one truth in anything, least of all this performance.

The $12 Million Stuffed Shark

I have been reading about another art machine - the market! The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art and Auction Houses is a fascinated read, written by Don Thompson and published by Aurum Press Ltd in 2008, it maps the ludicrous system of the art market in relation to all other economic forces.

Who really rules the (art) world when money is no object and time is the scarcest resource left?

The art market is its own disconnected ecosystem; removed from (and even in some cases opposed to) many of the defining structures of the broader marketplace. The book analyses this art market from within the auction house. Therefore video, performance, film and photography have been disregarded - categorisation itself becomes a slippery subject. Where are the boundaries?

‘In 2003 a twenty-five-year-old student named Clinton Boisvert at The School of Visual Arts in New York was asked to produce a sculpture project showing how the emotion elicited by art could impact on life. Boisvert created three dozen black boxes each stencilled with the word ‘Fear’. He had just finished hiding the last of these in New York City subway stations when he was arrested. A dozen stations were shut down for several hours while police squads retrieved the sculptures. Boisvert was convicted of reckless endangerment, but received an ‘A’ for the project.’

The book then goes on to argue that when there is nothing left to trust within art, when taste and instinct are no longer applicable terms, the only thing that those investing in the works have is BRANDING - there is no time to invest in knowledge. ‘Branding is the end result of the experiences a company creates with its customers and the media over a long period of time.’ Christie’s and Sotherby’s are the biggest value adding components. Branding has substituted aesthetic judgement. However there are other branding systems too - not just the auction house itself but the time of the auction (evening auctions are superior), then there is the gallery, the dealer, the establishment of the artist, each which come with their unique stamp of approval (or not depending). But this is not all… the city of sale is also a factor - New York and London for example are brands in themselves. It is a terrifying system out there, and one with increasingly little to do with any work content it seems to me. I shall read on and update more later.

The case of the disappearing 'liveness'

Is 'liveness' losing its meaning?

In 2008 the ICA announced the closure of their 'Live and Media Arts Department' with the director's statement that, 'the art form lacks depth and cultural urgency.' Never, in my opinion, has it been more urgent to locate the points of differentiation between 'liveness' and mediated, pseudo-reality. Did you hear about the man who spent so long playing computer games that when he steps outside, empowered by the projection of himself onto his super-hero character, he instantaneously got hit by a car and died? More broadly, think of the numerous studies on children proving that the long term effects of violent video games produce a two way effect of imitation violence and desentivity to violence within their audience. "When you're exposed to violence day in and day out, it loses its emotional impact on you. Once you're emotionally numb to violence, it's much easier to engage in violence."

Dr. L. Rowell Huesmann, director of the Research Center for Group Dynamics at the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research

'In 1932 Bertolt Brecht imagined a future in which radio would cease to be merely a one-way 'apparatus for distribution' and become 'the finest possible communication apparatus in public life, a vast network of pipes.' In writing this he anticipated what we know now as internet culture and the possibilities of interactive media in 'theatre'. Almost concurrently, in 1936, Walter Benjamin, wrote 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.' According to [Philip] Auslander in his contribution to Interfaces, 'Benjamin's concept of reactivation provides a starting point for thinking about the relationship between mediated performances and their audiences'. Mediated is a useful term here as Auslander has proposed that we live in a world where the concept of 'liveness' is losing its meaning.'

Interfaces in Performance edited by Maria Chatzichristodoulou, Janis Jefferies and Rachel Zerihan, Ashgate Publishing Ltd 2009

Digital multi-media performances have the ability to 'reactivate' (in the words of Benjamin) 'liveness' or at the very least create awareness of its slow decline. Activity, however, requires support (but obviously not from the ICA).

