Blog Entry Heading: Grad Research Artist Statement and New Semester Work Documentation

100 word artist statement:

The bases for my art practice are rooted around the concept of perpetual human struggle. I stage performative actions that give rise to issues of repetitive, restless tasking without distinct resolution. I have been using my naked body as a metaphor for the emotional alienation and struggle that occurs in life. Nakedness symbolizes the lack of protection both physically and psychologically that is afforded in each work.
Video is my primary tool. Motion and gesture when experienced fluidly intensifies the feelings of frustration and repetition. The addition of contrived sound is integral to this exaggerated sense of futility and awkwardness.

Hassan Grad Research Assignment: Discussion Questions on Article or Essay

Interview taken from "The Friendliest Black Artist in America"
William Pope L.
Interviewer: Lowery Stokes Sims

Sims, Lowery. William Pope. L : The Friendliest Black Artist in America. By Mark H. Bessire. New York: MIT P, 2002.

In his interview Pope L. talks about the Black African Male and the concept of presence/ versus lack. The idea that ideas of masculine is rooted in presence, that the idea of blackness is rooted in lack. How does this fit into your work as its image has both elements?

I do feel these words. Recently I have been asked to define my work in terms of why use myself as my model, and also what does race have to do with my work. I see the lack represented two fold. One that if a so-called white artis (read male) no one asks about race unless there is some other signifier present. So it is the lack of whiteness which prompts the question. I have found that sometimes people talk about masculinity and issues around that- but that begins to be an assumption placed upon the work and the artist without the question being asked. The second areana is of course my work and my need to do performative works with myself as the model. I feel like it is a need, an internal need to speak for myself to be heard and that certainly comes out of lack. It may stem from what Pope L. is talking about. I wrote some thoughts down for Sonali on race and work on race and while I did not use the word lack, I did use the word deficit. My desire is not to work out of deficit, or a sense of deficit.(in relation to race).

The theme of masculinity and blackness are running themes in this article. What is your sense of this negotiation of blackness seeing as how the two seem two be tethered as problematic- something to overcome?

Pope L. says that what it is to be black is a negotiation. The idea of a black race is at the same time a factual fiction in America. There is no black race as it is social construction based on power. He speaks of these masks of blackness. But on the other hand there is no solid heretige for black people in this country that extends past these borders- concretely anyway. So there is this “black race” the black diaspora I think is apart of this but also that there was a erasure of memory not just of geography. So there are nooks and cranies in which to negotiate what it means to be black and it keeps changing and must be changed, accepted and rejected. It is room to maneuver.

Complete

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Sunday post 09/028/2008

1. Sunday Entry:

Highlight an artist of interest that relates to your work. Provide the following information:
- Artist Biography and brief explanation of work (can use quotes from critics or galleries)
William Pope.L
1. William Pope.L is a prominent multidisciplinary artist known for his conceptual, often performance-based art practice, which actively confronts issues of race, sex, power, consumerism, and social class. As the self-proclaimed “friendliest black artist in America,” Pope.L invites dialogue through provocative performances, installations, and art objects. He is best known for a series of more than 40 “crawls” staged since 1978 as part of his larger eRacism project, in which he inched his way through busy city streets on his belly, back, hands, and knees in an attempt to draw attention to the plight of those members of society who are least empowered.
At the center of Focus: William Pope.L—the artist’s first solo show at a major museum—is a selection of approximately 50 works from Pope.L’s ongoing series, Failure Drawings. Created only when he is traveling with whatever materials he has on hand, these intensely personal works reveal compelling mood shifts. Taken as a whole, Failure Drawings constitute an unexpectedly structured project within Pope.L’s famously unfettered body of work, suggesting that the discipline of drawing provides the opportunity for introspection and private exploration. As suggested by the title, the overall sentiment of the series is melancholic. Yet, humor is also an essential “material,” providing a path to the sort of communication among strangers from which positive change so often occurs.
Exclusively for this exhibition, Pope.L has also conceived a “live drawing.” Made with a combination of organic materials and more traditional oil paints, charcoal, and pigment sticks applied directly to the gallery wall, the image is intended to change form over time. Prompted by the artist’s response to prominent Chicago personalities and the city’s history, this drawing and its meaning are, like so much of his work, insistently open ended. “You can hold contraries, bound together, without blurring them together,” wrote Pope.L about his work. “The fact is I am black and I am influenced by historically European-based art. I am interested in formal issues and I am interested in social issues. Think of it as a bunch of flowers—daisies, lilies, daffodils. I want you to hold them all in a bundle but see them each distinctly.”
William Pope.L was born in 1955 in New Jersey. He currently lives in Lewiston, Maine, where he is a lecturer on theater and rhetoric at Bates College. He received his M.F.A. from Rutgers University in New Jersey, and studied at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. Pope.L has called himself the “friendliest black artist in America,” a designation that became the title of a 2002 book on his works published by MIT press. His work has been exhibited and performed at venues including the Art Institute of Chicago, The Whitney Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles), Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), and Artists Space, among others.

