Contemporary Art History Final
Greg Ligon
(featured in article) history of slavery and its legacies reworking/reframing strategies of the 60s text based some grid stuff image and text relationship thinking about violence of representation archiving and research process
connecting new forms to earlier discussions of representation-
*** RECONNECT - representation produces medium - when artists point to conditions of their form and the conditions of representation which they are working they open up inquiry into technique and how it produces meaning - idea that representational devices are not neutral - they produce meaning apply to lots of artists - How is this work thinking self reflexive about its own formal conditions? Why is this imp?
Public Sphere
- site of discussion and debate - accessible to all (theoretically) - problematic fiction - mediates between private (home, family, commerce, private investments) and public - formation of public opinion -artists in 80s looked @ how advertising affected the public sphere
Rotimi Fani-Kayode
-Nigerian -died of AIDS in 1989 -studio based photography -working in photographic tradition of the nude uses various props - masks, costumes Masks = ways of looking, gaze] -frontal framing =thinking about cultural hybridity as a kind of critical resource and way of contesting notions of cultural authenticity worked in position of radical "in betweenness" -left nigeria at age 11 -displaced from his Yoruba identity -gayness and blackness -society pushes for an either or employing elements of Yoruba culture in his work positions elements of himself in relation to each other incongruous positions interested in sexuality - thinking not in terms of fixed identities but moment when identity can fall away in moments of ecstasy moment of shattering of identity reconfiguring of boundaries between self and other iconoclastic work -response to work of Robert Mapplethorpe (white artist book of erotic images of exclusively black men) basically objectification of the black male body ex) Mapplethorpe's work - Thomas (1987) (man in a tunnel, ripped), Man in a Polyester Suit (1980) (emphasis on large penis), Derrick Cross (1983) (pic of a butt)
Globalization and Art
-central to art now because art is produced in a global context -art participates in producing the globalized conditions -increasingly globalized art market -not just anchored to NY, LA, London ex) biennial cropping up worldwide (group exhibition of contemporary art happen every 2 years) =signals collapse of a very eurocentric art world -artists worldwide are becoming highly visible -see artists interested in reflecting on globalization as a concern
Liam Gillick Revision -22nd Floor Wall Design (1998) Reversal Platform (1999) Delay Screen (1999) Literally This Place, Elevation Structure - Exterior (2003)
-drawing on aesthetic of design and interior architecture -wants his work to be a "background" for dialogue minimalist sculpture techniques formal choices -employing very spare forms --> can heighten other relationships -industrial material -slick and corporate feel -feel of office cubicles historical relationship between minimalist sculpture and modernist architecture -vivid lush color -ref Judd how does architecture delineate types of communication available to us ? -architectural conditioning - sets up certain modes of communication -spatial partitioning govern/situate our social experiences does the work take for granted that we are conditioned by certain industrial pressures? -Bishop article thinks so -thinking about how to optimize relationships that can form -attempt to create micro-instances of communication and exchange in which background noise of design is of little importance
Social Practice
-looking @ what type of collective + relational encounters? can we shape them? -blossoming in 1990's and 2000's -shift to ethical criteria -interest in how can artwork engage in project of social justice work -relationship w/ social contexts such as oppression roots -groundwork in new genre public art, site specificity, community based public art -goal - dissolve art into life -artist = community activist other concerns what is specific contribution of art? what does it contribute to realm of social and political to ameliorate/rectify? is it arts task/primary faculty to take this on?
Artists addressing War
-loss, loss of life -looking @ artists concerned w/ a longer view - 9/11 and its aftermath -social experience and public life and other activities of state w/in US and the consequences
Gift (2003)
-reminiscent of Torres =serial objects =involves pleasure and taste form boxes w/ arabic inscription on outside -"if you see something says somthing" = bush administration slogan during war on terror inside the boxes -south asian dessert wrapped in wax paper -lumped around a wire or fuse of a homemade bomb -paper with instruction for how to defuse the bomb and consume the desert -"suspicious" packages -in dialogue w/ aid packages that were dropped by the pentagon in afghanistan that included instructions on how to diffuse bombs tensions in work -name gift -vs. act of violence it encloses idea of aid v. effects of obligation and military objectives bound to aid -culture of fear -abstract idea of terror -about the body -tasty delectable gift and you're left with a sharp indigestible remainder (the fuse)
Video Expression
-spatial frames -relationship to spectator -how is attention fragmented/suspended? blocked? -from where we are presented w/ some type of spatial container how do works make separation between projector and screen a relationship that is part of the fabrication of the projection?
Trevor Paglen
-started out as a geographer then became an artists -also thinking about research based practices and interdisciplinary approaches
Post colonialism Strategies
-thinking about colonialism and independent movements -Colonialism emerges out of Capitalism = capitalism needs expansion - new markets, new resources -Concept of Hybridity experience of colonial rule as a hybridization of local and foreign 2 fold identity - othersness What artists are doing -confront history -historical research process -work with methods of discipline of history and represent it -challenging Eurocentric roster of artists generally presented in museum contects (1980s)
Post Internet Art
= Artists who are responding to digital culture
Resurgence of Painting (Godfrey article)
= died because realized painting is participating in something already established and is not this separate autonomous gesture -crit of capital -extended from earlier critiques of notion of an autonomous gesture that was deferred and deflected other sources of composition (grid, indexical mark, forces of gravity) but painting has been gaining prominence - how do we contend with its death and its resurgence -constraints are being newly understood -even a kind of institutional crit can unfold -a lot of people who are interpreting this rise, studied with people who called it dead end of painting is end of subject as coherent and situated and white and male
globalization
= the tendency of businesses, technologies, or philosophies to spread throughout the world, or the process of making this happen. The global economy is sometimes referred to as a globality, characterized as a totally interconnected marketplace, unhampered by time zones or national boundaries.
