textually.org: Skullphone hijacks digital billboards in Southern California
Southern California is all abuzz the hijacking of digital billboards.
Silenced Majority Portal, reports that last Thursday, 18 year old graffiti artist Skullphone hacked into 10 of ClearChannel's digital billboards in Hollwood, Culver City, and elsewhere around LA, putting up his logo in between the more normal ads.
According to SuperTouch Blog, "Hacking into the billboard’s computer network today, Skullphone positioned his trademark imagery in between the array of flashing movie, TV, and auto company ads that make up the normal paid advertising barrage on the giant illuminated monitors."
Sunday, 20 April 2008
Tuesday, 4 March 2008
Thursday, 28 February 2008
the viral and the squat
Curating the Viral
The central concerns of my research have evolved from a dialogue with the analogical to an interest in the Viral and its possibilites within curation. The Viral defines objects and formations that are able to self-replicate or even convert other objects into copies of themselves when they come into ‘contact’ with one another. The Viral phenomena in marketing, the mass media, and specifically the Internet, have informed my research to date, which aims to explore how these systems of information are able to perpetuate ideas and affect actual and virtual environments. The word meme, which was first cited in Richard Dawkins’ book The Selfish Gene (1976), is one such form of the viral which has been able to multiply and spread into mainstream language. Dawkins formed the word through an abbreviation of the Greek term ‘mimeme’ and so the concept has etymological roots with the concept of mimesis and what it is to ‘mimic’. The Viral and the memetic are most frequently applied to the passing of information on the Internet in the form of videos and Web 2.0 interfaces, and I am interested in how these objects and ideas can be conceived, created, and then curated on these platforms. The spaces that memes occupy become ‘Memeplexes’ when they are constructed from mutually supportive memes that work together in symbiotic relationships, and how it is that these spaces are translated physically or psychologically into actual places presents itself as a fertile area for developing curatorial projects.
As a curator I run a distinctive space deliberately outside of the traditional white cube aesthetic, and it is in the imperfect plastering, grimy crevices, and curiously fluctuating ceiling heights that I place an importance and identity. For some time after I opened the space I maintained a DIY ethos that ensured that everything that was attached to the gallery in any way (flyers, posters, press releases) was handmade, well-handled, and rubber stamped manually as an act of authentification and self-replication. Although this activity became untenable in certain areas as the gallery expanded, the philosophy continues to reemerge in different guises and scenarios, such as the recent conversion of a digital jpeg still of the gallery logo back to an analogue object in the form of a bespoke rubber stamp that an artist requested be made. The Viral nature of the logo not only replicated itself, but reconverted back to its original form in an activity initiated by another outside of the gallery framework, re-entering the gallery by coming back into contact with myself. The relationship between digital and analogue formations and their mutation will inform my research into how the Viral and memetic can interact with actual spaces and to what degree site-specificity and consent is obtained. As any Viral form requires a ‘host’, the nature of the Viral’s impact upon a space or framework (e.g. a gallery, Second Life, blogosphere, etc) is fundamental. Virals that replicate the most effectively spread the most comprehensively and the possibility that their success may well be detrimental to their hosts adds a further layer of interest when put into the context of an exhibition and its hosting within a gallery or public/private space.
Grey Area has maintained the feel of a ‘squatted’ space since its conception, not only in its imperfections and aesthetic approach, but also in its avoidance of certain legal requirements and its relation to the rest of the commercial building of which it is a part as a basement, out of site and with very different concerns to the pawnbrokers under which it resides. I am specifically interested in how the Viral relates to the concept of ‘squatting’ and the nature of permission, authorisation, or contingency within hosting. My practice as an artist is informed by Situationist ideas such as ‘Derive’ and ‘Detournement’ and I intend to contextualise these concepts with the Viral by researching into the ‘Psychogeographic’ nature of how the Viral can be perceived, traced and hosted temporarily within a squat. The minor acts of curated squatting that I performed in my recent visit to Berlin for the Transmediale festival put some of these ideas in concrete form and the ‘jacked’ nature of the curation presented exciting possibilities for documenting residual evidences and considering ‘Trojans’ of intention/meaning.
The central concerns of my research have evolved from a dialogue with the analogical to an interest in the Viral and its possibilites within curation. The Viral defines objects and formations that are able to self-replicate or even convert other objects into copies of themselves when they come into ‘contact’ with one another. The Viral phenomena in marketing, the mass media, and specifically the Internet, have informed my research to date, which aims to explore how these systems of information are able to perpetuate ideas and affect actual and virtual environments. The word meme, which was first cited in Richard Dawkins’ book The Selfish Gene (1976), is one such form of the viral which has been able to multiply and spread into mainstream language. Dawkins formed the word through an abbreviation of the Greek term ‘mimeme’ and so the concept has etymological roots with the concept of mimesis and what it is to ‘mimic’. The Viral and the memetic are most frequently applied to the passing of information on the Internet in the form of videos and Web 2.0 interfaces, and I am interested in how these objects and ideas can be conceived, created, and then curated on these platforms. The spaces that memes occupy become ‘Memeplexes’ when they are constructed from mutually supportive memes that work together in symbiotic relationships, and how it is that these spaces are translated physically or psychologically into actual places presents itself as a fertile area for developing curatorial projects.
As a curator I run a distinctive space deliberately outside of the traditional white cube aesthetic, and it is in the imperfect plastering, grimy crevices, and curiously fluctuating ceiling heights that I place an importance and identity. For some time after I opened the space I maintained a DIY ethos that ensured that everything that was attached to the gallery in any way (flyers, posters, press releases) was handmade, well-handled, and rubber stamped manually as an act of authentification and self-replication. Although this activity became untenable in certain areas as the gallery expanded, the philosophy continues to reemerge in different guises and scenarios, such as the recent conversion of a digital jpeg still of the gallery logo back to an analogue object in the form of a bespoke rubber stamp that an artist requested be made. The Viral nature of the logo not only replicated itself, but reconverted back to its original form in an activity initiated by another outside of the gallery framework, re-entering the gallery by coming back into contact with myself. The relationship between digital and analogue formations and their mutation will inform my research into how the Viral and memetic can interact with actual spaces and to what degree site-specificity and consent is obtained. As any Viral form requires a ‘host’, the nature of the Viral’s impact upon a space or framework (e.g. a gallery, Second Life, blogosphere, etc) is fundamental. Virals that replicate the most effectively spread the most comprehensively and the possibility that their success may well be detrimental to their hosts adds a further layer of interest when put into the context of an exhibition and its hosting within a gallery or public/private space.
Grey Area has maintained the feel of a ‘squatted’ space since its conception, not only in its imperfections and aesthetic approach, but also in its avoidance of certain legal requirements and its relation to the rest of the commercial building of which it is a part as a basement, out of site and with very different concerns to the pawnbrokers under which it resides. I am specifically interested in how the Viral relates to the concept of ‘squatting’ and the nature of permission, authorisation, or contingency within hosting. My practice as an artist is informed by Situationist ideas such as ‘Derive’ and ‘Detournement’ and I intend to contextualise these concepts with the Viral by researching into the ‘Psychogeographic’ nature of how the Viral can be perceived, traced and hosted temporarily within a squat. The minor acts of curated squatting that I performed in my recent visit to Berlin for the Transmediale festival put some of these ideas in concrete form and the ‘jacked’ nature of the curation presented exciting possibilities for documenting residual evidences and considering ‘Trojans’ of intention/meaning.
critical writing workshop 2
‘Any practice which critically questions and actively challenges the conditions of its own possibility aspires to the condition of art.’ Discuss
It is of fundamental importance that art be open to a rigor of self-criticism and reflection if it is to stay vital and avoid the pitfalls of dogma and blind institutionalisation. Without a direct critique of their own nature and authenticity, artistic practices are liable to perpetuate their own assumptions and become docile with the generalised anesthetic of unquestioning tradition. The task of actively challenging presumptions has long been the concern of the Avant-Garde, who as abhorrers of the triteness of fashion and the falsehoods of typecasting have ensured that the very condition of art is not itself conditioned. The iconoclastic challenge instilled in the Vanguardist approach ensures that cultural practices are constantly reassessed and pushed further in order to escape the prison of history, and in many cases they have campaigned for the gilded laurels that sit on masterpieces to be replaced with wreaths. This action ensures that the parameters of what art can be are redrawn and re-speculated in order to avoid sentimentality, tautology, and an untouchable academic sovereignty. In his text, Avant-Garde and Kitsch (1939) Clement Greenberg famously created a binary polemic between the concerns of the ‘high’ Avant-Garde and that of ‘low’ Kitsch production, which he identified to be the ‘rear-guard’ of culture and a lamentable embodiment of spuriousness. Greenberg argued that without the activities of the Avant-Garde art would become entirely stupefied by low culture, as not only was Kitsch rife in mass production but also in the unquestioning following of tradition as ‘all that is academic is kitsch’ (Greenberg, C. 1939). Greenberg later went on to revise the unanimity of this statement but maintained the importance of developing practices that not only challenged the nature of their opponents, but also of themselves and the conditions (e.g tradition, respect, value) that support their existence.
