This is the "map" for my process and evidence class. It's really just a start of something--I've done a lot but have a lot of directions I'd like to push this in further. I'll let you know again when I've updated it significantly.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
walking//mapping project
This is the "map" for my process and evidence class. It's really just a start of something--I've done a lot but have a lot of directions I'd like to push this in further. I'll let you know again when I've updated it significantly.
même
I posted this as a response to one of Adam's posts regarding staking your territory and being different as an artist, but then realized it's something I've been thinking a lot about lately--especially after Venice--and wanted to expand on further.
honestly, an experience where everything is different all the time is so tiring (take this last week visiting Biennales as an example). as a society, I think we could do with a little more of la même chose.
(même//same//meme//mime//even)
meme- (According to Wikipedia) A meme (pronounced /ˈmiːm/, rhyming with "cream"[1]) is a postulated unit or element of cultural ideas, symbols or practices, and is transmitted from one mind to another through speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena. (The etymology of the term relates to the Greek word mimema for "something imitated".)[2] Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes, in that they self-replicate and respond to selective pressures.[3]
More on how this relates to my biennale response later...
do we really have to always be making something different?
do we have to try at all to make things different? aren't we all just saying the same things in different ways, passing them through our own internal strainers, filtering out what doesn't resonate, and passing on what does?
what would happen if we started trying to say the same thing as others instead of a different thing? why not try it and see what happens? could a community of differences be born from aiming for the same?
honestly, an experience where everything is different all the time is so tiring (take this last week visiting Biennales as an example). as a society, I think we could do with a little more of la même chose.
(même//same//meme//mime//even)
meme- (According to Wikipedia) A meme (pronounced /ˈmiːm/, rhyming with "cream"[1]) is a postulated unit or element of cultural ideas, symbols or practices, and is transmitted from one mind to another through speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena. (The etymology of the term relates to the Greek word mimema for "something imitated".)[2] Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes, in that they self-replicate and respond to selective pressures.[3]
More on how this relates to my biennale response later...
Saturday, September 26, 2009
The Cut-Up Method of Brion Gysin (William S. Burroughs)
Barry gave us this reading for our Process and Evidence class by William S. Burroughs who speaks about painter and writer, Brion Gyson's "Cut-Up Method" where you take a piece of writing you like and you cut it up (however you like, he suggests into four pieces) and then you pull words and arrange them at random to create a new piece of writing. Burroughs argues that "all writing is in fact cut-ups." He would probably laugh at me for using quotes. Ironically, this is sort of the point that I've gotten to, that I just want to be able to use someone else's words as my own, because I've begun to live them already (see my post on Terry Tempest Williams).
This method is a "surrealist" way to come up with new meanings out of the same material. I must agree with Burroughs and argue that it's not "surreal." It's simply what we do on a day-to day basis, only in doing physical cut-ups, we are doing it more directly.
Ironically, Terry Tempest Williams (the writer whose words I've begun to live in) quotes so many people, making their words her own, more or less, cutting their words into her writing. In our day and age, we must cite all these quotations, or else it is considered plagiarism, stealing, so that is what she does. But Burroughs is right, at what point do "someone else's words" become our own? At what point are we able to take that on as a part of ourselves?
Jay echos this mentality pretty clearly when he says that "great artists steal." And this is true, we are always learning from those we are influenced by--here I note that several of my last posts have been about artists whose work I like, from whom I'm "stealing" a visual language and ideas. I prefer to say that I'm relating my work to theirs or that their work resonates with me, but at what point is it relating or stealing?
In contemporary art there are individuals who have photographed others' photographs and called them their own work, arguing that the copying and difference in time and space and context changed the photograph's meaning. It is so easy today to reproduce another's work and so the copy has become the norm, but should homage be payed to those who gave us the idea or material to work from? To steal, word for word, someone else's writing or someone else's artwork, and not show thanks or gratitude for those thoughts, that is a wrong against that person. It's like gaining supernatural powers through ancestor worship, then claiming you have no ancestors. Or learning yoga and becoming a yogi then claiming that no one ever showed you a single pose or meditation practice. Not that you don't learn somethings by your own practice, but not honoring outside influence seems dishonest somehow.
I guess I'm wondering, how do I show those thanks? Do I make citations, like Terry Tempest Williams? Do I simply mention writers and artists in my statements? How do we mediate the line between stealing another's work and giving someone else all the credit for something we've added to? How do I make those connections known in a graceful yet unobtrusive way?