medium specificity
==== is the idea of pointing to the conditions of form - use techniques which manipulate materials to produce objects that the media in question particularly lends itself for -successful if it fulfills the promise contained in the medium used to bring the artwork into existence. -distinct materiality of artistic media
Sunflower Seeds (2010)
By Ai Weiwei Display/Process -displayed turbine hall at the Tate Modern -filled it will 100 million handmade painted porcelain sunflower seeds (very life like) -spectators can immerse themselves in it -made over the course of two years in china by 1600 laborers Capitalism and Work Force and globalization -province where it was made used to produce porcelain goods for the imperial court at a time when porcelain was traded as a kind of currency -was an early highly precious object of exchange in the very beginnings of early globalization -thinking about scale of globalization - size is hard to conceptualize and take hold of trace of the monumental work force sunflower seed choice -not usually associated w/ globalization -sunflower in China - cultural revolution loyalty was described as a field of sunflowers -as communist paradigm wanes a different kind of obedience has displaced it which is similar to the conditions of capitalism we are all subjected to in different light - usually a snack shared - can't eat them here -seed that will never germinate, food that can't be eaten connection to other works - Andre, Morris, Torres
Glen Ligon and Other Runaway Subjects (article)
By Copeland -Ligon sees nations hypocrisy like Douglass -work "questioning positions" -appropriates historical icons -uses language/text to represent a whole black body that could not otherwise be represented - appetite for language and the power of the printed word - although this isn't a completely unfettered site of expression -"murkiness of racial thinking" -commodification of blackness, how black voice is conditioned -"black male body in any description...some relation to a history of stereotype and racial prejudice" -boxes in disembark also show black bodies lack of location and commodification
Junker 1 (2009) Nut (2011) Blue Diagram (2009)
By Amy Stillman Form/Process -using traditional painting materials -uses an extreme sense of hesitancy and indecisiveness that reflects her thought about painting - hesitant in its resurgence and place in the art world now -brush is dry and scratchy -repeated applications -forms derived from figure drawings - quick sketches of friends and lovers suspends work between figuration and abstraction sense of the body -contours are fragmented -odd uncomfortable intimacy between her figures ----> banal awkwardness of compainionship end of painting is end of subject as coherent and situated and white and male notion of subjectivity in a larger and confusing is still at issue and still a terrain of thinking that can be explored in painting Gesture and Subjectivity -false choice between preserving notion of gesture and how constrained it is -in older painting each gesture is a deposit of authentic subjectivity - now we have the uncertainty of the gesture that is not traceable to the subject -so sillman has these incomplete confused gestures - not masterful renditions -end of painting is a crisis particular to longstanding concepts of artist and subject
Chicago, Board of Trade II (1999)
By Andreas Gursky -stock exchange floor of chicago -process of digital compositing (adding up images) -creates an all over system where everything is equally in focus -lacks sense of foreground, middleg and backg reference to pollock all overness suggestive of the way global trade works
Line Describing A Cone (1973)
By Anthony McCall -explores relationship between footage and projection -30 min animation of circle slowly emerging as a projection -cone = cone of light extending from a projector -demonstrates function of projection -plots out a space for viewer -interested in the density of the space and brought in dif features to show us this ex) smoke machine --> light becomes more material viewers invited to intervene in projection = social
Chronochrome 9 (2009) Chronochrome 18 (5G/5RP) Square (2009) Chronochrome 16 Set (2011)
By Cheyney Thompson Form/Process -photo scans of linen and transfers it to computer and then projects that image onto surface of canvas -highly detailed minute process, hand paints this pattern onto canvas -see intriguing optical flickering of flecks of paint delicate oscillation of color -ground of painting is transposed as the subject thinking in terms of material constraints -broadens and complicates this idea --->digitizing the context and the linens weave digital image and digital context are a crucial site of arts reception and their display painting rendered as sheer information thinking through institutional conditions it must operation -in relation to forms of scanning, image searches, online world -painting in relation to/conditioned by the digital technological world - painting but also using other mediums to create his paintings series are in economies of artistic labor Temporal Aspects -the day and hour and length of time engaged in painting are each accorded a different color and the time of day and the month are accorded a value (relation of light and dark) and a saturation level so that over the course of their execution the paintings track the time of their production -thinking through transformation of artistic labor in postindustrial era citing work of artists in 50s and 60s who were thinking about the deductive structure ex) Frank Stella brush strokes are dictated by width of brush
i Mirror (2007)
By Cia Fei -created 3 documentaries about her experience on 2nd life (she had a revelatory experience on it) 2nd life = sphere initiated in 2003 that allows users to operate in an invented digital world that simulates real world ex) cities, nature, money, relationship -has players from all over world playing as avatars - thinking about social experimentation and social possibility Concepts -giving us a vision of virtual sphere as a site of freedom and imaginative project -construction of identity and self process -sense of self as fluid and permeable -not possessing an identity here or having/being one exercising a movable identity that is endlessly transformable and free of arbitrary social positions of race, class and gender -politics of fantasy and a sense of fantasy as politics Unoriginality of 2nd Life -what she encounters and invents for herself is entirely unimaginative from our world ex) real estate, money, wealth, class, impoverishment, toxic landscape -shows us how this fantasy world is conditioned greatly by our real world tempo of the work -smooth and gliding -characters, buildings - unbound by gravity -depicts the fantasy of the cybersphere as frictionless space of exchange and communication -neutral environment -utopian ideal that must be maintained by certain conditions ambivalence of the work -what is this state of affairs? -more melancholy tone -conveyed through more critical self reflexivity ex) character washing windows
How To Build Cathedrals (1987)
By Cildo Meirles (Brazilian artist) thinking specifically about Brazilian Colonialism materials -black shroud where you enter -on floor - 600000 pennies -extending from pennies 800 communion wafers -on ceiling - 2000 bones -wafers connecting bones and pennies annihilation of people through this religion in conn w/ economy Death and Bodies -question - is colonialism a type of canibalism (bones and money) -spread of disease and death -Biopolitics -governance and power exercised at the level of the human body -governance over life and death Religion -Jesuit missionaries who were converting the brazilians has an economic aspect reminiscent of post minimalist strategies gravity cube
Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics (article)
By Claire Bishop -works in relation to the modern day "experience economy" where we pay for our experiences -human interactions in the social context -all about audience not autonomy and separateness of artist (in con w/ death of painting maybe) Tirivanija -"food is a means to allow convivial relationships to develop" -"creating situations where audience can produce it's own work" Gillick -"investigating space between sculpture and functional design" -ref min and post min sculpture -"art is a backdrop to activity" -"negotiate ways" of improving institutions both have this "feel good" position also cites death of author How we judge relational aesthetic works -structure of their work produces relationships - but identifying the structure is difficult since work claims to be open ended because it is installation art and has such diverse media it is consequently lacking in medium specificity - cites Krauss - and thus can't operate self reflexively -suggests instead we have to judge these works by the relationships they produce -should look at the types of relationships they produce instead and how these relationships operate Antagonism -public sphere and democracy need conflict, division and instability to advance -> necessary debate -antagonism is lacking in work of G and T because they create this mini utopias - not emblematic of democracy -still "good" in sense it links art dealers and people have a nice experience and whatever why Serra is better -produce unease and discomfort rather than a sense of "belonging" -have the antagonisms -reflects "social reality of the place in which he works" "knows there's no such thing as a free meal" -exposes abuse of capitalism and how it has made some people do anything in return for money -works imbed themselves into institutions of immigration, capitalism, homelessness, commerce in order to highlight their divisions -work acknowledges limitations of the art world
Soil-Erg (2012) -