The longstanding relationship between the actions of practitioners (artists, writers, designers, etc) and those who comment on cultural output such as critics, philosophers, and educators, has been continually reappraised since Modernism, and the difficulty of defining the interconnected role of ‘maker’ and ‘commentator’ has been consolidated into a central concern for many 20th cultural movements. The differences between such philosophies as Structuralist thought and Existentialism are distinct, but like many other movements since the birth of Modernism both have a core level of self-examination and a hermeneutic process of challenging orthodoxies of thought and the legitimacy of their communication. Central to modern literary criticism is the inescapable problem that it is itself literary and therefore as prone to the same discrepancies as the texts that are being critiqued. Using one literary device to analyse another is problematic as the tools employed are themselves open to similar analysis and therefore unable to provide a sense of objective assurance, but instead further shroud meaning or use with yet more assumptions that hide as much as they reveal. Many artists and writers have attempted to devise a metalanguage with which to talk about their work, both within their practice as an occupier, and externally as an organiser of thoughts. A metalanguage is created out of a desire to critically question the conditions of a practice, but as to whether the drive behind its creation is always an aspiration for the condition of art is difficult to confirm. The desire to be privy to one’s own limitations certainly suggests a desire for quality, and although this quality may be art, or become art, it may also be a separate desire for knowledge or ‘truth’. To construct a metalanguage is to propose a desire for epistomological clarity free from the constraints of an internal vernacular.
‘the advocates of Postmodernism have been dreaming a language of excess and endlessly deconstructive reflexivity, a language that could never be held captive in any conceptual forms, a language released from the logic of identity and the grammar of the same.’ (Levin, D. 1997)
The Cut-up writing technique employed by William Burroughs and the single roll of paper used by Jack Kerouac (referred to as ‘the roll’) when writing On the Road where both devices used to speak about the problem of writing and the very nature of what it is to write. These techniques were propositions that challenged writing’s authority, turning it in on itself whilst also having the effect of liberating its creativity. The transgressions initiated by these acts can be seen as violent subversions of convention and conditioning that became art wholistically because of specific attributes such as content, intent, process, context, etc. By negating degrees of traditional practice many members of the Beat Generation were able to produce work that questioned its own possibility and therefore construct a kind of metalanguage that is not only used retrospectively on that period of history, but also to illuminate links with other practices in a kind of arthrology.
When the work of any practice is date-stamped and signed it is open to the possibility of consumption and a process of characterisation that allows for replication. The fact that not only a Francis Bacon painting can be described as Francis Baconesque, but also a painting by an unknown artist regardless of intention or quality is a problem of definiton that can be further perpetuated by the desire to create a metalanguage, or by the characterisation of an artist as a rebelious outsider who challenges the norm. In his book The Non-Objective World (1927) Kazimir Malevich describes the inspiration which brought about the enduring images of Suprematistism and his ‘escape’ from the restrictions of representation and colour. No sooner had he constructed a Suprematist 'grammar' with which to speak about the possibilities and condition of art, than his language of fundamental geometric forms had been replicated and imbued with an idiosyncracy that limited its possibilities, particulalry any notion that it was capable of presenting the sublime. Many practitioners of Surrealism endured a similar fate, whereby the idealistic emphasis on spontaneity, automata, and subconscious creation was only able to test the limits of what art could be for as long as its ‘language’ was able to avoid the ridicule of pastice, self importance, and an anti-real predictability.
The anti-art ethos of the Dadaists marked an Avant Garde protest against the cultured values of the art of the time (and past) and its appeal to sensibilities of aesthetic and moral taste. The viscera of Dada’s distaste was an act of violence towards art, but more fundamentally towards the doctrines of logic in society and culture that ultimately led people into war and gave ammunition to the atrocities of WWII. Theodor Adorno’s infamous statement ‘to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric,’ (Adorno, T.1956) asks the question ‘how can art can be possible in reflection of inhumanity?’ as surely critical intelligence would be concerned with this rather than an individualistic ‘indulgence’. Dada and Adorno challenged art to justify itself in a world where its possibility seems questionable, and by doing so they were able to again articulate its limits, not as a confirmation of a grand narrative, but for freedom from one.
In order to break out of a restrictive tradition, moral stupidity, or desparate compartmentalisation of knowledge, an act of violence or transgression is required. When this is in the form of a challenge to creativity’s existence a ‘plateau’ may occur whereby art can form a metalanguage derived from either a hermeneutic semantic analysis or conversely from a kind of ‘outsider’s art’ or ‘asemic’ writing that says what cannot be said in the dominant language. The challenge of how to step outside of a practice’s boundaries whilst still maintaining productivity can be seen to be embodied by Franz Kafka’s famous letter to Max Brod in which he said that he couldn’t write in German, Czech or Yiddish for fear of restriction, but he could not not write.
It is of fundamental importance that art be open to a rigor of self-criticism and reflection if it is to stay vital and avoid the pitfalls of dogma and blind institutionalisation. Without a direct critique of their own nature and authenticity, artistic practices are liable to perpetuate their own assumptions and become docile with the generalised anesthetic of unquestioning tradition. The task of actively challenging presumptions has long been the concern of the Avant-Garde, who as abhorrers of the triteness of fashion and the falsehoods of typecasting have ensured that the very condition of art is not itself conditioned. The iconoclastic challenge instilled in the Vanguardist approach ensures that cultural practices are constantly reassessed and pushed further in order to escape the prison of history, and in many cases they have campaigned for the gilded laurels that sit on masterpieces to be replaced with wreaths. This action ensures that the parameters of what art can be are redrawn and re-speculated in order to avoid sentimentality, tautology, and an untouchable academic sovereignty. In his text, Avant-Garde and Kitsch (1939) Clement Greenberg famously created a binary polemic between the concerns of the ‘high’ Avant-Garde and that of ‘low’ Kitsch production, which he identified to be the ‘rear-guard’ of culture and a lamentable embodiment of spuriousness. Greenberg argued that without the activities of the Avant-Garde art would become entirely stupefied by low culture, as not only was Kitsch rife in mass production but also in the unquestioning following of tradition as ‘all that is academic is kitsch’ (Greenberg, C. 1939). Greenberg later went on to revise the unanimity of this statement but maintained the importance of developing practices that not only challenged the nature of their opponents, but also of themselves and the conditions (e.g tradition, respect, value) that support their existence.
The longstanding relationship between the actions of practitioners (artists, writers, designers, etc) and those who comment on cultural output such as critics, philosophers, and educators, has been continually reappraised since Modernism, and the difficulty of defining the interconnected role of ‘maker’ and ‘commentator’ has been consolidated into a central concern for many 20th cultural movements. The differences between such philosophies as Structuralist thought and Existentialism are distinct, but like many other movements since the birth of Modernism both have a core level of self-examination and a hermeneutic process of challenging orthodoxies of thought and the legitimacy of their communication. Central to modern literary criticism is the inescapable problem that it is itself literary and therefore as prone to the same discrepancies as the texts that are being critiqued. Using one literary device to analyse another is problematic as the tools employed are themselves open to similar analysis and therefore unable to provide a sense of objective assurance, but instead further shroud meaning or use with yet more assumptions that hide as much as they reveal. Many artists and writers have attempted to devise a metalanguage with which to talk about their work, both within their practice as an occupier, and externally as an organiser of thoughts. A metalanguage is created out of a desire to critically question the conditions of a practice, but as to whether the drive behind its creation is always an aspiration for the condition of art is difficult to confirm. The desire to be privy to one’s own limitations certainly suggests a desire for quality, and although this quality may be art, or become art, it may also be a separate desire for knowledge or ‘truth’. To construct a metalanguage is to propose a desire for epistomological clarity free from the constraints of an internal vernacular.
‘the advocates of Postmodernism have been dreaming a language of excess and endlessly deconstructive reflexivity, a language that could never be held captive in any conceptual forms, a language released from the logic of identity and the grammar of the same.’ (Levin, D. 1997)
The Cut-up writing technique employed by William Burroughs and the single roll of paper used by Jack Kerouac (referred to as ‘the roll’) when writing On the Road where both devices used to speak about the problem of writing and the very nature of what it is to write. These techniques were propositions that challenged writing’s authority, turning it in on itself whilst also having the effect of liberating its creativity. The transgressions initiated by these acts can be seen as violent subversions of convention and conditioning that became art wholistically because of specific attributes such as content, intent, process, context, etc. By negating degrees of traditional practice many members of the Beat Generation were able to produce work that questioned its own possibility and therefore construct a kind of metalanguage that is not only used retrospectively on that period of history, but also to illuminate links with other practices in a kind of arthrology.