I don't really know the answers to these questions, but will continue to think about them and work them out within my work, of course. And for fun, here's my cut-up of Terry Tempest William's writings I quoted earlier:
(cut into eight)
Jump-started by beauty, rising and falling beauty, fallen trees. We too can dance on the floors of wide-open joy singing on the sage flats, faith of falcons, peregrine falcons appear indifference, the greatest sin is the sin of it can be hidden, all this is hidden, until the midair, drop and break through a haze of indifference, and I will balance this die on my head and say to Hell right here on earth and yes there are times you hear, I hear that fresh, fertile cadence. Dive past our sluggish hearts and we are our native pulse restored, coming out of the forest, dancing on trees, decaying wood. Can you hear, I hear, that meadow lark, meadow vole, hidden. The inquisitors, yes there are times I inhabit, I inhabit Heaven right here on earth. Can.
(cut into phrases and then edited to be made somewhat sensical.)
Why or whereabouts? No one would know the world where we are one. We are going. We come from the color of perhaps the most emotion inside.
I am certain, I do not I walk. My identity is afforded no movement. The buildings are grey. I honestly don't know is seeping Hell again. The sky is grey is the place if I were to die, I don't know how to percieve beauty. To feel the Great Forgetting where are can no longer meaning...attached to no one. outside.
Say to remember. Nothing makes motion.
Dissolve. El Bosco's Hell, the mood is grey.
Profound, what moves us: anonymous, faceless, misery boundaries. Retreat is grey. Nothing has meaning.
I honestly--
These streets. Teachings. We cast a shadow. I can find no barometer for beauty. Hell is dissolve--is when and where we did sense.
(cut into nine)
The ladder. I want out. I want down. Strangler, our own. I cannot breathe, noxious smells must surely--
they do. Hell, all of them in Hell, my mind is in go aware, go away.
Of strings, in my head I feel a tightening of strings, strings of a harp like a crucifix. I have to wait my turn. Turn. The millstone turns...The tightening there, a woman hangs from the Father forgive them for they do not know what--
Leave me in peace with my own contemplations. It is Hell to know the devil is the intimate family.
I do not know what to do.
They are standing in Hell, they are tromping all over this landscape of the dark near faraway stranger anxiety I embody when feats, feet, these--
There are others climbing, this is clear.
This nausea I am feeling is the I cannot breathe in this crowd of too many passing.
This method is a "surrealist" way to come up with new meanings out of the same material. I must agree with Burroughs and argue that it's not "surreal." It's simply what we do on a day-to day basis, only in doing physical cut-ups, we are doing it more directly.
Ironically, Terry Tempest Williams (the writer whose words I've begun to live in) quotes so many people, making their words her own, more or less, cutting their words into her writing. In our day and age, we must cite all these quotations, or else it is considered plagiarism, stealing, so that is what she does. But Burroughs is right, at what point do "someone else's words" become our own? At what point are we able to take that on as a part of ourselves?
Jay echos this mentality pretty clearly when he says that "great artists steal." And this is true, we are always learning from those we are influenced by--here I note that several of my last posts have been about artists whose work I like, from whom I'm "stealing" a visual language and ideas. I prefer to say that I'm relating my work to theirs or that their work resonates with me, but at what point is it relating or stealing?
In contemporary art there are individuals who have photographed others' photographs and called them their own work, arguing that the copying and difference in time and space and context changed the photograph's meaning. It is so easy today to reproduce another's work and so the copy has become the norm, but should homage be payed to those who gave us the idea or material to work from? To steal, word for word, someone else's writing or someone else's artwork, and not show thanks or gratitude for those thoughts, that is a wrong against that person. It's like gaining supernatural powers through ancestor worship, then claiming you have no ancestors. Or learning yoga and becoming a yogi then claiming that no one ever showed you a single pose or meditation practice. Not that you don't learn somethings by your own practice, but not honoring outside influence seems dishonest somehow.
I guess I'm wondering, how do I show those thanks? Do I make citations, like Terry Tempest Williams? Do I simply mention writers and artists in my statements? How do we mediate the line between stealing another's work and giving someone else all the credit for something we've added to? How do I make those connections known in a graceful yet unobtrusive way?
