The Art of Blagging it!

So much in art today is reliant on an artists ability to bullshit, bullshitting itself has become an art form as Jenny Fiduccia revealed in her recent Map article, ‘Bullshit! Calling Out Contemporary Art’. Edinburgh Art Festival roles around again and simultaneously we see Duchamp’s Fountain at the Dean Gallery while Martin Creed stacks up chairs, wood, cactuses, (imported from Birmingham as apparently there is not a cactus to be found in rainy Scotland) at the Fruitmarket Gallery. What links these two? The art of the blag - I am not being derogatory, billions of pounds go into this art form. The skill has now become manoeuvring the Ikea table and the John Lewis Packaging into the gallery. One of my favourite Creed quotes goes something along the lines of, ‘I like work that is stupid, the stupider the better…’ On another note however, his work IS self-consciously inclusive; while on some levels it is rigorously structured, on others it can be seen as a never ending pattern which the audience, as participant, moves into at any point to activate (for instance the sonic stair piece). Therefore if the audience is part of the work, and the best work is stupid, is the best audience is a stupid one… This is bullshit!

Say Parsley

I finished the last entry rather abruptly and shall now resume where I left off discussing the Arnolfini in Bristol and the rather intriguing second exhibition - Caroline Bergvall and Ciaran Maher’s ‘Say Parsley’. The seeming innocence and playfulness of this title belies a most disturbing concept behind the installations displayed. The exhibition guide reads, ‘The background to the title is a biblical ’shibboleth’; a brutal event where language itself is a gatekeeper, and can become pretext to massacre. The pronunciation of a given word or letter exposes the identity of the speaker. How you speak will be used against you.’ These sound pieces were not only conceptually fascinating but had a real visual strength in the subtlety of design. Playing with language seems to me rather trendy at the moment, certainly at art school the joy of the laser transfer for the ‘text piece’ was never far removed and, to my rather bias eye, always felt a little like cheating. Typography itself is a fascinating subject that should not be dabbled in lightly, it is not just the words but the font too that can be both manipulated and manipulating and must be treated with caution. ‘Say Parsley’ is a tutorial in decision-making. The white light of one particular text installation projected onto the wall rendered the whiteness of the wall itself a totally different, muddier deception of white. The exhibition tied in remarkably well with a book I bought at the shop, Chromophobia by David Bachelor, discussing our obsession today with whiteness. Both book and exhibition reminded me of how hard it is to make decisions today. A single decision can seemingly be argued to reference everything or nothing ( as I have done in this very entry linking unconnected book and exhibition by sheer chance). Bergvall and Maher know this of course, informed decisions are made accordingly; a meticulous assault on the senses.

Me Myself and I

Post degree show I had no inclination to do anything, least of all anything art related. Two weeks on however I found myself in Bristol waiting for a friend to finish work with no money (the show cleaned me out) and no coat (I wrongly assume that the sun always shines south of the boarder). I found myself caught amongst a stampeding group of school children in the Arnolfini which in fact turned out to be a rather lovely gallery with an even lovelier book shop and reading room archiving all passed exhibitions alongside relevant critical and contextual material. The building itself is an old tea warehouse on Bristol Harbour renovated most recently in 2005. There seemed to be two exhibitions currently running (although their separation, or lack of, seemed a little vague - the only indicator as such being the two information guides). The first one I came to was Otto Zitko and Louise Bourgeois ’Me Myself and I’. Zitko’s work runs along the ground floor in the form of monumental brush strokes onto aluminium plates spilling of the plates as they reach the door and overflowing onto the walls, climbing up the stairs. The strong blue of the paint intensifies in colour as it moves from the aluminium to the porous wall and envelopes its audience as they move up the building. While this was, in my opinion, not quite the right location to show Zitko’s work, acting more as a prelude, or some kind of preparatory experience for Bourgeois’ drawings, his work has a strength which is somewhat location-reliant and the wonderful archive gave this fascinating artist more justice than the Arnolfini. Zitko’s wall painting led upstairs to the smallest gallery space in which Bourgeois’ drawings were situated. I was intrigued to discover that the room layout and arrangement of the work was a distant collaboration between the gallerist and the artist, prior to her death. Bourgeois always uses the same frames for her work - float mounting then a card mount surrounding this. The drawings are two sided - sketched through the long nights of an insomniac, all entitled ‘je t’aime’ alluding to waiting for something or someone. However far from being melancholic, these drawings are frantic, energetic, crowded together on one wall of this tiny room, overpowering in both their arrangement and confidence. Each frame can be turned to reveal the other side of the paper yet it was Bourgeois’ decision as to which side should be displayed. On the other hand it was the gallerists’ decision to show these later works opposite one lonely drawing from the 40s. This tentative, frail drawing forms a contrast, a dialogue with the brash later works, emphasising both her growing confidence in the marks she made but also the intrinsic instinct throughout her career.

Last week in Frieze I came across an article entitled 'That Eye, The Sky' in which the author mapped out the recent influx in rather trendy photos utilising the birds eye view. Among those photos cited were the infamous shot of Formula 1 driver Michael Schumacher from above and the advert for the Berlin Film Festival where a group of rather organised fans were photographed picnicking in the cue (possibly referencing the initial shot of the 1977 Charles and Ray Eames film Power of Ten). The author suggests that these non-traditional angles through which we see the world are a result of technological advancements. Jennifer Allen (article author) writes, ' it's intriguing to contemplate the difference between Renaissance linear perspective and the zooming celestial eye of our advanced space and information age, market by satellites, digitalization and the Internet.' So are we beginning to see the world differently or are these shots merely turning the intrusive eye of Google Earth into another accepted convention, fashionable view of the world even? I do not mean to be cynical but I believe that these photographs are not evidence of us seeing the world differently but instead seeing the world the same. The fact that the birds eye has become a 'fashionable' viewing station suggests to me that it is now an acceptable convention to see the world through the eye that sees you, the eye of surveillance.

http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/that_eye_the_sky/

Schizophrenia is on the rise! According to new research by the Stanley Medical Institute mental illness has morphed into the 'invisible plague'. I have noted before that the words 'science' and 'schizophrenia' come from the same etymological routes – a mind fractured and split into pieces. Are we really turning slowly into a generation of mad scientists, a generation of Victor Frankensteins? Is scientific development proportional to rates of insanity? This is a rhetorical question as specific psychiatric illnesses are notoriously difficult to quantify. One such study however by ECA (Epidemiologic Catchment Area) suggests that schizophrenia has indeed become an epidemic effecting four million Americans (this is four times as many as HIV). This figure has increased ten fold over the last century and is still increasing. Calculations of this exact increase is complexified further by an estimation that 15% of those effected commit suicide. What indeed has information overload done to us?

http://www.schizophrenia.com/newsletter/allnews/2002/disordersincrease.htm

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.