- 4 images and / or video/sound clips of artwork






- a link to an interview with the artist or a review
http://www.kgbbar.com/lit/cityscape_at_a_/inside_the_blac.html
http://www.researchchannel.org/prog/displayevent.aspx?rID=2047&fID=571
- link to gallery representing artist

-artist website
http://www.theblackfactory.com/

Sunday post 09/28/2008

1. Sunday Entry:

Highlight an artist of interest that relates to your work. Provide the following information:

- Artist Biography and brief explanation of work (can use quotes from critics or galleries)
Stefaan Loncke

**Education:



1990 - 1994 : Master of Visual Arts at the High Institute of Fine Arts St. Lucas, Ghent, Belgium
2006 - 2008 : diverse courses and workshops contemporary dance and movement techniques



** Projects:



* 2008

-- De Drempel, art event Wevelgem- Kortrijk (Belgium)

-- Faces, filmproject. concept: Stefaan Loncke, Video: Geert Wachtelaer, performance & story by Frederique Gaillot (Fr) & Stefaan Loncke

-- Performance on Bach organ music with Nicoletta Branchini (It), organ: Ludo Geloen

-- ce(n)uur, filmproject. concept: Stefaan Loncke, Video: Geert Wachtelaer, dance: Nicoletta Branchini (Iit), Stefaan Loncke

-- black noise.white noise, Installation/bodyworks, concept: Stefaan Loncke, Video: Geert Wachtelaer, Bodyworks: Ine Pieters, Stefaan Loncke, project with support of the Flemish Community

-- ARTisSTARTplus, participation in artibook archive of Ko de Jong (NL)



* 2007

-- “Foreign Bodies”, 5 objects for the Ozark Micro Sculpture Gardens, Lyon College, Arkansas, USA

-- sound- and bodyworks performance, collaboration with Ana M.Marañon(Spain) project: 'A través de las diferencias... '

-- CO-ART, participation with project 'WAAR' (where), Drongenhoeve Knesselare (Belgium) Confrontation between "outsider art" and "regular art"

-- "an artist is a virus" bodyworks project in collaboration with Nana (Ivana Quiternos) for the mailart expo of Irina Logvinova

-- IN-FORMATION, Media art project, participation with video of contactimpro, Cultural Center Dnepr, Smolensk (Russia)

-- Concupiscencia, bodyworks/performance Concupiscencia held at Ghent (Belgium). Perf.: Benedicte De Vos, Stefaan Loncke. Concept: Stefaan Loncke. Camera: Filip. Project of Ivana Aquinteros

-- Participation with artibook in the mailart exhibition for Frida Kahlo's 100th anniversary (Spain)

-- video "IX (ik's)" for the mailart project "What about Croxhapox?", Croxhapox, Ghent (Belgium) collaboration with Huayong Feng



* 2006

-- Z/W 1, groupexhibition, Den Haag (Netherlands), curators Jowel de Bruijn & Paul de Mol

-- IN-FORMATION2006, contactimpro performace for the mailart project of Dmitri Zimin. Concept: Stefaan Loncke. Dance: Benedikte De Vos, Christie Di Perna, Jo-An Lauwaert, Stefaan Loncke, Geert Vercruysse. Recorded at: Gallery Link te Gent (B)

-- 'Do Not Fold, Bend, Spindle or Mutilate: Computer Punch Card Art', Visual Arts Center, Washington Pavillion of Arts and Science, Sioux Falls - South Dakota (USA)

-- Oog'n'BlikArt, Oppuurs (Belgium).

-- 'the psychedelic mailart call', groupsexpo, Cultural Centre Elassona, (Greece)

-- installation 'the ill child', mailart exhibition concerning Sigmund Freuds 150th birthday. Kunstbibliothek Staatliche Museen, Berlijn (Germany)

-- 'Dream City' mailart call, participation with documentation photographs of performances sIght and Medusa
Elassona Art Cafe '1936' & Hatjiyiannio Cultural Center of Larisa(Greece)



* 2005

-- Ce(n)suur (solo), Hof Lanchals, Brugge (Belgium)

-- OdeGand 2005, Festival of Flanders, Gent (Belgium)

-- tRAUMgeBILDe 2005,AMO, mailart exhibition at Cultural Center in Magdeburg (Germany)

-- ARTfriday collective, 'Happenings' mailart expo, Imprint Gallery, New York (usa)

-- Centro Cultural Recoleta (Argentinie) National MailArt Day.



* 2004

-- Group exhibition Salon Internationale de l'Art, Libr'Art te Libramont (Belgium)



* 2002
-- Maison du Westhoek, Esquelbec (France) , group exhibition



* 2001
-- Groupexhibition Salon Internationale de l'Art, Libr'Art, Libramont (Belgium)



* 1999
-- Monasterium Mariakluizen, Brakel (Belgium) Solo



* 1997-2001
-- collaboration projects with Sonja Ulrick: concerning the alchemistic theme Solificatio.



* 1996
-- Aleph (solo) - Linisi Art Gallery, Sint-Niklaas (Belgium)
-- Aleph (solo), M.Rooze, Lokeren (Belgium)


* 1995
-- Persoonstralie (solo) - Linisi Art Gallery, Sint-Niklaas (Belgium)
-- Poem and Mailart Myth, Gent
-- Wintersalon, Group exhibition at Linisi Art Gallery, Sint-Niklaas (Belgium)

- 4 images and / or video/sound clips of artwork

- a link to an interview with the artist or a review
My main concepts are the questioning of identity, and the Gap in cultures.