When the work of any practice is date-stamped and signed it is open to the possibility of consumption and a process of characterisation that allows for replication. The fact that not only a Francis Bacon painting can be described as Francis Baconesque, but also a painting by an unknown artist regardless of intention or quality is a problem of definiton that can be further perpetuated by the desire to create a metalanguage, or by the characterisation of an artist as a rebelious outsider who challenges the norm. In his book The Non-Objective World (1927) Kazimir Malevich describes the inspiration which brought about the enduring images of Suprematistism and his ‘escape’ from the restrictions of representation and colour. No sooner had he constructed a Suprematist 'grammar' with which to speak about the possibilities and condition of art, than his language of fundamental geometric forms had been replicated and imbued with an idiosyncracy that limited its possibilities, particulalry any notion that it was capable of presenting the sublime. Many practitioners of Surrealism endured a similar fate, whereby the idealistic emphasis on spontaneity, automata, and subconscious creation was only able to test the limits of what art could be for as long as its ‘language’ was able to avoid the ridicule of pastice, self importance, and an anti-real predictability.
The anti-art ethos of the Dadaists marked an Avant Garde protest against the cultured values of the art of the time (and past) and its appeal to sensibilities of aesthetic and moral taste. The viscera of Dada’s distaste was an act of violence towards art, but more fundamentally towards the doctrines of logic in society and culture that ultimately led people into war and gave ammunition to the atrocities of WWII. Theodor Adorno’s infamous statement ‘to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric,’ (Adorno, T.1956) asks the question ‘how can art can be possible in reflection of inhumanity?’ as surely critical intelligence would be concerned with this rather than an individualistic ‘indulgence’. Dada and Adorno challenged art to justify itself in a world where its possibility seems questionable, and by doing so they were able to again articulate its limits, not as a confirmation of a grand narrative, but for freedom from one.
In order to break out of a restrictive tradition, moral stupidity, or desparate compartmentalisation of knowledge, an act of violence or transgression is required. When this is in the form of a challenge to creativity’s existence a ‘plateau’ may occur whereby art can form a metalanguage derived from either a hermeneutic semantic analysis or conversely from a kind of ‘outsider’s art’ or ‘asemic’ writing that says what cannot be said in the dominant language. The challenge of how to step outside of a practice’s boundaries whilst still maintaining productivity can be seen to be embodied by Franz Kafka’s famous letter to Max Brod in which he said that he couldn’t write in German, Czech or Yiddish for fear of restriction, but he could not not write.
Sunday, 24 February 2008
the elect, show statement
The Elect, Soft Restriction
Featuring the Descendants of the Whores of Babylon
Paige Perkins
Exhibition: 23rd February - 9th March 2008
Open: Thurs - Sun, 1-5pm
PV: Friday 22nd February, 7-9pm
Artist talk: Sat 1st March, 7.30pm
Paige Perkins' solo show at Grey Area consists of an installation that challenges notions of confinement and intimacy both within the context of an art gallery, and within a constructed 'private' space. Informed by Jean Genet’s Our Lady of the Flowers (1943), The Elect has occupancy in the gallery as an observed cell, replacing its white walls and windows with a soft restricted chamber. The distorted image of the viewing window promises repeated voyeurism but also questions the legitimacy and clarity of this act.
The Uncanny nature of The Elect swells within the space to encompass a group of small paintings from an ongoing series entitled Whores of Babylon. The mute ‘Whores’ seem to inhabit staged environments in which their abject existence teeters between such dualities as ‘safety’ and ‘harm’, ‘intimacy’ and ‘distance’.
‘French prison authorities, convinced that ‘‘work is freedom’’, give the inmates paper from which they are required to make bags. It was on this brown paper that Genet wrote, in pencil, Our Lady of the Flowers. One day while the prisoners were marching in the yard, a turnkey entered the cell, noticed the manuscript, took it away and burnt it. Genet began again.’
Sartre, J.P. (1963), Introduction to Our Lady of the Flowers
Featuring the Descendants of the Whores of Babylon
Paige Perkins
Exhibition: 23rd February - 9th March 2008
Open: Thurs - Sun, 1-5pm
PV: Friday 22nd February, 7-9pm
Artist talk: Sat 1st March, 7.30pm
Paige Perkins' solo show at Grey Area consists of an installation that challenges notions of confinement and intimacy both within the context of an art gallery, and within a constructed 'private' space. Informed by Jean Genet’s Our Lady of the Flowers (1943), The Elect has occupancy in the gallery as an observed cell, replacing its white walls and windows with a soft restricted chamber. The distorted image of the viewing window promises repeated voyeurism but also questions the legitimacy and clarity of this act.
The Uncanny nature of The Elect swells within the space to encompass a group of small paintings from an ongoing series entitled Whores of Babylon. The mute ‘Whores’ seem to inhabit staged environments in which their abject existence teeters between such dualities as ‘safety’ and ‘harm’, ‘intimacy’ and ‘distance’.
‘French prison authorities, convinced that ‘‘work is freedom’’, give the inmates paper from which they are required to make bags. It was on this brown paper that Genet wrote, in pencil, Our Lady of the Flowers. One day while the prisoners were marching in the yard, a turnkey entered the cell, noticed the manuscript, took it away and burnt it. Genet began again.’
Sartre, J.P. (1963), Introduction to Our Lady of the Flowers
Monday, 18 February 2008
Tutorial Record 2
Bridget Crone, 13/2/08
As this was the first opportunity that I had had to speak to Bridget after having presented my research topic last week in my seminar, I was keen to obtain some feedback from her on the ideas and approach that I discussed. We spoke about my intention to form a type of ‘meta-language’ with which to discuss my curatorial practice and contextualize both previous and forthcoming activities. Analogical processes can be used to extract information and identify findings, but the relationship that the analogical has with my practice can be seen as problematic as it is not my focus, but more a schema for observing and ordering information that is flowing from many other sources. We discussed how perhaps certain motifs keep cropping up in my work, and how lineages can be seen in my practice as an artist, writer, and curator. I have deliberately avoided explicit links with themes such as ‘burlesque’ and ‘theatre’ in the past, and have been guilty of forcing my practice into misshapen boxes in the hope that something may begin to ‘work’ laterally or haphazardly. The interrogation of method that analogy provides me with cannot be seen as primary in my concerns when generating new ideas and curating events. As a curator I run an idiosyncratic space far from the traditional white cube aesthetic, and it is in the slapdash plastering, grubby crevices, and curiously fluctuating ceiling heights that I place an importance; an identity, an ident, a modus operandi. Indeed when I first opened the space I went to an incredible amount of trouble to ensure that everything that was attached to the gallery in any way (flyers, posters, press releases) were all handmade, well handled, and rubber stamped manually as an act of authentification and actualisation. This grew to the point of fetish, and although it became untenable as the gallery expanded, the DIY philosophy has reemerged in different guises and scenarios, such as the recent conversion of a digital jpeg still of the gallery logo back to an analogue object in the form of a bespoke rubber stamp that an artist requested be made. As I spoke to Bridget about these processes of mimesis and process it became increasingly apparent that my work is concerned with site-specificity and memetic formations.
We discussed my interest in Situationism and concepts such as ‘Derive’, ‘Detournement’, the ‘Flaneur’, and ‘Psychogeography’, and Bridget recommended the text ‘Surveillance in the City’ by Nils Norman and the work of ‘irrational’, a Bristol based arts collective for deploying ideas ‘for the displaced and roaming’. I found the acts of curated ‘squatting’ that I did during my recent visit to Berlin for the Transmediale festival a liberating and exciting experience and intend to further explore possibilities for curated projects in both ‘concrete’ terms and in a viral or ‘jacked’ virtual format. The memetic and the viral offer exciting possibilities for innovative new forms of curation, as does the blogging format, as a way of placing and forming information. I am interested in notions of authenticity, sacrifice, authority, and communication in viral self organising/perpetuating systems and residual evidences in the form of vestiges, or even Trojans of intention. I intend to read widely in this area in the forthcoming weeks and resist my anxious urge to quickly form an umbrella question over the subsidiary propositions that are beginning to form in my research.