By Claire Pentecost Location of Display -Documenta in Germany at prestigious exhibition every 5 years -in 2012 was dedicated to the seed Form/Process w/ analysis 43 drawings mounted on wall -drawn to resemble/recall currency =key people in environment combined with plants -humans as coextensive w/ world of plants and animals is to provoke a rethinking of an extractive model of capitalism serialized units of solid dirt presented in 2 formats - disks (coin) on wall and ingots - both referencing material/money - currency operates by equivalency - only functions if we rely on its units of measure as fixed - enacts a kind of abstraction - ex) credit card brackets from view the material labor and material that constitute that value as money vs. soil - not easily transportable, heavy, fragile POV of sculpture -not modeling and molding in the traditional sense soil that has been cultivated and composted and then compressed thinking about biodiversity shift from work to frame absence of the seed -thinking about representation - the seed = unlike soil, very transportable, recently subect of efforts to privatize it as a commodity (GMO's) privatization of intellectual capital as property privatization of soil itself - fertilizers soil as property Comparison to Andre firebricks Comparison to Serra Casting
Concerto in Black and Blue (2001)
By David Hammons Formal Choices -gallery blacked out - 3 dif rooms -upon entry take a handheld blue light ==> space becomes lit by viewers -asked to navigate a dense inscrutable space with other viewers name (Black and Blue) -bruising - violence -being in a room with people -vs. "in G major" - color as difference -blues - jazz -music history -Concerto -music -thinking about noises people create -performance critique of race -color in space not in bodies -race is not bound by the figure but born out of a social space -social relational space between bodies
Cherynobl (2010)
By Diana Thater form -installed in a 6 sided space -each side has a projector throwing footage on opposite side of the wall footage -shot in a ghost town basically (after nuclear testing in a zone of exclusion) -off limits to humans but-can get a special permit to go there -pre dawn→ night (edited (so not full 24 hr)) begins in abandoned movie theater (also a 6 sided) -theater + crew, industrial sites in the ghost town, housing complex, schools, hospital (all abondoned) - have been subject to nature -town was built to house workers at the nuclear site -see animals beginning to re populate the area thinking about demise electrification and socialist experiment -vision that everyone would have access to electrical power -she juxtaposes the devastation wrought statue of lenin in this ghost town human relationship w/ nature -even though animals coming back, they can't thrive ex) moments when horses wander off =paralleling demise of social system and socialist experiment w/ this event of 1986 which she suggest anticipates that in some way the demise temporal aspect biological time, human time, how is thater operating self reflexingly? attending to form the features of form? material features that form depends on? -displaying apparatus of the project as a feature of the work -showing her own procedures in the video -technology and nature -medium of this work is electricity and light and it's about electricity in some ways -theater she shoots - also a sight of projectors and social site for viewing -spectators own shadow is projected -enclosure surrounds spectator and immerses them in the space -dawn to dusk (conducted again by light) -the more people in space - the less of the work you can see -creating a context in which collectivity is impinging on out ability to see
To Disembark (1993)
By Greg Ligon -responds to trope of Henry Box Brown (shipped himself from Richmond to Pittsburg (slavery → freedom)) -became a featured performance on the abolitionist circuit Ligons response -movement between subject and object of Henry Box Brown Formal strategies - each crate plays a dif recording -crates have lids = containment still in effect -multiple crates -symbols of fragility on crates -repetition of crates =repetition of Henry's performance -music coming from box (also performative) -way people move in the gallery boxes -3 drawings in Oil stick from zora hearston's essay how it feels to be a colored me - "i feel most colored when i am thrown against a sharp white background" commodification of black people market for black authenticity e con → how art is shipped Comparison to Judd's (Untitled 1976) -but ligon rejects grid structure and Ligons is not so removed from history -cube shape, color serialization -all ligons boxes are enclosed -thinking about spectatorship -black entertainment culture -representation of body
Liquidity Inc.( 2015)
By Hito Steyeler -coming @ documentary film from a v different angle understands we can't have a "faithful" document -video installation about her friend Jason wood (a financial analyst laid off in 2008 turned to martial arts when unemployed and had a new life as a fighter) Mortal combat and Financial combat -fluidity and liquidity and adaptability as necessary skills in the world of trade and finance and athletic performance -metaphor of water and the boxing scenes - Steyelerl to return to mortal combat vs. financial combat -Bruce lee quotation at the beginning furthers connection between athletiscicm vs. financial performance -Brian wood grew up in this war of capital and finance the weatherman in the film - his two jobs have both of these combats forecasting -ski mask - reference to weather underground of a militant group of activists/terrorists who opposed US war in Vietnam -allusion to precarity of weather and its unpredictability and unpredictability of stock trading -sciences subject to unpredictability -famous wave woodblock in the back (?) title -Inc -incorporated, official status of corporation - incorporation also means to make of the body preamble describes this financial system incorporated in both senses -also maybe ink? dif form of media image text relationships -suggesting that the I speaking @ beginning (capital) exists everywhere here but is also an alienating force -set up of installation mimics wave medium specificity -screens -also see how she is manipulating material self reflexivity -thinking in spatial terms -humor
Archive (white w/ black) (2006) and Herder Black (black with white) (2006)
By Jenny Holzer - also thinking history/historical representation form -11 part large scale painting -on linen, silkscreen =large versions of censured classified documents later declassified, but still has sensitive info crossed out reversal of black and white = process called redaction ==> so crossing out looks white Content -pertaining to Al Khida and military mobilization in Afghanistan and Iraq and Guantano aesthetic -addressing administration -thinking about it in relation to her other work - ex) Truisms - compare and contrast text and relation to public Similarities -text -black and white -selected words -appropriated text -anonymous authority -truisms - ananymous authority stating this that may be contradictory -dissolving authroity of text through proliferation of so many texts -critique of authroship -unsigned -appropriation vs. Archive - authority of language w/ govt -function of language and text differences -site of reception and distribution -st. vs. gallery -no narrative development in truisms public -classified- originally govt didn't want public to see - addressed to private and unnamed recipients -truisms -made for public
Endgame (2012)
By Jenny Holzer continues critique of authorship -medium of painting -authorship of words -covering appropriated text with paint Document Content -documents of war - how war infiltrates the very intimate painterly gesture -thinking about war as a system - hard to hold individuals accountable -we should hold ourselves accountable/inseparable from war
In the Holocene
By Joao ribas "how art functions as an investigative and experimental activity through traditional and scientific means"
Marcel Duchamp
his works are earlier - early-mid 1900s but influence the artists we are talking about Three Standard Stoppages (1917) and Sixteen Miles of String (1947) -thinking about ways of defining and cutting up space and how colonialism did this -16 miles of string -height of WW2 -boundaries between peoples and nation - measuring and dividing up of space - interfering w/ spacial navigation of the spectator
What to Do with Pictures (Seth Prices) (article)
By Joeselit -answers question what to do with pictures? = "to disperse" "to profile" and "of effects" to disperse -massive distribution and how it relates to value - increase it in the new internet economy - mode of transfer with borrowing and contamination -Hostage Video still -physical effects of dispersion - way he produces the image w/ a file that has been dispersed online, way myler is twisted up = metaphor for the "immaterial online traffic" and physical "violation of Berg" = dispersion (how head is parted from the body" -dispersion = slow = vs. speed of commercial distribution to profile -profile = result of online activity often involuntarily created Untitled -refers to wood as "continents" and "land masses" -appropriated icons of intimacy - work parallels the "effects of digital communication" -reliefs adopt modes of "packaging" -idea of whole and hole
Over Exposed - Mortal Coil: Eros and Diaspora in the Photographs of Rotimi Fani-Kayode
By Kobena Mercer -blend of African and Western -ref to Euro/Am cannon -Nigerian Yoroba iconography - feels like west still sees this as "primative" "ethnic" work -thinking about the Diaspora as well - his own state of inbetweeness uses black male body to explore the relationship between erotic fantasy and ancestral memory Otherness and Identity -"gayness is acknowledged but his blackness can only be seen as exotic or alien" -liberate the body from the ego and it's obligations of identity - work transcends identity -"black ass sells almost as well as black dick" and the exotic appeal -galleries are more comfortable w/ his "ethnic work" - talking about his own identity - three spheres "cultural, sexual and racial" - says they are not separate w/in himself mask - was appropriated into Af Am art -deflects the gaze sexuality and spirituality
