Art and audience

Today i learn 't how to play an art game with an audience. it was like a test and involved memory. memory can be useful.there is a point when you get so over saturated with half formed ideas and information that it is hard to care about anything except the the immediate. a way in is sometimes through the use of fun to generate audience participation. the old fine line between active and passive participation is crucial to the way an art game is generated and how it will continue. the web is like a game which you can plug into anytime into any part (in theory) is possibly part of its popularity. but its not really even one on one- the audience just is not there in the old school sense and this must make a difference to the reactions you get .

ART and politics

some thoughts on the topic
history (as recorded) is self centered and selfish as it is normally recorded by the so called winners.
Art can operate closer to the personal of politics than political parties because they work to apeal to popularist opinions.
To be politicaly active you need to be at least active in politics although it could be said that doing nothing is doing something its a long bow to draw.
concerning mutual obligation, its usually seen as inherent in social interaction and participation.
Australian Nationalism- beware of the identity you have when you have no identity.
I really thought that presenting the title and details vertically at the side of the picture read from top down is a good idea, its not so distracting to the image but the info. is there.

art and institutions -blogging style

From a social sciences site i get this:
Commonly, experts officially recognize five major social institutions that have been evident in some way in every civilization in history:

• government
• religion
  
• education
  
• economics
• family

i note that art is not part of this list, nor is language. common experts eh!
what i've noticed so far and this is no disrespect to anybody in particular is that blogging seems to be a one way discourse with pictures. This concerns me because i feel like i'm writting to a vacuum that represents the latest global communication tool.
Are we scared to comment or does it just take to much time?
might a comment offend or is a comment just a comment?
Is language inherently dangerous in the wrong hands.
Who decides and who owns these words ? me or you or the corporation that is google.
oh did i mention the seductive black background that has been thoughtfully provided to make the images and text look more interesting.

Art and Globalisation.

A summary of my thoughts on the above topic with an introduction to the artistic practice of Joyce Kozloff.
Art and Globalisation involves many layers of ideas including identity, their authenticity and place. Globalisation could be said to be a normative utopian ideal that can be manipulated for specific ends. This can become a source of inspiration for Art. It’s possible to think your thinking globally but it’s more difficult (impossible) to be every where at once, so you can not check your thinking. Or another way of looking at it – Who has the authority to speak for a groups identity or authenticity? What are the essential elements of and boundaries of culture?
Lest we get too tangled up with words its worth taking a look at something visual and tactile.
Targets: aerial views of 24 counties that have been bombed by US war planes since 1945.
Joyce Kozloff, Targets, 2000. Acyrlic on canvas with wood frame,
Diameter: 108 in. (approx 330 cm), p 35

The political messages are often quite clear – Kozloff calls attention atrocities like slave trade, wars, and bombings – but she also uncovers the subtle prejudices and misinformed worldviews that have shaped cartography. She invites us to navigate these issues through wry humor, rich references to literature and pop culture, and a great deal of visual appeal. Exploration of human drives and desires, along with a deliberate erasure of the division between high and low culture.
Ideas starting with more local concerns, her own children. With some feminine critique?

Joyce Kozloff, Boys’ Art #9: Iwo Jima, 2001-2. Mixed media on paper,
16.75 x 11.5 in. (approx. 50 x 34.5 cm), p36

Joyce Kozloff. is a painter commonly associated with the Pattern & Decoration movement of the 1970s. The movement was an effort to challenge the stigma that modern art had put on ornamentation. The artists of this movement drew inspiration form arts and cultures outside the mainstream of modern art: Islamic, Celtic, and Arts and Crafts . In an interview in 2000, Kozloff says of this cultural melding: "I would not enjoy a world in which cultures became homogeneous and lost their singularity. All my work is appropriated from outside sources; I create a hybrid, a fusion of diverse materials, but I don't disguise their uniqueness or stylize them beyond recognition. We are flooded with imagery from everywhere: in our museums, our libraries, our media. For years, I've been trying to put it together for myself."
The American History series are a visual extension of the ironic and whimsical layering of Boys’ Art. Kozloff seems to be aware of a human compulsion to locate and orientate ourselves in our environment and is giving us new frames from which to do this.

