Ayanah Moor - 'All My Girlfriends'

When recording my work for Followers (2012), I remembered hearing Ayanah Moor speak at AUT about her work, All My Girlfriends (2011).

I was always going to install my work in the studio space, instead of the elevator, because I enjoyed the way you could hear my droning voice as you walked through the studio space. When you arrive in my space, you are able to hear exactly what I'm saying, and finally, properly engage with the work. It reminds me of the performance I did in Talk Week, where my voice drew people in from different parts of the studio. Perhaps this work, on some level, does the same. When you arrive at the space, you encounter a small speaker, with two little speakers on the top facing outwards at opposite angles. I chose to have small speakers because I did not want to take away from the voice. Instead, the big, droning voice that one can hear throughout the studio, is only coming out of a small space. I could liken this to the way in which we use our digital voices in the small boxes we call computers, but I'll leave that for now.

I thought about Moor's work throughout my setting up process, and the recording process too. She uses an "audio book" like voice too. Her afflictions and pauses are used only when they need to be. It's as though she is introducing pageant contestants to the stage. Mine, however, needed to be a little more monotone. I was indeed reading the title of a persons blog and their follower numbers, but I wanted them all to be equal and speak for themselves. I knew that the affliction in my voice could make something SOUND interesting, however, the names and numbers themselves are already interesting and do not need unnecessary dressing up.

AYANAH MOOR - 'ALL MY GIRLFRIENDS'

Malala Yousafzai

Malala Yousafzai is probably one of the bravest people on the face of the earth. This week, she was shot in the head and neck by Taliban members as she was leaving school. She's 14, and the reason they shot her was because she's been a global advocate for the rights of woman and girls, and their education for years; since she was 11 actually. This tiny person was targeted by the Taliban. Targeted, meaning she was a threat... a 14 year old girl was a threat to men who carry guns like they're permanently attached to their hips. I read dozens of news articles regarding the shooting, and one said something along the lines of, "...it shocked an unshockable country (Pakistan)" This was really poignant. Think about it. We get shocked when we see a show like Fear Factor, where people eat bugs and voluntarily fling themselves from skyscrapers. For the people of Pakistan, for example, they have endured so much they are "unshockable". Actually they'd probably think some crazy westerner was nuts for flinging themselves off a skyscraper too. But the sentence was thought provoking for sure. The shooting of Malala has shocked the world, I think, and rightly so. We should be shocked! Everyone should hear her story and that's what I've been thinking these last few days.

I have been working predominantly on this blog for the greater part of this year, on - at times - very political subjects. The Internet is a space of global sharing where you can say and do as you please (as I have many times reiterated, apologies) with less potential scrutiny then perhaps if you were to be physically expressing the information or ideas you release on your blog or other social media forum. It does not mean that those who blog or express themselves via digital means are not subject to potential physical abuse or are not held accountable for their words or actions, I just mean that I can write this post about Malala Yousafzai and if someones reading it, if so inclined, could post a comment saying something along the lines of "shut your blabbering pie hole", or numerous variations. Unless of course they were my neighbour and could egg my house or light my rubbish bin on fire... don't do it.

So you get what I mean.
It's a place to share, like sharing has never been done before!

This year I've especially looked at Jacques Ranciere and his writings like The Emancipated Spectator and the Ignorant Schoolmaster. I've studied and experimented with The Emancipated Spectator mostly and have been really interested in Relational Aesthetics, and replacing the word 'viewer' with 'Interlocutor' ("someone who is involved in a conversation" - Cambridge Dictionary), a term introduced to me by Andy. Simply, I wanted my work to be open to anyone and everyone, non discriminatory, non assuming or dictatorial. I think it's wiggled it's way through different forms and mediums, and ended up (surprisingly!) here, my research blog for Year II. In addition to this, the aspect of vast advancements in technology to create a futuristic, perhaps, utopic or distopic world in the novels and films of Science Fiction (big nerd) has also been a heavy interest for me this year, starting at the very beginning with my newspaper paintings.This relates to my blog in so many ways, as I said before, this is sharing platform which has never been done before. This advancement in our own world, has opened up communication into a whole new realm and it's only just beginning. It's changed our human nature; the way we encounter eachother and the world around us. We are living two lives at once, one in the digital and one in the physical.

Is this post, if not all posts, the embodiment of this thinking? A sharing of information, not dictatorial in nature but evoking in thought and potential activation. Perhaps a "share" or a "like" will occur, as we often use these actions to express a confirmation of listening or agreement. Maybe a disgruntled comment or a further action to dismantle the very forum I'm working on.
These are the ideas of my work, that have grown from the paintings in March, of creepy trees on the foreground of American Newspapers.

As for Malala Yousafzai, maybe I can help to share her story of courage and compassion. At 14 years old she's got more bravery then many people I've met in my life.

On wednesday, surgeons operated to remove the bullet that was lodged so close to her brain, and she survived! Amazing! Perhaps she will live to tell her own story, and tell the Taliban to shove it up their ass.

Read about Malala and her survival here

(One of many, many articles)

Pick a city, any city.