Forgetting the Artworld Article
By Lee -globalization issues a challenge to representation -art world is an object and agent of representation -globalization takes place in the art world with distribution and display and art itself can be reflective on globalization --activities in art world are "constitutive of globalization" -art world expanding = form of globalization
No Drone (2011)
By Loise Lawler 3 elements =disco ball, 2 photographs that are mounted on adhesive vinyl (gray background) -photos taken in Dresden when work by Richter was being installed two works by Richter -Mustang Squadron (1964) -Skull (1983) = photo paintings -thinking about end of painting/tie w/ photography disco ball -creates dimensional space of spectatorship and intervenes in space -reflects spectators in mirrored surface -@ night when gallery closes the ball is illuminated -parallels festive winter atmosphere around the museum -contrast w/ bombs and explosion -if squadron is comparable to holbiens skull in elognation, then disco ball is comparable in location =hung low (@ knee hight) -compared to skull and a kind of drone -emmitting light and shards of light in space =kind of drone while it is also its effects (death) specific spacial dimension -elongates/stretches richter's works -extension of war in time -invited already by the way the work is painted - already has this odd angle London's relation -also part of allied forces that are painted in the mustang squadron bomber plane -aerial view that is foundational to violence of war -intersection of war and technology =flattens and compresses land and its features see in Richter's photograph Work cites Hans Holbein's ambassadors -double portrait of 2 ambassadors -sumptuousness of trade and merchant class -interruptive object in foreground which is a skull -can't really tell what it is until you see out of the corner of your eye -in order to see the skull for what it is you have to radically shift your position in space and walk away from the painting and radically -reorient your way of seeing gaze and view -frontal/ariel view doesn't show us what we need to see = argument to see war anomorphacly/from an oblique angle -step away, trip up our expected encounters w/ war and its representation
Tate Thames Dig (1999)
By Mark Dion archeological and national history inspired -mode of field work - vs. how field work usually takes place in archeology ex) archeological tent being displaced into the realm of art -social and archeological research/experiment Process --has a materials list of things needed - not what we would normally associate w/ art -find all sorts of trash - things from recent past and older ex) nail associated w/ shipbuilding older, dolls, condoms conducted over a series of days -2 stretches of beach 1 is-south bank - formally industrial part -volunteers of all ages -did work @ low tide - only went 4 inches - summer months -artifacts found organized and cleaned and sorted in tent like structures in keeping w/ archeological tradition archeological tent being displaced into the realm of art tents are set up - preformative thing -then the artifacts were presented in mahogany cases 18th/19th cent furniture making -interactive cabinets can be opened and closed Organization -highly regimented classification of the materials sorted by shape -somewhat random organization ex) things of value next to trash background are photos of participants in the dig draws on participation Institutional Crit - relying on museum and cabinets as a container that determines and establishes value establish an expectation of order and narrative but we are missing this sense of chronology or developing narrative that might illuminate these objects in their historical narrative cabinet = displaying display -shelves, glass vitrine, doors, system of display/classification that fills out these containers -collection is not so much a collection of artifacts but display options -methods of display of museum, archeology, science act on our understanding of meaning impulse to name, classify, taxonomize -what does this process allow? compress? confine? this process is so fundamental to knowledge and inquiry and understanding but we see potential limitation ex) Mike Kelley work =how systems of classification and naming have a potential violence to them determinative to the meanings we draw -reminds us way we classify is always just a mode of classification -subject to historical moment and various pressures what can art introduce into realm of science/archeology? how can it challenge it? temporal aspects river archeology of present and recent past
Statements of Intent (article)
By Mark Godfrey -artists who have replaced artistic authentic gesture w/ a postmodern one -working in response to the circumstances created by the death of painting -Sillman - hesitancy in her painting - "uncertainty in the identity of each" brushstroke -artists working @ moment when technological changes are devestating and reconfiguring the subject" -dealing w/ "technological shift on our lives" -sillman also makes work for the screen
Person's Paid to Have their Hair Dyed Blond (2001)
By Santiago Sierra Vender Choice -not white street vendor - concerned w/ race -vendors generally from Senegal and Bangladesh -vendors in Venice w/ little legal status -most disavowed street vendors Effects -redispersed after dying -highlighted/stand out --> highlights site specificity of Venice Biennale -gallery allotted to Sierra -gave his space to vendors to sell their wares = disruption of the identity of the visitors to the -Biennale who rely on the obscuring of the Biennale's role as an art market -if you get to the Biennale your work value increases - fame ==> so here are street vendors selling their wares in this prestigious area thinking about race and class exclusions of the Biennale concepts reminiscent of the public space article! -both drawing out antagonisms -methodological points shared by nuan and bishop -thinking about how idea of community and collective is in some way a fantasy in that it rest on constitutive exclusions -works addressing contradictions of idea of community and exclusions that idea must contend with
Mea Culpa, Beruit (1992, 1999) Mea Culpa, Sarejevo (1992, 1999)
By Mary Kelly Text -large panels with text that derives from news accounts of atrocities involving women and their children -not cited or specified - only gives us location in title no subjects - just pronouns (she, her) materials and process -made from domestic dryer lint (soft, ash like) -each panel is a single load of laundry -->domestic labor in con w. the women and children -embossing process origins and goals of the work -"began by creating an archive" ===collecting news clippings, notes, recordings war and its consequences response to journalism and photo journalism also an indexical work material trace works meaning and the dryer -interested in capturing not so much factual events, but how events are represented and circulated(circulation of dryer) in the news -filtration of news and editing process spatial extension of the work -resonant of geographic span her work addresses temporal aspect -spans roughly 2 decades -has appearance of timeline -temporal elsewhere far from her dryer in LA 60s strategies text serialization becomes a way of confronting serialization of violence public (war, news) and private spaces (dryer)
Moments Pleasure No. 2 (2008) Le Deujuner sur l'herbe: Les Trois Femmes Noires (2010)
By Mickalene Thomas Form/Process -makes portraits based on photographs -palette is very vibrant and diverse -huge size wise Feminism and Race in works -engaging in reclining female nude in the domestic interior and coming at it from a new different angel -many cases her subjects return the gaze of the viewer and the painter and photographer -domestic interiors are suggestive of a 70s disco aesthetic and black power -register aspirational vision attached to the aesthetic and its passing into historical reference and cliche Textiles -textiles predominate in background and clothing here subjects were -relationship between textile and painting - also citing Af Am history and visual culture cites work by Edouard Manet (1862-63) Le Deujuner sur l'herbe -controversial at the time it was made -presents an everyday scene of female nudity -nude is pervasive in history of art, but usually presentation is couched in myth and references to bible -she returns our gaze -Thomas is inserting black visibility in structures of representation ==> goal is to mark out absence of that visibility historically and to claim a position now -women are engaging with each other - she has no men -women see themselves being seen and return our gaze in a disinterested way
Our Product (2015)
