Wednesday 13 May 2009
Tuesday 12 May 2009
Collected Books - Emma Astner and Louise O'Hare
(click to enlarge image)
A temporary library containing the favourite books of a selection of artists involved with Contested Ground. Each artist was invited to contribute a book list of 5-10 favourite books from their personal library.
“Favourite” is an awkward word, it means most liked, or preferred, it doesn’t mean the best. The nature of the question means the answer will always be subjective. The request for a favourite may seem pointless but it permits an unencumbered answer- a selection with no discernible thrust or order. The response is always current, the favourite is contemporary and it is expected to change.
Here, the artists personal collection was presented in a space that is used to make public a private collection. A declaration of taste - both collections exhibit a desire to own the intellectual property of another and to visibly and tangibly associate oneself with this ownership.
“Favourite” is an awkward word, it means most liked, or preferred, it doesn’t mean the best. The nature of the question means the answer will always be subjective. The request for a favourite may seem pointless but it permits an unencumbered answer- a selection with no discernible thrust or order. The response is always current, the favourite is contemporary and it is expected to change.
Here, the artists personal collection was presented in a space that is used to make public a private collection. A declaration of taste - both collections exhibit a desire to own the intellectual property of another and to visibly and tangibly associate oneself with this ownership.
Thursday 7 May 2009
The Edge of the City - Mona Schieren
The Edge of the City
30 min 48 sec, Video, 2007
The film The edge of the city (2007) shows the search for the outskirts and the encounter with the phantasm „Zona Metropolitana de la Ciudad de Mexico“ (ZMVM). Urban interest merges with the curiosity of a tourist in a video collage that shows a „trip through the urban (un) reality of one of the biggest cities of the world“. From a bird’s-eye view the sea of light of the mega city in the night is a magic moment. After this opening scene the film becomes a mixture of a heroic epic, a news channel program and a travel diary. Instead of hearing a typical documentary voice over the artist’s very personal comments make one aware of the construction of the narration. This suggests various stories and makes one doubt the truth of them at the same time. Members of the youth gang the „Cacos“ (thieves) talk about the rules in the streets of Neza, a place where the roads aren’t paved. „As if God forgot to come ‘round here to pave the roads,” one guy comments. The gang members’ dreams are focused on a border that is further away than the city boundary: the USA. An ostensible edge of the city is the urban highway, which runs straight for miles from Neza to Ciudad Azteka. However, behind it a gated community was being constructed at the time the film was made – with walls around it and uniformed security guards in order to dissociate oneself from the rest. In the north, a wall that was built to stop the city from growing has already been overwhelmed by new settlements. In the south traditional Christian feasts are being celebrated in modest dwellings, whereas in the rich west the skyscrapers of Santa Fé, an international business headquarter, stretch towards the horizon. Gratefully the travelers reject an offer to film a kidnapping. However, in the initial scene a man with a mask „saves“ a woman: a scene, that alludes to the cliché of the legendary Mexican toghter Santo and comments on his heroic performance in Mexican films. In suggestive scenes the storytelling is demonstrated and maintained at the same time. Presenting personal experiences of the artists, the narrative perspective shows how subjective a point of view can be but how one nevertheless tends to look out for the unreal. The relation between the supposed real and the unreal, the present and the virtual is constantly being reorganized, while differing facets of experience are demonstrated. Like a music piece The edge of the city jumps from one rhythm to another making the „report“ somehow unreal and fantastic.
30 min 48 sec, Video, 2007
The film The edge of the city (2007) shows the search for the outskirts and the encounter with the phantasm „Zona Metropolitana de la Ciudad de Mexico“ (ZMVM). Urban interest merges with the curiosity of a tourist in a video collage that shows a „trip through the urban (un) reality of one of the biggest cities of the world“. From a bird’s-eye view the sea of light of the mega city in the night is a magic moment. After this opening scene the film becomes a mixture of a heroic epic, a news channel program and a travel diary. Instead of hearing a typical documentary voice over the artist’s very personal comments make one aware of the construction of the narration. This suggests various stories and makes one doubt the truth of them at the same time. Members of the youth gang the „Cacos“ (thieves) talk about the rules in the streets of Neza, a place where the roads aren’t paved. „As if God forgot to come ‘round here to pave the roads,” one guy comments. The gang members’ dreams are focused on a border that is further away than the city boundary: the USA. An ostensible edge of the city is the urban highway, which runs straight for miles from Neza to Ciudad Azteka. However, behind it a gated community was being constructed at the time the film was made – with walls around it and uniformed security guards in order to dissociate oneself from the rest. In the north, a wall that was built to stop the city from growing has already been overwhelmed by new settlements. In the south traditional Christian feasts are being celebrated in modest dwellings, whereas in the rich west the skyscrapers of Santa Fé, an international business headquarter, stretch towards the horizon. Gratefully the travelers reject an offer to film a kidnapping. However, in the initial scene a man with a mask „saves“ a woman: a scene, that alludes to the cliché of the legendary Mexican toghter Santo and comments on his heroic performance in Mexican films. In suggestive scenes the storytelling is demonstrated and maintained at the same time. Presenting personal experiences of the artists, the narrative perspective shows how subjective a point of view can be but how one nevertheless tends to look out for the unreal. The relation between the supposed real and the unreal, the present and the virtual is constantly being reorganized, while differing facets of experience are demonstrated. Like a music piece The edge of the city jumps from one rhythm to another making the „report“ somehow unreal and fantastic.
Stefan Demming - Carmen Billows
“As if God forgot to come ‘round here to pave the roads.”
After watching The Edge of The City, a film by artist Stefan Demming this particular sentence, said by one of the gang members caught on camera, sticks in my mind. Both documentary and fiction, Demming’s film investigates the limitations of urban space and human endeavour at the margins of visibility.
A charismatic narrator guides us to the different edges of the world’s biggest Metropolis, Mexico City. He draws us into the two protagonists’ mission; the relentless search for mental and factual borders, so that we become witnesses of random encounters and unexpected adventures along the fine line between the last signs of human inhabitation and the desert. The camera focuses on the forgotten and neglected by urban politics and on the daily struggle of a population usually hidden from media representation, on youth gangs and ‘heroes’ in criminal scenarios.
The film’s narrative is ambivalent and at the same time both humorous but troubling. We can never be sure about it’s intention, leaving us suspending belief somewhere between amusement and disturbance. In their encounter with different cultures and ways of living the two European anti-heroes are humanitarian friend and distanced observer acting beyond our expected mode of representation familiar in documentaries. By exaggerating and persistently imposing their western perspective onto what they discover they can clearly pinpoint ordinarily neglected and ignored issues of injustice. Their naïve, clown-like behaviour paradoxically encourages trust and confessions from the people they meet, dismantling inconsistencies making them partners in kidnap and crime activities.
The dwellers that they meet during their travel through the lines of urban confinement seem to have found a specific way of inhabiting the contested reality of their modest territories. With menace the film persistently circles around one main issue: Who will win within this uneven battle between civilisation and an inhuman environment? Will the city finally give in and allow nature to regain territory and ease where there is nothing but poverty, crime, injustice, violence, dirt and heat?
After watching The Edge of The City, a film by artist Stefan Demming this particular sentence, said by one of the gang members caught on camera, sticks in my mind. Both documentary and fiction, Demming’s film investigates the limitations of urban space and human endeavour at the margins of visibility.
A charismatic narrator guides us to the different edges of the world’s biggest Metropolis, Mexico City. He draws us into the two protagonists’ mission; the relentless search for mental and factual borders, so that we become witnesses of random encounters and unexpected adventures along the fine line between the last signs of human inhabitation and the desert. The camera focuses on the forgotten and neglected by urban politics and on the daily struggle of a population usually hidden from media representation, on youth gangs and ‘heroes’ in criminal scenarios.
The film’s narrative is ambivalent and at the same time both humorous but troubling. We can never be sure about it’s intention, leaving us suspending belief somewhere between amusement and disturbance. In their encounter with different cultures and ways of living the two European anti-heroes are humanitarian friend and distanced observer acting beyond our expected mode of representation familiar in documentaries. By exaggerating and persistently imposing their western perspective onto what they discover they can clearly pinpoint ordinarily neglected and ignored issues of injustice. Their naïve, clown-like behaviour paradoxically encourages trust and confessions from the people they meet, dismantling inconsistencies making them partners in kidnap and crime activities.
The dwellers that they meet during their travel through the lines of urban confinement seem to have found a specific way of inhabiting the contested reality of their modest territories. With menace the film persistently circles around one main issue: Who will win within this uneven battle between civilisation and an inhuman environment? Will the city finally give in and allow nature to regain territory and ease where there is nothing but poverty, crime, injustice, violence, dirt and heat?
Introduction by Ellen Mara De Wachter - Exhibition Curator, 176
Contested Ground took place at 176 over two days in January 2009 as part of Testing Ground: Curating. This month-long experiment sought to engage with the practice of curating in three specific artistic registers: the performing arts, curatorial training programmes and the secondary school teaching of photography, textiles and graphics. These projects resulted in the intensive production and presentation of three public events at 176 over the course of three weeks. The Magic, an evening of music, dance and live film curated by singer-songwriter Lail Arad, tested the boundaries between the performing arts and performance art. Deconstruct/Reconstruct was the culmination of a process that involved the curators at 176 mentoring a group of year 12 secondary school students through the production and exhibition of new works, and introduced a generation of young art students to the practice of curating.
In the narrative arc of Contested Ground, what began as a modest proposal to students on the two most established curatorial training programmes in London – the MA in Curating Contemporary Art at the Royal College of Art and the MFA in Curating at Goldsmiths College – rapidly took on a life of its own as the forces of ambition and competition came into play. The resulting two days of exhibitions, performances and events were attended by more than 800 people. The initial brief to the students of the two courses was to programme a public event – for example an artist’s talk or screening – during the weekend of January 17/18. We extended that initial invitation in late October 2008, and in the 12 weeks between that time and the public presentation of Contested Ground, the project grew, well beyond our initial expectations, to involve 30 curating students and more than 35 artists and collectives in some 17 discrete events and over 10 different curated displays. In terms of resources, the students were offered the building at 176, a former Methodist chapel with 1,000 square metres of exhibition space; curatorial support from the team at the gallery; and a promotional campaign for the event, conducted through the press and marketing channels used by 176. One caveat in the brief was that the event would in no way be funded by 176, hence the modesty of our initial proposal. The curators of Testing Ground were invited to figure out the event’s economics and budget for themselves.
Contested Ground was not simply an exercise in fulfilling lavish ambitions with frugal means; its underlying pedagogical motivation was to introduce the students to the practice of curating in an active and independent institution; one which operates within its own unique set of circumstances and provides an unusual institutional framework. As a privately funded public space, linked to the Zabludowicz Collection of contemporary art, 176 enjoys a relative freedom in terms of its programming. In other words, its independence from public sources of funding allows it to take on projects at short notice, sidestepping time-consuming bureaucratic procedures, and to take risks in producing large-scale artworks and exhibitions. This freedom lends the process of exhibition-making at 176 an intuitive air and allows for an open-ended approach to projects. However, it also demands a sustained critical and analytical stance from the curatorial team at 176 with regard to its own programming and status in relation to other types of public and private art institutions.
During the debrief for Contested Ground, the most common comment from the students involved in the project was a retroactive wish to have received a more stringent brief for the project. But delivering an overall vision for the event from the outset would have risked hindering the open-ended and experimental nature of the project, which in many ways enabled its ambitious scope to emerge and contributed to its eventual success. Paradoxically, the fact that Contested Ground teetered on the edge of being overprogrammed, or of repelling audiences with an excess of options, is one of the things that made it so successful. Post hoc publications such as this zine, which has come out of the printed material generated during and after the weekend, allow an engagement with the tangled legacy of such an intensive moment of production. They allow us to eke out the strands that made it such a success, and to reel in those that threatened to lead it astray.
In the narrative arc of Contested Ground, what began as a modest proposal to students on the two most established curatorial training programmes in London – the MA in Curating Contemporary Art at the Royal College of Art and the MFA in Curating at Goldsmiths College – rapidly took on a life of its own as the forces of ambition and competition came into play. The resulting two days of exhibitions, performances and events were attended by more than 800 people. The initial brief to the students of the two courses was to programme a public event – for example an artist’s talk or screening – during the weekend of January 17/18. We extended that initial invitation in late October 2008, and in the 12 weeks between that time and the public presentation of Contested Ground, the project grew, well beyond our initial expectations, to involve 30 curating students and more than 35 artists and collectives in some 17 discrete events and over 10 different curated displays. In terms of resources, the students were offered the building at 176, a former Methodist chapel with 1,000 square metres of exhibition space; curatorial support from the team at the gallery; and a promotional campaign for the event, conducted through the press and marketing channels used by 176. One caveat in the brief was that the event would in no way be funded by 176, hence the modesty of our initial proposal. The curators of Testing Ground were invited to figure out the event’s economics and budget for themselves.
Contested Ground was not simply an exercise in fulfilling lavish ambitions with frugal means; its underlying pedagogical motivation was to introduce the students to the practice of curating in an active and independent institution; one which operates within its own unique set of circumstances and provides an unusual institutional framework. As a privately funded public space, linked to the Zabludowicz Collection of contemporary art, 176 enjoys a relative freedom in terms of its programming. In other words, its independence from public sources of funding allows it to take on projects at short notice, sidestepping time-consuming bureaucratic procedures, and to take risks in producing large-scale artworks and exhibitions. This freedom lends the process of exhibition-making at 176 an intuitive air and allows for an open-ended approach to projects. However, it also demands a sustained critical and analytical stance from the curatorial team at 176 with regard to its own programming and status in relation to other types of public and private art institutions.