As this was the first opportunity that I had had to speak to Bridget after having presented my research topic last week in my seminar, I was keen to obtain some feedback from her on the ideas and approach that I discussed. We spoke about my intention to form a type of ‘meta-language’ with which to discuss my curatorial practice and contextualize both previous and forthcoming activities. Analogical processes can be used to extract information and identify findings, but the relationship that the analogical has with my practice can be seen as problematic as it is not my focus, but more a schema for observing and ordering information that is flowing from many other sources. We discussed how perhaps certain motifs keep cropping up in my work, and how lineages can be seen in my practice as an artist, writer, and curator. I have deliberately avoided explicit links with themes such as ‘burlesque’ and ‘theatre’ in the past, and have been guilty of forcing my practice into misshapen boxes in the hope that something may begin to ‘work’ laterally or haphazardly. The interrogation of method that analogy provides me with cannot be seen as primary in my concerns when generating new ideas and curating events. As a curator I run an idiosyncratic space far from the traditional white cube aesthetic, and it is in the slapdash plastering, grubby crevices, and curiously fluctuating ceiling heights that I place an importance; an identity, an ident, a modus operandi. Indeed when I first opened the space I went to an incredible amount of trouble to ensure that everything that was attached to the gallery in any way (flyers, posters, press releases) were all handmade, well handled, and rubber stamped manually as an act of authentification and actualisation. This grew to the point of fetish, and although it became untenable as the gallery expanded, the DIY philosophy has reemerged in different guises and scenarios, such as the recent conversion of a digital jpeg still of the gallery logo back to an analogue object in the form of a bespoke rubber stamp that an artist requested be made. As I spoke to Bridget about these processes of mimesis and process it became increasingly apparent that my work is concerned with site-specificity and memetic formations.
We discussed my interest in Situationism and concepts such as ‘Derive’, ‘Detournement’, the ‘Flaneur’, and ‘Psychogeography’, and Bridget recommended the text ‘Surveillance in the City’ by Nils Norman and the work of ‘irrational’, a Bristol based arts collective for deploying ideas ‘for the displaced and roaming’. I found the acts of curated ‘squatting’ that I did during my recent visit to Berlin for the Transmediale festival a liberating and exciting experience and intend to further explore possibilities for curated projects in both ‘concrete’ terms and in a viral or ‘jacked’ virtual format. The memetic and the viral offer exciting possibilities for innovative new forms of curation, as does the blogging format, as a way of placing and forming information. I am interested in notions of authenticity, sacrifice, authority, and communication in viral self organising/perpetuating systems and residual evidences in the form of vestiges, or even Trojans of intention. I intend to read widely in this area in the forthcoming weeks and resist my anxious urge to quickly form an umbrella question over the subsidiary propositions that are beginning to form in my research.
Monday, 11 February 2008
analogical as curatorial
‘In fact, aesthetic comparison is not direct: it neither simply matches an ‘’art feeling’’ with another ‘’art feeling’’, nor simply pits a work of art against another. It is a comparison by analogy, an ‘’as if- comparison.’’
De Duve, T. (19), Kant After Duchamp, MIT Press, London
Theatrical
‘The Theatre of Cruelty has been created in order to restore to the theatre a passionate and convulsive conception of life, and it is in this sense of violent rigor and extreme condensation of scenic elements that the cruelty on which it is based must be understood.’ Antonin Artaud
Bentley, E. (2008), The Theory of the Modern Stage, Penguin, London
‘Artaud sought to remove aesthetic distance, bringing the audience into direct contact with the dangers of life. By turning theatre into a place where the spectator is exposed rather than protected, Artaud was committing an act of cruelty upon them.’
Jamieson, L. (2007), Antonin Artaud: From Theory to Practice, Greenwich, Essex
Reality
‘…the main interest in the film lies in its ‘premiss’ of establishing a perfect correlation between the two series (our contemporary late capitalist consumer life; the Stone Age), so that anxiety constantly gnaws at the spectator: will the film succeed in finding a Stone Age counterpart to all the phenomena of our society…’
Žižek, S. (1996), The Invisible Remainder, Verso, London
Current Projects
Tête à Tête, Barry Barker & Peter Seddon, illustrated talk, Grey Area
The Elect, Soft Restriction, Paige Perkins, Installation, Grey Area
Feed Lack Loop, Michael O’Connell, Performance, Lighthouse
Swear to Tell the Truth, Delaine Le Bas, Installation, Grey Area
Gallery Swaps, London and Berlin, tbc
De Duve, T. (19), Kant After Duchamp, MIT Press, London
Theatrical
‘The Theatre of Cruelty has been created in order to restore to the theatre a passionate and convulsive conception of life, and it is in this sense of violent rigor and extreme condensation of scenic elements that the cruelty on which it is based must be understood.’ Antonin Artaud
Bentley, E. (2008), The Theory of the Modern Stage, Penguin, London
‘Artaud sought to remove aesthetic distance, bringing the audience into direct contact with the dangers of life. By turning theatre into a place where the spectator is exposed rather than protected, Artaud was committing an act of cruelty upon them.’
Jamieson, L. (2007), Antonin Artaud: From Theory to Practice, Greenwich, Essex
Reality
‘…the main interest in the film lies in its ‘premiss’ of establishing a perfect correlation between the two series (our contemporary late capitalist consumer life; the Stone Age), so that anxiety constantly gnaws at the spectator: will the film succeed in finding a Stone Age counterpart to all the phenomena of our society…’
Žižek, S. (1996), The Invisible Remainder, Verso, London
Current Projects
Tête à Tête, Barry Barker & Peter Seddon, illustrated talk, Grey Area
The Elect, Soft Restriction, Paige Perkins, Installation, Grey Area
Feed Lack Loop, Michael O’Connell, Performance, Lighthouse
Swear to Tell the Truth, Delaine Le Bas, Installation, Grey Area
Gallery Swaps, London and Berlin, tbc
Tutorial Record 1
Amanda Beech, 21/2/08
As this was the first tutorial session on the course it served as an initial diagnostic session with Amanda to identify key concerns in my written and curatorial practice, as well as providing an opportunity to raise any initial issues about the course structure and project outlines. I created a PowerPoint presentation with slides that relate to my recent studies and some forthcoming events at Grey Area, as well as three saved html pages to illustrate recent website updates that support my practice. It quickly became apparent that this quantity of material illustrated a degree of over-planning, as the 30min slot only really allowed enough time for primary issues to be flagged and discussed. I went through a list of key events and concerns to introduce the direction of my research to date, as well as making Amanda aware of my forthcoming visit to Berlin for the Transmediale Festival and the difficulty I had with trying to attend Student Rep training due to poor communication on the college’s part over a cancelled training date at Camberwell College.
I spoke about my various projects at Grey Area, including Paige Perkins’ padded cell installation (The Elect), and a forthcoming talk by Barry Barker and Peter Seddon on their curatorial intervention at the Muse de Beaux Arts in Nimes (Tête-à-Tête) in which they projected digital animations alongside a canonical Delaroche painting. I raised my concerns on the nature of utilising Grey Area during the course, as I don’t want the gallery to become my default setting as a venue and act as a limiter to my ambition by always providing me with an immediate solution or ‘stock phrasing’. Although Grey Area is a fantastic resource to have and use I only want to use it when it is appropriate to do so and when the space really resonates with the project/exhibition. As the space needs to maintain an output I realise that I may have to bring others in who can curate certain shows and thereby free up some of my time to focus on projects that compliment and manifest my areas of research. As the course progresses I imagine that it will become increasingly apparent that I will need to bring in guest curators and share more of the responsibility in the day to day running of the space in order to give this course the time that is required.
Having presented examples of my recent films and performances at the start of the course, Amanda remarked on my interest in theatricality and the Burlesque, and asked how these elements in my own artistic practice may inform my approach to curating. The ludicrous nature of language’s often haphazard deployment, evolution, and ‘meaning’ has a significant presence in my practice and the emergence of an interest in the ‘real’, artifice, and systems of ‘belief’. Anton Artauld’s ‘Theatre of Cruelty’ and Anti-realist thought in the form of Michael Dummett’s ‘Realism’ (1963) are potential avenues for further research in this area, and perhaps should be considered in relation to the theatrical nature of my approach to hanging, promotion, design, and staging of spectacles. I will expand my reading on Slavoj Žižek to encompas ‘On Belief’, and will also look at Simon Critchley’s ‘On Humour’ (2002) and ‘Very Little…Almost Nothing’ (1997) with the intention of looking at banality, farce, and simulation.
I briefly discussed my research into analogy as a curatorial process and how I have drawn material form Thiery De Duve’s ‘Kant After Duchamp’. I will also look at Jaques Derrida’s ‘Signature Event Context’ (1997) and Deleuze’s Essays Critical and Clinical (1997) for further views on Structuralist and Post-Structuralist thought. It is my intention to apply for a Phd at a London college (perhaps Chelsea) when this course has been completed so I have been actively seeking out information on the the various deadlines for research applications and AHRC funding bids. Hopefully this course will act as pre-Phd study and provide me with a platform to test the assumptions that I have made in my area of research to date and to open them up to further debate and re-appraisal.