By Pamela Rosenkranz -swiss artist - working on adapting research and development from real of product design and reflecting critically on the uses of scientific technology in that realm was displayed in "art olympics" in venice Formal Choices -paints walls green and puts up LED lights -hear through hidden speakers a recorded track of product names evocotive of cosmetic industry -enter corridor that ends w/ a barrier looking out on a huge room w/ pool of viscous pink liquid -feels like an encompassing pink room -some materials - neotine, viagra, biotin -really disgusting smell from this liquid -liquid is moving from this motor inside it -sounds of liquid/oceanic sound is being played as well relationship between nature and cultural and historical split between these realms is v complicated green → suggestion of verdant nature but in this case it's very engineered and steril paint engineered to be biologically attractive ex) bugs come onto wall frequently "effects" of naturalness unclean floor - organic matter in the space in tension w/ produced nature corridor -bruce nauman ref - peice green light corridor -responding to minimalist sculpture of how work -heightens attention to coordinates of space and how these play into interpretation of form spatial and perceptual geometry -sense of shape, form, volume and mass how body is constrained by historical pressures and cosmetics industry -thinking about how in relation to nauman - ideas of human physiology is not timeless and transcendental - rather a conditioned structure (by history) site specificity in venice city threatened by flood she has an oceanic engineered landscape smell -supposed to be like a baby -somewhat subtle - but v gross -appeal and repulsion at the same time -smell diffusers are becoming more common ingredients ex) evian - coincident w/ their advertising campaign - age defying properties of their purified water which comes from switzerland (where she is from) emulating research conducted -cosmetics industry -bottled water (evian) -pharmaceutical color -engineered to simulate northern european skin tone as it's represented in advertising -race/whiteness as a kind of product engineered through..., cosmetics industry, advertising -advertising white flesh = proven means of garnering attention as consumers adds that have exposed flesh are "very attractive" also fundamental to painting and art how is the body abstracted in our culture science, art, terrain of research adapting post minimalist strategies physics = liquid against the barrier
Waiting For Godot in New Orleans, 2007
By Paul Chan the Story -arrives in New Orl -sees some neighborhoods are untouched while others devastated -neighborhoods hardest hit/not repaired = historically black neighborhoods =political crisis - lack of govt aid, systemic racism, environmental racism the theater = collaborative endeavor -outdoor performances -took place on steps of foreclosed home in abandoned neighborhoods -directed towards a social cause criticism -got some well known actors so- should he have worked more with locals? Specific play - Waiting for Godot =scene of waiting - Godot never shows up =waiting that goes stale, does not' amount to anything responding to government inaction ==> this waiting for aid/help -project wanting to have a reparative impact on the city sinage that was mounted at random intervals over the city lines from the play -reference markings of the flood -tradition of protest graphics -no clear message -oblique language that doesn't really stand for anything per say
They Shoot Horses (2004)
By Phil Collins Process/Form -2 consecutive days of 8 hour dance marathon - auditions and selected groups of 5-6 young people -were paid to dance for all 8 hrs (con--> Serra) -western pop and disco hits -multiple projections in a big dark room (from dif days) dancers -on the same wall -kind of dancing solo even though they are all next to each other -attention divided to the dif screens Concepts -reflection on Americanization - global capitalism /pop culture -also social practice -authorship - participatory work authored by artist and this group of young people -they get to dance however they want -interactions with the camera draw our attention to medium of film - confinement of the camera -con → confining 8 hrs of dancing -frontal gaze => never see signs of violence or war or occupation or international disagreement but the camera and color drives us to see it
Untitled (1995)
By Rikrit Tirivanija Formal Choices -prepares pad thai and thai curry in museum space and serves it to viewers -makeshift kitchen -public is invited on particular day to partake in this offering -art as an act of hospitality and act of gift giving goal --- everyone is giving equal footing in the food and sharing of dialogue - public event food = enabler for dialogue and discussion convivial social gathering art = preparing of food, gathering of people, discussion think about... criticisms that Bishop raises -only welcomes community of sameness/elite - people --who go these events -it is public - but its a self selecting public =certain degree of exclusionary aspect =sociality that relies on exclusion dialogue doesn't have a lot meaning missing the antagonism necessary for democracy -founded on exclusions that make it possible if a different person walked in - experience economy where you pay for experiences, not just products ex) vacations, college experience other ways to read it -remnants left => stay on as an installation -smells of another culture are left -context of colonialism -institutional critique
Dan Mask (1989)
By Rotimi Fani-Koyade con → Kruger no returning of gaze Masks = ways of looking, gaze]
Golden Phallus (1989)
By Rotimi Fani-Koyade looking @ stereotypes of black male -black male phallus -mask and penis visual correspondence -responding sexualization of the black male penis suggesting collapse of identity bird as emblem of mind thinking about the gaze of the west Yuroba culture shrines of head alude to perching bird the"bird of head" that is white in color and enshrined in purity " Yoroba color symbolizism and forms" birds beak mimics shape of the penis gold = commercialization, objectification of the body objectification as an object of sexual pleasure is how the body is fetishized mask "seeks protection" vs. gaze that "appropriates the balack male penis" way penis is held up by string - weight that the black male has to carry w/ the oversexualization
Bronze Head (1989)
By Rotimi Fani-Koyade subject straddling ife bronze head -bronze figurative sculptures act between earthly and spiritual realm -clear affront to religious tradition -framing spiritual emblem and a poop "symbolism of the head as a higher phallus" sex homoerotic penetration giving head drawing on spiritual tradition in terms of its gender hybridism gender Ife culture - spiritual god heads are neither male nor female
Hostage Video Still with Time Stamp (2005)
By Seth Price Background on the video -video stills taken from the internet of Nick Burg (american small time busisness man worked in radio repair, went to Iraq in 2004 to do contract work, was abducted and eventually beheaded and it was videotaped and went viral - his captors described it as a parallel tragedy to way Iraqi prisoners were abused and tortured by the US gov/military Form and Process -downloads image of the head being held up and silkscreened it onto mylar plastic -still has extreme flattening from source and mylar material -shaped and crumbled to make it a volumetric site of confusion Concepts what happens to image when uploaded, downloaded, transferred, circulated? -what happens to possibility to communicate meaning? stand as evidence? -what info is lost in the radical decontextualization of the image? -recognizability of the image -brutal decapitation in connection to violent displacement of the image -thinking about circulation of images w/ the piling up of the mylar thinking about it in relation to photo montage and kruger -violent decontextualization of cropping and taking images and displacing them -transparency of the mylar -transparency of this widely proliferated video -but also what is obscured?
Untitled (2008)
By Seth Price Form -images from internet mounted on wood covered in plastic and placed on wall like paintings -images depict moments of intimacy and proximity between people ex) eating, writing, giving food to other people images are made in the white space Concepts -thinking about painting/end of it -thinking about transformations of technologies constitute what must be described as a sweeping -reconfiguration of how we experience labor, governance, intimacy, relationships, perception digitization of the subject - how experiences are ever more conditioned by digital interfaces Analyzing form -intimate scenes are fragmented --> network = images - making/conditioning the figures -no defining characteristics of the figures --> impersonal aspect -also looks like floating island --> how world is brought together through technology thinking about how capitalism = expansionist internet = new market of capitalism -wood - nature vs. internet -also wood veneer - so processed produced and then covered by plastic --> natural v. synthetic -negative space -->what is this space of the internet intangible -deceleration -ask for a kind of extended attention which is v different to speed we ascertain info online -instance of recognition and connection -misrecognition -kind of profiling
Revolutionary Love: I am your worst fear, I am your best fantasy (2008, St. Paul Minnesota)
By Sharen Hayes Formal Strategies -reciting love letter written by hayes - in unision -preform through medium of public address and street demonstration - odd line to walk -self selective group -occupying public space - colorfully queer group act of politcs Idea of a collective -not trying to give voice to a community - more about forming a collective not quite representing a collective though site specificity -dif - people are walking by love letter choice -not directly calling for change -presenting sexuality as a political act -usually a private thing demonstration of desire - runs through the field of the political looking @ need of assembly operating in gesture of ready made grassroots organizing into art
Gravesend (2007)
By Steve McQueen Coltan Background -focus' on the mining of Coltan -mined in Dem Rep of Congo (80% of world's coltan comes from DRC ) -decisive in how economic power is organized → some riches, some impoverished -price skyrocketed in the 90s -Coltan plays role in civil war in the DRC -uncanny echo of Belgian colonialism (mining of rubber and RR building) thinking about how the way the image is displayed adds meaning politics of representation -how are we participating in them? -film thinks about how you are also participating in power and network relations and labor relations required for us to take images film parts and analysis -start in Nottingham where raw material is heated in a machine =-camera feels embedded in the very heart of the machine -extraordinary heat required to process this material -hot to cold mechanization of the factory -shadows of the machines - con to later part when person picks out the Coltran w/ his hands -contrast w/ grim manual labor -then people digging underground = the mine in the DRC -sunset (same colors as beginning) over factory time lapse of 5 min - duration that adds gravity and significance -people breaking rocks by hand -loud -moving black river with overwhelming indecipherable noise = graphic animation of the congo river = river graphically reduced to a line = fundamental ingredient of art making and abstraction -think about river of communication, trade, how it played a role in colonialism -then real water running over the coltan -difficulty of discerning coltan from just regular soil stored on leaves thinking about value- why we value it Title → Heart of Darkness con → literature where character embarks on journey from Thames about colonialism too early condemnation of colonialsism Heart of Darkness = England = machine in early footage