I use art as a medium to explore the concepts of Identity and non-Identity, position and non-position, the tension between nature and culture. I'm fascinated by what creates and escapes a culture, by what lies beyond the Gap in human norms and the multiplicity of phenomena within Culture, which envelop this Gap (this mouth of the primordial abbys which dissolves all identity).

I question, I examine.

To me, the question is of more importance then the answer. When the question results in an answer, I like to tear the answer open, creating new questions. I have difficulty to accept definite constructions (such as theories, criteria, images, etc...) and mistrust strivings who have this as a goal, for they lead towards the gaze of the Medusa.

I'm intrigued by the Gap behind identities, the Gap which no construction seems to escape. I'm intrigued by the human strivings trying to get even with this Gap... and concepts like 'love' and 'domination' which waver around the Gap.
These human strivings include the attempt to stipulate/identify the workings of raw nature, and endeavours to control/dominate raw nature by tearing her down into comprehensible parts. To this aim, one calls forth on units of measurement, which function as points of reference. Simultaneously to the diversity of the nature of these units of measurement, rise a diversity of cultures.
To make the unknown known, is a process which is subject to the restrictions of human perception and thinking. This implies that this process is formed through the fact of censorship. What cannot be perceived by the mind (or, what a subject does not want to perceive) is naturally censored. This censure reveals man’s cesure with nature and reality… the breaking point where reference and words fail him. It’s around this point that man’s mental and physical strivings provide him with fantasies and assumptions which fill in the gaps of the cesure. They make him blind for the existence of the gap, driven by some sort of horror vacui, for man wants all questions answered, he wants to comprehend, rule and dominate nature and reality. It's a domination which tries to bind the factor of uncertainity, of chaos.
Yet, this does not change how nature and reality is, or the way it behaves or acts. She escapes these human strivings and cultural workings, and forces men to make new theories, change perceptions, change their way of thinking… endlessly. Finally she always wins from these cultural workings by elements as decay and death.

I experiment with different disciplines such as drawing, painting, performance and and bodyworks. For my performance pieces, I often work together with other artists.

- link to gallery representing artist

- artist website

Thursday post 09/24/08

Thoughts of interest – Week in review

- Answer the following questions:

* Did anyone critique your work this week? If so, what were their impressions?
I had a group crit this week in which I showed several video pieces I have been working on. I am intereseted in definition of space and installation of art. In short I am looking for a space where my art can breathe and interact with the viewer.
It was a good crit as I am still in the initial stages of my process and got good feedback and suggestions. I am slowly encorporating them into my practice.
* What was the most motivational or creative moment of the past week?
Finally getting to look at my own work in something other than a sketch book or trash bin.
* What do you want to achieve in next week's studio practice?
More footage to shoot, different locals to scout, work on sound.
* What did you achieve in your studio this past week?
1st Group crit- survival
* What has been an artistic failure this week?
Not having enough time to experiment to my fullest and feeling ill for lack of sleep.
* What was the most profound thought in relation to your practice this week?

* If there was a visiting artist this week, what is your impression of their work and process in relation to your own?
no VA
- Post 1 picture, video, etc. of your choice

One Word 9/24/2008

Word: Surreal
“Some where someone or everyone discovered everything and learned everything except one thing and they named it God. God could think and that led to the following tale.”
Tom Repasky, 2008
http://eloquentinsanity.com/writings3/howtopissoffgod.html

Definition:
sur·re·al Listen to the pronunciation of surreal
Pronunciation: \sə-ˈrē(-ə)l also -ˈrā-əl\
Function: adjective
Etymology: back-formation from surrealism
Date: 1937
1: marked by the intense irrational reality of a dream ; also : unbelievable , fantastic
2: surrealistic
— sur·re·al·i·ty Listen to the pronunciation of surreality \(ˌ)sə-rē-ˈa-lə-tē\ noun
— sur·re·al·ly adverb



Artist 1:

Artist Name: Scarlett Hooft Graafland
http://www.scarletthooft.com/
Reason for Choosing:
I ran across an image of Graafland’s entitled “Salt- Bolivia (2004)” Which reminded me of a painting of Odd Nerdrum. The photograph is such a divergence from reality, an image of Hopi sitting on white salt hills with umbrellas. I like the idea that she is a performance artist and produces such engaging photographic stills. They are filled with the weird juxtaposition of geography, societies and objects.
Image 1 of Artwork- Include Title, Year, Medium, Dimensions