During the debrief for Contested Ground, the most common comment from the students involved in the project was a retroactive wish to have received a more stringent brief for the project. But delivering an overall vision for the event from the outset would have risked hindering the open-ended and experimental nature of the project, which in many ways enabled its ambitious scope to emerge and contributed to its eventual success. Paradoxically, the fact that Contested Ground teetered on the edge of being overprogrammed, or of repelling audiences with an excess of options, is one of the things that made it so successful. Post hoc publications such as this zine, which has come out of the printed material generated during and after the weekend, allow an engagement with the tangled legacy of such an intensive moment of production. They allow us to eke out the strands that made it such a success, and to reel in those that threatened to lead it astray.
Curating Ecologies - Robert Dingle
A concern brought to our attention when asking such awkward questions as, what is at the centre of contemporary curatorial practice? Or what can we identify as particular to the field of curating?, becomes a problem as soon as we attempt to address these questions in ways which try to define a singular attribute or tendency that satisfactorily appeases both questions.
At the same time there is a necessity, which all curators posses that can be recognised as the identification of a particular concern in relation to the field of cultural production. Or, to put it another way, is not the notion of a curatorial practice underlined by a particular and developed curatorial ‘sensibility’ or engagement with a precise set of ideas that are perceived, by the curator, to be in relation to specific modes of cultural production? Is it possible to say that although we are unable to define the field of curatorial production around the terms of a singular attribute, attitude or model of practice, may we instead say that the field is composed from a multitude of particular, overlapping and variable concerns that take form of practices and attempt to address modes of cultural production in both numerous and variegated ways?
Putting this to one side, what I would argue to be considered as a fundamental aspect of any understanding of curatorial production is an apparent and joined concern, not particular to the field of curating at all, but rather, shared with that of ecology. If we are able to understand ecology (outside the vernacular usage of the term), to mean a particular method or process for addressing the relations within and between an identified system, then it is possible to consider an ecology of curatorial production as a method that holds essential the apprehension of relations between individual agents, agents and objects and objects and objects.
In particular, with regard to the latter, to what extent are we able to manage, understand and interpret the relations and encounters between objects? To what extent is this concern the role of the curator? How do objects (re) act in relation with one another? And to what extent can this allow for a productive encounter with cultural production?
Contested Ground takes these questions as a basis for its position in relation to modes of cultural production, as the exhibition proposes to establish a micro field of simultaneous practices (on both curatorial and artistic levels). The contested ground formulates itself around the specific territory of relations, both physical and symbolic, that are discernable through the artwork and the work of the curators. The exhibition formally establishes itself as the result of a process of continuous affect, as each micro field comes into relation with one another to form a disjointed but formally constituted whole.
But, to what extent are we able to pull apart individual vectors at work within the exhibition and consider them in relation to one another? What are the precise terms being proposed as constitutive of a state of contestation and are we only able to consider these as physiological incursions within the space where objects impose, or are imposed, spatially or physically upon one another? Are we able to imagine a more productive encounter between objects that does not necessarily result in a homogenised or consensual approach, but rather demands us to address a more considered series of questions?
At the same time there is a necessity, which all curators posses that can be recognised as the identification of a particular concern in relation to the field of cultural production. Or, to put it another way, is not the notion of a curatorial practice underlined by a particular and developed curatorial ‘sensibility’ or engagement with a precise set of ideas that are perceived, by the curator, to be in relation to specific modes of cultural production? Is it possible to say that although we are unable to define the field of curatorial production around the terms of a singular attribute, attitude or model of practice, may we instead say that the field is composed from a multitude of particular, overlapping and variable concerns that take form of practices and attempt to address modes of cultural production in both numerous and variegated ways?
Putting this to one side, what I would argue to be considered as a fundamental aspect of any understanding of curatorial production is an apparent and joined concern, not particular to the field of curating at all, but rather, shared with that of ecology. If we are able to understand ecology (outside the vernacular usage of the term), to mean a particular method or process for addressing the relations within and between an identified system, then it is possible to consider an ecology of curatorial production as a method that holds essential the apprehension of relations between individual agents, agents and objects and objects and objects.
In particular, with regard to the latter, to what extent are we able to manage, understand and interpret the relations and encounters between objects? To what extent is this concern the role of the curator? How do objects (re) act in relation with one another? And to what extent can this allow for a productive encounter with cultural production?
Contested Ground takes these questions as a basis for its position in relation to modes of cultural production, as the exhibition proposes to establish a micro field of simultaneous practices (on both curatorial and artistic levels). The contested ground formulates itself around the specific territory of relations, both physical and symbolic, that are discernable through the artwork and the work of the curators. The exhibition formally establishes itself as the result of a process of continuous affect, as each micro field comes into relation with one another to form a disjointed but formally constituted whole.
But, to what extent are we able to pull apart individual vectors at work within the exhibition and consider them in relation to one another? What are the precise terms being proposed as constitutive of a state of contestation and are we only able to consider these as physiological incursions within the space where objects impose, or are imposed, spatially or physically upon one another? Are we able to imagine a more productive encounter between objects that does not necessarily result in a homogenised or consensual approach, but rather demands us to address a more considered series of questions?
Friday 24 April 2009
Objectophilia in Contested Ground - Dominic Rich and Gareth Bell Jones
Contested Ground is described as a curatorial investigation. Just under 30 curating students from Goldsmith’s College and the Royal Collage of Art are working with and against each other in order to satisfy their own interests. The sheer number of curators working with the restrictions of time and space offers the possibility of miscommunication, friction and a warren of aims posited in a multitude of mediums. As suggested by the title Contested Ground, the result of such healthy negotiation may allow for the production of the unforeseen. Here, disorder from order is being celebrated. However, this activity cannot avoid centring importance on the curatorial manoeuvrings. This may allow something more interesting to be overshadowed- the exhibition contents - the things and their own contest.
Gareth Bell-Jones (RCA) and Dominic Rich (Goldsmiths) find this aspect more interesting. Therefore they have proposed Objectophilia, an exhibition integrated amongst others and within another that invites those reading to consider the forces that play between the chosen artworks. Further, the reader is asked to contemplate the artworks’ resistance to framing and speculate to what they may irrespectively, hold and emit. After all the artworks will always offer excess to the numerous framings in which they are placed.
This exhibition is made visible only to those who read this text. For those who are not reading there is no reason to assume that an exhibition has been dispersed into and as part of Contested Ground. Although it could be argued that the most objectophilic thing to do would be to stay mute and allow the artworks to speak for themselves and to argue amongst each other. The answer to this begins simply with the fact that artworks literally cannot speak of their opinions. A true objectophile however, has to say something even if it is as brief and hidden as this. It is beyond obvious to say that artworks do not give birth to other works. Rather a person produces them, say an artist who grapples with material, circumstances, ideas and intentions. To stay mute would be to ignore these factors.
Accordingly, we have chosen work by artists who are model objectophiles; artists who make art to lead their thinking rather than illustrate it. Below are some brief statements developed in conversations with the artists. Hopefully they offer practical information about the individual artworks and the artists’ aims. As for their relation to each other, those reading should decide.
Forth Worth by Simona Brinkman consists of a culminating number of black ‘leather sandbags’. Every time they are exhibited they gain in number and change formation in response to their new environment. The use of sandbags denotes a desire to protect from wars or floods. It also suggests a level of preparation against such possibilities. Yet it was created with no such preparation in mind. Its black leather coverings testify to where it is destined - a gallery. It has been distanced from its original associations. So what is Forth Worth defending? What boundaries have been demarcated? And what are the implications of this ever-growing structure. This will be the 5th exhibition of Forth Worth and includes 51 sand bags.
Mirror 5 support and Mirror 6 support, by George Charman. George Charman wishes to blur imagined space with real structure. Mirror 5 support and Mirror 6 support, are both studies on perceptual disruption of the whole or image/object in space. The presence they convey through light, shadow and reflection, denotes both the essence of their falsehood and the solidity of their existence. These polarities are reflected in the void space that both supports and is framed by the arrangements.
This Sense of Togetherness (Without you I am nothing) by David Raymond Conroy explores the conundrum that art objects might be “… either more than they appear to be, or maybe more accurately more than they are because of how they appear”. Situated in this distance between material ephemera and mythical absolute, Conroy’s work presses upon the fragility of how a set of events, objects or positions can potentially transform into a political gesture, a spiritual presence or a romantic fragment.
Cthonic Harmonic by Andrew Hewish is a white, wooden sculpture/ornament inspired by architectural folly, observations of Venice's encrusted architectural aspect and that city's historical fascination with Capriccio form. Hewish sees it as a ‘koan’; a nonsensical or paradoxical question that demands an answer, the stress of its contemplation offering alternative illuminations. Hewish sees this koan quality as the bastion of stability that enables the form's generation and continuity. Cthonic Harmonic is part of Hewish’s ongoing enquiry into the nature of sculpture as stage object; how far do its formal qualities assure its presence, and how do these qualities intersect with the object's theatrical framing?
Rail, by Benjamin Jenner is a peculiar wooden gate-like structure on wheels. Like Forth Worth it performs the division of space. Like a gate, it marks a puncture in a boundary, sitting on a line between included and excluded. It indicates power tensions without disclosing cause. The wheels playfully suggest the gates ability to shift, in space where included and excluded has not been defined.
Affair at Styles (pink & blue) and High Steel by Kate Owens deals directly with materials and their properties. Affair at Styles (pink and blue) uses soft drink staining as tie-dye and the polythene of High Steel is held on the wall with its own pure static. Owens uses these two processes – staining and the static of bin liners – associated with the material yet normally minor irritants, to transform the materials themselves. As such, by making as few alterations to the original material as possible the beauty of these natural phenomena are revealed.
Untitled (Third Cut), by James Porter can be described as part of his ongoing examination into the duration and production of practice in which there lays a compulsion to make but avoid certainty. His artworks are often evidence of their own making, a culmination of unintended residue. Untitled (Third Cut) barely stands as a broken plinth accompanied with economically poetic texts that hint at the demise of practice.
Advanced Military Layers, by Ben Washington is a proportionately accurate paper model of Mount Fuji that seemingly hovers above the table it was made on. The title refers to a NASA computer program that contains detailed information about the Earth’s terrain. Washington stated, “All of this satellite data technology was developed by the army to kill people, but then you’ve got Mt Fuji which is just a perfect mountain.” This piece addresses the ways in which a landscape transfers and takes on meaning when represented as an object and the consequent clashes of history, narrative and layers of “visual noise”. It aims to add to the confusion, appealing to mystery.
Gareth Bell-Jones (RCA) and Dominic Rich (Goldsmiths) find this aspect more interesting. Therefore they have proposed Objectophilia, an exhibition integrated amongst others and within another that invites those reading to consider the forces that play between the chosen artworks. Further, the reader is asked to contemplate the artworks’ resistance to framing and speculate to what they may irrespectively, hold and emit. After all the artworks will always offer excess to the numerous framings in which they are placed.
This exhibition is made visible only to those who read this text. For those who are not reading there is no reason to assume that an exhibition has been dispersed into and as part of Contested Ground. Although it could be argued that the most objectophilic thing to do would be to stay mute and allow the artworks to speak for themselves and to argue amongst each other. The answer to this begins simply with the fact that artworks literally cannot speak of their opinions. A true objectophile however, has to say something even if it is as brief and hidden as this. It is beyond obvious to say that artworks do not give birth to other works. Rather a person produces them, say an artist who grapples with material, circumstances, ideas and intentions. To stay mute would be to ignore these factors.
Accordingly, we have chosen work by artists who are model objectophiles; artists who make art to lead their thinking rather than illustrate it. Below are some brief statements developed in conversations with the artists. Hopefully they offer practical information about the individual artworks and the artists’ aims. As for their relation to each other, those reading should decide.
Forth Worth by Simona Brinkman consists of a culminating number of black ‘leather sandbags’. Every time they are exhibited they gain in number and change formation in response to their new environment. The use of sandbags denotes a desire to protect from wars or floods. It also suggests a level of preparation against such possibilities. Yet it was created with no such preparation in mind. Its black leather coverings testify to where it is destined - a gallery. It has been distanced from its original associations. So what is Forth Worth defending? What boundaries have been demarcated? And what are the implications of this ever-growing structure. This will be the 5th exhibition of Forth Worth and includes 51 sand bags.
Mirror 5 support and Mirror 6 support, by George Charman. George Charman wishes to blur imagined space with real structure. Mirror 5 support and Mirror 6 support, are both studies on perceptual disruption of the whole or image/object in space. The presence they convey through light, shadow and reflection, denotes both the essence of their falsehood and the solidity of their existence. These polarities are reflected in the void space that both supports and is framed by the arrangements.
This Sense of Togetherness (Without you I am nothing) by David Raymond Conroy explores the conundrum that art objects might be “… either more than they appear to be, or maybe more accurately more than they are because of how they appear”. Situated in this distance between material ephemera and mythical absolute, Conroy’s work presses upon the fragility of how a set of events, objects or positions can potentially transform into a political gesture, a spiritual presence or a romantic fragment.