LA
New York
Chicago
Montreal
San Francisco
Boston
San Diego
Philadelphia
Atlanta
Detroit
Houston
Minneapolis
Portland
Austin
Baltimore
Denver
Phoenix

Surveillance, from the comfort of your living room.

Wafaa Bilal

Domestic Tension

2007

http://wafaabilal.com/works/

"Iraqi born Wafaa has become known for provocative interactive video installations. Many of Bilal's projects over the past few years have addressed the dichotomy of the virtual vs. the real.

He attempts to keep in mind the relationship of the viewer to the artwork, one of his main objectives being to transform the normally passive experience of viewing art into an active participation."

"...his latest effort, Domestic Tension, viewers can log onto the internet to contact or "shoot" Bilal with paintball guns. Bilal's objective is to raise awareness of virtual war and privacy, or lack thereof, in the digital age."

http://wafaabilal.com/works/

 I won't say much, as I'm not feeling well today, but this work was incredibly interesting. It addresses so many things-as does so much of Bilal's work- but what relates back to my interests and issues within my work, is the use of the Internet. It's almost like a video game, where you log on and shoot at people, only this time it's real.
It's like any kind of confrontation on the internet, these days. You can call someone something horrid, you can be anyone you wouldn't normally be in real life, and not have to worry about the consequences as such; there is no face value.

Earlier today I was also lead to this website - www.blueservo.com, where you can log on and watch surveillance cameras along the Texas/Mexico boarder. It reminded me of a site where you can listen to live police radio feeds, paired with atmospheric music. Listen here.
I always liked listening to the Minneapolis feed.

These three things may seem only slightly relative, but to me it's much more. I haven't figured everything out yet, but listening to the feeds from the police radios and watching the surveillance videos are two things one would think were illegal right? With the birth of the internet, we can all spy on one another, listen in to eachother cities, I just heard that some dude drove his car into a house in New York. It's an experience, it makes us seem so much closer, a lot less different. Maybe this post is just me thinking out loud, but Bilal's work started something today that I'm rather excited about. All this talk about Social Media and the net, about Science Fiction narratives etc etc... perhaps this is an avenue worth taking. Too many ideas in one basket! Blah!  

Man Bartlett - #24hKith

Speaking of social media.....

"Complete the sentence "I AM..." and tag it: #24hKith"

Image and film acquired from here.

'Love You Up' - Two Inch Punch

A brilliant response from Sandro Kopp...

Sandro Kopp, a figurative artist well known for his Skype portraiture, was one of my chosen artists for Theory's, Curate and Critique.
I emailed Kopp about using his images for the presentation, I also stated that I felt as though figurative work is less appreciated nowadays, but that his work has given me hope.
He replied, and not only did he say yes to my use of his images, he also said this:

"There is SO MUCH appreciation of figurative contemporary work nowadays. Don't let those suckers tell you anything else."

Thank you Sandro Kopp, for being 100% BOSS.

Check out his work here: it's frickin incredible.

Claire Bishop is a baddass, who can write a sweet article.

"In other words, relational art works seek to establish inter subjective encounters (be these liberal or potential) in which meaning is elaborated collectively rather then in the privatized space of individual consumption."

-Claire Bishop, Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics

I think this has a ton to do with what I've been thinking about recently in terms of blogging, and sharing of information. This is a research blog, to show what I'm reading, what I'm looking at, to back up my folders and research for Studio II. I post things that I read, watch, listen to, experience, but I also post things that I want to share with others, most of which are in my year group who may, or may not, be interested in what I have found while researching. 

Firstly, I made my blog public- not private so that only those I choose are allowed to see - and I did this because this act of making my blog private, reminded me of deliberate exclusion or withholding of collective information. I deliberately made it public so that those who wanted to share, take part in discussion or simply just read any articles I put up, can.

What am I but a speck in the blogisphere; a tiny, talking page with a follow number of 9. But this is not my first time in the blogging world; I made my first blog in mid-2009, my last year of High School. The two blogs, one on Blogspot and one on Tumblr, were purely aesthetic I think. I posted and re-posted photographs, drawings, music I liked from other blogs I'd trip over, from time to time. I enjoyed the collage of images most. If you press the archive button in Tumblr, all the images you've posted over the month and the previous months, mix between themselves, and I enjoyed the colour, the imagery, my interests all in one space.

But blogging for me has come a long way and the more I think about it, the more this blog has the potential to have been an ongoing work of mine since mid July, when we were told to start them.

Since a conversation with MJ last week, I've been thinking more about, and reading more about Relational Aesthetics (probably to Fiona's utter dismay). I came across Claire Bishop's text, Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics, I'm currently half way through the text, but needed to get some of these ideas out before they pummeled into nowhere land.

You can find Bishop's text here

Ranciere and Sloterdijk at the University of Warwick - PODCAST

"...debating the aesthetic both as a way of understanding the modern word and as a problematic category within the world."