As this was the first tutorial session on the course it served as an initial diagnostic session with Amanda to identify key concerns in my written and curatorial practice, as well as providing an opportunity to raise any initial issues about the course structure and project outlines. I created a PowerPoint presentation with slides that relate to my recent studies and some forthcoming events at Grey Area, as well as three saved html pages to illustrate recent website updates that support my practice. It quickly became apparent that this quantity of material illustrated a degree of over-planning, as the 30min slot only really allowed enough time for primary issues to be flagged and discussed. I went through a list of key events and concerns to introduce the direction of my research to date, as well as making Amanda aware of my forthcoming visit to Berlin for the Transmediale Festival and the difficulty I had with trying to attend Student Rep training due to poor communication on the college’s part over a cancelled training date at Camberwell College.
I spoke about my various projects at Grey Area, including Paige Perkins’ padded cell installation (The Elect), and a forthcoming talk by Barry Barker and Peter Seddon on their curatorial intervention at the Muse de Beaux Arts in Nimes (Tête-à-Tête) in which they projected digital animations alongside a canonical Delaroche painting. I raised my concerns on the nature of utilising Grey Area during the course, as I don’t want the gallery to become my default setting as a venue and act as a limiter to my ambition by always providing me with an immediate solution or ‘stock phrasing’. Although Grey Area is a fantastic resource to have and use I only want to use it when it is appropriate to do so and when the space really resonates with the project/exhibition. As the space needs to maintain an output I realise that I may have to bring others in who can curate certain shows and thereby free up some of my time to focus on projects that compliment and manifest my areas of research. As the course progresses I imagine that it will become increasingly apparent that I will need to bring in guest curators and share more of the responsibility in the day to day running of the space in order to give this course the time that is required.
Having presented examples of my recent films and performances at the start of the course, Amanda remarked on my interest in theatricality and the Burlesque, and asked how these elements in my own artistic practice may inform my approach to curating. The ludicrous nature of language’s often haphazard deployment, evolution, and ‘meaning’ has a significant presence in my practice and the emergence of an interest in the ‘real’, artifice, and systems of ‘belief’. Anton Artauld’s ‘Theatre of Cruelty’ and Anti-realist thought in the form of Michael Dummett’s ‘Realism’ (1963) are potential avenues for further research in this area, and perhaps should be considered in relation to the theatrical nature of my approach to hanging, promotion, design, and staging of spectacles. I will expand my reading on Slavoj Žižek to encompas ‘On Belief’, and will also look at Simon Critchley’s ‘On Humour’ (2002) and ‘Very Little…Almost Nothing’ (1997) with the intention of looking at banality, farce, and simulation.
I briefly discussed my research into analogy as a curatorial process and how I have drawn material form Thiery De Duve’s ‘Kant After Duchamp’. I will also look at Jaques Derrida’s ‘Signature Event Context’ (1997) and Deleuze’s Essays Critical and Clinical (1997) for further views on Structuralist and Post-Structuralist thought. It is my intention to apply for a Phd at a London college (perhaps Chelsea) when this course has been completed so I have been actively seeking out information on the the various deadlines for research applications and AHRC funding bids. Hopefully this course will act as pre-Phd study and provide me with a platform to test the assumptions that I have made in my area of research to date and to open them up to further debate and re-appraisal.
Tuesday, 5 February 2008
The Mug
Only the person holding the mug can speak.
For another person to speak the mug must be passed on to them.
A person can reach for the mug or otherwise indicate a desire to speak, but they cannot take it without it being agreed.
A person can refuse to pass the mug on to a particular person but must realise the enormity of this gesture (or non gesture).
If nobody has the desire to speak the mug can be put down.
If somebody would like to speak after a silence they must pick up the mug.
Too often are discussions and debates dominated by those with the loudest voice or the greatest desire to speak. The desire to speak instead of or over another, can extinguish any number of meaningful contributions from others. By removing any possibility of interruption, and adding mutual silence when others are speaking we are made aware of the heightened importance of body language and eye contact, and may have to pay greater attention to the concision of our statements. After these rules have been obeyed we may still find that the discussion is dominated by one or two figures. With the exception of some mitigating shyness, we can say that those who spoke were encouraged to do so by the behavior of others in the group.
References
In Slavoj Zizek’s ‘Everything you wanted to know about Lacan (but were afraid to ask Hitchcock)’ (1992) the term McGuffin is used to define a plot device that motivates the characters or advances the story, but otherwise has little or no actual relevance. Zizek later goes on to describe another device that acts as an ‘object of exchange’ that serves as a guarantee or pawn of the subjects’ symbolic relationship.
‘For example, in Strangers on a Train the murderous pact between Bruno and Guy holds only in so far as the object (the cigarette lighter) is circulating between them.’
In William Golding’s novel ‘The Lord of the Flies’ (1954) a Conch shell is used to represent power, authority, civilisation, and democracy. It is used to call the boys to meetings, and whoever is holding the shell in the meetings has the power to speak. The Conch shows how people use objects to signify power (a Crown, Sceptre, etc) and how without a democratizing mouthpiece or vessel of political legitimacy all hope of civilisatiion is lost.
‘Ralph smiled and held up the Conch for silence’
For another person to speak the mug must be passed on to them.
A person can reach for the mug or otherwise indicate a desire to speak, but they cannot take it without it being agreed.
A person can refuse to pass the mug on to a particular person but must realise the enormity of this gesture (or non gesture).
If nobody has the desire to speak the mug can be put down.
If somebody would like to speak after a silence they must pick up the mug.
Too often are discussions and debates dominated by those with the loudest voice or the greatest desire to speak. The desire to speak instead of or over another, can extinguish any number of meaningful contributions from others. By removing any possibility of interruption, and adding mutual silence when others are speaking we are made aware of the heightened importance of body language and eye contact, and may have to pay greater attention to the concision of our statements. After these rules have been obeyed we may still find that the discussion is dominated by one or two figures. With the exception of some mitigating shyness, we can say that those who spoke were encouraged to do so by the behavior of others in the group.
References
In Slavoj Zizek’s ‘Everything you wanted to know about Lacan (but were afraid to ask Hitchcock)’ (1992) the term McGuffin is used to define a plot device that motivates the characters or advances the story, but otherwise has little or no actual relevance. Zizek later goes on to describe another device that acts as an ‘object of exchange’ that serves as a guarantee or pawn of the subjects’ symbolic relationship.
‘For example, in Strangers on a Train the murderous pact between Bruno and Guy holds only in so far as the object (the cigarette lighter) is circulating between them.’
In William Golding’s novel ‘The Lord of the Flies’ (1954) a Conch shell is used to represent power, authority, civilisation, and democracy. It is used to call the boys to meetings, and whoever is holding the shell in the meetings has the power to speak. The Conch shows how people use objects to signify power (a Crown, Sceptre, etc) and how without a democratizing mouthpiece or vessel of political legitimacy all hope of civilisatiion is lost.
‘Ralph smiled and held up the Conch for silence’
The Centre of Attention interview, a-n, 2005
AN: The artist-curator is a strange hybrid of selecting and positioning your work and other artists’ work in unusual conceptual and contextual situations. How do you tackle this in your thinking, practice and selection process? And what, in your opinion, is the role/purpose of the artist-curator in the 21st Century?
How does your approach differ from the monographic and group exhibitions of ‘professional’ curators of galleries or museums? Do you feel that the choices you make in your practice and in curating other artists/work are driven by external forces such as funding criteria, social agendas, and audience development? And is this an impediment to artistic creativity?
Self-indulgence or critical rigor? Without the interpretative or validating role of a gallery or museum curator how do you measure quality of work and the works' ability to communicate to an audience?
TCOA: There is nothing strange about the artist-curator: it is not a new concept but a sign that the artist is engaged in what happens around them. The artist-curator does not per se produce unusual situations. In any case we don’t consider ourselves artist-curators. We consider the Centre of Attention’s work to be participatory curating. We are very much involved in the choice, commissioning, presentation of the work and drawing attention to the performative aspects of all these processes...
An example would be, in Paris, January 2005: ‘Nicolas Schöffer – a found exhibition’ presents the real unmediated space of the artist’s studio, where we, as curators, limit ourselves to defining it as the exhibition, drawing people through the terrain of art and visual culture to the site as un-fabricated, as an endeavor and as a site of contestation... A process very much opposed to the curator’s fabrications of facsimile exhibitions.
‘Gonzo’ (subjective, first person) curation is about taking risks and we put ourselves very much in the firing line. We stand by our choices and hope something is revealed about us, as human beings, and our curating methods... we are performing curation.
For example, in ‘On Demand’ (London, August-September 2005), participants were asked to select the artist’s work they wanted to see and then we brought it to their homes.
As gonzo curators we do not go forth hiding behind the artists.