Tatlin's Whisper
By Tania Bruguera (2008) -work for a large cavernous hall in the tate modern -enlisted 2 police officers on horseback to undertake crowd control routines in the gallery -horses and officers blocking exits and entrances and repeatedly dispersing + containing the crowd how is this relational aesthetics -people are part of the work -no object - just horses and viewers -constituted by social relationships -shared experiences of the viewers being corralled in bishop's mind =creating antagonisms and tensions -not this happy moment of people presiding in the gallery in relation to minimalist sculpture no free-wheeling sociality governed by control institutional critique museum inserted with a reminder of punishment and law -larger bureaucracy that governs the museum -horse - highlighting operations of surveillance that -condition a museum -usually silenced into background
Gone Are the Days of Shelter and Martyr (2014)
By Theaster Gates Formal Choices -performance takes place in semi demolished church -black monks -violent movement -using doors as percussion instruments function of door no place to go → con w/ title combined/music moving resources but not getting much done con → housing disaster and govt aid reflection on spaces of assembly - secular or otherwise what are frames where we can gather? spec historically black chigago reform and radicalism conn/comp → wodiczko's homeless project series
Civil Tapestries (2011) Ground Rules (2015)
By Theaster Gates = ways of funding his other projects -funding and recruiting for this type of work -hires people to train in dif art forms -also Gates makes sculptures of things found in the buildings that he sells to finance his projects Civil Tapestries =part painting part sculpture made of decommissioned fire houses Ground Rules = made of gymnasium floor that was salvaged from a closing school in chicago
The Dorchestor Projects (2009-present) and Black Cinema House (2024-present)
By Theaster Gates How the project began -Gates wanted to buy house, looks in south chicago ==contradictions of this neglected and low income neighborhood -began as his home -as project grew more buildings became converted into the art space -space for watching films, listening to music, residence for himself and other artists -purchases lots of buildings -permanent commitment for its neighborhood = v. site specific library -had been a bookstore that went out of business -now mixed income housing for artists and residents What are we seeing here -artist as role of community organizer, urban planner, entrepreneur -confounding of boundary between artistic practice and architecture and urban studies medium -neighborhood itself Antagonisms in the work -project made possible by the recession, displacements, mortgages -capitalizing on this historical moment to capture resources and direct them to those affected most
Stony Island Arts Bank (2015)
By Theaster Gates The Story =Conversion of a bank ready for demolition -Gates convinced mayor to sell him the building for $1 that he would raise $3 million dollars for restoration Fundraising -raised funds through the 501C3 and selling works engraved marble plaques =mock "bond certificates"- sold for $5,000 In relation to capitalism -takes advantage of opportunity to produce and benefit from production of art commodities -art as a kind of currency -thinking about patron class that makes art possible -redirecting the resources of the wealthy class and diverting them ex) one part = black history library -his work confronts us with arts commodity property seizing resource
Freedom of Assembly (2012)
By Theaster Gates deals w/ gentrification -interest in spaces of assembly -street, gallery space Thinking about Freedom of Assembly -works take up notion of assembly -assembling in space as artifacts -melancholy feel -commenting on Chicago's' need for this type of assembly
Chemical and Biological Weapons Proving Ground Dugqy, UT; Distance - 42 miles 10-51 a.m (2006)
By Trevor Paglen
Reaper Drone (2010)
By Trevor Paglen
Untitled (2007)
By Wade Guyton Process/Form -image files in photoshop filled in with black -then takes woven linen and folds them down the middle -so that it can run through printer, which can only accommodate a certain size -all the process is encoded in the form photoshop file is printed on the linen and passed -through 2x so both sides can be printed ->register imperfections of the printer -flop to the floor in a heap after being printed that can leave scratches -line down middle - registers size of printer -ink doesn't fully saturate cloth --> see glitches, stuttering effect, missed spots -fact that this is printed not painted is called out complications of technology -formally points to technique in which the works are made monochrome -free of 3d -free of associative expectations attributed to color -still not neutral or fully extracted Concepts of exchange, reception and distribution - work is always embedded in circuits of exchange and distribution -registers systems of presentation, distribution and reception -networked office of the gallery and museum and publisher that are all engaging in the presentation of art -software and printer also crucial to the system of the reception and distribution -sense of traffic between these places -derivation of the work is the computer
Secrets in The Open Ocean, (1994, 2004)
By Walidd Rad/Atlas Group -group researching and documenting history of lebanon -think tank inventive that Raad was part of -Rad = lebenese thinking about para fiction ( a term used to describe an emergent genre of artwork that plays in the overlap between fact and fiction) =degree to which history is touched by fiction The Prints -series of 29 photographic prints -only 6 are ever shown - were donated to atlas group having been found amid rubble in Beruit (capital of Lebanon) -6 of them sent to France for digital and chemical analysis -discovered that within blue are tiny black and white photographs of people that were recovered by the lab -lab proposed the photographs documented people who drowned in the Mediterranean and whose bodies were recovered relationship between photographic index and fictional world that is conjured as though lab uncovered hidden information to present it for us but that info is bound to a fiction
Felix in Exile (1994)
By William Kentridge Parts of the animation and what they are doing -telescope - device of seeing and the tenure of the charcoal drawing -hotel room - w/ drawing on wall - exhibition space all the paper flying around - see the drag of charcoal -a lot of paper in an imitation vs. he's not using a lot of paper technique vs. history -evolution and traces -re-writing, covering up how is self reflexive video working? -working @ moment when history of apartheid is coming under examination -1994 heralding end of aparthied -residual effects are still v palpable -moments of drawing within the drawing -points to the form -paper shifting over bodies -references process of erasure status of evidence here? -can we trust documents we are presented w./? -correlation of process and the concerns of the film documentation and history why medium specificity matters =history in a formal, rather than narrative sense -self reflexive relationship to medium in defining set of parameters that confine and limit subsequent instances, medium specificity is a way to connect to history and historical transformation ex) grid in painting - you are stepping into a historical genealogy an if you initiate a new grid, new type, you initiate a new historical possibility way to retain memory linked relationship to form
Scramble For Africa (2003)
By Yinka Shonibare Formal choices -same type of fabric as in double dutch -emblem of Africanness -but in a contemporary european context -tailoring = late 19th cent = age of imperialism/colonialism -furniture is contemporary ==reverberations of colonial period still felt clothing -stages Berlin conference (1884) where Africa was divided up - Fr, Ger, UK, Portugal, Belgium thinking about it as a land of resources -capitalism -new markets and resources w/ textiles -maybe thinking about cultural appropriation
artists from last semester to draw back into discussion
Pictures Generation - esp Kruger artists also thinking about the death of painting - - Sherry Levine, George Richter, Allen McCollum, Mary Heilman artists in the60s - Judd, Morris, Kasuth, Andre public space and antagonism - Richard Serra, Rachel Whiteread, Wodizco,
Camera Obscura (2014)-
By Zoe Leonard Form/Process -spacial enclosure w/ v small hole punctured in one wall casting scene outside wall in the interior -image is both reversed and inverted -Camera Obscura history -- using mirrors, artists used it for rendering at an early pt mimics/enacts anatomy of vision -can't be stilled or fixed or recorded viewer is cut off from the outside world -separation from the viewer who sees and the material being projected division of museum and street -how public is the museum's public space? viewer and outside world -projects city inside museum - on the wall and ceiling -stretched by features in museum and underscores relationship of world outside and architecture inside light as a medium of the work Temporal aspects -time of day relates to crispness of the images early morning = more blurry -presented w/ a kind of projection/video installation (but no video here) -images projected are real time and not still - so you can actually see what is going on video installation is a frequently presented form - she is asking us to think critically about that why return to this archaic form? -think about relationship w technology we have no vs. this much more simple version -w/ camera obscura where there is no means of recording, things are flipped, spatial container viewer is placed inside the apparatus -kind of limitation and constraint of the camera obscura private enclosure