Potosi
c-print mounted on dibond, behind plexiglass
100 x 125 cm

Image 2 of Artwork- Include Title, Year, Medium, Dimensions



Harvest Time
c-print mounted on dibond, behind plexiglass
100 x 125 cm

Outside Review of Artwork: A 2-3 paragraph quote
“… the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on a dissecting table (can provoke) the most powerful poetic detonations”
Le Comte de Lautréamont, Les Chants de Maldoror, 1868.
We are delighted to announce the first UK solo exhibition of work by Dutch artist Scarlett Hooft Graafland. Inhabiting the border between straight photography, performance and sculpture, Hooft Graafland’s photographs are records of her highly choreographed live performances in the salt deserts of Bolivia. Fascinated by the surreal beauty of the harsh natural landscape she utilizes this as her canvas. Anthropologically curious, her ideas emerge directly from the local mythology that originates in this otherworldly environment.
Using naïve and childlike colour palettes her photographs draw on the language of the surreal showing familiar objects out of context (a llama wearing balloons, top hats flying through the desert and a pair of naked legs entwined around a cactus). Her humorous and unsettling juxtaposition of these everyday objects with the sparse, unforgiving landscape echoes the aesthetic of surrealists such as René Magritte. Hooft Graafland utilizes the medium of photography, associated with the representation of truth, to represent the fantastic and the irrational.
‘Vanishing Traces’, a homage to land artist, Robert Smithson, is made out of floating balloons at Laguna Colorada in southern Bolivia. Smithson was inspired to make his original piece after reading about this particular red salt lake (Laguna Colorada) in the book Vanishing Traces of Atacama’ by William Rudolph. Due to the remoteness of the location however, Smithson installed his work in the Great Salt Lake in Utah. Hooft Graafland has returned to the place of his inspiration, with her team, to build her own transient spiral balloon jetty. The clean simplicity of her finished works offer no indication of the difficulties in accessing and working in such inhospitable terrains. Highly dependant on the collaboration of the local people, her journeys are indebted to the assistance of the local people and artists with which she works.
Born in the Netherlands in 1973, Hooft Graafland is based in both Amsterdam and New York. She has studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, The Hague, Bezalel Academy, Jerusalem and Parsons School of Design, New York and has traveled to Iceland, Israel, Canada and the United States for her work. Her work has been exhibited in solo exhibitions all over Europe and as part of group shows at the Metropolitan Museum. New York, and the Musée D’Orsay, Paris amongst others.

Bibliography of Review
http://www.michaelhoppengallery.com/exhibition,past,3,0,0,96,6,0,0,0,_potosi.html


Artist 2:

Artist Name: Roger Ballen

Reason for Choosing:
I enjoy the weird context in which Ballen’s photographs exist. They seem at first like documentary photos of the lower tiers of societies, the poor, the wretched, the deformed and the strange. But as I browse though his photographs I begin to see these images not just as typographies or purely unmanipulated images. They become directorial of the bizarre. I find it odd to see such an easy slippage- not an outright declaration but one of subtlety and patience.
Image 1 of Artwork- Include Title, Year, Medium, Dimensions



Two Figures, 2000
Silver Gelatin Print
39 x 39 cm

Image 2 of Artwork- Include Title, Year, Medium, Dimensions



Cat Catcher, Gauteng, 1998
Silver Gelatin Print
39 x 39 cm

Outside Review of Artwork: A 2-3 paragraph quote
“Roger Ballen was born in New York City in 1950. His interest in photography began at the age of thirteen when his mother, Adrienne Ballen, started working for Magnum in 1962 as a picture researcher. She was later to open the first photographic gallery in New York City. After receiving a PhD from the University of California at Berkeley in 1972 and suffering the death of his mother, Ballen began a five-year journey hitchhiking around the world. Along the way, Ballen photographed what would become his first book, Boyhood. He arrived in South Africa in 1974 where he met his future companion and wife and has lived ever since. Since 1974, Roger has spent most of his time in South Africa photographing the countryside and its inhabitants, searching for aesthetic symbols to convey the sense of the place and people that have inspired him.

Ballen’s South African experience was soon to produce a second book, Dorps, in 1986, a Walker Evans-style photographic essay on the Platteland (‘flatland’) towns. He writes, “My purpose in traveling among the dorps had been primarily to document that society, to record a phenomenon vanishing from the South African scene. But of course I was also orienting myself to this country, making links and finding aspects of myself in these small towns. The trend in my work since then has been away from the documentary, increasingly towards an exploration of my own interiority.”

As Ballen continued his immersion in the visual mythology of the Platteland region in South Africa, he moved from an obsession with form to an obsession with psychological issues. This became the subject of his third book, Platteland: Images from Rural South Africa, published in 1995. The subjects are photographed mostly in their dwellings: mixed-race couples, forgotten civil servants made redundant by affirmative action and political change, independent small-town diamond miners ever hopeful of striking it big, subtle and not-so-subtle statements of inbreeding and loneliness. The subjects are all linked by their poverty and by the time warp they occupy in South African history. In 1997, Photo Poche published a fourth book of Ballen’s images from the Platteland period and this spring (March 2001), Phaidon Press is publishing a volume of Ballen’s collected work from 1981 onwards entitled Outland.

Two of Ballen’s photographs hang in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. They also feature in the permanent collection of the Maison Europeene de la Photographie, Europe’s most prestigious photographic center, as well as in Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum.”