Cthonic Harmonic by Andrew Hewish is a white, wooden sculpture/ornament inspired by architectural folly, observations of Venice's encrusted architectural aspect and that city's historical fascination with Capriccio form. Hewish sees it as a ‘koan’; a nonsensical or paradoxical question that demands an answer, the stress of its contemplation offering alternative illuminations. Hewish sees this koan quality as the bastion of stability that enables the form's generation and continuity. Cthonic Harmonic is part of Hewish’s ongoing enquiry into the nature of sculpture as stage object; how far do its formal qualities assure its presence, and how do these qualities intersect with the object's theatrical framing?
Rail, by Benjamin Jenner is a peculiar wooden gate-like structure on wheels. Like Forth Worth it performs the division of space. Like a gate, it marks a puncture in a boundary, sitting on a line between included and excluded. It indicates power tensions without disclosing cause. The wheels playfully suggest the gates ability to shift, in space where included and excluded has not been defined.
Affair at Styles (pink & blue) and High Steel by Kate Owens deals directly with materials and their properties. Affair at Styles (pink and blue) uses soft drink staining as tie-dye and the polythene of High Steel is held on the wall with its own pure static. Owens uses these two processes – staining and the static of bin liners – associated with the material yet normally minor irritants, to transform the materials themselves. As such, by making as few alterations to the original material as possible the beauty of these natural phenomena are revealed.
Untitled (Third Cut), by James Porter can be described as part of his ongoing examination into the duration and production of practice in which there lays a compulsion to make but avoid certainty. His artworks are often evidence of their own making, a culmination of unintended residue. Untitled (Third Cut) barely stands as a broken plinth accompanied with economically poetic texts that hint at the demise of practice.
Advanced Military Layers, by Ben Washington is a proportionately accurate paper model of Mount Fuji that seemingly hovers above the table it was made on. The title refers to a NASA computer program that contains detailed information about the Earth’s terrain. Washington stated, “All of this satellite data technology was developed by the army to kill people, but then you’ve got Mt Fuji which is just a perfect mountain.” This piece addresses the ways in which a landscape transfers and takes on meaning when represented as an object and the consequent clashes of history, narrative and layers of “visual noise”. It aims to add to the confusion, appealing to mystery.
Tuesday 21 April 2009
Loose Associations Lecture / Ryan Gander - Robert Dingle
Loose Associations Lecture
Ryan Gander
Brighton University, 2004
Written by Robert Dingle
Image taken from the book Loose Associations by Ryan Gander
Ryan Gander
Brighton University, 2004
Written by Robert Dingle
Image taken from the book Loose Associations by Ryan Gander
Loose Associations is the title given to a lecture series performed by the artist Ryan Gander. Accompanied by a series of slides the talk draws an intriguing line between seemingly disparate points on the cultural map. Reminiscent of a conversation among friends congregated around a table, the subject roams aimlessly, linked only by seemingly trivial facts. Gander weaves a subtle constellation between facts, semi-fictions and fictions.
The term loose associations principally refers to a derailment in schizophrenia where the phrase designates the manifestation of a thought HYPERLINK "http://www.biology-online.org/dictionary/Disorder"disorder whereby the HYPERLINK "http://www.biology-online.org/dictionary/Patients"patients HYPERLINK "http://www.biology-online.org/dictionary/Responses"responses do not correspond directly to the interviewer's questions or where one HYPERLINK "http://www.biology-online.org/dictionary/Paragraph"paragraph, sentence, or HYPERLINK "http://www.biology-online.org/dictionary/Phrase"phrase is not logically connected to those that occur before or after.
In September 2004 Gander delivered a version of his Loose Associations Lecture at Brighton University. Being typically digressive and in true anti-Sherlockian fashion, he guided the audience on a meandering journey. Beginning from point A - a discussion of desire paths in urban planning, to point B - trauma lines meant to direct traffic flow in hospitals, to point Z - a scene from Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later in which Cillian Murphy ambles a deserted London, while just off-screen, Gander points out, thousands of real-life drivers are irately honking their car horns. Along the way connections are made to everything from invented languages (Elvish and Klingon), the British TV show Inspector Morse, a historical fragment concerning British longbows, and a lawsuit the artist Gillian Wearing brought against Volkswagen.
Gander’s dialogic and conversational work offers us an alternative model through which to view the course of history. Allowing us the possibility to rethink a notion of the past under a new set of coordinates, his associative methodology maps divergent constellations that show us the fragility of our own dominant historical ideology. It permits for a consideration of an alternative possibility for viewing the course of history from a predominantly linear trajectory accompanied by a singular narrative towards a more associative form underpinned by the possibility of a process of cause and effect.
His development of narrative systems, often underlined by a dry sense of humor, are reliant on the gap in meaning produced within language. Gander treats this space as an opening of latent possibility, a site where storytelling writes and revises the course of history over and again. As the telling of a divergent and associative path of events unfolds accompanied by the slippage between fact and fiction, an oscillatory movement occurs, as temporarily we are able suspend our disbelief and imagine an alternative course to history.
If art has the possibility to reform dominant narratives, are we then able to forge new relations and retell an alternative history of art? It makes little difference in knowing Churchill’s famous quote that history is always written by the victory’s, as history is always rewritten by Ryan Gander.
The term loose associations principally refers to a derailment in schizophrenia where the phrase designates the manifestation of a thought HYPERLINK "http://www.biology-online.org/dictionary/Disorder"disorder whereby the HYPERLINK "http://www.biology-online.org/dictionary/Patients"patients HYPERLINK "http://www.biology-online.org/dictionary/Responses"responses do not correspond directly to the interviewer's questions or where one HYPERLINK "http://www.biology-online.org/dictionary/Paragraph"paragraph, sentence, or HYPERLINK "http://www.biology-online.org/dictionary/Phrase"phrase is not logically connected to those that occur before or after.
In September 2004 Gander delivered a version of his Loose Associations Lecture at Brighton University. Being typically digressive and in true anti-Sherlockian fashion, he guided the audience on a meandering journey. Beginning from point A - a discussion of desire paths in urban planning, to point B - trauma lines meant to direct traffic flow in hospitals, to point Z - a scene from Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later in which Cillian Murphy ambles a deserted London, while just off-screen, Gander points out, thousands of real-life drivers are irately honking their car horns. Along the way connections are made to everything from invented languages (Elvish and Klingon), the British TV show Inspector Morse, a historical fragment concerning British longbows, and a lawsuit the artist Gillian Wearing brought against Volkswagen.
Gander’s dialogic and conversational work offers us an alternative model through which to view the course of history. Allowing us the possibility to rethink a notion of the past under a new set of coordinates, his associative methodology maps divergent constellations that show us the fragility of our own dominant historical ideology. It permits for a consideration of an alternative possibility for viewing the course of history from a predominantly linear trajectory accompanied by a singular narrative towards a more associative form underpinned by the possibility of a process of cause and effect.
His development of narrative systems, often underlined by a dry sense of humor, are reliant on the gap in meaning produced within language. Gander treats this space as an opening of latent possibility, a site where storytelling writes and revises the course of history over and again. As the telling of a divergent and associative path of events unfolds accompanied by the slippage between fact and fiction, an oscillatory movement occurs, as temporarily we are able suspend our disbelief and imagine an alternative course to history.
If art has the possibility to reform dominant narratives, are we then able to forge new relations and retell an alternative history of art? It makes little difference in knowing Churchill’s famous quote that history is always written by the victory’s, as history is always rewritten by Ryan Gander.
Fictions (I want to have evidence) - Tamarin Norwood
FICTIONS (I want to have evidence)
Tamarin Norwood
1.
I watch a man as reality hardens and bangs into him like a pane of glass.
It hurt and he laughs and goes round to the real doorway.
2.
The water is on the outside of the bath and a man rows it until it is submerged.
The man swims back.
3.
I stare at the eyes of a woman performing until a muscle in her neck contracts.
When I see her with her coat on upstairs later I pretend we haven’t met.
4.
A voice without an accent is piercingly sharp like an alarm clock.
5.
Many works are on loop, many works are on loop.
Loop is a sad thing to be on.
6.
A technician screws in the last two energy-saving light bulbs and the one at the end begins to flick on and off. He says it’s been synchronised to the interference on the video and I regret that because I thought one was causing the other.
Tamarin Norwood
1.
I watch a man as reality hardens and bangs into him like a pane of glass.
It hurt and he laughs and goes round to the real doorway.
2.
The water is on the outside of the bath and a man rows it until it is submerged.
The man swims back.
3.
I stare at the eyes of a woman performing until a muscle in her neck contracts.
When I see her with her coat on upstairs later I pretend we haven’t met.
4.
A voice without an accent is piercingly sharp like an alarm clock.
5.
Many works are on loop, many works are on loop.
Loop is a sad thing to be on.
6.
A technician screws in the last two energy-saving light bulbs and the one at the end begins to flick on and off. He says it’s been synchronised to the interference on the video and I regret that because I thought one was causing the other.
Virginia Phongsathorn: Chicken Soup (The Commune), 2007 - Gemma Sharpe
Drive to form, to play, to another body, to a certain end.
I wanted to write about Ginny’s work, so watched Chicken Soup (The Commune) a few times. On Wednesday we had spent a few hours in her studio, talking about her paintings. So to talk of her film today, is to refer to those hours, before those paintings.
As if looking from the navel-eye-view at a kitchen crowded with objects, the film watches the preparation of chicken soup. Music plays in the background of the kitchen, and text on the screen accompanies the movements of cooking. The text takes the tone of recollection, behaving like an absent soundtrack, or the rehearsal of a dialogue with a particular other. We see the action of hands: washing, breaking bay leaves, or wielding a short knife. At one point an image of comic violence is described in the text/soundtrack: a vulture is eating a fox, ‘the vulture stuck its head up the foxes arse, it started to move as it if it were alive.’ It is a perversion of the natural order, of birth, death, and desire for nourishment. Particularly interesting though, is the clash of word to image at this point. These feminine hands occupied with gentle domestic activity - wielding that short knife - become possible arbiters of violence. Directly, there is no such threat, but an alternative power is gifted upon these hands, and the potential for their diversion from a closed set of actions.
The space of the film’s display was once a Methodist Hall, and the film is shown at the upper level of the main hall, on one of three tiers that would have separated an audience – allowing optimum view for the optimum number of people. The wooden surface solicits you to procure a splinter, if only to demonstrate its age and texture. There are remnants of fluff between the boards, and a penny (Queen side-up) has been dropped on the tier below Ginny’s film. It reminds me of her paintings.
Along the course of a drive – to form, to another body, to a certain end – the paintings demonstrate a fixation with peripheral items accumulated on the way. Think of ‘pervert the course of justice’, a perversion is misdirection. To interrupt the drive is to deviate, to become too interested in peripheral items – the objects of the drive over its object. But there is beauty in the protracted linger upon those objects, in what might be found along the journey of the diversion.
Along the course of a drive – to form, to another body, to a certain end – the paintings demonstrate a fixation with peripheral items accumulated on the way. Think of ‘pervert the course of justice’, a perversion is misdirection. To interrupt the drive is to deviate, to become too interested in peripheral items – the objects of the drive over its object. But there is beauty in the protracted linger upon those objects, in what might be found along the journey of the diversion.
Monday 20 April 2009
Contested Ground Artist Disco Mix-Tape
songs selected by the dj's from the contested ground artist disco
Robert Alex Rush
The Flirtations – ‘Nothing But A Heartache’
Leeroy Stibbles – ‘Express Yourself’
Yo Majesty & Enya – ‘Fuck That Shit / Sail Away’
Antony Faroux
Don Cherry – ‘Symphony For Improvisers’
Gay Faze
Animal Collective – ‘My Girls’Maurice Fulton – ‘Let’s Get Sick’
Jona Lewis – ‘In The Kitchen At Parties’
Gareth Bell-Jones
Mike Mareen – ‘Double Trouble (Zeppelin Remix)’
Love Club – ‘Hot Summer Nights’
Glass Candy – ‘Beatific’
Put Out The Bin
Pat Benatar – ‘Love Is A Battlefield’
Queen & Montserrat Caballe – ‘Barcelona’
Amii Stewart – ‘Knock On Wood’
Tom Trevatt
Cinematic Orchestra – ‘To Build A Home’
Georgie James – ‘Grizzly Jive’
The Cure – ‘Fire In Cairo (Digitalism Mix)’
* compiled by Alexandra Terry
Robert Alex Rush
The Flirtations – ‘Nothing But A Heartache’
Leeroy Stibbles – ‘Express Yourself’
Yo Majesty & Enya – ‘Fuck That Shit / Sail Away’
Antony Faroux
Don Cherry – ‘Symphony For Improvisers’
Gay Faze
Animal Collective – ‘My Girls’Maurice Fulton – ‘Let’s Get Sick’
Jona Lewis – ‘In The Kitchen At Parties’
Gareth Bell-Jones
Mike Mareen – ‘Double Trouble (Zeppelin Remix)’
Love Club – ‘Hot Summer Nights’
Glass Candy – ‘Beatific’
Put Out The Bin
Pat Benatar – ‘Love Is A Battlefield’
Queen & Montserrat Caballe – ‘Barcelona’
Amii Stewart – ‘Knock On Wood’
Tom Trevatt
Cinematic Orchestra – ‘To Build A Home’
Georgie James – ‘Grizzly Jive’
The Cure – ‘Fire In Cairo (Digitalism Mix)’
* compiled by Alexandra Terry
Sunday 19 April 2009
Room 11
Room 11, installation shots
Vanessa Billy, Robert Holyhead and Sam Porritt
Curated by Gemma Lloyd
Addressing the viewer from both entry points are two components of Sam Porritt’s No Problem, Everyone’s Invited!, 2009 (a). Screwed into the floor, these aluminium carpet cover strips invoke a certain familiarity in their proximity to the doorways. Straying into the space however and going against the grain of the dark seasoned floorboards they start to suggest positions for the viewer to stand. Two further strips by the radiator are laid closely next to each other but begin to scissor away at one end. They are committed to this position and will never be parallel or aligned with each other; generating an uncomfortable stance that gives weight to this side of the room.
