Art and Audience

Been doing a little research on relational aesthetics.

From Bourriards writing (he coined the term):

http://www.creativityandcognition.com/blogs/legart/wp-content/uploads/2006/07/Borriaud.pdf

Some responses:

http://transform.eipcp.net/correspondence/1196340894#redir

Interesting stuff. I think alot of the art in Hartneys chapter is really well thought out on a conceptual level. But I like that it reaches out beyond an academic audience (unlike alot of the text based works that we have been looking at that formed part of the conceptual art movement)

Art and Politics

I wanted to put up a post up about 'culture jamming' in response to this weeks topic. Art beyond the gallery and beyond the myth of the capital 'A' Artist. Art that is organic and autonomous.Culture jamming is in my mind a meeting point between art and activism: from messing with billboards, to banner dropping, to flash mobbing, to free parties, to street performance, etc, etc and all the bits in between...

Check out Graffiti Research Lab for some hot tools to get you started ;P

http://graffitiresearchlab.com/

Also, the Billboard Liberation Front and Space Highjackers are deffinitely worth a google if you're interested..

Art & its Institutions: Blu

If, within this train of thought, we are critiquing the gallery/museum as the space for art then why not look at artists who bypass it all together? Although Heartney doesn't mention it in her chapter, i thought it would be cool to raise the subject of graph culture as a direct subversion of art and its institutions.

Blu is an italian mural artist who I am particularly interested in for his mural scale stop-animation works. I think these works, although not so much sculptural, have cross-overs with performanative and installation practices in terms of their engagement with and response to space.

Heres some images, but for the full effect, deffinitely check out youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uad17d5hR5s

Art & Architechture: Porosity Project

This is a really interesting project being undertaken by a friends phd supervisor, Richard Goodwin. From my understanding it is about mapping the 'porosity' or, the public accessibility, of 'private' space in cities. Dressed in appropriate business attire, 'researchers' enter private space, office buildings etc and measure the amount of time/level of exploration possible. This information is then mapped according to a scale of lesser to greater porosity/accessibility. How are our concepts of space and freedom of movement within space limited and controlled by social understandings of ownership? How solid are the rules which govern our movement within cities? are these rules primarily enforced by fear and the pretense of surveillance? Does this matter? Who is granted what access and how embedded in social hierarchies are these freedoms? How important is it to defend our access to space?

Most importantly: what do cities begin to look like when we remove the restrictions of access to different spaces? And what possibilites are opened up! (mmmmmm!)

Goodwin writes: "Porosity Research seeks to classify spaces which exist deep within the skin or fabric of privately owned city buildings...One of the vital needs or reasons for this work lies in finding ways of preventing cities from being shut down as a result of rampant capitalism in the ‘Age of Terror’. Porosity as a strategy attacks this trend. It seeks the dissolution of architecture through a type of mapping which dissolves existing boundaries associated with rights of access. Capitalism needs to be continually measured by mapping or defining what is public against what is private. It can be argued that the social construction of a city is as important as its physical manifestation as buildings. It can also then be argued that a city which allows public space to penetrate its private space enables a healthier social construction."

Sorry this post is so text dense, couldn't find any images.. but superbly interesting nonetheless.

Overview: Wolfgang Laib: Returning to What Is

Darren James Jorgensen’s interview with German artist, Wolfgang Laib, entitled Returning to What Is provides an insight into Laib’s personal philosophy on his art and practice.

Jorgensen provides us with an overview of Laib’s work, which is embedded in the use of organic materials such as beeswax, milk and pollen. Simultaneously he probes out the motivations behind Laib’s practice, which is grounded in the rhetoric of abstract concepts like purity but also in the experience of process.

Having access to Laib’s direct transcribed voice allows readers a real sense of the artist behind the works. The often open-ended nature of Laib’s language in statements like “its about the pollen” or “how the milk is” provides a complete reflection of the simplicity of his works and his insistence on letting the materials speak for themselves. Both his language and his art allow their audiences to encode their own experiences when responding.