3:00pm, Tuesday 20th May, 2008

I listened to the podcast here, and it was interesting - and this may seem a little strange- to hear Jacque Ranciere's voice, for the first time. After reading so much of his work, especially The Ignorant Schoolmaster, I never really thought about what his voice ACTUALLY sounded like. He kinda sounds jacked up on some sort of energy drink, in a cool, French, kind of way.

He talks kinda like Robin Williams would, doing an impression of Ranciere. But seriously.

In terms of the podcast, as much as I love Ranciere, he's pretty hard to follow sometimes. I enjoyed the introductions by Professor of French Studies, Sean Hand and Professor of Law, Ralf Rogowski as they touched on major works by both Ranciere and Sloterdijk, and did them fair justice. I have yet to listen to the whole thing but I am intrigued to listen to Sloterdijk speak as I am less familiar with his work.

The Political Compass

An interesting test that, judging by your answers, shows you where on the scale you sit, in terms of both your economic and socio-political stance. The questions I found to be rather convoluded and really confrontational at times because of their loaded nature. I found it hard also, that there was no "unsure" or middle-of-the-road button; often a place I find myself in questionaires or tests of this nature. However, it's always fun seeing where you stand (I'm not sure why...).It's also an interesting perspective on where our society is, in 2012. These questions are clearly a responce to our social issues, our present government and our capitalist structure.



 This was my scoring on the test (below)...More liberal then Ghandi! hahaha.
A friend got a similar score, only far, far, far more liberal. It makes me wonder about the political mind of the youth in Auckland, especially those who I know at both Elam and AUT. It truely differs so much. I'm even more surprised at the lack of knowledge or care for politics and economics, in our own little country, and the world in general.

Speaking of which I give it up to Amiria from Mark, artist collective at Elam School of Fine Arts for finding this test.

Take the test here

"Given that words too often supersede handmade visuals—paintings, drawings, sculpture, and so on—how to make those visuals matter? That is, how to contemporize painting, say, or, more specifically, return it to the level of discussion it engendered fifty years ago, before our world went mad with beeps, and biomorphic forms and various color fields and portraiture and drips and concentric circles inspired conversation, too."

- Hilton Als

Text from Sandro Kopp's exhibition 'There You Are" at Lehmann Maupin, New York, 2012.
This entire text is beautiful and I will post it below. However, this excerpt struck me as it relates whole heartedly to conversations i've had recently about my over-arching ideas this year regarding the contemporary nature of painting in 2012.

In fact, here's the whole write up...

You see too little. No sooner do you tumble out of bed than your eyes search for some means of connection, words that describe yourself to yourself: Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr: You don’t know what you look like. You don’t know what shape you present to the world. You don’t know what your eyes say, since they never look up; like Narcissus you are always looking down at your reflection, but instead of water, it’s a Blackberry screen. You talk too much. No sooner do the words tumble out than they devolve into meaningless sound-symbols signifying the busy work of thinking, of being, of feeling, while doing very little of the above. You lack half-wit. You plug into your day like another appliance: a double pronged, bi-pedaling thing immune to sensation you cannot mitigate through a television screen, a computer screen, an iPad screen, mobile phones. You don’t know what your mouth looks like as it shapes the words that tell you about the world in which you assume you have a place because you share the same language—sort of. What about the language of the soul? Individuality? That which our individual bodies sing only to ourselves? What about all that Walt Whitman gave us when he wrote, “I celebrate myself, and sing myself,/ And what I assume you shall assume,/ For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.” You can’t celebrate yourself because you don’t know yourself, trapped in that net of beeping words. 

Given that words too often supersede handmade visuals—paintings, drawings, sculpture, and so on—how to make those visuals matter? That is, how to contemporize painting, say, or, more specifically, return it to the level of discussion it engendered fifty years ago, before our world went mad with beeps, and biomorphic forms and various color fields and portraiture and drips and concentric circles inspired conversation, too. In recent years, the brilliant English artist, David Hockney, in addition to his work on canvas, has begun to use the iPhone as another canvas. Every day, via this Apple method, he sends images to twelve or so friends—still-lifes, landscapes, self-portraits, whatever he comes up with that day. By using an electronic tool for communication, instead of the transmission of more information, Hockney subverts standard use, and marries the artist's hand to what can't be avoided—our contemporary world—and what we misuse: apparatuses like the iPhone that allow us to spread more and more blather. 