Horizontally demarcating one third of the room, Waist Line, 2009 by Vanessa Billy (c) plots out a stretched rectangular circuit in a continuous strip of punctured metal. The chain-like quality of the material sits uneasily at waist height and challenges or interrogates the possibility of looking closely at the painting behind it. Examining the two lines in parallel creates an optical experience asking the eyes to re-register and make sense of the illusionary depth. Like Porritt, Billy’s work elevates the viewer’s awareness of his or her own presence in the room. The tension, width and distance lend themselves to playground skipping games, which lead to an inviting experience in contradiction with its other more hostile qualities.
Wiped out edges interrupt the horizontal movement of the lightly painted surface in Robert Holyhead’s Untitled (Yellow), 2008 (b). They have in fact been removed with the artist’s thumb – and therefore introduce a third intimation of human presence into the installation. The painting works confidently in the room with a single command of sandy yellow. Much like the daylight coming through the window, this work picks out elements in the room, bringing out the faded sea green in a floor panel below and the luminescence of the doorway to its left. Poised at the bottom two corners of the canvas sits an accumulation of paint; the weightiest part of the work. The edges, of which we can only see one (unless we cross Billy’s work) hold a slight bleed of paint – there is deft negotiation in the painting and hung next to the window the natural light emphasises the light, fast paced yet measured surface.
Where Billy and Porritt introduce discrete household materials, Holyhead offers concrete forms in the composition that perhaps suggest the physical foundations of a space. Selected specifically in response to the room, the linear forms in all three of the works are in dialogue with the existing bands, stripes, panels and lengths in the space. Simultaneously, the installation frames and is framed by the wall, floor and space inside the room. The works carve out space and extend beyond the physicality of themselves, affecting the experience and behaviour of the viewer.
Gemma Lloyd, 2009
Friday 13 March 2009
The Docter's Arrival - Richard Battersby
(click to enlarge image)The night air was thick with moisture brought on by another July downpour as the large Mercedes hurtled through the park’s dark glades, a dim reminder that the summer was going a little like the business – slow and with disappointing results. Smelling almost as seductive as the air itself, the doctor reached for his attaché, clutching another remedy in his bottomless arsenal. This one would last, he chuckled to himself, at least until he was due at the event. Sniffing the air with caution, he lowered his chin to the window frame, feeling its bullet-proof glaze chaffing his freshly gilletted skin, sensing its vulnerability. Beauchamp Place seemed a little different from how he remembered it, not quite so many rangers, perhaps a few more recent arrivals, though just as much attention to the shop front cosmetics. If he pitched his next lunch with just the right amount of right, he might just land that deluxe parking bay he’d been eyeing up, taking 7 and a half minutes off the trip to the Therapy Power Bootheque. He noticed with his usual precision that the 53 was obscured by the throng of excited bodies huddled under the new canopy, a well-lit lesson in how to stand in line when such an event was in store. Signalling his appreciation to the driver, he slowly placed one brogue in front of the other, steadying his restrained joy as he headed for the threshold.
Victoria Adams and Gareth Bell Jones, Untitled
(click to enlarge image)
Victoria Adam and Gareth Bell-Jones, Untitled, books rearranged on book shelving - 176 Gallery Resource Room, 2009
Contingent Ground; Post Foundational Politics, Violence and the Art Object - Tom Trevatt
In Oedipus the King the tragic conflict still centres, at least in appearance, on specific concerns: the throne of Thebes and the queen who is both mother and wife. In The Bacchae, by contrast, Dionysus and Pentheus have nothing concrete to fight over. Their rivalry centres on divinity itself: but behind that divinity there lies only violence. To compete for divinity is to compete for a chimera, because the reality of the divine rests in its transcendental absence. It is not the hysterical rivalry of men that will engender gods - only unanimous violence can accomplish that. Insofar as divinity is real, it cannot serve as a prize to be won in a contest. Insofar as it is regarded as a prize, it is merely a phantom that will invariably escape man’s grasp and turn to violence.
Rene Girard, Violence and the Sacred
Within the exhibition structure certain discourses are played out, certain positions are put at stake. The exhibition is an empirical object with which to understand artwork, history and the production of knowledge, but also, allows a challenge to be set, arguments to be laid down and battles to be fought. The combat takes place on a number of levels, and is scarred by continually oscillating internal infractions. Claims are made for position, space, attention and meaning. This is true not only of the process of hanging or curating an exhibition, but also of the exhibition itself.
Contested Ground brings these questions to the fore. What claims can an artwork make to a certain ground? What desires are played out when objects ‘touch’ each other in time, circumstance, space and co-incidence? What occurs in the ‘between’ between works of art, and what claims can these works make on that between space? What this amounts to is a political question. The space between beings, the space on which beings rest, the ground they mark out, what is contested, is necessarily engaged with the political. The ground here, what the contestation is over, is more than just topographical, it is ideological, ethical, political, aesthetic, &c. What the ground amounts to then is the structures and formations of systems of thought that define how one makes decisions and about what the decision is made.
What final foundation do these claims use to mediate their battle? Through the procession of the recent history of philosophy the foundation on which we may have once stood has been evacuated. It has been cleared, withdrawn, removed and abolished, according to Heidegger, what now remains is an abyss. Whereas, within what we call foundationalism (the form of thought that supposes that society and/or politics are founded on undeniable, ultimate and immutable principles), the question of being had recourse to a higher fundamental, or transcendent Other (otherwise known as logos, substance, spirit, the absolute, infinity, God, idea &c), post-foundationalism removes this ultimate foundation of Being from the equation, replacing it with the absence of ground. Heidegger withdraws the ground from the metaphysical question, leaving us in an a-byssal position. The ultimate ground of the social on which the political ‘decision’ is made has been removed, however, as Oliver Marchart argues in his recent book Post-Foundational Political Thought, this does not mean the complete removal of all grounds. In fact, post-foundational as opposed to anti-foundational thought, suggests that the foundations for the social are removed and replaced in a processural manner, oscillating continuously, grounding and ungrounding. Marchart accounts for this in an adroit move; utilising the Heideggerian concept of ‘ontological difference’ he posits that the field of politics is conditioned by this difference. At the ontic level, the level of things, he positions politics, as in the day to day running of a state etc. at the ontological level he positions the political, as the question of the nature of politics. This he names political difference.
Marchart’s thesis provides the conditions for a processural movement of ungrounding and grounding to occur temporally. The social sphere is articulated through a process whereby one claim makes the jump from the particular to the universal, instituting itself in a hegemonic procedure. This hegemonic nodal point seeks to ground society, give sense to it, however, as there is an inherent lack within the particular claim to universality that comes from it’s very position as particular, i.e. it cannot speak universally, it ultimately fails. The failure of the nodal point to speak universally, to gain full presence within society and totalise the field of discourse, its inherent lack or constitutive split comes from the political difference Marchart determines.
As he asserts:
[W]hat occurs within the moment of the political […] is the following double-folded movement. On the one hand, the political, as the instituting moment of society, functions as a supplementary ground to the groundless stature of society, yet on the other hand this supplementary ground withdraws in the very moment it institutes the social. As a result, society will always be in search for an ultimate ground, while the maximum that can be achieved will be a fleeting and contingent grounding by way of politics - a plurality of partial grounds.
The ground achieved is necessarily and productively contingent. It is through this contingency and the plurality of partial grounds that the political comes into play within social discourse. If particular subjectivities come into conflict and they can have no claim to a higher principle to mediate their discourse the resulting crisis must make an appeal to a quasi-transcendental ground. A hegemonic operation that instates temporarily one particular claim to fill the position of Master signifier.
The shift to discussion of signification is a pertinent one. We understand the aporias inherent in signification - that there is a constitutive gap between saying and meaning - and that this is a tendency that pertains to all signifying structures. What we must come to terms with is that the inherent and necessary contingency constitutive of the political applies within the sphere of the exhibition. That the political decision based on the contingent relation between the signifier and signified gets taken within the exhibition structure. That the process of viewing art is constituted by the very political paradox, the foundational abyss, the grounding and ungrounding of the sphere that we are discussing.
Monday 2 March 2009
The Power Tower Thing
Kelly Wojtko in conversation with Jenny Moore Koslowsky
KW: Was there anything in particular about the project, or the space, that made you interested in participating? In the end I think it was crucial that both of your towers were in the space. At the very start of the show the viewer was confronted with their authoritative, commanding presence; was this the reaction you hoped people would have upon first seeing them?
JMK: I think there is an initial command that I hope to achieve with my sculptures, but one that can be equally undermined when looked at closer, or from a different angle. The fact that the skinnier guy was so tall, positioned right on the altar, and yet had to be secured to the ceiling in order to stand up was really interesting for me and opened up so many other readings than what I had expected. For instance, I was thinking about what you said about altar pieces and how the church used to build huge domes above their altars so that the visual cues led straight up into 'heaven' or the sublime/the divine. You mentioned that my sculpture may sit in the place of this kind of architecture and, while I might be twisting your words, it reiterated for me this hero/anti-hero status that my work sometimes takes. In one way, it is a commanding structure, which in terms of the church altar could be a metaphor for something metaphysical, but it also (physically) depends on the architecture of the building. Do you know what I mean by this? It's sort of become a chicken and egg question for me when thinking of power structures in this way.
Let's start from the beginning: you asked what attracted me to the project in the first place. The space was a major draw, because of its unique height and layout - I've never had my work viewed from two levels before, so that was an exciting experiment for me, especially because in the end I found myself more fond of the view from above than below. Physical space always teaches me something about my own work - this could be in a purely formal sense (how does this angle work with that one, what does a wood sculpture look like in a wood room?), or in a conceptual way. I am coming to terms with the fact that there is a bit of formalism in me (Conrad, the architect, chuckled at that statement saying “you have to come to terms with that?” To clarify; it's not that I deny formalism as a valuable pursuit in art, or think that there isn't room for formal concerns since Conceptual Art or any nonsense like that, I just mean FOR ME, considering the practice I come from and the trajectory of artists I would have associated myself with, I didn't know this about myself before now.)
I guess another thing about the show that appealed to me (in a masochistic way) was the concentrated, brief timetable of the thing. The more towers I build, the more I see them as transitionary, or provisional, gaining life and meaning and context from the disassembling and re-building of them in different orders, adding a bit here, a bit there, tacking on a new assortment of materials, but also recycling and reincorporating elements from other works: like a snowball effect. I like to think of pieces of the previous space rubbing off onto my materials and being reinvented in a new situation. So, having to build something so substantial (and so precarious at the same time) for a short period of time seemed appropriate. It seems to
mimic my life in some ways! Or maybe it mimics a lot of people's lives, this accumulative, re-building thing of day-to-day survival.
But back to you - what about the whole idea of 'Contested Ground'? It's hard not to try and read some serious politics into a title like that, especially considering the whole Palestine/Israeli occupation and all those other lovely things that remind us of the harshness of our world. Not that I have a particular interest in this kind of direct international relations-type politics in terms of my own work but I was curious if other people read it that way.
KW: To be honest in terms of the title of the exhibition I hadn't recognized its reference to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict but I think you're dead on. We are products of the time we live in, and I think it’s impossible not to subconsciously include aspects of the present circumstances of our lives into whatever it is that we're doing/making. In the end our idea of 'contested' grounds ended up playing out more behind the scenes and I think was mostly important for the artists and curators participating in the project. You stated it perfectly while we were talking during the weekend of the exhibition that the idea that any work of art is able to retain its autonomy, remaining unaffected by other works when it’s in a group exhibition is a farce. The 'contesting' going on between works in an exhibition is more a productive way of instigating discourse between them.
Besides the practicality of the placement of your taller tower directly where the pulpit would have been, I think its location enhanced the tower's inherently authoritative content. You've mentioned in previous conversations that your skinnier tower was also about authority and power, possibly the loss of it, or that the power the tower was alluding to was false. Could you talk more about the play you created between the instability it portrayed and the strength traditionally associated with such structures.
JMK: Fair enough that the war-politics of the Middle East didn't determine your choice of the title 'Contested Ground.' The show itself had its own contestations: between objects, ideas, timetables, participants, you name it! As you mentioned, we talked about this on the weekend of the event and I told you that I don't see art exhibitions as being able to function any differently. In a very broad sense I think most shows could have a title like ‘Contested Ground’. The idea that you presented to me as the basis of the show - that all things would be competing, all spaces and objects and time slots would be active and shifting - is another thing that attracted me to participating. I think it's a very honest way of approaching curating because all of these things happen, even when we try and pretend that they do not, or that a white cube situation can obliterate these problems, creating some 'pure' space for viewing, come on, that's just impossible.
As an artist working in the world, I have to accept that my work will be tainted or enlivened - you chose the word - by its context and interruptions. This is the reality of how people encounter things in the world; the factors are endless and cannot be controlled. So, as you said, sometimes the contesting that goes on between the factors is where the really interesting conversations, debates and connections can take place.