I don't really know the answers to these questions, but will continue to think about them and work them out within my work, of course. And for fun, here's my cut-up of Terry Tempest William's writings I quoted earlier:
(cut into eight)
Jump-started by beauty, rising and falling beauty, fallen trees. We too can dance on the floors of wide-open joy singing on the sage flats, faith of falcons, peregrine falcons appear indifference, the greatest sin is the sin of it can be hidden, all this is hidden, until the midair, drop and break through a haze of indifference, and I will balance this die on my head and say to Hell right here on earth and yes there are times you hear, I hear that fresh, fertile cadence. Dive past our sluggish hearts and we are our native pulse restored, coming out of the forest, dancing on trees, decaying wood. Can you hear, I hear, that meadow lark, meadow vole, hidden. The inquisitors, yes there are times I inhabit, I inhabit Heaven right here on earth. Can.
(cut into phrases and then edited to be made somewhat sensical.)
Why or whereabouts? No one would know the world where we are one. We are going. We come from the color of perhaps the most emotion inside.
I am certain, I do not I walk. My identity is afforded no movement. The buildings are grey. I honestly don't know is seeping Hell again. The sky is grey is the place if I were to die, I don't know how to percieve beauty. To feel the Great Forgetting where are can no longer meaning...attached to no one. outside.
Say to remember. Nothing makes motion.
Dissolve. El Bosco's Hell, the mood is grey.
Profound, what moves us: anonymous, faceless, misery boundaries. Retreat is grey. Nothing has meaning.
I honestly--
These streets. Teachings. We cast a shadow. I can find no barometer for beauty. Hell is dissolve--is when and where we did sense.
(cut into nine)
The ladder. I want out. I want down. Strangler, our own. I cannot breathe, noxious smells must surely--
they do. Hell, all of them in Hell, my mind is in go aware, go away.
Of strings, in my head I feel a tightening of strings, strings of a harp like a crucifix. I have to wait my turn. Turn. The millstone turns...The tightening there, a woman hangs from the Father forgive them for they do not know what--
Leave me in peace with my own contemplations. It is Hell to know the devil is the intimate family.
I do not know what to do.
They are standing in Hell, they are tromping all over this landscape of the dark near faraway stranger anxiety I embody when feats, feet, these--
There are others climbing, this is clear.
This nausea I am feeling is the I cannot breathe in this crowd of too many passing.
Saturday, September 19, 2009
eva hesse and judy pfaff
(Judy Pfaff, Round Hole Square Peg, 1997)
(Eva Hesse, Ohne Titel, 1966)
(Eva Hesse, Right After, 1969)
(Eva Hesse, No Title, 1970)After hardly thinking of Eva Hesse or Judy Pfaff for about eight months, their work is once more resonating with me very strongly. (I'm just turning and turning in circles.)
The other night, my iPod changed at random to a clarinet duet I wrote in response to Hesse's Right After for a Music and Art class a few years ago. Though I listen to the recording fairly often, it struck me that this was a response to Hesse's work, and that I had just written about a gossamer web. I immediately remembered her No Title work that mirrors Right After but looks as though it is decaying, and realized that this is the duality that I want to create within the same work--light against dark, life against decay--and also the sense of relationship and reliance of the part on the whole. Looking up Hesse's work further I re-found her mandala series, which I've thought a lot about, but never really directly wanted to incorporate into my work until a the last couple weeks. Like Hesse, Judy Pfaff's room and print installations also use geometric mandala forms//structures cast against organic forms of plants and landscapes, and evoke both life and decay at once. Both artists are interested in immersing//engulfing the viewer in an experience, and this has been a goal of mine as well. I'm getting so excited because the installation work I'm starting to bring together seems to be a synthesis of all of these interests I've had for so long.
order//chaos
structure//deviation
singularity//multiplicity
universal//specific
HOLY COW VELLUM!!
Yet again, I have found a highly applicable material for creating translucency (see photos in the corner between the wall and window). I really like that it provides another way to layer on top of photos//drawings and then draw more on top of them potentially. Also, I'm finding that going back and forth between a real installation and a computer is working well. I can't do it all in one go in either place, but working with them against each other helps me to get further along (thanks for the suggestion, Barry). (who would have thought, balancing material//immaterial, sensed//thought...)word map
1. Get a piece of paper, writing utensil, and french//english dictionary.2. With your eyes closed open the dictionary to a random page and put your finger down.
3. Copy the word and it's translation onto the paper.
4. Continue choosing random pages and words until your paper is full enough.
5. Draw links between words that have related meanings.
6. Do whatever you like with it.
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