Variety in the art world landscape is what we desire. There are no rules. We need more unique, original, hot curators from all backgrounds, and with all sorts of ideas. This will keep the scene a little less earnest, less parsimonious, less didactic, less closed and conformist. We need more courage, creativity and confidence...
Framing possibilities and celebrating individualism and freedom from orthodoxy are challenges that keep us inspired, entertained, interested and alert... We want to re-evaluate the past, discover new trends and give oxygen to the significant but over-looked for whatever reason (for example, our curation of Ken Friedman’s Fluxus concert, April 2004, London).
Artists are fracturing into tribes but these tribes are not necessarily original or innovative and can be defensive and retrograde (nostalgic). In a Matthew Arnold sense, we want the best that each tribe has to offer.
The Centre of Attention is a search engine for fresh, original, vital, beautiful, true, intelligent and amusing, tragic and comedic work. Sometimes literally: In ‘the Centre of Attention Search Engine‘ (San Francisco, March-April 2003) the exhibition launched with an empty gallery space, with artists bringing in work to be discussed with us before being accepted or rejected for the show, and the curators scouring the city with a view to finding the most interesting work. The show was a performance where visitors could see the making of the exhibition; they could come back daily to check the progress; could follow the curator’s visits, make suggestions. The end of the show paradoxically marked the completion of the process.
In the 21st century we are merely the performing monkey to the organ-grinding of the artists.
On one level the Centre of Attention’s approach doesn’t differ from professional (as in ‘salaried’) curators of galleries or museums. Like the institutions, we produce solo and group shows, some of which travel internationally. Like them we produce a magazine, administer a prize, hold events and screenings, and try to define and label current trends in contemporary art. Unlike them, we have never been state-sponsored and do not depend on (though would not reject) the welfare funding given to artists, curators, artist-curators and institutions and we are not as driven by external forces such as funding criteria, social agendas, audience development or market forces, as they are. We have no budget, no academic, political or moral agenda; we have no time and no will to over self-justify.
But we emulate the institution and thereby generate a surreal expectation shortfall. What can you do without money, space and resources seen as indispensable to the big space? Can the pageant of art history and its inexorable forward movement be deformed by an individual artist or curator?
Should only wealth accruing sections of society dictate what is the most interesting in art production and endeavor?
The traditional alternative space or artist-led exhibition can be equally unappealing to us with its inbuilt flaw of compromise, its naïve idealism and its conventionally avant-garde antechamber function. We want to maintain a quality control and are not keen to reward commitment, integrity or delusion for its own sake.
The Centre of Attention has no desire to be literal, didactic or provide examples for our limited political beliefs or narrow social agendas.
As gonzo curators we often fall back on asking ourselves these questions and discussing with those willing to listen: Do we want it? Do we want to be part of it? What do I think about it and that? What do I feel about that and it? And why do I think and feel that and it about it and that? And why hasn’t it, that, that and it, been done before or since; and if it has and was, why is it different now or not?
Critical rigor is a minority self indulgence... and as such we celebrate it! We do not interpret and we do not validate.
Interpret? That’s for the future but have a go by all means.
Validate? We can do without it and take our chance. Museums confer status not validation. This supposed validating quality is not upheld by their past track record.
Communicate? It is a big assumption that the work should communicate anything. We create the exhibition and let it un-spool as it will, creating its own audience.
To predict the future you must change the past and thus we participate, through our enquiry into the phenomenon of art production, presentation, consumption and heritage-ization.
How does your approach differ from the monographic and group exhibitions of ‘professional’ curators of galleries or museums? Do you feel that the choices you make in your practice and in curating other artists/work are driven by external forces such as funding criteria, social agendas, and audience development? And is this an impediment to artistic creativity?
Self-indulgence or critical rigor? Without the interpretative or validating role of a gallery or museum curator how do you measure quality of work and the works' ability to communicate to an audience?
TCOA: There is nothing strange about the artist-curator: it is not a new concept but a sign that the artist is engaged in what happens around them. The artist-curator does not per se produce unusual situations. In any case we don’t consider ourselves artist-curators. We consider the Centre of Attention’s work to be participatory curating. We are very much involved in the choice, commissioning, presentation of the work and drawing attention to the performative aspects of all these processes...
An example would be, in Paris, January 2005: ‘Nicolas Schöffer – a found exhibition’ presents the real unmediated space of the artist’s studio, where we, as curators, limit ourselves to defining it as the exhibition, drawing people through the terrain of art and visual culture to the site as un-fabricated, as an endeavor and as a site of contestation... A process very much opposed to the curator’s fabrications of facsimile exhibitions.
‘Gonzo’ (subjective, first person) curation is about taking risks and we put ourselves very much in the firing line. We stand by our choices and hope something is revealed about us, as human beings, and our curating methods... we are performing curation.
For example, in ‘On Demand’ (London, August-September 2005), participants were asked to select the artist’s work they wanted to see and then we brought it to their homes.
As gonzo curators we do not go forth hiding behind the artists.
Variety in the art world landscape is what we desire. There are no rules. We need more unique, original, hot curators from all backgrounds, and with all sorts of ideas. This will keep the scene a little less earnest, less parsimonious, less didactic, less closed and conformist. We need more courage, creativity and confidence...
Framing possibilities and celebrating individualism and freedom from orthodoxy are challenges that keep us inspired, entertained, interested and alert... We want to re-evaluate the past, discover new trends and give oxygen to the significant but over-looked for whatever reason (for example, our curation of Ken Friedman’s Fluxus concert, April 2004, London).
Artists are fracturing into tribes but these tribes are not necessarily original or innovative and can be defensive and retrograde (nostalgic). In a Matthew Arnold sense, we want the best that each tribe has to offer.
The Centre of Attention is a search engine for fresh, original, vital, beautiful, true, intelligent and amusing, tragic and comedic work. Sometimes literally: In ‘the Centre of Attention Search Engine‘ (San Francisco, March-April 2003) the exhibition launched with an empty gallery space, with artists bringing in work to be discussed with us before being accepted or rejected for the show, and the curators scouring the city with a view to finding the most interesting work. The show was a performance where visitors could see the making of the exhibition; they could come back daily to check the progress; could follow the curator’s visits, make suggestions. The end of the show paradoxically marked the completion of the process.
In the 21st century we are merely the performing monkey to the organ-grinding of the artists.
On one level the Centre of Attention’s approach doesn’t differ from professional (as in ‘salaried’) curators of galleries or museums. Like the institutions, we produce solo and group shows, some of which travel internationally. Like them we produce a magazine, administer a prize, hold events and screenings, and try to define and label current trends in contemporary art. Unlike them, we have never been state-sponsored and do not depend on (though would not reject) the welfare funding given to artists, curators, artist-curators and institutions and we are not as driven by external forces such as funding criteria, social agendas, audience development or market forces, as they are. We have no budget, no academic, political or moral agenda; we have no time and no will to over self-justify.
But we emulate the institution and thereby generate a surreal expectation shortfall. What can you do without money, space and resources seen as indispensable to the big space? Can the pageant of art history and its inexorable forward movement be deformed by an individual artist or curator?
Should only wealth accruing sections of society dictate what is the most interesting in art production and endeavor?
The traditional alternative space or artist-led exhibition can be equally unappealing to us with its inbuilt flaw of compromise, its naïve idealism and its conventionally avant-garde antechamber function. We want to maintain a quality control and are not keen to reward commitment, integrity or delusion for its own sake.
The Centre of Attention has no desire to be literal, didactic or provide examples for our limited political beliefs or narrow social agendas.
As gonzo curators we often fall back on asking ourselves these questions and discussing with those willing to listen: Do we want it? Do we want to be part of it? What do I think about it and that? What do I feel about that and it? And why do I think and feel that and it about it and that? And why hasn’t it, that, that and it, been done before or since; and if it has and was, why is it different now or not?
Critical rigor is a minority self indulgence... and as such we celebrate it! We do not interpret and we do not validate.
Interpret? That’s for the future but have a go by all means.
Validate? We can do without it and take our chance. Museums confer status not validation. This supposed validating quality is not upheld by their past track record.
Communicate? It is a big assumption that the work should communicate anything. We create the exhibition and let it un-spool as it will, creating its own audience.