Bibliography of Review
http://www.michaelhoppengallery.com/artist,show,3,2,25,460,0,0,0,0,roger_ballen_cat_catcher,_gauteng,_.html

Artist 3:

Artist Name: Jeff Bark

Reason for Choosing:
Bark’s photography speak if an otherworldly gothic romance that seems to be deeply rooted in painting. His images are very rich and sharp yet oddly removed from those images usually wrangled for commercial consumption. They evoke another world that is easily ripe for cliché.
Image 1 of Artwork- Include Title, Year, Medium, Dimensions



Untitled
2007
C-Type Print

Image 2 of Artwork- Include Title, Year, Medium, Dimensions



Untitled
2007
C-Type Print

Outside Review of Artwork: A 2-3 paragraph quote
“The much-anticipated new series of work by Jeff Bark, Woodpecker, is full of dark romanticism. Under the cover of a manufactured night, his young subjects indulge in skinny-dipping, huffing, smoking pot, and moments of introspection echoing Bark’s own memories of his near adulthood.
The subjects of Bark’s previous series, exhibited at Michael Hoppen Contemporary in 2006, were captured in moments of self-contained abandon in formally constructed urban interiors. In Woodpecker, his subjects are pictured in naturalistic outdoor tableaux, sometimes interacting in couples or groups but always with the suggestion an internal isolation. The rich detail, vivid self-contained illumination and the complexity of the constructed surroundings in these photographs draw the viewer into the dense pictorial allegory.

Occupying a space between the classical artistic categories of photography, painting and film – Bark moves against the lure of instantaneous photography. The collaborations, castings, set construction (the swamp took one month to sculpt in a Brooklyn studio) and illusionary narrative in the series bring the act of photo taking closer towards the highly considered processes of both the Old Master tableau and the younger art of cinema. Nothing is built by Bark beyond the edge of the frame and his subjects are snatched out of real time, so the audience is viewing an enactment, a constructed diorama rather than reality. Held together in a film, cinematically constructed, dissected and reassembled - the works can be looked at as individually structurally significant, and also as part of a larger extended narrative.
In these photographs, scenes of dream-like concoctions coexist with unembellished realism. The muted moonlit tones soften the human forms and the watery illumination lends them the appearance of otherworldly creatures indulging in their private fictions, desires and escape. The images are heavy with symbolism: the swamp, at the fringe of urban sprawl is a no mans land between civilization and the wilderness: the swan, recalling the erotic motif of Leda and the swan but also signifying, light, self-transformation and the higher self. On first glance, the location is a rural idyll but on closer inspection urban debris is revealed - a pram, crates, tyres, mattresses, telephone wires, bed frames and a car are strewn amongst the rotting landscape. The corruption of the scenery is mirrored by the corruption of the youth - drugs, disillusionment, violence and sexual behavior, referencing Eric Fischl and his depictions of psychosexual malaise of American prosperity.
Jeff Bark (born 1963) lives and works in New York. Woodpecker is his second exhibition at Michael Hoppen Contemporary.”

Bibliography of Review

Artist 4:

Artist Name: Polly Borland

Reason for Choosing:
Borland’s world intertwines humor and repulsion to create an odd vignettes or snippets to view. When I look at her images I am at once enticed into the strange and funny non real human forms while at the same time experiencing the “eww” factor. These are not the skeleton chic Hollywood starlets we all love to point out. These are figments of another world that exist not because of our societal quirks, but hers.
Image 1 of Artwork- Include Title, Year, Medium, Dimensions



Untitled V
2004-2005
Fujicolor crystal archive print
92 x 67 cm

Image 2 of Artwork- Include Title, Year, Medium, Dimensions



Untitled, (2004-2005)
Fujicolor crystal archive print
27 x 35 cm

Outside Review of Artwork: A 2-3 paragraph quote
A leading portrait photographer before moving to the UK from her native Australia in 1989, Polly has earned her reputation for specializing in stylized portraiture and off-beat reportage. She shoots regularly for numerous UK and US publications including The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Independent and Dazed and Confused.

In 1994 she won the prestigious John Kobal Photographic Portrait Award. Her work has appeared in numerous exhibitions, and a selection of photographs from The Babies was exhibited at the South Bank’s Meltdown Festival in 1999, curated that year by Nick Cave.

The National Portrait Gallery in London and Australia have acquired a number of Polly’s photographs for it’s collection, and in 2000 both exhibited a solo show of her work. Powerhouse published her first book The Babies in 2001 with an essay by Susan Sontag. In that same year she was one of eight chosen photographers to photograph the Queen for her Golden Jubilee.

Polly has recently collaborated with Lauren Child on two children’s books for Puffin, reworking the fairytales The Princess and the Pea, and Goldilocks and The Three Bears. Michael Hoppen Contemporary will exhibit her Bunny project in 2008 – a series of portraits of a giant girl called Gwen.

Bibliography of Review
http://www.michaelhoppengallery.com/artist,show,3,6,18,795,0,0,0,0,polly_borland_untitled,_.html

Artist 5:

Artist Name: Desiree Dolron
Reason for Choosing:
Dolron’s images evoke notions of fantasy/horror and such painterly traditions as portraiture . She takes what we expect from more established mediums and genres and after combining them presents them again as profoundly complex and compelling images. It is definitely intimidating to look at a portrait of a woman that should look demure or passive at the least, only to see pathos and psychological archetypal visions of death, terror and fetish.