Mr. and Mrs. Andrews Without Their Heads (1998)
Headless choice =human w/out head suggests lack of morality and ethics -part of large mass of European powers - less identity focus on objects referencing very specific portrait = (Mr. and Mrs. Andrews by Thomas Gainsborough) (1748-89) = portrait of wealth that is intimately tied to the land founded on agrarian definition of wealth "landed elite" -land as source of privilege (political and economic) -land is presented in bucolic landscape vs. removal of land in Shonibare's work -it's not their land - land far away - giving them these textiles clothing -points to colonization -land is stripped away - but shown in clothes new context of capitalism
questions
Hybridity w/ Postcolonial works? what is it between? historically identity based rights - rights for people who have been marginalized - problem solidifies category of identity - like stereotyping post colonialsim challenges that mode of thinking through identity thinking about hybridized model where there is not such a clear split between colonial and post and coliner and colinized kaode has this hybridized identity shonibare - african print textiles -complex cultural artifact that reesters cultural intertwining Secrets in the Open ocean - how does this deal with para-fiction? confused about the process that the the original photographs were discovered? whole premise is that its made up - people donate but its all fictional - all the contributions are fictional documents about true events what is the photographic index? What is the significance of the signs with lines from waiting for Godot that Chan had in the city? leadup, part of work in larger scale, posted up in New Orleans - relationship to 60s, not really helping - more abstract - difficulty of representing the event - profusion of text in NO when buildings were marked with things like body counts, this house is off limits I have notes about how social practice relates to the ready made but they don't really make sense to me as I read them again, can you clarify this relationship? What is the dif between Jenny Holzer's Archive and Herder Black? I thought they were the same piece? why is the character washing windows so important in Cia Fei's piece -virtual experience - fluid exchanges in the world and transportation - gravity free virtual world - yet that world depends on material constraints - has the kind of capitalistic realness - recalling material conditions that bring it into being linden corporation - screen culture = window = reminder of the screen Article about Price - concept of deceleration i really don't get at all How is Chronochrome thinking about material constraints? also what material constraints? what exactly is abstraction? traditonal def - image representation that has no referent - ex) monochrome painting doesn't depict anything or point to anything abstraction looser - doesn't map directly - ex) abstraction of value from coltan - stripping of a referent ex) currency what exactly does it point globalization - we see a lot of abstraction Joe Carrier in Vo's work, what is his relation to Vo and did he intend to show male affection in his photos or did that just happen? - might be a fabricational relationship - idea is that they met at a bar intergenerational intrigue and interracial and semi colonial (carrier = white- vo viet) carrier gave archive = ex) of parafiction - all historical represntation is narratized - ficiton in history - what if?? a little confused about how Cherynobl relates to socialist movement and lenin why medium specificity and self-reflexiveness is so important in a work - and what is the difference? self ref - artists point to conditions of means of repres medium spec - historical derivation - modernist discourse -rigid - traditionally applies to older more traditional forms - originally meant to preserve them Krauss broadens it why is spatial container so important for video works ?
Krauss article (just read in notes tbh)
Kraus (article about Kentridge) -wants to revisit medium specificity from a different angle -medium specificity operating w/in medium is a way to connect w/ history by participating in the history of form -medium = wall you push against to propel your movement recognizes forms have a life span (perhaps) -can't be sure any one form will continue indefinitely -concerned w/ artists who she sees as inventing a new medium for their practice = artists who work self reflexively = keen attention to material of their form her ex) = william Kentridge -south Af. Artists who makes work about history -animation videos that are distinct from both drawing and animation process -draw with charcoal and erasure -pull back walk across room and photograph it erase it a little -shift movement and take photo agian -animation on a single sheet of paper exposes frames and minute shifts and changes in times photographs spooned together to form a little film (8 -10 min) spatial practice =constant shuttle between the drawing and the camera = the back and forth between the body and machine =shuttle between handmade and technological dif between his practice and traditional animation -working w/ just a few sheets of paper -history of narration and form resides in the page -see the traces of modifications and erasures as the image unfolds temporal aspects -always see traces and vestiges of past moments in his animation -referencing the process of drawing with erasure ex) piece History of the Main Complaint - w/ windshield wipers - perfectly exhibits drawing as erasure automatism in Kentridge's works = artists inventing a way of working that sets forth certain procedural necessities and material conditions and constraints/parameters that limit and propel development of their work -work with keen attention to parameters and exhibit them within the material form of their work call attention to those parameters Krauss focus' on medium specificity in the post medium era -beyond traditional concepts of marble, sculpture, oil on canvas -any kind of technical support/materials that form an artist's practice -relationship = artists who invoke the parameters of their medium that define their specific practice
Minimalist and Post-minimalist scultpure of the 1960s
Minimalist sculptures of 1960s - grid - ready made - serialized iteration of objects - composition deferred to grid and number -new concern for spectatorship - relation between spectator and object - matter and physical force relationship - using pliant materials - composition reliant on effects of gravity - space acting on matter in verry particular way - ex)Robert Morris ex of work - L-Beams and the draped fabrics
Detatchment 3, Air Force Flight Test Center Groom Lake, NV Distance 26 miles, (2008)
Process of his works -looking @ infrastructure of hidden military sites and areas of weapon resource, torture location, testing grounds for weapons = sites that are not visible to the naked eye ex) some have 50 mile radius - Paglen makes them visible w/ adapted instruments from astronomy -sometimes includes the range in work title -classified sites - "don't exist" -Paglen has gotten into trouble antithetical to democracy =which is all about transparency and visibility often difficult to ascertain what we are looking @ in landscape in relationship w/ Holzer -sort of obfuscation/redaction -visually fascinating works -hard to tell what exactly is going on -thinking about how abstract/difficult to discern photographs can serve as evidence/means of war -think about war as a system we can't possibly see/point to sources or origins -makes us encounter it to some extent and see something in what can't really be seen/assimilated -technologies of vision he employs are very often used by the military =strategy as a re-routing of this technology con → artists in 80s like kruger and sherman who re-route things for dif ends thinking about sites of power and the gaze of power (like Kruger (your gaze hists the side of my face)
Representation
Representation split/gulf between signifier and the signified representation stands for something incompletely but it can also carry its own content - representation doesn't transmit a prior reality but is constitutive and constructive of reality
Which artists are dealing w/ Postcolonialsm
Shilpa Gupta, Duschamp (early),Cildo Mierles, Yinka Shoribare, Rotimi Faye-Kodi
Artists in the Pictures Generation
Which artists are in the pictures generation? What did they do as a whole? - Sherry Levine, Barbara Kruger, Dara Birnbaum, Cindy Sherman, - appropriating images - group of artists - challenge notion of original and copy → critique of originality and representation - challenge to notion of original model copies are made - look @ tension between text and image - 1st generation to come up in homes w/ TVs representation in broadest sense -text, newscast, cinema, space - grew up in 60s
Archival Strategies and Historical Representation
all art registers time and place of its creation these artists confront history as a central part of their work -historical research -work with methods of discipline of history and represent it shed light on marginalized history, how some things art creates an archive for thinking critically about historical methods themselves what are our representational means and possibilities? How do we approach it? What methods/tools are at our disposal when we think about past and its repercussions?