To predict the future you must change the past and thus we participate, through our enquiry into the phenomenon of art production, presentation, consumption and heritage-ization.
current bibliography
Bermel, A. (2001), Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty, Methuen, London
Critchly, S. (2001), Continental Philosophy, Oxford University Press, Oxford
De Duve, T. (19), Kant After Duchamp, MIT Press, London
Zizek, S. (1992), Everything you always wanted to know about Lacan (But were afraid to ask Hitchock) (1992), Verso, London
Zizek, S. (2001), On Belief, Routledge, London
Zizek, S. (2002), Welcome to the Desert of the Real, Verso, London
Zizek, S. (1996), The Invisible Remainder, Verso, London
Critchly, S. (2001), Continental Philosophy, Oxford University Press, Oxford
De Duve, T. (19), Kant After Duchamp, MIT Press, London
Zizek, S. (1992), Everything you always wanted to know about Lacan (But were afraid to ask Hitchock) (1992), Verso, London
Zizek, S. (2001), On Belief, Routledge, London
Zizek, S. (2002), Welcome to the Desert of the Real, Verso, London
Zizek, S. (1996), The Invisible Remainder, Verso, London
Monday, 4 February 2008
Transmediale interventions
He's Human Too You Know, DVD
Exhibited at King Kong Club, Mitte, Berlin, Feb 2008
Apologue, DVD
Exhibited at Transmediale, House of World Cultures, Berlin, Feb 2008
Tuesday, 22 January 2008
Rem Koolhaas
'Architects — by and large old-fashioned utopian liberals who want to save the world — have trouble when faced with someone who says the Enlightenment is dead. Koolhaas’s glee for shopping, consumerism and big fat capitalists — he sees China as capitalism’s front line, where a new society is being formed in instant cities — attracts accusations of relativism, nihilism and cynicism. 'I’m not cynical about anything,' he says, amazed. 'I’m critical. A cynic could not be this industrious. A cynic is someone who doesn’t believe in anything.” Tom Dyckhoff
Rem Koolhaas at the Serpentine
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,585-1012507_2,00.html
Pavilion with Thomas Demand Frieze
Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA)
Think-tank: AMO
“Catholic, shapeless educational establishments”
I am interested in the priviledge of Koolhaas' position. Genuine authenticity seems to be tied up with a less inspiring ambition for the bombastic, and an embracement of capitalism as theatre. To be in the position of a designer outside of patronage, and a thinker who can look past the 'Ground Zero' project and shun instant household famedom. Some actors are applauded for their ability to look past a paycheck and a chewing gum satisfaction in order to 'hold out' for a big break in an authentic production, to achieve critical fame and acceptance. The genuine article. Like Ricky Gervais' character in 'Extras' or current media testaments of the recently departed Heath Ledger; the performer of craft craves to be taken seriously at the cost of poverty and fame. And that is why Koolhaas is such a mix of contradictions, tautology, and oxymoron. Simultaniously he gives clear attention to subtlety, modestness, and presents diatribes on authenticity and awareness, whilst at the same time taking on projects that simply seem to add a further layer of icing on already sugar-heavy environments and companies. Postmodern decadence, or a realistic manifestation of the split human concerns in all of us?Monday, 21 January 2008
Confessions of a WHITNEYBIENNIAL.COM Curator
Patrick Lichty
'I discussed the schism between the code-based net artists and those deciding to use more design-driven Macromedia Flash-based works. As mentioned on the Crumb New Media curating maillist in 2001 (13), one perception of the proliferation of Flash-based net art is that of post dot-com boom designers trying to distinguish themselves in the online milieu, thus the ‘art world’ not taking these Flash creators as serious artists, although this is a somewhat reductive discourse. To compound this, the split between code-based artists and Flash/Director artists fracture the nature of online art along lines of traditional disciplinary difference, technique, and craft. whitneybiennial.com positioned itself to take several critical positions between disciplines, the extant and emerging art worlds, and between ideologies in the online art community itself.'
Excerpts from an account on the curation of new media artwork during the Whitney Biennial 2002.
The curation of new media still reflects Lichty's account of 6 years ago, with Flash designers and coders being seen as separate practitioners with very different concerns. It is taking time for these concerns to be consolidated together under the common core concern of 'artist' or 'art'. I would personally like to explore the possibility of curating another show with set parameters for its content in the form of a software package (Flash, PowerPoint, IMovie) or display mode.
Lichty is a curator and artist who has worked at the Whitney and Venice Bienniales as well as the International Symposium on the Electronic Arts (ISEA). He is Editor-inChief of Intelligent Agent, an electronic arts/culture journal based in New York.
Kurator Software
The KURATOR is a free software application designed as a tool for curating source code which is in early stages of technical development. It offers one way of developing a model of curating that is open source and open for collective development.
There is an analogy between the use of the term 'programming' here - both in the curatorial work of programming events (traditionally in a museum or exhibition but also clearly in organising something like an event/conference/structure) and in programming of the technical system that facilitates the work.
It might be useful to think about the work of curator as analogous to the work of programmer: from artist-programmer or software artist to curator-programmer or software curator. Indeed curating source code is standard practice in this field of software production and so is a collective production process involving various agencies including a programmer and a curator.
http://www.kurator.org/wiki/main/read/Introduction+to+the+conference
There is an analogy between the use of the term 'programming' here - both in the curatorial work of programming events (traditionally in a museum or exhibition but also clearly in organising something like an event/conference/structure) and in programming of the technical system that facilitates the work.
It might be useful to think about the work of curator as analogous to the work of programmer: from artist-programmer or software artist to curator-programmer or software curator. Indeed curating source code is standard practice in this field of software production and so is a collective production process involving various agencies including a programmer and a curator.
http://www.kurator.org/wiki/main/read/Introduction+to+the+conference
curator as validator
‘Curator as … ’ constructions speak of a welcome self-reflexivity and plurality of approach, but they also almost inevitably stick in the craw. There’s a faint atmosphere of subterfuge about them, of borrowing the glamour or gravitas of another profession in an attempt to graft it onto one that we’re aware is, for all its possibilities, also commonly bound up with the grey, clerk-y stuff of fundraising and filling out loan forms. (Among these constructions, the worst offenders I’ve come across include ‘curator as anthropologist’, ‘curator as stylist’ and once, unforgivably, ‘curator as DJ’.) More importantly, the fashion for analogy in framing the figure of the curator points to a certain lack of self-confidence in the field, as though curating is an activity that can only be understood, or even validated, with reference to activities that exert a greater gravitational pull. Despite the explosion in curatorial discourse over the past couple of decades, despite the foregrounding of ‘star’ curators in innumerable biennale press releases, the feeling remains that the profession is at times still closer to the advertising copywriter who claims to ‘work in the creative industries’ than to the novelist who is simply and unapologetically a novelist.
Tom Morton, Frieze, March 2006
Morton raises a probing finger at the schitzoid nature of curatorial identity and a self-doubting nature verging on multiple personality disorder. Not long ago I had a conversation with two other artists on the curious necessity for the artworld to cleave to removed and isolated genres, ideas, or identities other than itself. Not to in order to speak about the world legitamately, but to give itself the legitamacy of speech. The 'hook' or 'treatment' of a cultural trope (Deller on anthropology), (Hirst on God), (Koons on money) gives artists a way in, but are these topics and correspondences necessarily rendered into titbits and buffet picking as the curator pays passing attention to a highly complex area? The gravitas of a gravitational pull is expanding, and does this drive for a heavyweight cause inevitably lead to a greater state of anxiety as curators desparately skim away at the surfaces of overlooked depths?
Correspondence Theory
Qualitative analogies have much in common with the Correspondence Theory of truth
The theory states that something (for example, a proposition or statement or sentence) is rendered true by the existence of a fact with corresponding elements and a similar structure.
Historically, the most popular theory of truth was the Correspondence Theory. First proposed in a vague form by Plato and by Aristotle in his Metaphysics, this realist theory says truth is what propositions have by corresponding to a way the world is. The theory says that a proposition is true provided there exists a fact corresponding to it. In other words, for any proposition p,
p is true if and only if p corresponds to a fact.
The theory states that something (for example, a proposition or statement or sentence) is rendered true by the existence of a fact with corresponding elements and a similar structure.
The theory maintains that the truth or falsity of a statement is determined only by how it relates to the world, and whether it accurately describes (i.e., corresponds with) that world.
Historically, the most popular theory of truth was the Correspondence Theory. First proposed in a vague form by Plato and by Aristotle in his Metaphysics, this realist theory says truth is what propositions have by corresponding to a way the world is. The theory says that a proposition is true provided there exists a fact corresponding to it. In other words, for any proposition p,
p is true if and only if p corresponds to a fact.
Snow is White
Remarking that the proposition's truth is its corresponding to the fact that snow is white leads to the request for an acceptable analysis of this correspondence.
Presenting his theory of logical atomism early in the twentieth century, Russell tried to show how a true proposition and its corresponding fact share the same structure.
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus approach to curating.
Fumerton, R. (2002), Realism and the Correspondence Theory of Truth (Studies in Epistemology and Cognitive Theory)
Cabinet of Curiousities
Wunderkammer - Cabinet of Wonders
. . . holy relics from a Spanish ship; earthen pitchers and porcelain from China; a Madonna made of feathers, a chain made of monkey teeth, stone shears, a back-scratcher, and a canoe with paddles, all from "India"; a Javanese costume, Arabian coats; the horn and tail of a rhinoceros, the horn of a bull seal, a round horn that had grown on an Englishwoman's forehead, a unicorn's tail; the baubles and bells of Henry VIII's fool, the Turkish emperor's golden seal . . .