Image 1 of Artwork- Include Title, Year, Medium, Dimensions



Gaze, study number 16
Cibachrome Print
16x20"

Image 2 of Artwork- Include Title, Year, Medium, Dimensions



Xteriors VIII
Colour Coupler Print on Endura Paper
174.5 x 115 cm

Outside Review of Artwork: A 2-3 paragraph quote
For years now Desiree Dolron (Netherlands, b. 1963) has traveled around the world. Whatever corner of the world she finds herself in, she has invariably returned with uniquely personal records of her journeys.

Dolron’s acute vision meshes traditional reportage photography and computer enhancement to create a richer version of a genre that many believe to be tired and overused. The stillness and subtlety that is evoked by her seamless work has created a 21st century vision at odds with traditional photographic practice. Her references are obvious, but the results are a revelation. Perfection, often disappointing in practice, is in Dolron’s work, a newer vision.
Michael Hoppen Gallery has previously exhibited Dolron's Te dí todos mis sueños (Cuba) series of work in 2003 which followed by the much talked about Xteriors in 2004 on the contemporary floor.
Since then Dolron's reputation and recognition as one of the leading contemporary artist has excided our own expectations - supported by her first retrospective show of work from 1990-2005 presented by the Fotomuseum den Haag (The Hague Museum of Photography).
The associated book, Desiree Dolron, contains her four most important series: Gaze, Exaltation, Xteriors and Te dí todos mis sueños, and a limited number of copies are available at gallery. Please visit the Publications section for more information

Bibliography of Review
http://www.michaelhoppengallery.com/artist,show,3,4,94,380,0,0,0,0,desiree_dolron_gaze,_study_number_.html

Artist 6:

Artist Name: Alex Prager

Reason for Choosing:
Alex Prager’s photography evokes references to other photographers, film and filmmakers. His images rely on a certain acceptance of an artifical world- a directorial world. In each image we are asked to relinquish what we might consider to be true or real for the sake of the building of another narrative. This narrative is full of implications as we step into the middle and are forced to figure out what’s going on…all based upon an artifical staging of people, props and angles. I definitely see Cindy Sherman in Prager’s work.
Image 1 of Artwork- Include Title, Year, Medium, Dimensions



Annie, 2008
C-Type Print
36 x 48"

Image 2 of Artwork- Include Title, Year, Medium, Dimensions



Susie and Friends, 2008
C-Type Print
36 x 58"

Outside Review of Artwork: A 2-3 paragraph quote
Alex Prager was born in Los Angeles in 1979. She was raised by her grandmother in a small apartment in the suburb of Los Feliz and her curious and restless nature was evident early on. Her nomadic upbringing saw her splitting her time between Florida, California, and Switzerland without truly settling down long enough for a formal education. Prager's interest in art began in her adolescence, but it was in her early twenties that she began to focus on photography after being inspired by the work of William Eggleston.

In keeping with her independent spirit, she eschewed art school and began taking photographs on her own, teaching herself equipment and lighting through trial and error. Prager has since contributed to a number of publications including ID, Elle Japan, MOJO, and Complex. All the while, she continued to exhibit her work in various group shows throughout Los Angeles. After the release of her first book The Book Of Disquiet (2006) Prager was given her first solo show at Robert Berman Gallery in Santa Monica, CA entitled "Polyester", which was covered by the Los Angeles Times. Along with her 2007 exhibition at Sara Tecchia Roma New York, Prager is slated to exhibit in both London and Miami Photo.

Bibliography of Review
http://www.michaelhoppengallery.com/artist,show,3,120,147,742,0,0,0,0,alex_prager_annie,_.html

Artist 7:

Artist Name: Toshio Shibata

Reason for Choosing:
Shibata’s work is pretty easy to discern yet the firm basis of a simple dam shot becomes the departure point for these transformative surreal landscapes. Through the use of black and white photography and control over printing techniques the image becomes a thing, which is not the original subject. Through camera techniques and manipulation alien landscapes emerge where a pedestrian one falls to the wayside.
Image 1 of Artwork- Include Title, Year, Medium, Dimensions



Grand Coulee Dam (p.15), Douglas Co., WA, 1996
Gelatin Silver Print
20x24"

Image 2 of Artwork- Include Title, Year, Medium, Dimensions



Minakami Town, Gumna Prefecture, 2005
Silver Gelatin Print
32x40"

Outside Review of Artwork: A 2-3 paragraph quote
Toshio Shibata explores the delicate balance and powerful juxtapositions between the landscape and the infinite ability of man to impose structure on that landscape. Seen through Shibata’s large-format camera and wide-angle lenses, colossal industrial structures confuse our sense of mass and volume, and our ability to orient the subject in relation to human scale; the pure beauty of the photographs places man in awe of the structures Shibata has received international acclaim, most notably with a recent one-person exhibition at the Centre National de la Photographie in Paris, preceded by a commission from the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago to photograph in the United States.