Good Life (1996, 2007)
by Danh Vo born in Vietnam fled refuge campe in 1980 → Netherlands woven silk wallpaper -history of silk road -culture of colonialism portals showing photographs of war and inscription w/ metal frame photographs document period of life in Vietnam cusp of colonial and postcolonial context Joe Carrier -gives Vo his own archive of photographs -anthropologist who had lived in Vietnam and taken photographs that are in the work -includes his notes and camera -gets us to think about anthro and empire and practices of representation and writing as part of empire and definition of otherness -photographs depict scenes of male affection poses question what if? homosexual love was ubiquitous? what if we invent a new archive? how can we resituate this archive? no archive is ever neutral underscore that desire infiltrates historical practice - i want to tell you a particular story desire is fundamental to historical works - although we want history to be objective and reasonable and ethical
We Have a Future: Interview with Sharon Hayes
by Julia Bryan Wilson -"articulate queer desire in the public sphere" -appropriated the title from a documentary she saw but text of letter she wrote -talks about when you look at a photograph its through your own desire but also through the "desiring eye of the photographer" -Revolutionary Love = "love address" where she "maps political desire and personal desire on top of each other" - also doesn't want to just leave politics up to "CNN" and the media -interested in the "event of the preformance" and how that even is documented relationship w/ participants -asks them to participate -also self selecting participants -she hopes they will find a relationship to text -asks them to dress flamboyantly queer - which she leaves up to their interpretation -reference to gay liberation -act of protest as speech -demonstration that 'asks for a kind of critical viewership" History and Art "historians and artists are alike in a certain sense." both working w/ archiving "we have a past" = desire for a future -
Louise Lawler No Drones (article)
by Nixon thinking about how people in humanities also have to accept some responsibility of war retitiling richters "skull" as Civilian" - lawler alludes to ommission from history aerial toll on noncombatants "desire for mastery is tripped up by the anamorphic image" gaze conjured by the stretching forces us to take responsibility "aerial war provides a convincing enough optical illusion"
"Waiting for Godot in New Orleans: An Artist Statement," (article)
by Paul Chan - "Some neighborhoods, like the one around Tulane, seemed virtually untouched by Katrina. But in the Lower Ninth Ward and parts of Gentilly, the barren landscape brooded in silence" - "But he told me many art projects have come and gone without leaving anything behind. "You gotta leave something behind for the community," he told me" - question is did Chan do this? or not? -"n these great times, the terror of action and inaction shapes the burden of history." -"Here, the burden of the new is to realize the play through the city."
Untilled, 2011-12
by Pierre Huyghe what is this worth doing? very unclear also at the same Documents as Soil-erg Form -caste concrete supine female nude -not presented in exhibition halls but in the composting area of the Documenta -head is an active beehive -planted poisonous plants -white dog with a magenta leg dyed with food coloring color is intended to speak to the bees with its color -dog's name is Human -has a human handler very odd ecology here moving parts and the concrete statue compost, dog, humans, under transformation
1:14:9
by Shilpa Gupta Materials and Analysis Polyester thread wound around itself --string = dividing space --fact that it's not cotton --> reminiscent thinking about cotton in resistance movements (esp Ghandi - make your own clothes) Title 1:14:9 -indicative of geopolitical boundary between Pakistan and India that emerged out of colonial history Shape of the egg -conceptual relationship between concept of nation and concept of nativity and how birth effects that --> speak to tenuousness of human rights -attributed on the basis of nationality - which boundary are you born into also citing Brancusi (early 1900s) w/ shape -but using string instead of stone -something more frail and impermanent
Double Dutch (1994)
by Yinka Shonibare - born in Britain, raised in Nigeria moves back to london -between cultures formal components -stretched fabrics mounted on wall -African print textile --> history of social movements w/in Af context and taken up in civil rights and black power movements -emblem of pan-Af identity (could connect to Mickalene Thomas) Title (Double Dutch) -dye process of these textiles =botique process exported from indonesia by dutch to amsterdam traded w/ british and then produced increasingly in factories -thinking about complicated history of these textiles thinking about hybridity -colonial power operates of basis of classification of difference -setting up clear boundaries between self and other, colonized and colonizer, civilized and savage 60s strategies -grid structure
In Defense of the poor image by Steyerl Article about value in digital culture
circulation -gains value -capitalism -not just new goods or services -but through how much people participate ex) commenting liking -participating is a nutrient of capitalism visual culture -we have means to participate in the culture and produce and author it -democratization of means of producing knowledge costs of this though... poor images and online world = art of the people - lot of authorhsip - enables participation of a much larger group than ever before " perfectly integrated into an information capitalism thriving on compressed attention spans" creates global networking system - con --> globalization also thinking about appropriation
Santiago Sierra
engaging in exploitation? or forcing us to confront it ? or Both? Process of his works -hires individuals(poor ones) who are paid (very little) to perform meaningless absurd task -documented in black and white photographs -exposing labor relations in global capitalism value of their labour and the discomfort they endure and to be paid for their time is far less valuable than the commodity (Sierra's work) that results thinking about the lowest rung of the labor economy in a global market system and the most elite terrace
Social Practice and the ready made
how does this displacement force a reconfiguration of the category of art? -institutions - how do they react to these forms - both places them in a wierd situation -ready made asks art to expand so does social practice asks it to raise questions about the field it is derived from
Medium and The Post-Medium Condition
in dialogue w/ tradition of public but is departing a lot from the traditional forms traditional techniques of artmaking have been vastly expanding ex) Futon Homeless by Orozco, 1992
self reflexive
marked by or making reference to its own artificiality or contrivance
Runaways (1993)
research process -@ library and other archives -based on model of runaway slave bill form -text based description w/ emblem drawn from slave adverts -emblems are generic and nonspecific =suggesting absurdity of these emblems representing people -emblems don't illuminate text one specific emblem he uses is from abolitionist movement =am i not a man and a brother (from British abolitionist movement) begging for freedom -image has been subject for crit because slave positioned as subjugated figure and is pleading not fighting thinking about ways to make a person definable as an object of property -10 descriptions of Glenn written by 10 different authors -personality + physical -reduces person to status of an object
gentrification
the buying and renovation of houses and stores in deteriorated urban neighborhoods by upper- or middle-income families or individuals, thus improving property values but often displacing low-income families and small businesses. It also involves the "yuppification" of local businesses; shops catering to yuppie tastes like sushi resaturants, Starbucks, etc... come to replace local businesses displaced by higher rents.
Main stuff
things to compare and contrast with artists how they deal with... representation abstraction the gaze medium specificity relationship to the spectator techniques of minimalist and post minimalist sculpture (responses to Judd, Morris, Carl Andre) working self reflexively in relation to the ready made antagonisms response to capitalism site specificity response to historical conditions formal techniques used death of the author/authorship and then of course all the main themes post colonialism historical archiving interdisciplinary work social practice Art in Wartime relational aesthetics response to death of painting and digital culture post-medium condition response to globalism
Relational Aesthetics
thinking about form as constituted through an interactive field of relationships and spectatorship early ex) Morris early-mid 1990s -response to digital culture -idea about possibility of a direct encounter that is not mediated by technology -social dynamics that form in relationship to art in some ways inseparable from all art "birth of the reader" = foundational to meaning but...something new here -not just act of interpretation -but the role of the spectator as participating in the form of the work -collective idea of spectatorship =constituted in act of conversing/dialogue/shared experiences =activated viewer =site of relationships and interaction -dialogue among viewers ==> material of dialogue and social exchange is part of the form work is secondary to the relationships it forms, instigates, and frames risks notions of a collective overlooks the enabling exclusions that allow that collectivity to be brought into being
biopolitics
to examine the strategies and mechanisms through which human life processes are managed under regimes of authority over knowledge, power, and the processes of subjectivation
Artists and Art Research/Interdisciplinary Research
towards end of 80s -incorporating research practices from other practices turning artistic methods to critical advantage in a different discipline what can art do for history? for historical representation? article art and science are similar, curiosity in relation to the ready made -inducted object of everyday life into art field -enters museum, site of display => institution must transform to accommodate this new object just like institution must accommodate again for this new form this practice and methods of history raise questions about context from which art is drawn, historical research and representation
abstraction is a mode of globalization
we abstract/extract resources from places and render labor relations unrecognizable things are radically not represented abstraction enacts a kind of violence linked to capitalism con → costs of representation we talked about earlier in the semester when can abstraction be a mode of confronting history that echoes the abstraction of globalization?