In Sandro Kopp’s recent painting, “Mum,” a dark-haired woman sits in a room. She looks as if she’s lit from within. She has a long face, and she wears a headphone—the most modern of accessories. She’s looking down, and to the side of the visual field. But at what? She’s thin, and her body communicates that she is trying to communicate something, but what? In Sandro Kopp’s painting, “Viktor and Rolf,” two men sit against a white wall. The wall looks as if it’s lit from within. Both men are thin—one more than the other—and their silence is palpable. It is a silent painting, made electric through light, and brushwork: patches of lit heaviness alternating with dark shapes that communicate something about his subjects bodies, they’re being joined, but in what way? They, too, look a bit off center—which is say, it appears they are, and aren’t looking at the artist, all at once. In Sandro Kopp’s painting, “Maria,” we see a woman’s head. She seems to be lit from within. Brown hair frames a facial plane composed of lines made out of strong brushstrokes. Who is Maria? What accounts for the sensuality of her lips, the wry intelligence in her eyes? And why does she look as if she is and isn’t looking at the artist? In Sandro Kopp’s recent paintings, the sitter poses in a field of ether. The artist works in collaboration with his subjects, but at a remove: they pose in the terrible intimacy and distance that Skype affords them. Kopp can talk to his subjects, certainly, as they adjust their eyes to the image of the artist recording who they are, or thought they were, or who Kopp sees them as, but he can only touch you through paint, through his attention, and his various descriptions, on and off the canvas—seeing through modern technology, but transmogrified, somehow, through the artist’s eyes, which is where vision belongs. Like Hockney before him, Kopp’s work isn’t just about painting—that is, the image qua image—but about how to incorporate the artist’s subjectivity with a modern contrivance, thus not only making painting matter in a post-Impressionist world, but the better to show ourselves to ourselves in a framework we understand: that distant and close world where talk is cheap, but it doesn’t have to be, and paint communicates our inner silence, the only vocabulary worth knowing.

Text received from; http://www.sandro-kopp.com/41.html

Wellington Composer, Rhian Sheehan

Straight up, this is a little ridiculous.

 (Their family is nuts...seriously though they're all musically on crack.)

Here's some music for ya'll to study to. Get those Curate and Critique's done!

In first year at Elam I took NZ Music as a General Ed and it was a BRILLIANT paper.

Our musical history from rock n roll to pop, through to our contemporary composers-just to name a few- is really interesting!

Tracks like Nusquam (the second from the top), are a massive influence on my making. As a musician listening to instrumental music, with a narrative within the composition of the instruments is an incredible learning experience. As a theatre geek and film fanatic, music is the addition of another dimension. As an art maker, it's an inspiration source and a place where emotion is evoked from the subconscious. I enjoy the narrative within these pieces and the use of different instruments to create bodies.

Performance is something I have heavily studied this year and with that came the notion of using voice as a medium. I haven't worked it out fully but it's always been something in the back of my mind and I continue to read about performance, about music within performance, about voice and body within a contemporary art context.
At talk week, as I ended the performance with an acapella piece called 'Cheerleader' by the artist St. Vincent (Annie Clark), people from the other side of the studio and even outside came over to my performance space. I was so interested in this. How the voice carries and calls. What does it evoke in people that they gravitate towards a voice. Is it nostalgia? Is it curiosity?
Does the voice, a singing voice, have a sort of power, for lack of a better word.

I became interested in protest songs; the songs of men and women across the Middle East, which this year has been filled with protest and riot. Our own little courntry too, whose University protests I attended. Both very different but the use of voice, as a collective this time, is key.

Sheehan's music however uses little to no voice, but he's an incredible composer. The instruments sing for themselves.

Rashid Johnson makes 'Things to Put Things On'

Rashid Johnson's practice is based around domestics and the everyday, as well as ideas of Escapism. Incorporated into work surrounded by dialogue of afrofuturism and "afroscism", Johnson creates a work of, things to put things on. Tables, desks, shelves, etc.

SUPER cool work, and a super cool guy.

Andy had actually been talking to me about building shelves to put 'things' on.
Like a collectors exhibition.

Rammellzee

BATTLE STATION, 2011

I Know Girls (Body Love) - Mary Lambert

If there's a song you gotta listen to, it's this one.^
I say this because I appreciate what Lambert is talking about, obviously, being a girl etc.
But it's true, the morphing of the female in this world is strange and it links closely, I think, with technological growth and how we, as women, as young adults, as people, relate to ourselves. Both outside and inside the computer or our phones or whatever.

Listen to more below.
It's spoken word, but Lambert is also an incredible singer. Featuring in the song "Same Love", a few posts below. 

Mariele Neudecker

Mariele Neudecker talks about her work, 'Heaven the Sky'.

Awesome piece! They're like little fish tanks with water all the way to the top, with fiberglass, spray painted mountains. Watch what she does next though that takes it to the next level of coooool.

What she speaks about also, in terms of viewership and perception, and painting too!

'Bird in Hand' Ellen Gallagher

It strikes a chord because it reminds me of drawings I do. I feel like there's no substitute for the original of this, I want to see more but the pictures never do it justice.

This brings back the question of narrative, and how it can be done in [my]work... cos I think i've avoided it for a while.

picture from: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/gallagher-bird-in-hand-t12450

FORWARD

Have you read the YouTube comments lately
"Man that's gay"
Gets dropped on the daily
We've become so numb to what we're sayin'
Our culture founded from oppression
Yeah, we don't have acceptance for 'em
Call each other faggots
Behind the keys of a message board
A word routed in hate
Yet our genre still ignores it
Gay is synonymous with the lesser
It's the same hate that's caused wars from religion
Gender and skin color
Complexion of your pigment
The same fight that lead people to walk-outs and sit-ins
It's human rights for everybody
There is no difference

The Propaganda Project

The Propaganda Project is a student project blog dedicated to the issue of propaganda and understanding it.
Earlier in the year Maddi Atherfold and I spoke about doing a collaborative project for drawing. She had been spoken to about "silencing" as a topic or discussion in her work. We thought about "silencing" as a basis for a project and as we work very differently, we had different takes on the word. Maddi's was very physical, with her structures held together by placement of her objects and sometimes string or rubber bands. I thought more of imagery, and setteled in the idea of propaganda.The collab and the work quickly disintergrated as such, but the ideas have still been floating around my head.