Jorgensen covers a number of the topical features of Laib’s work including the spiritual aspects of his practice, Laib’s connection to and understanding of the concept of art, his self-professed ‘non-european’ cultural influences and a description of his studio. He also goes into details of Laibs upcoming exhibition in Perth and queries his response to traditional indigenous Australian art practices in the contemporary art scene. It is interesting to note that again Laib’s primary focus is on materials, expressing concern over the move away from traditional natural paints to acrylics.

The article also includes a number of images of his work, including examples of his work with beeswax and pollen.

Overall, Jorgensen presents an insightful and personal account of the artists practice and beliefs about art.

Art and Spirituality: Mariko Mori

For the thematic area Art and Spirituality I have chosen to research Japanese artist Mariko Mori.

Her work embodies a vision of contemporary spirituality, which fuses high-technology with Japanese religious tradition. It exemplifies the optimistic sense of interconnectedness that the advancement of global communications and technologies has brought about and covers a number of the salient features of the thematic area; her work is at once an exploration of cultural identity, a genuine personal spiritual quest, and an attempt to affect her audience into altered states of consciousness.

In Wave UFO 1999-2002, viewers enter an alien vessel 3 at a time and are hooked up to brainwave monitoring electrodes which generate a light-show from their biofeedback. This is the psychic world of cyberspace and offers its audience an immersive and visually ethereal spectacle, inviting them to momentarily transcend the mundane in much the same way traditional temples and churches do.



Wave UFO 1999-2002, fiberglass, resin, 34 feet long x 17 feet wide x 14 feet.


"Miko no Inori" or the Shaman-Girl’s Prayer 1996, is another of Mori's periodic self-transformations. Shape-shifting into a silver-eyed, silver-haired visionary, Mori dances with a crystal ball to a haunting Japanese song. In Mori's fantasy it is the cyborg which has access to the world of spirit and the unknown, her pearlescent machinic breast plates implying transcendence of the flesh through the purity of the machine.



Miko no Inori (The Shaman-Girl’s Prayer) 1996, video still.

Check out the video on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bwl6G9L6bk8


Mori’s "Enlightenment Capsule" equips the imagined meditator with everything necessary on their quest for enlightenment, including a system of natural light filtration which removes ultraviolet and infrared radiation. No surprises if this reads like a sales line, the paradoxical nature of this material path to the immaterial, embedded in plexiglass-kitsch, is absolutely apparent. In fact it is a hallmark of Mori’s new religious iconography which forces us to reassess our perceptions of spirituality in light of the increasing technological augmentation of reality in contemporary society.




“Enlightenment Capsule” 1998, optic fibre cables, glass, aprox 150 by 100 cm.


Mori renews our visions of the sacred, questioning the progress of spirituality within our contemporary context right at its interface with technology. Is it technological advancement which will allow us to transcend the flesh and connect with higher consciousness?

Bibliography

Baas, J. and Jacob, M.J. (eds.) "Buddha Mind in Contemporary Art" University of California Press, Berkeley, 2004.

Cotter,H. "Drawing on a Rich Lode of Shinto-Buddhist Culture; In Brooklyn, a mix of adolescent fantasy, fashion and narcissicism." New York Times, Apr 16, 1999. p. E33 [accessed online: http://www.library.usyd.edu.au/]

Eliel, C.S., "Interpreting Tradition: Mariko Mori’s Nirvana" in Moriko Mori, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago Distributed Art Publishers Inc., New York, 1999, p.27-31.

Molon, D., Countdown to Ectasy in Moriko Mori Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago Distributed Art Publishers Inc., New York, 1999, p.1-16.

http://www.galerieperrotin.com/artiste-Mariko_Mori-6.html [accessed: 20/08/10]

Art and Identity

I know its not sculpture, but for a topic like art and identity I can't help thinking about the graphic novel 'Persepolis'. Its been made into an animation too and is definitely worth checking out. It is the story of a young girl growing up in Iran, forging her own identity in circumstances of violence, political volatility, and increasing religious fundamentalism.

Art and The Body

There seems to be a tendency when talking about the body within art to focus on gender and sexuality. I found Tania Bruguera's focus on the body as a product of social and political forces an interesting deviance from this general trend. Works like 'the burden of guilt' (1997) position the body in relation to a network of cultural histories and symbols.

http://www.taniabruguera.com/cms/210-0-Cuba+in+Tania+Brugueras+work+The+body+is+the+social+body.htm