Bibliography of Review
http://www.michaelhoppengallery.com/artist,show,3,104,152,654,0,0,0,0,toshio_shibata_minakami_town,_gumna_prefecture,_.html

Artist 8:

Artist Name: Bianca Brunner
Brunner uses light, color, tension and lack of context to conduct these oddly normal/ not normal personal explorations and seems to play with the idea of mystery and possibly notions of identity or knowledge. It’s not that I feel this work examines the artist reflexively but rather examines personal space of the subject depicted. It invokes a sort of mythological sense of idea of quest and self.
Reason for Choosing:

Image 1 of Artwork- Include Title, Year, Medium, Dimensions


Limbo 5, 2004
C-print,
Image: 18" X 22"

Image 2 of Artwork- Include Title, Year, Medium, Dimensions



Limbo 3, 2004
C-print,
Image: 18" X 22"


Outside Review of Artwork: A 2-3 paragraph quote
As noted in reGeneration: 50 Photographers of Tomorrow (Aperture, 2006), Bianca Brunner's photographs are based on memory. Limbo 5, included in reGeneration, is from Brunner's five-image Limbo series exploring the concept of somatic memory, the body's own memory. The series shows people fixed in motion, in a moment of stillness. Nothing in the images is moving; everything is held in a prolonged state of waiting. Brunner wants us to remember that human beings do not only remember things with their minds, but that many memories may be held inside the body.
"When we touch things, or move in certain ways, the thoughts attached to these bodily functions can pop up," Brunner says. "Or it can be the other way around; remembering something can unleash certain physical feelings or even movements. This phenomenon . . . the displacement in time that takes place when a latent image suddenly emerges and disrupts the scene of the present . . . is what this work is all about."
Outside Review of Artwork: A 2-3 paragraph quote

Bibliography of Review
http://www.aperture.org/store/prints-detail-w.aspx?ID=533

Artist 9:

Artist Name: Atta Kim

Reason for Choosing:
Atta kim’s work works to segue way to visual forms into one consciousness, namely the formal qualities of time and geometry with ideas of environment and “human” spaces. The two do not ever coexist in a comfortable space of rationality and therefore can not be understood on the fundamentals of recognizable imagery and narrative.

Image 1 of Artwork- Include Title, Year, Medium, Dimensions



Museum Project #001, from the Field series
C-Print
1995

Image 2 of Artwork- Include Title, Year, Medium, Dimensions


On-Air Project #110-2, from the New York series
C-Print
2005

Outside Review of Artwork: A 2-3 paragraph quote
Every day, hundreds of tourists snap photographs of a crowd- and car-jammed Times Square. The average picture takes — what? — 15 seconds to shoot? The same picture of the same place takes the Korean photographer Atta Kim eight hours. And his Times Square ends up with only an eerie trace of a human presence, like a deserted movie set.
Other pictures by Mr. Kim, who is making an outstanding New York solo debut in a show titled “Atta Kim: On-Air” at the International Center of Photography, have required less time. A photograph of a soccer game: two hours. Of a couple having sex: one hour. Still others go way beyond the eight-hour mark. “Monologue of Ice,” with its mysterious lozenge of pollen-yellow light hovering in the dark, is the product of a marathon 25-hour shoot.
Bibliography of Review
By Holland Cotter
Pub July 12, 2006 New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/12/arts/design/12atta.html

Artist 10:

Artist Name: Simen Johan

Reason for Choosing:
Well Paul you’ve got this guy coming in so it was kind of a no brainier as far as “surreal.” He is coming here so I need to look at his work and learn a little more about him anyway. He seems to be very interested in the ideas of history as a phenomenon(read here history museum) and also shared concepts of human history. Using this as the basis of the work I see him taking the idea of going into a museum for example and creating the perspective and imagination of children and the ideas and notions that would germinate from such experiences or encounters we might have had as youngsters.
Image 1 of Artwork- Include Title, Year, Medium, Dimensions


Untitled #111, from the series Breeding Ground
C-Print
2003

Image 2 of Artwork- Include Title, Year, Medium, Dimensions



Untitled #118, from the series Breeding Ground
C-Print
2003

Outside Review of Artwork: A 2-3 paragraph quote
In Until the Kingdom Comes, Johan presents animals using escapism and fantasy to construct identity and purpose. Similar to his earlier work of children, this series explores our predilection towards imagination and emotion, rather than reason. Using digitally manipulated photography and sculpturally enhanced taxidermy, the artist presents scenarios that address ways in which we contend with inherent fears and desires.

A sculpture of an arctic wolf posed atop a circus pedestal/beauty display, its hair extensions threaded with crystalline jewels, transforms a childhood horror into absurd beauty (or serves as a symbol perhaps for all those things we deny, cover up, or manipulate in order to make our reality desirable). A large mammoth made of cement, standing in a natural landscape, creates an uncanny relationship between the organic and the artificial (or testifies to our ways of preserving history and honoring the dead in order to conquer our own fears of mortality and being forgotten).