Mark, the collective from Elam School of Fine Arts, posted 3 links today. All of them, as always, were really interesting. One of the links was The Propaganda Project.

On the blog, there was a page called 'Questions for Consideration', and they are just that.

1)      Where do you generally draw the line between persuasion and propaganda?

2)      Do you feel that your education used propagandistic techniques to create consensus (for example, in high school history textbooks?)  How so?

3)      Do you think propaganda can at times be used in positive ways?

4)      Is it necessary, to some degree, to keep people in the dark (specifically when it comes to policy decisions made by the government)?

5)      Does human psychology make us susceptible to propaganda, or is its use a byproduct of the society we live in?

6)      How much responsibility should the public take in educating themselves, and how responsible are the media and government for providing accurate information?

7)      What do you think would be the effects of having a well-informed, critically thinking public?

The last one has particularly stuck with me. I am currently reading 1984 by George Orwell and (without spoiling it) have gotten to the end of the book, which at a particular part, literally made me jump with fright. No joke. It's that messed up.

(But it's messed up in a really, real way. Which makes it entirely more scary then any horror film.)

^hahahahahaha best.

 

1984 is a novel, one could describe as Science Fiction. Written in the 1930's by George Orwell, the son of a gun predicted, as such, many things about the future. Communication via 'telescreens' being one of them. The story is set in Oceania-one of 3 sections of our earth- the other two being Eastasia and Eurasia. Oceania is always at war with either one or the other.

At Oceania's heart lies the Party, made up of four Ministries. 

The Ministry of Love

The Ministry of Truth

The Ministry of Peace

and the Ministry of Plenty.

And in complete and utter power of everything and everyone, is Big Brother, *cue light bulb* always watching, always listening.

Inside the Ministry of Truth, works a man by the named of Winston, who finds himself questioning every part of his society and the regime he's confined to.

What does Winston do 'bout it?

I DUNNO, READ THE BOOK.


Picture sourced from http://www.serwer.wssm.edu.pl/~jakub_s/cms/?page_id=66

Curate and Critique

'Truth Is Concrete' 21st-28th September 2012

by iconoclasistas

"Truth is concrete is a 24-hour, 7-day marathon camp: for 170 hours more than 200 artists, activists and theorists lecture, perform, play, produce, discuss and collect useful strategies and tactics in art and politics. A full grant program additionally invited 100 students and young professionals from all over the world. The marathon is a platform, a toolbox as well as a performative statement. It is a machine that runs non-stop – often too fast, sometimes too slow. All day, all night. It produces thought, argument and knowledge, but it also creates frustration and exhaustion." - truthisconcrete.org

Go to the website www.truthisconcrete.org

There is a conversation about art and political action that's really worth a read. It explains the project and who's involved, there's even a link to a continuous live streaming of the events on 21st of September till the 28th.

"On our travels during the last one and a half years – be it to Zuccotti or Tahrir Square... Tunis, Rio or Buenos Aires – everywhere artists were among the first to get involved, among the first to join the political and social movements. But how did art, how did artistic strategies and tactics play a role? At a time when art, theory and practice seem to be constantly lagging behind reality? When art is seen more and more as a mere leftist hobby rather than a foundation of humanity?" - truthisconcrete.org

good questions.

The Russian Pavilion at Venice Architecture Biennale 2012

Interactive and engaging, the space is activated when viewers use the tablets and scan the codes. This is probably one of the coolest things i've seen in a while!

Some things I've been thinking about lately -

Finding an internship somewhere?

Where is there even a place to intern?

Where do Visual Arts people fit in to the whole scheme of things?

As much as I'd like my own practice, I'd like to do other things too;

like in a more corporate setting perhaps.

working along side design people.

And how can I learn those skills to broaden my knowledge?

In terms of my own practice;

What ideas am I focused on?

What interests me?

I will keep an inter-disciplinary approach to my work, but at present i'd like to focus on painting. I tried to explain to Andy a couple days ago that I go through stages, where I have a lot of energy and I turn to more performative work, more hands on. Then sometimes I get more tired, more inward and I find myself drawing or painting more. Of course I keep all aspects of making open; if I am painting I normally have objects around me that i've collected or found that I feel, contribute to the painting (and vice versa), or anything that I'm doing. I like to keep many conversations open, conversations meaning between object and painting etc. Work speaking to work, which really helps me to find pathways into new projects or thinking.

Recently I did a painting of a cat for my partner, for her birthday. The cat is her's. The cat is named Buddy. Buddy is suspended in air, sleeping, floating in green and teal space.