Joyce Kozloff, American History: Age of Discovery, 2004.Etching, collage, watercolour, pigment print, acrylic, and coloured pencil, 32.75 x 48 in. (approx. 68 x 150 cm), p 39

Pictures: The map as art: contemporary artists explore cartography,
Princeton University Press, Kathrine Harmon, 2009

AS PART OF THIS BLOG I WOULD LIKE TO SHARE WITH THE WORLD HOW MUCH I HAVE NOT ENJOYED THE PUTTING INFO. FROM A WORD DOC. ONTO A BLOG. IT SEEMS UNBELIEVABLY DIFFICULT FOR NO APPARENT REASON. THANKS GOOGLE!

Spiritual Reality and ART

On Nicholas Zurbrugg and his Installation art article, my first thoughts were that the article was about honesty, refined to the search (endless and subjective) for the true essence. The article also seemed to be about the real and raw power that propels us to keep our art practice going. This was also true for Wolfgang Laib who further opinioned that the potential of an artist was as significant as a doctor.
The overview - Or as Zurbrugg puts it ‘what is worthy of consideration.
What is significant and active in a 2 D. picture or in a 3 D. object or installation has is a correlation.’ How important something is means interrogating a hierarchy of opinion. This is a reflexive concept that needs to factor in other people and there opinions. This is psychologically interesting ground from which may sprout new ideas or become poetically and artistically barren. A place where one may begin to explore any idea would be by making sure you respect others and by extension yourself. When we are talking Art it seems that boundaries including those of respect are explored.
Wassily Kandinsky and his ‘Concerning the spiritual in art’ text introduces English speakers to ‘the almost untranslatable’ stimmung as meaning sentiment, feeling and the essential spirit. The word, stimmung, is a key to his text and a connection to Douglas Kahns’ book Noise, Water, Meat. Kahns’ book uses the above Kandinsky text to illustrate ideas about music and sound (p106/7). Kandinsky is quoted as saying ‘music was a powerful model for non representation’ and that he developed ‘a notion of inner sound, a deeper and more pervasive vibrational being….’. These ideas indicate to me the same sense of impermanence that I started describing in my previous blog. Kahns’ study and understanding of the history of music and sound helps to make sense of the suggestion that Kandinsky circumvented imitation by conduits of cosmic vibrations behind apparent reality. I wonder if it would be possible to do this while also eating your favourite breakfast brand of breakfast cereal. Kahn also makes reference to a Kandinsky comment that ‘our hearing of colours is so precise..’. Although this seems a little of track it is why I have to allow each to their own spiritual reality because I’m not sure I can completely rule the idea of hearing colour. As you know we can feel sound and colour in various ways so the essence of our relational activities maybe seen, felt, tasted and heard.

impermanence

Impermanence is, i believe, an important concept that relates to both art and spirituality.
As i understand it, its key to the idea of making a fantastic sand mandala and then brushing it away. With art this impermanence allows new ideas(art) to be considered as part of the historical canon. Your personal art language is relevant because it is part of the 'nowness' of the world we live in. Styles of art will change to reflect human evolution although this can not necessarily be considered progress, but thats a idea for another time.
In my next blog I'm going to attempt to link spirituality to sound as it is impermanent in its natural environment, a lot like ideas.

i have chosen

Joyce Kozloff as the artist for which to present in my presentation on Art and Globalisation.
D.

I for Identity 1st and Art. me 1st and Art 2nd.

Artist at the beginning and everything else ripples out, things like social and cultural critique from the point of view of the self.

Subcultures as well as stereotypes now exist in cyberspace. I wonder what the view of earth from cyberspace looks like? This is going to lead to the inevitable to the rise of global identities that include multiple, symbolic and fractured identities that are non racial. Then there are the trans human and post human issues to be dealt with- discussions about the ethical dilemmas have already begun. Bring it on!

Mind/Body + Art

Whats the difference between Art and Entertainment? Life is intertwined with both. The difference is hard to pick. A link may be the mediated thinking process not entirely separated from ego.
I am not my ego.
I can't help feeling that it is no coincidence that the type of body art we've been talking about talking about and its historical timing are pivotal to a Modernist way of thinking. There seems to be a self centered approach or is that part of the act?