About the power tower thing, (this struck me as really funny when I read your email): I see myself looking back and forth between two types of towers/structures. On the one hand there is Tatlin's tower, the Eiffel tower, and the tower of Babel, all built with revolution in mind. They aim for the future, they are more pictorial, they try to see (maybe nostalgically) into the future or towards some better society. On the other hand, there are structures like watchtowers, military defense/prison towers, hunting decks and crows nests on ships. These are all much more aggressive and directly offensive in their use. Their use itself is key because they act as much more functional buildings than the first examples. So I think that I'm flip flopping between these typologies, talking about power and/or authority, but also reminding us of revolution, then tearing down that idea of revolution through references to aggression, all the while trying to maintain an inch of optimism about social change and the visioning of some 'other' place, which deflates me once again to the ridiculousness of an altruistic social project. It's a vicious cycle! Back and forth, back and forth! Somehow I can decipher the Hero and the Anti-Hero in this see-saw action of mine and that really interests me: how to combine two concepts, both using the title 'heroism' but to very different ends (think of the tragic Greek hero vs. the macho man on the land hero).
KW: Regarding your POWER TOWERS (I'm not going to be able to get that out of my head now) I really liked looking at them as apparatuses, structures which are meant to aid other purposes. Since they could be seen as podiums or platforms from which political or military leaders deliver speeches, I also think of dictators (here I'm mostly referring to the skinny one) and possibly the rise and fall of dominate political systems: this coming from its implied function as some sort of tower, yet one whose function has been deliberately put out of reach: a relic of its original purpose. The hope you talked about possibly lying in the removal of what could have been repressive. This reading is greatly influenced by the image I have in my mind of your towers next to Simona's sandbags. Together your works caused that central space to take on the feel of a battlefield or some sort of training camp. How do you feel your worked changed (if it did) being situated with Simona's work?
JMK: Part of me really likes how you put it: ‘a relic of its original purpose,’ because there is something OTHER, whether that be a figure or landscape or situation, that I hope my sculptures call out to. At the same time, I have a hard time thinking of the term relic as one which is alive and present in the now-ness of our lives – a relic is more of a narrative object, loaded with perceptions and desires and stipulations and speculations. Having said that, I now wonder if art and relic could almost be synonymous?! Many might argue that art objects are not necessarily narrative but I tend to believe that people (viewers) are narrative and therefore bring stories to the things they encounter, experience, and engage with.
Okay, bringing it back to your observation that my work at 176 suggests an alternate purpose – I agree. The tension between fragility, instability and power or authority is crucial here because that alternate purpose must be one without definition, one that is open to possibility, rather than fixed in a certain mode or system. I definitely think my work changed by being situated with Simona’s work, but by now you may know that I think all artwork changes according to its situation. In this case, the main space of 176 really did become some sort of obstacle course, training ground, or war game, and yet I was surprised that the atmosphere was not as hostile as it could have been considering the elements placed in the space. Maybe the luxuriousness of Simona’s leather sand bags, and the awkwardness of my towers worked together to push it past a straightforward ‘battle-ground,’ both suggest unorthodoxy or a play with expectation, and therefore possibly with function.
Jenny Moore Koslowsky is a Canadian artist, currently completing an MFA Art Practice degree at Goldsmiths College, London.
Kelly Wojtko is one of the contributing curators as part of 'Contested Ground,' she is currently undertaking the MFA in Curating at Goldsmiths College, London.
KW: Was there anything in particular about the project, or the space, that made you interested in participating? In the end I think it was crucial that both of your towers were in the space. At the very start of the show the viewer was confronted with their authoritative, commanding presence; was this the reaction you hoped people would have upon first seeing them?
JMK: I think there is an initial command that I hope to achieve with my sculptures, but one that can be equally undermined when looked at closer, or from a different angle. The fact that the skinnier guy was so tall, positioned right on the altar, and yet had to be secured to the ceiling in order to stand up was really interesting for me and opened up so many other readings than what I had expected. For instance, I was thinking about what you said about altar pieces and how the church used to build huge domes above their altars so that the visual cues led straight up into 'heaven' or the sublime/the divine. You mentioned that my sculpture may sit in the place of this kind of architecture and, while I might be twisting your words, it reiterated for me this hero/anti-hero status that my work sometimes takes. In one way, it is a commanding structure, which in terms of the church altar could be a metaphor for something metaphysical, but it also (physically) depends on the architecture of the building. Do you know what I mean by this? It's sort of become a chicken and egg question for me when thinking of power structures in this way.
Let's start from the beginning: you asked what attracted me to the project in the first place. The space was a major draw, because of its unique height and layout - I've never had my work viewed from two levels before, so that was an exciting experiment for me, especially because in the end I found myself more fond of the view from above than below. Physical space always teaches me something about my own work - this could be in a purely formal sense (how does this angle work with that one, what does a wood sculpture look like in a wood room?), or in a conceptual way. I am coming to terms with the fact that there is a bit of formalism in me (Conrad, the architect, chuckled at that statement saying “you have to come to terms with that?” To clarify; it's not that I deny formalism as a valuable pursuit in art, or think that there isn't room for formal concerns since Conceptual Art or any nonsense like that, I just mean FOR ME, considering the practice I come from and the trajectory of artists I would have associated myself with, I didn't know this about myself before now.)
I guess another thing about the show that appealed to me (in a masochistic way) was the concentrated, brief timetable of the thing. The more towers I build, the more I see them as transitionary, or provisional, gaining life and meaning and context from the disassembling and re-building of them in different orders, adding a bit here, a bit there, tacking on a new assortment of materials, but also recycling and reincorporating elements from other works: like a snowball effect. I like to think of pieces of the previous space rubbing off onto my materials and being reinvented in a new situation. So, having to build something so substantial (and so precarious at the same time) for a short period of time seemed appropriate. It seems to
mimic my life in some ways! Or maybe it mimics a lot of people's lives, this accumulative, re-building thing of day-to-day survival.
But back to you - what about the whole idea of 'Contested Ground'? It's hard not to try and read some serious politics into a title like that, especially considering the whole Palestine/Israeli occupation and all those other lovely things that remind us of the harshness of our world. Not that I have a particular interest in this kind of direct international relations-type politics in terms of my own work but I was curious if other people read it that way.
KW: To be honest in terms of the title of the exhibition I hadn't recognized its reference to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict but I think you're dead on. We are products of the time we live in, and I think it’s impossible not to subconsciously include aspects of the present circumstances of our lives into whatever it is that we're doing/making. In the end our idea of 'contested' grounds ended up playing out more behind the scenes and I think was mostly important for the artists and curators participating in the project. You stated it perfectly while we were talking during the weekend of the exhibition that the idea that any work of art is able to retain its autonomy, remaining unaffected by other works when it’s in a group exhibition is a farce. The 'contesting' going on between works in an exhibition is more a productive way of instigating discourse between them.
Besides the practicality of the placement of your taller tower directly where the pulpit would have been, I think its location enhanced the tower's inherently authoritative content. You've mentioned in previous conversations that your skinnier tower was also about authority and power, possibly the loss of it, or that the power the tower was alluding to was false. Could you talk more about the play you created between the instability it portrayed and the strength traditionally associated with such structures.
JMK: Fair enough that the war-politics of the Middle East didn't determine your choice of the title 'Contested Ground.' The show itself had its own contestations: between objects, ideas, timetables, participants, you name it! As you mentioned, we talked about this on the weekend of the event and I told you that I don't see art exhibitions as being able to function any differently. In a very broad sense I think most shows could have a title like ‘Contested Ground’. The idea that you presented to me as the basis of the show - that all things would be competing, all spaces and objects and time slots would be active and shifting - is another thing that attracted me to participating. I think it's a very honest way of approaching curating because all of these things happen, even when we try and pretend that they do not, or that a white cube situation can obliterate these problems, creating some 'pure' space for viewing, come on, that's just impossible.
As an artist working in the world, I have to accept that my work will be tainted or enlivened - you chose the word - by its context and interruptions. This is the reality of how people encounter things in the world; the factors are endless and cannot be controlled. So, as you said, sometimes the contesting that goes on between the factors is where the really interesting conversations, debates and connections can take place.
About the power tower thing, (this struck me as really funny when I read your email): I see myself looking back and forth between two types of towers/structures. On the one hand there is Tatlin's tower, the Eiffel tower, and the tower of Babel, all built with revolution in mind. They aim for the future, they are more pictorial, they try to see (maybe nostalgically) into the future or towards some better society. On the other hand, there are structures like watchtowers, military defense/prison towers, hunting decks and crows nests on ships. These are all much more aggressive and directly offensive in their use. Their use itself is key because they act as much more functional buildings than the first examples. So I think that I'm flip flopping between these typologies, talking about power and/or authority, but also reminding us of revolution, then tearing down that idea of revolution through references to aggression, all the while trying to maintain an inch of optimism about social change and the visioning of some 'other' place, which deflates me once again to the ridiculousness of an altruistic social project. It's a vicious cycle! Back and forth, back and forth! Somehow I can decipher the Hero and the Anti-Hero in this see-saw action of mine and that really interests me: how to combine two concepts, both using the title 'heroism' but to very different ends (think of the tragic Greek hero vs. the macho man on the land hero).
KW: Regarding your POWER TOWERS (I'm not going to be able to get that out of my head now) I really liked looking at them as apparatuses, structures which are meant to aid other purposes. Since they could be seen as podiums or platforms from which political or military leaders deliver speeches, I also think of dictators (here I'm mostly referring to the skinny one) and possibly the rise and fall of dominate political systems: this coming from its implied function as some sort of tower, yet one whose function has been deliberately put out of reach: a relic of its original purpose. The hope you talked about possibly lying in the removal of what could have been repressive. This reading is greatly influenced by the image I have in my mind of your towers next to Simona's sandbags. Together your works caused that central space to take on the feel of a battlefield or some sort of training camp. How do you feel your worked changed (if it did) being situated with Simona's work?
JMK: Part of me really likes how you put it: ‘a relic of its original purpose,’ because there is something OTHER, whether that be a figure or landscape or situation, that I hope my sculptures call out to. At the same time, I have a hard time thinking of the term relic as one which is alive and present in the now-ness of our lives – a relic is more of a narrative object, loaded with perceptions and desires and stipulations and speculations. Having said that, I now wonder if art and relic could almost be synonymous?! Many might argue that art objects are not necessarily narrative but I tend to believe that people (viewers) are narrative and therefore bring stories to the things they encounter, experience, and engage with.
Okay, bringing it back to your observation that my work at 176 suggests an alternate purpose – I agree. The tension between fragility, instability and power or authority is crucial here because that alternate purpose must be one without definition, one that is open to possibility, rather than fixed in a certain mode or system. I definitely think my work changed by being situated with Simona’s work, but by now you may know that I think all artwork changes according to its situation. In this case, the main space of 176 really did become some sort of obstacle course, training ground, or war game, and yet I was surprised that the atmosphere was not as hostile as it could have been considering the elements placed in the space. Maybe the luxuriousness of Simona’s leather sand bags, and the awkwardness of my towers worked together to push it past a straightforward ‘battle-ground,’ both suggest unorthodoxy or a play with expectation, and therefore possibly with function.
Jenny Moore Koslowsky is a Canadian artist, currently completing an MFA Art Practice degree at Goldsmiths College, London.
Kelly Wojtko is one of the contributing curators as part of 'Contested Ground,' she is currently undertaking the MFA in Curating at Goldsmiths College, London.
Tuesday 24 February 2009
Contesting Collections: how to secure a legacy for Live Art?
By Jenine McGaughran
In October 2008 CollectingLiveArt organised a number of events to take place at the heart of Zoo Art Fair. Discretely subversive soldiers whistled whilst mingling amongst an art savvy audience, while fair attendants clogged up doorways to galleries, only to disperse and re-group in different locations and configurations throughout the fair. The most provocative of all spectacles performed by Karin Kihlberg and Reuben Henry, was a live auction, auctioning itself off to the highest bidder. The events sought to plant a provocation at the heart of the fair, prompting gallerists, collectors and visitors to think through the potential ways it is possible to collect the uncollectable, intangible live events or happenings with a shelf life lasting long as the action itself.
Established in January 2008, CollectingLiveArt’s mission is to campaign for the collection of ephemeral works, thus ensuring Live Art’s legacy through its presence in private and public collections. While their strategy is to challenge collectors and audiences, their aim is to develop sustainable relationships between collectors and performance artists, creating methods of collecting relevant to the practices of individual practitioners. While CollectingLiveArt’s campaign signals the necessity for the collecting of performance, its very definition contradicts the notion of establishing a collection in formulating a legacy; for it is only within the collective memory and through the process of documentation that Live Art can be remembered and recorded.
The lineage of ‘Live Art’ or performance (the particular genre of the live of concern here) has been catalogued since its inception in the 1960s. Originating in movements such as Surrealism and Dada but also off the back of the dominant practice of Conceptual Art, performance offered a space for artists to transcend the commodification of their work, a space where ideas would be exchanged in return for the spectators’ time. Existing as a platform for the bringing to life of conceptual ideas, performances were enacted directly to audiences with the view to shock them into reassessing their own conceptions of art and there relation to wider cultural and political spheres.
In recent years, performance has taken a more prominent role within the contemporary art circuit, while simultaneously the art world has morphed into the wider sphere of the leisure industry. Audiences have come to expect scheduled events programmed around exhibitions and art fairs, thus performance art is in high demand. More and more spectators expect a closer encounter with the creator of these spectacles and galleries keep coming up with goods, supporting their artists while gaining invaluable PR for the creativity and breadth of their gallery’s programme in the process. However, despite audiences growing demand for such spectacles, there remains an ambiguity as to the authenticity of their engagement. Do the spectators seek out performance in the spirit of its original creation or is it just that it happens to be part of a social scene?