Historical Analogy
The Cabinet seems to be an ideal symbol for 'Romantic understanding' - Egan's term for the stage at which children are 'commonly obsessed with the extremes of human achievement and qualities' and 'while trying to master notational systems of alphabets and numbers, they are also becoming avid collectors, sorters and rankers of things'. This stage precedes the philosophic/scientific stage of understanding where children develop systematic and theoretical forms of inquiry.
Analogy with the brain
How the brain works often elicits metaphors of drawers, cupboards and 'tool-sheds'. Analogies with a cabinet that has different shelves and drawers for different kinds of thinking and for storing different kinds of memories could well be useful for discussing 'knowledge'. The variety and eccentricity of the way that objects were arranged within a cabinet according to their owner's personal notions of 'importance', similarity, historical and geographical connections, aesthetic appeal - make the cabinet of curiosities a far more interesting and useful analogy for the storage of knowledge and ideas than say the 'folk-wisdom' view of the mind as a filing-cabinet.
Analogies of loss of wonder
The dismantling of Cabinets of Curiosities or their assimilation into curated museums was a result of the rise of scientific/logical thinking as the accepted way of describing the world. The sense of a loss of wonder as 'scientific' thinking became the dominant way of looking at the world is expressed in Keats' lines on Newton 'unweaving the rainbow'.
Analogy with the Internet
In some ways, the Internet functions like a modern Cabinet of Curiosities - as a repository of curious, half-formed and extreme ideas - just as the vast new lands of the Americas inspired the senses of wonder and acquisitiveness in Cabinet owners, the sense of the vast amount of information stretching out over the Internet can provoke a similar delight at the possibilities of unearthing new and interesting things, and a desire to make collections/displays of links to favourite web sites through constructing personal websites and blogs. The recently defunct 'Nanohomes' system provided a close analogy with a collection of cabinets - with an on-line community where each user was able to place objects within a 3D room space and attach links to each of these.
http://www.curiosity.org.uk/whatisa.htm
. . . holy relics from a Spanish ship; earthen pitchers and porcelain from China; a Madonna made of feathers, a chain made of monkey teeth, stone shears, a back-scratcher, and a canoe with paddles, all from "India"; a Javanese costume, Arabian coats; the horn and tail of a rhinoceros, the horn of a bull seal, a round horn that had grown on an Englishwoman's forehead, a unicorn's tail; the baubles and bells of Henry VIII's fool, the Turkish emperor's golden seal . . .
Historical Analogy
The Cabinet seems to be an ideal symbol for 'Romantic understanding' - Egan's term for the stage at which children are 'commonly obsessed with the extremes of human achievement and qualities' and 'while trying to master notational systems of alphabets and numbers, they are also becoming avid collectors, sorters and rankers of things'. This stage precedes the philosophic/scientific stage of understanding where children develop systematic and theoretical forms of inquiry.
Analogy with the brain
How the brain works often elicits metaphors of drawers, cupboards and 'tool-sheds'. Analogies with a cabinet that has different shelves and drawers for different kinds of thinking and for storing different kinds of memories could well be useful for discussing 'knowledge'. The variety and eccentricity of the way that objects were arranged within a cabinet according to their owner's personal notions of 'importance', similarity, historical and geographical connections, aesthetic appeal - make the cabinet of curiosities a far more interesting and useful analogy for the storage of knowledge and ideas than say the 'folk-wisdom' view of the mind as a filing-cabinet.
Analogies of loss of wonder
The dismantling of Cabinets of Curiosities or their assimilation into curated museums was a result of the rise of scientific/logical thinking as the accepted way of describing the world. The sense of a loss of wonder as 'scientific' thinking became the dominant way of looking at the world is expressed in Keats' lines on Newton 'unweaving the rainbow'.
Analogy with the Internet
In some ways, the Internet functions like a modern Cabinet of Curiosities - as a repository of curious, half-formed and extreme ideas - just as the vast new lands of the Americas inspired the senses of wonder and acquisitiveness in Cabinet owners, the sense of the vast amount of information stretching out over the Internet can provoke a similar delight at the possibilities of unearthing new and interesting things, and a desire to make collections/displays of links to favourite web sites through constructing personal websites and blogs. The recently defunct 'Nanohomes' system provided a close analogy with a collection of cabinets - with an on-line community where each user was able to place objects within a 3D room space and attach links to each of these.
http://www.curiosity.org.uk/whatisa.htm
Corner of a Cabinet of Curiousities, painted by Frans II Francken in 1636
analogy generator
http://www.museumofhumor.com/Analogy.htm
Need an analogy fast?
No problem.
Just fill in the blank with your topic.
Then click on the analogize button.
You'll get a pithy analogy to use in your next article, presentation or conversation.
Just keep clicking the button till you get one you like.
This ________ is like................
Need an analogy fast?
No problem.
Just fill in the blank with your topic.
Then click on the analogize button.
You'll get a pithy analogy to use in your next article, presentation or conversation.
Just keep clicking the button till you get one you like.
This ________ is like................
Crisis
Crisis in collecting.
Crisis in representing ethnicity.
Crisis in criticism.
Crisis in funding.
Crisis in cultural identity.
Curator as Crisis
‘After a time, you train yourself that once the work is out of the studio, it’s up to somebody else how it gets shown and where it gets shown. You can’t spend all your time being responsible for how the work goes out in the world, so you do have to let go.’
Bruce Nauman, interview with Tony Oursler, Please Pay Attention Please: Bruce Nauman’s Words, Janet Kraynak (ed.), 2002,The MIT Press / Cambridge, MA / London, England, 2003 p. 381
Crisis in representing ethnicity.
Crisis in criticism.
Crisis in funding.
Crisis in cultural identity.
Curator as Crisis
‘After a time, you train yourself that once the work is out of the studio, it’s up to somebody else how it gets shown and where it gets shown. You can’t spend all your time being responsible for how the work goes out in the world, so you do have to let go.’
Bruce Nauman, interview with Tony Oursler, Please Pay Attention Please: Bruce Nauman’s Words, Janet Kraynak (ed.), 2002,The MIT Press / Cambridge, MA / London, England, 2003 p. 381
analogous projects
www.analogousprojects.org
'Our aim is to integrate mathematical or biologically-born concepts with intuitively-guided acts of expression to generate novel ways for people to perceive, gather, transact, communicate, collaborate, and connect. We hope to highlight the moment of interaction, examine the nature of interconnectivity, and exhibit the collaborative process. '
'Our guiding principle is the inherent intelligence of the superorganism -- the observation that independently functioning units (citizens, insects, genetic traits, musical notes, party guests, technological devices) operating within a shared context will create a non-hierarchical emergence "greater than the sum of its parts".'
'Through the act of weaving scientific logic with artistic creativity, our curators design catalysts and contexts in order that interaction experiments be conducted and, subsequently, exhibited from a systems-level perspective. Current Analogous-supported programs include Scrapcycle (a series of found-material music performances and experiments in barter economy), Mētis (an on-stage interaction between prepared text and improvised sound), likelike (a tape label and experiment in gift economy), nopurchaseisthenecessary (an experiment in the extension of a found-material's use-value to exchange-value), and Bread (a network-theory project donating to Millennium Villages).'
'Our aim is to integrate mathematical or biologically-born concepts with intuitively-guided acts of expression to generate novel ways for people to perceive, gather, transact, communicate, collaborate, and connect. We hope to highlight the moment of interaction, examine the nature of interconnectivity, and exhibit the collaborative process. '
'Our guiding principle is the inherent intelligence of the superorganism -- the observation that independently functioning units (citizens, insects, genetic traits, musical notes, party guests, technological devices) operating within a shared context will create a non-hierarchical emergence "greater than the sum of its parts".'
'Through the act of weaving scientific logic with artistic creativity, our curators design catalysts and contexts in order that interaction experiments be conducted and, subsequently, exhibited from a systems-level perspective. Current Analogous-supported programs include Scrapcycle (a series of found-material music performances and experiments in barter economy), Mētis (an on-stage interaction between prepared text and improvised sound), likelike (a tape label and experiment in gift economy), nopurchaseisthenecessary (an experiment in the extension of a found-material's use-value to exchange-value), and Bread (a network-theory project donating to Millennium Villages).'
uh-Nal-uh-gus colours
Analogous (uh-NAL-uh-gus) colors sit next to each other on the color wheel. Perhaps each once removed. Orange, yellow-orange, and yellow. Yellow is the 'central thing'; the keystone quality.
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