I think everything we do, whether it's specifically for studio work or a partner or a friend or whatever, contributes to ideas and also technique. Every painting, anything we do, furthers knowledge... and this cat painting that I didn't think much of, was something I loved doing, undeniably and lately, i've really been struggling with doing work I think will please others, and doing work that is enjoyable! I love figurative, I love people and things and animals and plants and things in this world and I love to draw them and paint them. That is what I love and why should that be lost? Is it not conceptual enough? Is it not contemporary? (These are just questions, I aint bein a smart ass)

And this all brings me back to the things I have been thinking about lately...

What do I do with this degree once i'm finished? What kind of job can I get?

I'm not interested in being a curator, i'm not, at this point, interested in ONLY having a personal practice. I'm interested in tutoring or lecturing at University, but not high school teaching.

So many things to think about.

Here's some photos of said cat painting (unfinished) Will get a nice finished photo of it, soon.

Dreaming the Mainstream; Science Fiction and Contemporary Art

Mark von Schlegell

Contemplating the relationship between Science Fiction and Contemporary Art

Jessica Stockholder Essays & Writings

Jessica Stockholder has done some interesting writings, check them out here.
Below is a collection of essays by Jessica Stockholder, Ann Lauterbach, Rochelle Feinstein and Sheila Lavrant de Bretteville (What a name!)

A lot of these writings from Stockholder are poetic examples of contextual statements which accompany her work and exhibitions. 

Powerful Art & Power

The essay by Ann Lauterbach is my favourite in this little collection. All four of them referrence their own experiences of September 11, 2001 and as a global event that's close to me in particular, the way Lauterbach speaks of the events and her experience as an American Poet was really engaging.

'Cool Calm and Collective'

Last week I attended Night School at my friends studio space down at Elam. Six Elam students have created a collective, called mark. The aim, "to share knowledge and contribute to everyone’s learning rather then withholding skills, resources and time due to your own time constrains on individual projects". The greatest part is that this collective is open to anyone and everyone, getting together three times a week to discuss local and international issues, history, contemporary art theories and work, and a whole bunch of other stuff you could possibly name and yeah, they'd probably be talking about it.

The Treaty of Waitangi was the big subject last week, with two articles from Paul Holmes and Rodney Hide, hitting the spotlight. And for good reason too. Let me just give you a hint as to, the attitude, of these articles...

"Waitangi Day produced its usual hatred, rudeness, and violence against a clearly elected Prime Minister from a group of hateful, hate-fuelled weirdos who seem to exist in a perfect world of benefit provision. This enables them to blissfully continue to believe that New Zealand is the centre of the world, no one has to have a job and the Treaty is all that matters." - Paul Holmes, 'Waitangi Day a complete waste', Feb 11, 2012

And that's just the first paragraph, not even the worst of it. Rodney ain't so sweet either...

"The Waitangi Tribunal is our Babylonian priesthood. Its members spend their days poring over a tatty old text seeking guidance for modern-day government.

The funny thing isn't that they do it. The funny thing is that anyone takes them seriously." - Rodney Hide, 'End the Treaty gravy train', Aug 12, 2012

Again, just the first paragraph. So we picked these articles apart, bit by bit and discussed both sides of the story, but it was a full circle agreement that we all found these articles to be full of racism, hate and biggotry.

To fully understand and have any form of judgement other then under my own morals and feelings, I needed to understand a little more about WHAT the Treaty of Waitangi actually IS and HOW and WHY and what exactly is said in the articles within. One gets taught these things at High School of course, but with passion and enthusiasm? Perhaps not. And in saying that, I never retained much information on the subject because, simply, it was just not made that interesting. It was just another tick in the curriculum box, I feel, and this is what I suspect to be the reasons for all the hate for Waitangi Day and the "irrational Maori ghastliness with spitting, smugness, self-righteousness and the usual neurotic Maori politics, in which some bizarre new wrong we've never thought about will be lying on the table." ....Seriously Holmes? You on crack B.

So we went through the Treaty (the english version), and Titiriti (the Maori version), and how Pakeha signed the Treaty,and Maori signed Titiriti. This is where trouble starts though, because both agreed to what they wanted, therefore both were promised what they wanted, but the translations between the two were a little mixed, you see. (I'll get Lana from mark to shed some serious light on this cos she's a boss and I'm still learning.) We came to the conclusion education may be the best step to defeating this looming dark cloud above our heads, but do people even think it's relevant? What is relevant then? Our "Contemporary New Zealand Racism" as one member of mark put it wonderfully, last night. And you can't have contemporary without history, infact what can you have without history? So yes, in my opinion it's relevant.

Speaking of contemporary, and another matter we discussed; our good friend, Meme.

And in particular... the New Zealand Meme page on Facebook.  

Meme's are interesting things - oh, and pronounced "Meem"- they highlight generalizations of people and culture and turn them into repetitive jokes, and they're relatable, they sometimes speak the thoughts everyone forgets to mention, but as soon as they are, all you can say is..

"Yes!!! hahaha!!! Yes yes!!!"

But Memes have progressed, like everything, and have become a way to express racial stereotypes and criticisms in sometimes, not the most intellectual way.

Here's the most talked about NZ Meme of late...