The notion of collecting performance art is by no means new; increasingly museums are allocating funds specifically for the acquisition of ephemeral works. The collection of performance documentation, in the form of photographs and written remnants, has existed for as long as it has been the by-product of a performance. Props used in performance enter collections and in so doing often undergo transformation from theatrical prop to sculptural item. Take Spartacus Chetwynd’s papier-mâché octopus, which formerly featured in The Sex Life of Nero and Hokusai Octopus - 'tentacle porn' as part of the Bloomberg’s New Contemporaries in 2004, the same piece was later included in Stay Forever and Ever and Ever for its physicality as an ‘object’ that retains it cultural significance through nostalgic collective memory.
However these examples of collecting Live Art depend entirely on the leftovers of performance and render the live act obsolete by preserving it through its trace. An alternative model for acquiring the live event is played out through the work of Tino Sehgal. Informed by a background in choreography and economics his practice critiques the production of material objects. His performances (‘situations’) refuse any means of cataloguing; no objects are produced, no written instructions or contracts created, documentation through video and photography are forbidden, the event exists and relies entirely on oral instruction and interpretation by its performer. The dematerialised object created in Conceptual Arts legacy emphasises process over commodity, Sehgal’s work proposes an alternative and sustainable means of production dependant upon the ephemeral moment.
Getting collectors to buy into this is an entirely difference matter. Of course major institutions acquire these moments in time and reproduce them in the conditions and spirit of their creation. However, how is it possible for such works, by perhaps lesser known artists, to become more widely purchased amongst private collectors? What is to be exchanged between artist and collector? Once the deal is done are there to be restrictions are placed upon the artist or rights bestowed upon the collector? Indeed there are no definitive rules for the collection of ephemeral works; there are no best practice guidelines in place, instead the situation relies upon the mutual agreement of both parties on the terms and conditions of the sale, but also on the willingness of collectors to support artists through commissioning new works that have little or no material trace surviving beyond the event
In October 2008 CollectingLiveArt organised a number of events to take place at the heart of Zoo Art Fair. Discretely subversive soldiers whistled whilst mingling amongst an art savvy audience, while fair attendants clogged up doorways to galleries, only to disperse and re-group in different locations and configurations throughout the fair. The most provocative of all spectacles performed by Karin Kihlberg and Reuben Henry, was a live auction, auctioning itself off to the highest bidder. The events sought to plant a provocation at the heart of the fair, prompting gallerists, collectors and visitors to think through the potential ways it is possible to collect the uncollectable, intangible live events or happenings with a shelf life lasting long as the action itself.
Established in January 2008, CollectingLiveArt’s mission is to campaign for the collection of ephemeral works, thus ensuring Live Art’s legacy through its presence in private and public collections. While their strategy is to challenge collectors and audiences, their aim is to develop sustainable relationships between collectors and performance artists, creating methods of collecting relevant to the practices of individual practitioners. While CollectingLiveArt’s campaign signals the necessity for the collecting of performance, its very definition contradicts the notion of establishing a collection in formulating a legacy; for it is only within the collective memory and through the process of documentation that Live Art can be remembered and recorded.
The lineage of ‘Live Art’ or performance (the particular genre of the live of concern here) has been catalogued since its inception in the 1960s. Originating in movements such as Surrealism and Dada but also off the back of the dominant practice of Conceptual Art, performance offered a space for artists to transcend the commodification of their work, a space where ideas would be exchanged in return for the spectators’ time. Existing as a platform for the bringing to life of conceptual ideas, performances were enacted directly to audiences with the view to shock them into reassessing their own conceptions of art and there relation to wider cultural and political spheres.
In recent years, performance has taken a more prominent role within the contemporary art circuit, while simultaneously the art world has morphed into the wider sphere of the leisure industry. Audiences have come to expect scheduled events programmed around exhibitions and art fairs, thus performance art is in high demand. More and more spectators expect a closer encounter with the creator of these spectacles and galleries keep coming up with goods, supporting their artists while gaining invaluable PR for the creativity and breadth of their gallery’s programme in the process. However, despite audiences growing demand for such spectacles, there remains an ambiguity as to the authenticity of their engagement. Do the spectators seek out performance in the spirit of its original creation or is it just that it happens to be part of a social scene?
The notion of collecting performance art is by no means new; increasingly museums are allocating funds specifically for the acquisition of ephemeral works. The collection of performance documentation, in the form of photographs and written remnants, has existed for as long as it has been the by-product of a performance. Props used in performance enter collections and in so doing often undergo transformation from theatrical prop to sculptural item. Take Spartacus Chetwynd’s papier-mâché octopus, which formerly featured in The Sex Life of Nero and Hokusai Octopus - 'tentacle porn' as part of the Bloomberg’s New Contemporaries in 2004, the same piece was later included in Stay Forever and Ever and Ever for its physicality as an ‘object’ that retains it cultural significance through nostalgic collective memory.
However these examples of collecting Live Art depend entirely on the leftovers of performance and render the live act obsolete by preserving it through its trace. An alternative model for acquiring the live event is played out through the work of Tino Sehgal. Informed by a background in choreography and economics his practice critiques the production of material objects. His performances (‘situations’) refuse any means of cataloguing; no objects are produced, no written instructions or contracts created, documentation through video and photography are forbidden, the event exists and relies entirely on oral instruction and interpretation by its performer. The dematerialised object created in Conceptual Arts legacy emphasises process over commodity, Sehgal’s work proposes an alternative and sustainable means of production dependant upon the ephemeral moment.
Getting collectors to buy into this is an entirely difference matter. Of course major institutions acquire these moments in time and reproduce them in the conditions and spirit of their creation. However, how is it possible for such works, by perhaps lesser known artists, to become more widely purchased amongst private collectors? What is to be exchanged between artist and collector? Once the deal is done are there to be restrictions are placed upon the artist or rights bestowed upon the collector? Indeed there are no definitive rules for the collection of ephemeral works; there are no best practice guidelines in place, instead the situation relies upon the mutual agreement of both parties on the terms and conditions of the sale, but also on the willingness of collectors to support artists through commissioning new works that have little or no material trace surviving beyond the event
Wednesday 18 February 2009
From Methodism - Sophie Risner (fanzine contribution)
So it was with great attention to detail that 176 Prince of Wales Road in the midsts of Chalk Farm, London became the resting point for Anita Zabludowicz. Pushing aside arts steady relationship to the east of London and shifting the telescope a few steps north. The trend for displaying art within the construction of a white space falters sporadically, leave aside the hard feeling of concrete beneath foot and enter the tide of the past. Wooden floorboards and high romantic ceilings shelter a circular mezzanine level with abstract splendor. The building is the history of the space, its sounds and feelings, the greeting columns which push up wards steady an impressive resume towards the Parthenon in Rome or indeed the Parthenon in Athens. Hinting at what could have dwelled within the space but again not in any way getting near the reality of how 176 came to exists on a residential road in Camden.
To get back to the entry point of 176 would be to recognize the work of John Wesley. In the 18th century John Wesley took the infancy of Methodism and introduced it to the boroughs of Camden and Islington, settling in the area just as the Huguenots had done to the east. Like what had come before, Wesley looked towards nesting his approach to Methodism within a borough and within that borough - a building. Crafting his sincerest thoughts and hard work John Wesley looked towards these great symbolic structures of Rome and Athens when forging his church, stone grandieur made for momentary pauses in church design as well as an unbeknown umbilical link to its current manifestation, up the stairs and through the doors it is hard to define how Zabludowiczs space could have possibly been a place of worship, but equally as remarkable the reality that whilst a place of worship its future lay in the striving need to display contemporary art. The characteristics of the building manage to whisper towards those felt by The National Museum, brooding and suspicious, the columns and stairs march the visitor from street level up into sanctuary. Religion and culture so in-exptricably linked, one could not have formed for the removal of the other. The signs seem to point towards a shift in the area, negating the Wesleyan Methodist movement for something all the more radical. Asking the borough of Camden to produce a more revolutionary gesture so as to by-pass the swell of the city and become of its own meaning and making. It is true that for many years now the North London borough stubbornly asked for the inventive and the creative to pass through and down its murky streets; plonking on an old wooden piano at the end of a bar, smoking on a cigerette surrounded by shouting laughter and the sound of an old man singing. Stop in the street of Camden today and there is a fierce combination of tired tourism and slacking rebellion. So how did the church gain its place so close to one of the capitals loudest communities, infested with problems and tired of the woes of existence it is almost incomprehensible that a place of such thought and composure ran the gauntlet of time to remain a place for thoughts made and ideas discussed. It is true that one of the many incarnations for 176 was that of a drama school, Drama Centre London helped practitioners also move from one moment of knowledge to a greater moment, educating budding young actors to BA level and beyond. Hold on though, to associate origin with the currency of the now through a building is to lay claims that there may be greater things at work, That the building is responsible for what happens, away from those who may procure it. Zabludowicz may have found the place to her pleasing, but would it be too spiritual to romanticize that the building may actually have found her?
Between 1864 and 1920 the voice of German sociologist was conjuring up nightmares that lead to the continued exploration of a western currency of condition, Max Weber not only forged some of the most relevant social theory of our day but he maintained the pertinent existence of something still not quite understood; he declared through his thinking that the arrival of Capitalism was almost as spiritual as the choice of Zabludowicz. Not to get carried away with the relationship a building has to its necessary outputs and inputs. Religion is something which must be approached carefully as not to make for a religious reading but to equally be able to ‘read’ religion. It’s complication is still the unauthorized formatting programme which fruitfully holds the realms of our own civilization, fighting the fierce trend to side-step religion and declare it useless, whilst also claiming through a shrugged shoulder the null-and-void mentality of religion is not just extreme Marxism but possibly a poor mans diet when trying to digest the wonders of how and why it is we came to manifest the sociological passage of our presentness. The actuality is far more entertaining and verocious, the shifts in patterns of thinking and understanding explore shifts in the placement of religion from one of near-governmental proportions to something a lot more idiosyncratic, indeed within United Kingdom protocol it is more and more the case not to want to be actively religious, not to find a place for a practice of religion but to actually systematize religion out of the attitude to life in favour of a passage of personal progression, that, or humanity just lost the need to believe. Either way it just simply isn’t the current trend to declare Christianity as it may have been so very recently. Religious ritualization has not only slipped from our ‘to-do-list’ but it has also vanished from the necessary requirements by which to exists. Something which commanded such structures as 176 to be built, with such wit and enthusiasm, left to ruin with half a roof, the slip from religion to capitalism is interesting but where did it leave culture? The hard stones that ‘shroud,’ to use a neo-religious concept, 176, make for an almost naturalistic gallery space, especially one to explain the vast and expansive collection of Anita Zabludowicz. To remain true to the gesture of this conundrum it is important to shift back to the time and making of 1905, sketched away in a dank cell, or so I like to envision, the world of Max Weber expressioned a landscape which looked towards a shift from Protestantism to Capitalism. True, Protestantism is not the making of Methodism but neither is John Wesley, who may or may not have had a strong over seeing hand in the production of 176. The shift here is more obvious than first recognized, it is the timely thought that Protestantism is the structural God father for a Methodist ethic. That Methodism formed from the ideas of Protestantism, this helps the case even more.
Explorative devices would now bring into view the hinge of 176, the move it made from a religious moment to its current incarnation as a resting point for the visibility of art. What the conundrum outlines refers back to the device formulated by Weber, one which declares a dramatic sociological shift from a civilization ‘shrouded,’ to use that word again, or maybe even governed by religious zeal to one equally shrouded by a capitalist zeal. The comparison between both approaches bears an unsettling resemblance. The possibilities to explore such ties between a religious practice and one of capitalism are a lot more unsettlingly multiple than it first may seem. It is this kind of discussion which is of interest when debating the passage that a building undertook to arrive on the surface of the world and how it managed to, 142 years later actually re-main on the surface of the earth, it is impressive that it has managed to attract such a diverse and altogether more ambitious approach, not left the ruin of another derelict obsession. Saying this, London is no minefield for derelict fetishism, there just simply isn’t enough room. Take for example the fascinating re-vamp of the Truman Brewery on Brick Lane, an 11 acre site which uses the best exploits of capital alongside the more identifiable conditions of art. Shoreditch’s Tea Building based on the corner of Shoreditch High Street and Bethnal Green Road looks towards the new development of the East London Line, it doesn’t just declare its attitude for re-invention by being within the heart of Londons ever-changing east end, it manages to stipulate the tide of change ocuring all around the place, banks turned into bars, post offices turned into fashion studios and in the case of fashionable space Village Underground, tube carriages transformed to become office spaces. Shifting this back to 176, it is not the clarity of the swiftness from religion to culture which is of massive interest to this debate, but the ideology that something really hasn’t changed all that much through this passing. To rephrase the inevitable it may be too ad-hoc to remember the passing of religion within this country as something so naturally elective, Weber would remain there standing and nodding stating the ever clear moment which looked toward the formation of capitalism from the seeds of protestantism, not just that, but from the very nature of what was happening the moment capitalism arrived, in that everything was happening, life was as life was, back in the tide that washed ashore during the past governed by religion. Equally a western civilization at the mercy of capitalism could be further more the revelation when comparing the mixed uses of a building situated within the off-beat tracks of a tired out borough. It doesn’t just swell with history but manage to become part of it, the grade II listing of 176 helps to relinquish a time passed and a dawn awoken. Traversing religion towards capitalism, dedicates to the theory of Weber more rightfully than is first resolved. That each and everything had to be in its right place for a place to be made of 176. Could culture be the transitory hobble drawing together the immense hitch-hike taken by the building, or is it more likely to be like religion and the drama school just another matter of moment. The fascination is what is next to come, where does a building with 142 years of cross-generational manipulation go from now, what can be shifted and what can be re-built, how can our civilization move into something beyond capitalism and even further away from religion, I don’t have the answer to this, but ask the building, it might.