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/family/11/03/healthmag.violent.video.kids/

Red Road

Two days ago I finally got round to watching Red Road, a film written and directed by Andrea Arnold released in 2006. Red Road is a gritty, Glasgow based drama about a woman working as a CCTV operator, seeking to avenge the death of her family when she discovers that the culprit (a crack addict who lost control of the wheel of his car while driving) has been released from jail. The film shots move from the CCTV screen image (a screen within a screen) to 'real' footage in rapid succession as, unbeknown to the culprit, his every movement is tracked. Perpetrator and victim switch roles, the power control between the characters shifts, mediated by technology. The CCTV camera becomes the victim's (turned victimiser's) weapon of choice. But where do we, the twice removed viewers, come into the equation? The CCTV system this film represents is not, as some thought, some kind of Orwellian sci-fi fantasy, but the reality. In an interview with The Guardian Arnold say, 'you've got to try and present the truth, haven't you? Whatever that is.' Ironically the same interview also states, 'she's almost phobic about [the public's] gaze falling on her.' The ugly truth of the matter is this, for all the pleasure of watching, there is always a counterbalancing quantity of discomfort in being watched!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2006/oct/18/londonfilmfestival2006.londonfilmfestival1

I found an image of a projection space in the April edition of Frieze set up by Katarina Zdjelar to show her piece 'Shoum' in Rotterdam 2009. It is an amazing idea – to set up a semi-free standing dark grey wall against a window. The light emitted by the window behind the partial cube seems to accentuate the sharpness and brightness of the image contained within. The partial cube, partial screen gives the space a sort of modernist stage set aesthetic, neither walled in nor totally free but acts as a 3D mount for the work. There is no adequate description for the limbo-like status of this projected space and I cannot find any internet reference image. Tomorrow I shall follow this entry with a sketch to give a more useful impression. For now this is merely a statement of my appreciation.

Strategies of Exposure

Are all performances really about the audience? Patrick Primavesi discusses in the book Interfaces of Performance (Ashgate Publishing Ltd 2009) the underlying goal of any performance being to, 'de-construct the 'us' and attempt to inscribe oneself in a mythical community.' I have written extensively about the recent development of the re-enactment as an attempt to retrieve the unrecorded past. However, I recently discovered the artist group 'Gob Squad' a German based collective, who play with the notion of re-enactment when they staged a revised version of Andy Warhol's Kitchen in 2007. Primavesi says, 'the audience is moved both emotionally and physically by the possibility of taking a step behind the screen into the film.' It becomes a work about existing on the threshold, in-between sender and receiver, stage and audience, physical and mediated presence. When an emotion becomes a simulation of itself it takes on a different reality, as Andy Warhol once said, 'they're faking it until it becomes real.' In Gob Squad's Kitchen the screen acts as a membrane (not between fact and fiction, for these are no longer diametrically opposed) but as a barrier which is slowly broken down during the course of the performance as actors and audience switch roles. Their work Saving the World comprises of seven screens arranged in a semi-circle to create a panoramic view of a public square. I find the fact that they choose the number seven very interesting for the fact that it was the number that Ray Eames selected for his seminal work Glimpses of the USA in the Moscow World Fair Auditorium in 1959, 'a credible number but not so many that they couldn’t be scanned in an allotted time.' Gob squad locate and expose the interdependence between 'live absence' and 'mediated presence' where voyeur, witness and participant take on a fluidity of meaning. Like Tadek Kantor's stage set, the screen that Gob Squad use is not a blank surface to be layered onto. It is, in itself, a sign to be worked with not over.

Who would have thought that preparation of a space could cause so many issues? There should be a degree show manual for all the hoops you have to jump through. A white cube (within a white cube) can only have a paper roof if there is no electrical equipment inside the cube, it can only have a fabric roof if the fabric is fire proofed, you have to make (and pay for) your own roof in any circumstances - who would want a cube after all that? Then there are all the forms, health and safety, press forms, statements, forms so you can climb up ladders, down ladders, put paper over windows, paint studios (as long as they are painted back to the white cube afterwards). It is a full time exhausting job and that is before you’ve walked paint splattered feet across the shiny new black floor to even start putting work up (with a form of course). I have now been sanding walls in the same room for three days and while it is very satisfying to see a white room get whiter and a little sharper around the edges, this is not what I think is or should be important. I’m sure many would disagree, but the most exciting spaces for me, are not the unnaturally polished studio, but a space with a set of ready-made conditions worked with rather than against. A studio is still a studio - surely white washing the walls will only highlight the paint splatters on the floors.