And I just found this one with the title "This should be the new Maori Flag" 

....

Anyway, the attitude that comes along with these Meme pages and the creation of these images comes with conditions... you can like these pages and interact with them, as long as you remain light hearted... 

There are a lot of unspoken rules when it comes to Meme pages and image creations... Like not being cruel towards disabilities for example. 

The New Zealand Meme page has written this about it's page, 

"Any relation to real life people or events is purely coincidental. We do not own or take credit for any of these photos/images posted on this page unless otherwise stated. Any content on this page belongs to the Republic of Facebook and the internet and we do not take any credibility or responsibility to any emotional, physical or metaphysical damage caused by these images. Nor are we trying to alter any political, racial or social views. Furthermore, please understand that this page was not made with the intention to offend people, their races, their political, or their religious views."

That's Interesting.

mark discussed last week about potentially shutting this page down, about reporting it and even potentially taking it to the Human Right Commision. They posed the question, should articles like Rodney Hide's and Paul Holmes' even be allowed to be be published? Should these Meme's be allowed on the internet with their blatant racism?

My question is, if you were to stop these things from hitting the net, where would the censoring stop? 

The censoring itself would be by someone, and their subjective opinion. 

Everything would be compared to the last thing that was censored, and people would ask, "Well... if Holmes wasn't allowed to publish that article on Maori and Waitangi Day, then why should this article on gay marriage be published..." etc etc etc

Alright, i'm done now. 

It was an incredibly interesting night and I invite anyone who wants to come along, let me know and i'll send you all the details. mark are doing something awesome here and as a collective of art students ourselves, we should get together and support each other - and further our knowledge on a broader spectrum.

Guess I better get started

“All of you here have one hundred thousand bad drawings in you. The sooner you
get rid of them, the better it will be for everyone.”- Chuck Jones

Thanks for this Jeff, you good thing you.

The word "illustrative"...

"... has been some what derogatory in the context of art, because an illustration, as an image inspired by a text, implies an easy reliance on a source outside the artistic imagination. Like the equally pejorative "decorative", "illustrative" also connotes a graphically lively, colourful kind of drawing produced for commercial purposes or entertainment. Above all, an illustration is readable, suggesting a lack of discursive complexity that has in the past sealed its banishment from the fine-art discourse. If the literary equivalent of the drawing might be the lyric poem, illustration finds it's analogy in something closer to the ground: the narrative folktale, repository for the stock characters and the social and moral conventions of vernacular culture." - (2002). Popular Culture and National Culture. In Drawing Now: eight propositions (p. 104). New york: The Museum of Modern Art.

 

Matti Braun, parallel universes and science fiction.

     Matti Braun, 'S.R.' (2002-Ongoing)                       Picture acquired from here

This guy! Okay now this, this is what I'm talking about!

"The main hall of the Kunstverein Freiburg is full of water, from which the museum’s mighty pilasters rise like the modern furniture in the director’s villa in Blake Edwards’ 1968 comedy The Party. The 1930s building, with its huge ceiling window, seems to straddle a natural pool after Matti Braun lined the floor of the former baths with sheeting and filled it up. The black mirror of the pool is interspersed with circular slices of tree trunk, allowing daring visitors to cross the hall by jumping from one to the next. The title of this piece, and of the exhibition - S. R. - stands for Braun’s inspiration, the Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray. But the exhibition also explores science fiction, the visual poems of the great Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore, Steven Spielberg and the dark waters that carry culture from one continent to another." - http://www.frieze.com/issue/review/matti_braun/

Yes yes bloody hell yes!

The reason I get so excited about this is because Braun is interested in what I'm interested in, and I've been finding it excruciatingly hard to find artists with the same interests (e.g. Science Fiction, Animation, Science in general, Geek subjects 101 etc etc). I can find a thousand who can talk politics and other cultural subjects I'm interested in, like participation or emancipation blah blah. But I find it hard to find artists who love geeky things such as I, and who execute their ideas profoundly well, and exhibit them successfully!

Well I just found an entire exhibition of artists, based around the idea of the Parallel Universe.

www.arnolfini.org.uk/blog/2012/03/20/parallel-universe-in-brief/

So happy.

"One of the central themes of popular entertainment today is the idea of a parallel universe. The Hollywood dream factory provides a constant barrage of escapism based on the pleasure of temporarily suspending all responsibilities of daily life and being transported to an alternative reality. Meanwhile, the new global world order is made up of multiple conflicting realities existing side by side. A Parallel Universe is a year long series of exhibitions, film, music, talks, performance and special events taking place in 2012, exploring alternative realities and co-existing worlds.

In the context of globalisation and instant communications around the planet it is no longer possible to argue that there is one privileged reality. Old certainties no longer stand and the super-rich live literally next door to the super-poor. Even the idea of universal human rights can be questioned as a Western tool for furthering its own ideological interests, in the name of ‘freedom’. If narratives of history are seen to be conditional, benefiting particular social and economic interests, re-telling histories becomes a significant part of creating new realities, and uncovering idiosyncratic pockets of forgotten history.