To get back to the entry point of 176 would be to recognize the work of John Wesley. In the 18th century John Wesley took the infancy of Methodism and introduced it to the boroughs of Camden and Islington, settling in the area just as the Huguenots had done to the east. Like what had come before, Wesley looked towards nesting his approach to Methodism within a borough and within that borough - a building. Crafting his sincerest thoughts and hard work John Wesley looked towards these great symbolic structures of Rome and Athens when forging his church, stone grandieur made for momentary pauses in church design as well as an unbeknown umbilical link to its current manifestation, up the stairs and through the doors it is hard to define how Zabludowiczs space could have possibly been a place of worship, but equally as remarkable the reality that whilst a place of worship its future lay in the striving need to display contemporary art. The characteristics of the building manage to whisper towards those felt by The National Museum, brooding and suspicious, the columns and stairs march the visitor from street level up into sanctuary. Religion and culture so in-exptricably linked, one could not have formed for the removal of the other. The signs seem to point towards a shift in the area, negating the Wesleyan Methodist movement for something all the more radical. Asking the borough of Camden to produce a more revolutionary gesture so as to by-pass the swell of the city and become of its own meaning and making. It is true that for many years now the North London borough stubbornly asked for the inventive and the creative to pass through and down its murky streets; plonking on an old wooden piano at the end of a bar, smoking on a cigerette surrounded by shouting laughter and the sound of an old man singing. Stop in the street of Camden today and there is a fierce combination of tired tourism and slacking rebellion. So how did the church gain its place so close to one of the capitals loudest communities, infested with problems and tired of the woes of existence it is almost incomprehensible that a place of such thought and composure ran the gauntlet of time to remain a place for thoughts made and ideas discussed. It is true that one of the many incarnations for 176 was that of a drama school, Drama Centre London helped practitioners also move from one moment of knowledge to a greater moment, educating budding young actors to BA level and beyond. Hold on though, to associate origin with the currency of the now through a building is to lay claims that there may be greater things at work, That the building is responsible for what happens, away from those who may procure it. Zabludowicz may have found the place to her pleasing, but would it be too spiritual to romanticize that the building may actually have found her?
Between 1864 and 1920 the voice of German sociologist was conjuring up nightmares that lead to the continued exploration of a western currency of condition, Max Weber not only forged some of the most relevant social theory of our day but he maintained the pertinent existence of something still not quite understood; he declared through his thinking that the arrival of Capitalism was almost as spiritual as the choice of Zabludowicz. Not to get carried away with the relationship a building has to its necessary outputs and inputs. Religion is something which must be approached carefully as not to make for a religious reading but to equally be able to ‘read’ religion. It’s complication is still the unauthorized formatting programme which fruitfully holds the realms of our own civilization, fighting the fierce trend to side-step religion and declare it useless, whilst also claiming through a shrugged shoulder the null-and-void mentality of religion is not just extreme Marxism but possibly a poor mans diet when trying to digest the wonders of how and why it is we came to manifest the sociological passage of our presentness. The actuality is far more entertaining and verocious, the shifts in patterns of thinking and understanding explore shifts in the placement of religion from one of near-governmental proportions to something a lot more idiosyncratic, indeed within United Kingdom protocol it is more and more the case not to want to be actively religious, not to find a place for a practice of religion but to actually systematize religion out of the attitude to life in favour of a passage of personal progression, that, or humanity just lost the need to believe. Either way it just simply isn’t the current trend to declare Christianity as it may have been so very recently. Religious ritualization has not only slipped from our ‘to-do-list’ but it has also vanished from the necessary requirements by which to exists. Something which commanded such structures as 176 to be built, with such wit and enthusiasm, left to ruin with half a roof, the slip from religion to capitalism is interesting but where did it leave culture? The hard stones that ‘shroud,’ to use a neo-religious concept, 176, make for an almost naturalistic gallery space, especially one to explain the vast and expansive collection of Anita Zabludowicz. To remain true to the gesture of this conundrum it is important to shift back to the time and making of 1905, sketched away in a dank cell, or so I like to envision, the world of Max Weber expressioned a landscape which looked towards a shift from Protestantism to Capitalism. True, Protestantism is not the making of Methodism but neither is John Wesley, who may or may not have had a strong over seeing hand in the production of 176. The shift here is more obvious than first recognized, it is the timely thought that Protestantism is the structural God father for a Methodist ethic. That Methodism formed from the ideas of Protestantism, this helps the case even more.
Explorative devices would now bring into view the hinge of 176, the move it made from a religious moment to its current incarnation as a resting point for the visibility of art. What the conundrum outlines refers back to the device formulated by Weber, one which declares a dramatic sociological shift from a civilization ‘shrouded,’ to use that word again, or maybe even governed by religious zeal to one equally shrouded by a capitalist zeal. The comparison between both approaches bears an unsettling resemblance. The possibilities to explore such ties between a religious practice and one of capitalism are a lot more unsettlingly multiple than it first may seem. It is this kind of discussion which is of interest when debating the passage that a building undertook to arrive on the surface of the world and how it managed to, 142 years later actually re-main on the surface of the earth, it is impressive that it has managed to attract such a diverse and altogether more ambitious approach, not left the ruin of another derelict obsession. Saying this, London is no minefield for derelict fetishism, there just simply isn’t enough room. Take for example the fascinating re-vamp of the Truman Brewery on Brick Lane, an 11 acre site which uses the best exploits of capital alongside the more identifiable conditions of art. Shoreditch’s Tea Building based on the corner of Shoreditch High Street and Bethnal Green Road looks towards the new development of the East London Line, it doesn’t just declare its attitude for re-invention by being within the heart of Londons ever-changing east end, it manages to stipulate the tide of change ocuring all around the place, banks turned into bars, post offices turned into fashion studios and in the case of fashionable space Village Underground, tube carriages transformed to become office spaces. Shifting this back to 176, it is not the clarity of the swiftness from religion to culture which is of massive interest to this debate, but the ideology that something really hasn’t changed all that much through this passing. To rephrase the inevitable it may be too ad-hoc to remember the passing of religion within this country as something so naturally elective, Weber would remain there standing and nodding stating the ever clear moment which looked toward the formation of capitalism from the seeds of protestantism, not just that, but from the very nature of what was happening the moment capitalism arrived, in that everything was happening, life was as life was, back in the tide that washed ashore during the past governed by religion. Equally a western civilization at the mercy of capitalism could be further more the revelation when comparing the mixed uses of a building situated within the off-beat tracks of a tired out borough. It doesn’t just swell with history but manage to become part of it, the grade II listing of 176 helps to relinquish a time passed and a dawn awoken. Traversing religion towards capitalism, dedicates to the theory of Weber more rightfully than is first resolved. That each and everything had to be in its right place for a place to be made of 176. Could culture be the transitory hobble drawing together the immense hitch-hike taken by the building, or is it more likely to be like religion and the drama school just another matter of moment. The fascination is what is next to come, where does a building with 142 years of cross-generational manipulation go from now, what can be shifted and what can be re-built, how can our civilization move into something beyond capitalism and even further away from religion, I don’t have the answer to this, but ask the building, it might.
Virginia Phongsathorn / Dan Shaw-Town and Tim Winter
Virginia Phongsathorn
'Chicken Soup (The Commune)', 2007. Video NTSC on DVD. 3min 51sec.
“Within this piece I was thinking about what happens when there are opposing narratives between the audio and the picture, and how this situation can be manipulated. At the time I was looking at a lot of Lettrist film-makers (Maurice Lemaitre being the most well known) and also artists who have more recently dealt with undermining the structure of a film. I was interested in creating a kind of everyday strange moment. A documentation of an introspective act shot from an inside angle. A simple process infused with memories of past conversations and fleeting thoughts, as cooking and all kinds of making often are.”
Dan Shaw-Town and Tim Winter
'At the edge of the world his journey begins, an objects search for autonomy in a world full
of things,' 2008, DVD, 10min 9 sec.
This film is the culmination of an experimental project and collaboration between the film maker Tim Winter and Visual artist Dan Shaw-Town. It portrays a surrealist sensibility, focusing on the performativity and theatricality that makes up the beginning, middle and end stages in the production of an artwork. And within that, it strives to demonstrate the conceptual and formal decision making that accompanies this process, whilst at the same time being very aware of the somewhat futile nature of this activity in relation to what is going on around it.
The film focuses on the act of creativity as a humble activity, showing the search for how an object might come to exist in a self governing state, one of absolute autonomy. However this gesture gradually slips into a form of obsession, as objects are introduced to more objects until each acts as a 'display aid' or 'prop' for the next. This is epitomised as the objects existence becomes a burden of it's creators achievement.
Spontaneity and the notion of 'one thing leads to another' are key elements, that demonstrate the different stages of the production of an 'artwork'. Not so much focusing on the actual 'thing' itself, but instead being aware of the temporary situations that are created by it. The films conclusion is inevitable, demonstrating that the pursuit of autonomy is therefore left up to a sea of possibilities.
HYPERLINK "http://www.danshawtown.com" www.danshawtown.com
Karina Joseph
'Chicken Soup (The Commune)', 2007. Video NTSC on DVD. 3min 51sec.
“Within this piece I was thinking about what happens when there are opposing narratives between the audio and the picture, and how this situation can be manipulated. At the time I was looking at a lot of Lettrist film-makers (Maurice Lemaitre being the most well known) and also artists who have more recently dealt with undermining the structure of a film. I was interested in creating a kind of everyday strange moment. A documentation of an introspective act shot from an inside angle. A simple process infused with memories of past conversations and fleeting thoughts, as cooking and all kinds of making often are.”
Dan Shaw-Town and Tim Winter
'At the edge of the world his journey begins, an objects search for autonomy in a world full
of things,' 2008, DVD, 10min 9 sec.
This film is the culmination of an experimental project and collaboration between the film maker Tim Winter and Visual artist Dan Shaw-Town. It portrays a surrealist sensibility, focusing on the performativity and theatricality that makes up the beginning, middle and end stages in the production of an artwork. And within that, it strives to demonstrate the conceptual and formal decision making that accompanies this process, whilst at the same time being very aware of the somewhat futile nature of this activity in relation to what is going on around it.
The film focuses on the act of creativity as a humble activity, showing the search for how an object might come to exist in a self governing state, one of absolute autonomy. However this gesture gradually slips into a form of obsession, as objects are introduced to more objects until each acts as a 'display aid' or 'prop' for the next. This is epitomised as the objects existence becomes a burden of it's creators achievement.
Spontaneity and the notion of 'one thing leads to another' are key elements, that demonstrate the different stages of the production of an 'artwork'. Not so much focusing on the actual 'thing' itself, but instead being aware of the temporary situations that are created by it. The films conclusion is inevitable, demonstrating that the pursuit of autonomy is therefore left up to a sea of possibilities.
HYPERLINK "http://www.danshawtown.com" www.danshawtown.com
Karina Joseph
Contested Ground - Eric Randolph (fanzine contribution)
Contested Ground
Eric Randolph
I think I’m supposed to give the outsider’s perspective here, the spontaneous unadulterated reaction of someone who knows close to nothing about art. That’s supposed to be easy: all I have to do is be honest about my impressions. But actually it’s not that easy, because we enter any situation with a clutch of prejudices and interests that distort any notion of honest feeling we might have. And prejudices and interests are not simple either; often they are contradictory and swayed by mood and circumstance. So I walk into the main room of the exhibition and I look up at a big wooden tower sort of a thing, and it’s kind of wonky and has some bits of metal stuck to it and so on, and my initial reaction is to scoff. What am I supposed to do with these bits of wood here? How long am I supposed to look at it before I’ve fulfilled the requisite quota of art appreciation on this piece? It means nothing to me. But then some other prejudices kick in which tell me that I know there’s more to this than the simple construction of the thing itself. That there’s a relationship to the space, that at some level there’s an interaction happening between me and this piece however little my cynicism wishes to acknowledge it; that the mere act of having carried out the task of building it and erecting it and opening the doors to people is an artistic act in which I am complicit. This is the part of me that wants to be considered culturally aware and observant and analytical, the part of my brain that sends me every so often to the Tate Britain to pay £10 and walk around looking at famous things and stroking my beard and adopting that pendulum swing walk that people adopt in art museums, occasionally leaning in to peer closely at some detail of a painting so that others can see that I know what I’m doing.
I continue around the exhibition, aware I need to write something about this when I’m done. I’m looking for a crux, something to hang the writing on. There’s a very clever piece using dry ice to make a CD skip. I quite like the music, but this won’t do. I’m told about a piece called Concrete Chunk. It’s a concrete chunk. It’s holding the door of the office open. This is shit, I think to myself. Occasionally, several people are roped in to move it around. What a pain in the arse, I think to myself. The aspirational part of me is losing out to the cynical moron. Need to regain inspiration. I head back downstairs. There’s a close-up of the little dove that used to be on credit cards. This is good, I think to myself, I used to like looking at my mum’s one of these when I was a kid. Hmm, I wonder, do they still put these on credit cards? I take my wallet out. There’s no dove on there. I feel disappointed, but somewhat enlightened. Another room is playing a film about Mexican gangs. Next to it is film about Ikea. What a depressing juxtaposition – how boring are our lives in Britain that artists feel there’s something worthwhile to be had from making a film about Ikea, while in Mexico you go out on the street and you find all sorts of horrible shit going on: Real Life. Of course, real life in this context consists of drugs wars, several thousand murders per month, and the decapitation of police officers. It’s easy to have a reaction to that. It must be a lot easier to corral your reactions to art in Mexico.
I walk into another room and find a tug-of-war going on. This is nice, I think to myself, some entertainment to keep the children amused. I discover later that in fact this is art, too. I protest, but I’m shouted down. I try to imagine why this is art. Are we supposed to look at this as the essential violence of man – that we can only ever succeed at the expense of another? Or is the tension in the rope a metaphor for the unbearable tension of our lives, are we the ribbon in the middle being torn from left to right by competing human pressures? Or is just a game of fucking tug-of-war?
And then it dawns on me that this is the point. That it has little to do with the form or the meaning or the context or the essence. The effect here is not the result of interaction between objects, or between objects and humans. The interesting relationship, as far as I am concerned, is that between the setting and vocabulary. Looking at these pieces of art, we find new ways of describing, new ways of interpreting, and categorising and analysing. This is a fun game, a hobby. It occupies the time of thousands and thousands of professors and students and art critics and artists and anyone who wants to immerse themselves in the pastime of stretching vocabulary to the borders of its logic. The uncertainty I often experience around art is less about what I’m feeling, then, and more about how I’m supposed to rationalise those feelings, translate them into English.
So I look again at the bunf about the exhibition: “Results or outcomes are rarely left to chance; the indiscernible is unacceptable. This rejection of the unforeseen creates a closed system where predictability and predetermination are celebrated.” Filtered through my brain, these sentences are meaningless constructions lain around a collection of nice and interesting, but ultimately pretty random, bits of stuff. The great hypocrisy of this brief is that it is itself an attempt to draw discernibility – through vocabulary – around the meaningless collection of pieces on display. If we follow its command and embrace the unforeseen, then it becomes foreseen. And let’s try to forget the fact that, mid-economic crisis, we actually live in a world horrifically riven with uncertainty and unforeseen consequences. But what wonderful fun is being had with English there! Where else can you get away with this shit but in an art gallery? Brilliant.
I take a step back and reassess this reaction I’m having. I realise this is the same contest happening within me that I spoke of earlier – between wanting to be true to my immediate reactions and aspiring to deeper levels of understanding. And if I’m truly honest then it’s between something that I do indeed have little control over. And that’s between wanting to write something honest, and not wanting to sound like a complete twat.
Eric Randolph
I think I’m supposed to give the outsider’s perspective here, the spontaneous unadulterated reaction of someone who knows close to nothing about art. That’s supposed to be easy: all I have to do is be honest about my impressions. But actually it’s not that easy, because we enter any situation with a clutch of prejudices and interests that distort any notion of honest feeling we might have. And prejudices and interests are not simple either; often they are contradictory and swayed by mood and circumstance. So I walk into the main room of the exhibition and I look up at a big wooden tower sort of a thing, and it’s kind of wonky and has some bits of metal stuck to it and so on, and my initial reaction is to scoff. What am I supposed to do with these bits of wood here? How long am I supposed to look at it before I’ve fulfilled the requisite quota of art appreciation on this piece? It means nothing to me. But then some other prejudices kick in which tell me that I know there’s more to this than the simple construction of the thing itself. That there’s a relationship to the space, that at some level there’s an interaction happening between me and this piece however little my cynicism wishes to acknowledge it; that the mere act of having carried out the task of building it and erecting it and opening the doors to people is an artistic act in which I am complicit. This is the part of me that wants to be considered culturally aware and observant and analytical, the part of my brain that sends me every so often to the Tate Britain to pay £10 and walk around looking at famous things and stroking my beard and adopting that pendulum swing walk that people adopt in art museums, occasionally leaning in to peer closely at some detail of a painting so that others can see that I know what I’m doing.
I continue around the exhibition, aware I need to write something about this when I’m done. I’m looking for a crux, something to hang the writing on. There’s a very clever piece using dry ice to make a CD skip. I quite like the music, but this won’t do. I’m told about a piece called Concrete Chunk. It’s a concrete chunk. It’s holding the door of the office open. This is shit, I think to myself. Occasionally, several people are roped in to move it around. What a pain in the arse, I think to myself. The aspirational part of me is losing out to the cynical moron. Need to regain inspiration. I head back downstairs. There’s a close-up of the little dove that used to be on credit cards. This is good, I think to myself, I used to like looking at my mum’s one of these when I was a kid. Hmm, I wonder, do they still put these on credit cards? I take my wallet out. There’s no dove on there. I feel disappointed, but somewhat enlightened. Another room is playing a film about Mexican gangs. Next to it is film about Ikea. What a depressing juxtaposition – how boring are our lives in Britain that artists feel there’s something worthwhile to be had from making a film about Ikea, while in Mexico you go out on the street and you find all sorts of horrible shit going on: Real Life. Of course, real life in this context consists of drugs wars, several thousand murders per month, and the decapitation of police officers. It’s easy to have a reaction to that. It must be a lot easier to corral your reactions to art in Mexico.
I walk into another room and find a tug-of-war going on. This is nice, I think to myself, some entertainment to keep the children amused. I discover later that in fact this is art, too. I protest, but I’m shouted down. I try to imagine why this is art. Are we supposed to look at this as the essential violence of man – that we can only ever succeed at the expense of another? Or is the tension in the rope a metaphor for the unbearable tension of our lives, are we the ribbon in the middle being torn from left to right by competing human pressures? Or is just a game of fucking tug-of-war?
And then it dawns on me that this is the point. That it has little to do with the form or the meaning or the context or the essence. The effect here is not the result of interaction between objects, or between objects and humans. The interesting relationship, as far as I am concerned, is that between the setting and vocabulary. Looking at these pieces of art, we find new ways of describing, new ways of interpreting, and categorising and analysing. This is a fun game, a hobby. It occupies the time of thousands and thousands of professors and students and art critics and artists and anyone who wants to immerse themselves in the pastime of stretching vocabulary to the borders of its logic. The uncertainty I often experience around art is less about what I’m feeling, then, and more about how I’m supposed to rationalise those feelings, translate them into English.
So I look again at the bunf about the exhibition: “Results or outcomes are rarely left to chance; the indiscernible is unacceptable. This rejection of the unforeseen creates a closed system where predictability and predetermination are celebrated.” Filtered through my brain, these sentences are meaningless constructions lain around a collection of nice and interesting, but ultimately pretty random, bits of stuff. The great hypocrisy of this brief is that it is itself an attempt to draw discernibility – through vocabulary – around the meaningless collection of pieces on display. If we follow its command and embrace the unforeseen, then it becomes foreseen. And let’s try to forget the fact that, mid-economic crisis, we actually live in a world horrifically riven with uncertainty and unforeseen consequences. But what wonderful fun is being had with English there! Where else can you get away with this shit but in an art gallery? Brilliant.
I take a step back and reassess this reaction I’m having. I realise this is the same contest happening within me that I spoke of earlier – between wanting to be true to my immediate reactions and aspiring to deeper levels of understanding. And if I’m truly honest then it’s between something that I do indeed have little control over. And that’s between wanting to write something honest, and not wanting to sound like a complete twat.
Thursday 12 February 2009
The Sad Ghost by Gareth Bell-Jones (fanzine contribution)
THE SAD GHOST
A nightmarish tale by Gareth Bell-Jones
It was nearly midnight. Through the revolving mists of the worry the teak boarding of the old manor occasionally became restless. The old maid who had lived there long ago died of corns, but that was by-the-by. She used to like eating tinned hot dogs. With her passing the manor had become increasingly scary until it sucked all happiness and colour out of the happy woods. The now rickety house was still, apart from the incessant creaking made by a ghost walking around. He still had real human feet and so made creaking noises. He walked through the unsound hallway into the decrepit kitchen to make some tea and stood on a rake. The horror rake whooshed before hitting the ground again behind him. "Woooooooo" he said, thinking (but unable to say).
A full moon hung loosely over the roof, draping the mansion with its pungent space light. Yes, there was no colour. It was black and white. A wolverine ran into the kitchen and ate the rake. It was the only object in the room apart from the kettle which had almost come to a boil. "Wooooooo" the ghost said to the wolverine. "A-Weeeeeeeeeee" the wolverine responded to the ghost. The ghost made the wolverine some ghost tea. The ghost poured it into a bowl which appeared - as if from nowhere. The wolverine lapped it up, greedily unaware that it was boiling its own tongue off. When it had fallen off the wolverine couldn't speak any more. Because of this three ghosts came out of its mouth. "Wooooooooooo" they all said. If you can imagine having three speakers that is what it sounded like.
Lightning struck.
An almighty crash and a nearby church tower collapsed. A farmer walked into the creepy manner and was really scared by all the ghosts and ran away. "wooooo" all the ghosts said. The wolverine ran around in circles. The wolverine could not speak anymore because it didn't have a tongue. A pig appeared - from nowhere. And bit the feet of the ghost. "WoOOOOooOOOooooO!" the ghost exclaimed kicking the pig. The universe ran this way and that. Inside that the earth vibrated. It vibrated very fast and this caused dead bodies to exhume themselves. Still dead but above ground. They all got into the kitchen and made it smell of eggs so all the ghosts and the pig went through the hallway into the lounge. The wolverine still walked round in circles and bumped into all the bodies walking higher and higher until it couldn't walk any more because it was pressed against the ceiling. The room really smelt badly of eggs.
It was now one in the morning and they hadn't got much done yet so they ate. They ate the wolverine because it was good for nothing. The soft tring of a harp flushed from the atrium. It was granddad standing up. He was ten foot tall and very characterfull. He would get rid of these ghosts once and for all he decided. Then he looked at himself in a mirror and he had no reflection. Deciding he needed fresh blood he drank from the pig to get going. Vampires keep dark. Finding he couldn't get much from the disembodied feet he went back to his coffin chair, he fell asleep again. The ghosts flew around the atrium trying to catch each others tails leaving one ghost on the floor because it had feet. The ghost cried air. "Ak-Scaloooooo" granddad snored. "Weeeeeeeeee" the ghosts exclaimed. "Pffffft" the sad ghost cried.
A nightmarish tale by Gareth Bell-Jones
It was nearly midnight. Through the revolving mists of the worry the teak boarding of the old manor occasionally became restless. The old maid who had lived there long ago died of corns, but that was by-the-by. She used to like eating tinned hot dogs. With her passing the manor had become increasingly scary until it sucked all happiness and colour out of the happy woods. The now rickety house was still, apart from the incessant creaking made by a ghost walking around. He still had real human feet and so made creaking noises. He walked through the unsound hallway into the decrepit kitchen to make some tea and stood on a rake. The horror rake whooshed before hitting the ground again behind him. "Woooooooo" he said, thinking (but unable to say).
A full moon hung loosely over the roof, draping the mansion with its pungent space light. Yes, there was no colour. It was black and white. A wolverine ran into the kitchen and ate the rake. It was the only object in the room apart from the kettle which had almost come to a boil. "Wooooooo" the ghost said to the wolverine. "A-Weeeeeeeeeee" the wolverine responded to the ghost. The ghost made the wolverine some ghost tea. The ghost poured it into a bowl which appeared - as if from nowhere. The wolverine lapped it up, greedily unaware that it was boiling its own tongue off. When it had fallen off the wolverine couldn't speak any more. Because of this three ghosts came out of its mouth. "Wooooooooooo" they all said. If you can imagine having three speakers that is what it sounded like.
Lightning struck.
An almighty crash and a nearby church tower collapsed. A farmer walked into the creepy manner and was really scared by all the ghosts and ran away. "wooooo" all the ghosts said. The wolverine ran around in circles. The wolverine could not speak anymore because it didn't have a tongue. A pig appeared - from nowhere. And bit the feet of the ghost. "WoOOOOooOOOooooO!" the ghost exclaimed kicking the pig. The universe ran this way and that. Inside that the earth vibrated. It vibrated very fast and this caused dead bodies to exhume themselves. Still dead but above ground. They all got into the kitchen and made it smell of eggs so all the ghosts and the pig went through the hallway into the lounge. The wolverine still walked round in circles and bumped into all the bodies walking higher and higher until it couldn't walk any more because it was pressed against the ceiling. The room really smelt badly of eggs.
It was now one in the morning and they hadn't got much done yet so they ate. They ate the wolverine because it was good for nothing. The soft tring of a harp flushed from the atrium. It was granddad standing up. He was ten foot tall and very characterfull. He would get rid of these ghosts once and for all he decided. Then he looked at himself in a mirror and he had no reflection. Deciding he needed fresh blood he drank from the pig to get going. Vampires keep dark. Finding he couldn't get much from the disembodied feet he went back to his coffin chair, he fell asleep again. The ghosts flew around the atrium trying to catch each others tails leaving one ghost on the floor because it had feet. The ghost cried air. "Ak-Scaloooooo" granddad snored. "Weeeeeeeeee" the ghosts exclaimed. "Pffffft" the sad ghost cried.
Wednesday 11 February 2009
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