Thus A Parallel Universe explores the notion of multifold worlds, possible, parallel, fictional, desired worlds, worlds different to the one we live in." - http://www.arnolfini.org.uk/blog/2012/03/20/parallel-universe-in-brief/

I think I just confirmed my theme for 'Curate and Critique'

Check out the link to the Arnolfini website at the bottom of my blog. There's some seriously sweet stuff on there.



While i'm at it...

http://www.thefaceofpanic.blogspot.co.nz/

Tao and Laura Wells have started doing podcasts/downloadable radio shows! Take a listen, they have guests from artists to politicians to well, Sue Bradford is a regular. They also have an array of crazy music to listen to between readings on contemporary art subjects and theories as well as political readings. It's a rather educational and at times buzzy experience, but none the less, give it a whirl!
They're already up to episode 5 and they're all available from the site above.

In this episode you'll hear Dick Whyte (Who also did the film The Happy Bene) and Sue Bradford as well as the readings;

-Franco "Bifo" Berardi. (2009). The Soul at Work, from alienation to autonomy (p.37). Los Angeles CA: Semiotext(e). 

-Peter Burger. (1989). Theory of the Avant-Garde (pp.44-46). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

-Malcolm X, with the assistance of Alex Haley. (1968). The Autobiography of Malcolm X (pp.143-147). England: Penguin Books.

Iron Lass vs. Happy Bene

Actually this is a super interesting thing to watch after i've just watched The Iron Lady, (starring the wonderous Meryl Streep) a film about the tough old broad herself, Margaret Thatcher.

Photo from here

Her policies are somewhat familiar to some in our own country, contributing to the gap between the rich and the poor growing larger. And I don't know everything! The movie,The Iron Lady, left me with a lot of questions as to who she was and what happened in that time, but when as I'm watching The Happy Bene - the film below- I'm feeling a strange natural juxtaposition.

People are forced into jobs where they sit stagnent and unhappy, so what do we do about it, as a society? Is being on the benefit a waste of tax payers money? (My opinion is one for later.) Where does that money go otherwise? Maggie T clearly had a mindset of get off your ass and get yourself a job and make something of your life, and that's an amazing outlook to have, but she also went so far as to try and impliment the same tax for everyone, regardless of whether you were employed or not. The issues and questions Tao Wells raises in The Happy Bene are legitimate concerns we can all question.

I'm rambling, so listen to this!

'The Happy Bene' - by Wells Group

THE HAPPY BENE

a film by Tao Wells and Dick Whyte

A film by Dick Whyte and Tao Wells documenting the Wells Group operation; "The Beneficiary's Office".

"What you did Tao, I thought, was incredibly courageous and profound... To be both dependent on that system and to so publicly expose the issues around that system was very brave... to be a public beneficiary that's about as bad as it gets. " (Chris Kraus)

"You actually have to ask the question frankly should Creative New Zealand actually exist if this is what they do." (Roger Douglas, New Zealand MP)

"A vacant commercial space is a site of anxiety, more so than a vacant dwelling. If it happens to include a shop front, its emptiness becomes a concrete representation of crisis. An empty shop on the corner can bring down the whole neighbourhood. We use phrases like that: to bring down, to depress, as if to reify the mood. The Letting Space projects are partly a response to the anxiety, a way of replacing those conspicuous absences with another sort of activity, another kind of trade. But what of the empty office on the sixth floor of an otherwise bustling building? What of the emptiness of the spaces that we cannot see?

That Tao Wells' Beneficiary's Office occupied such a space is one of the least commented on aspects of this intensely debated project, yet it fitted in perfectly with the subject matter. Being unemployed means being less visible, having less of a voice, keeping or being made to keep a lower profile. And so Wells and the curators chose an empty office on the sixth floor of a downtown Wellington building, upstairs from a branch of the Bank of New Zealand. Below, the engine room of commerce; above, an interrogation of the nature and the value of work. Choosing for the first time in the series not to occupy a shop also meant a shift in the terms of implicit comparison, for business has a far broader set of meanings than retail, and these would quickly come into play." (Giovanni Tiso, read more: lettingspace.org.nz/essay-the-beneficiarys-office/)"

- http://vimeo.com/wellsgroup

There are so many awesome points considered in this film by Tao Wells and Dick Whyte. They talk about the happiness of workers, making their way up the chain day after day in the towers of our cities. They talk about "getting people involved in the direction of society" and the up-side to unemployment. This contemporary art project was designed to spark debate, and that's exactly what it did. The film itself is bare in aesthetic, but it's worth every moment of watching and incredibly interesting and thought provoking not just about economics and politics, but about our country and our people. I think about my partner sitting up in PWC everyday, coming home with sore hands and a sore back, starting at 8:30am and finishing sometimes at 11pm or 12. The people at the bottom, like my partner are kept unhappy so they strive for the top, and is even any peace there?

Tao questions us as artists and how we are supposed to live and work and think and be. Are we "neutered"? Are we "trained like obedient dogs"?

At 34:00, we hear Tao doing an interview on Radio One (Nov. 6, 2010) talking about art and artists in this time. If anything, check this out.