Bibliography of Review
http://www.yossimilo.com/exhibitions/2006_03-sime

Sunday post 09/21/2008

1. Sunday Entry:

Highlight an artist of interest that relates to your work. Provide the following information:

- Artist Biography and brief explanation of work (can use quotes from critics or galleries)
Ana Mendieta
1.
The photographs of Ana Mendieta document private sculptural performances enacted in the landscape to invoke and represent the spirit of renewal inspired by nature and the power of the feminine. In her Silueta series (begun in 1974), created on location in Iowa and Mexico, Mendieta carved and shaped her own figure into the earth to leave haunting traces of her body fashioned from flowers, tree branches, mud, gunpowder, and fire. A typology of Siluetas emerged, including figures with arms held overhead to represent the merging of earth and sky; floating in water to symbolize the minimal space between land and sea; and with arms raised and legs together to signify a wandering soul. By 1978, the Siluetas gave way to ancient goddess forms carved into rock, shaped from sand, or incised in clay beds.
An exile from Cuba, Ana Mendieta was sent from her native homeland to an orphanage in Iowa at age 12. This traumatic experience had a tremendous impact on her art. She felt that, through her art, her interactions with nature and work in the landscape would help facilitate the transition between her homeland and new home. By fusing her interests in Afro-Cuban ritual and the pantheistic Santeria religion with contemporary aesthetic practices such as Earthworks, Body art, and Performance art she maintained ties with her Cuban heritage.
2. (another slightly different take)
Cuban-born Ana Mendieta produced work in the seventies in which she used her own body as a medium. In opposition to the predominant modernist theories of the time, this concept was being used by several other women artist as a feminist assertion of female body as a vehicle for personal and social expression. These women's emphasis on the female body as a realistic tool for the woman artist, challenged the male tradition of the idealized female nude; and was a precursor to the direction toward the refiguration of the body in the rest of the art community during the eighties.
Mendieta sought to establish a "dialog between the landscape and the female body return to the maternal source." She envisioned the female body as a primal source of life and sexuality, as a symbol of the ancient paleolithic goddesses. Between 1973 and 1980, Mendieta created her signature series, entitled "Silueta" or silhouette. Here, Mendieta used her body or images of her body in combination with natural materials. The pieces were transient, created and then photographed just before or during their destruction. The materials used were highly symbolic. In one work from the "Silueta" series, she outlined her figure with gunpowder, creating a shape reminiceint of prehistoric cave paintings. By setting it alight, she incorporates the ritualistic use of fire as a source of exorcism and purification. Mendieta also used flowers as mediums in her series, quoting the folk traditions of Mexico. Her primary material was the earth itself. In her "Tree of Life" series, she covered her naked body with mud and posed against and enormous tree. Ridding herself of her color and form, she is visually united with the tree, arms raised in supplication.

Tragically, Ana Mendieta died at age thirty-six, the result of a fall from an apartment window in New York in 1985. She left over 200 photographs documenting her body works, and a generation indebted to her innovation and ideals.
- 4 images and / or video/sound clips of artwork

- a link to an interview with the artist or a review
http://www.offoffoff.com/art/2004/anamendieta.php
- link to gallery representing artist
at the time of her death- http://www.galerielelong.com/
-artist website
NA

Thursday post 09/18/08

Thursday Entry:

Thoughts of interest – Week in review

- Answer the following questions:

* Did anyone critique your work this week? If so, what were their impressions?
Yes, Candice Breitz. She like my work, I was only able to show her one piece, Comfort Zone. Her comments were:
1) I need to know what size I am creating the piece for.
2) Consider the Piercing and Tattoos presence- however she said that leaving them in grounded the video within contemporary society as opposed to a historical reference.
3) Did not bring up or ask about race
4) She sensed that it was a metaphorical or emotional landscape.
5) Was not sure if it was a reference to purely personal or more societal based.
6) Enjoyed the lack of resolution.
* What was the most motivational or creative moment of the past week?
Seeing the work of Candice Breitz again but also being able to hear her speak.

* What do you want to achieve in next week's studio practice?
Get a rough edit of work so far to present, plus keep shooting.
* What did you achieve in your studio this past week?
I shot and edited, thought about and prepared for joint works.
* What has been an artistic failure this week?
Shooting in a format that was a technological brick wall-almost.
* What was the most profound thought in relation to your practice this week?
That one can receive to MFA in Art History?!
* If there was a visiting artist this week, what is your impression of their work and process in relation to your own?
See above. Breitz spoke about installation considerations. When and where to show work, when not to show work, and when to change the parameters if possible.
Her editing is very interesting and her relationship to mass culture is refreshing. It has little to do I think with my work but I enjoy watching something materialize out of a bank of Madonna fans. It is also interesting to see that her interest at the core is constant but the individual art pieces are in flux. I need to identify what her core interest is exactly. I have a good idea but I need to nail it down.

Pitts Grad Research Assignment: Discussion Questions on Article or Essay

This is from an interview between Saul Williams and Sanford Biggers. It can be referenced at:
http://www.sanfordbiggers.com/essays-publications-interviews/interview-with-saul-williams.html
In it Saul Williams interviews Sanford Biggers on the concept of Afronomics, the importance of symbolism in autobiographical art and colonialist approach to art and music.

"SW: First of all can you just explain to me what the term Afronomics is?

SB: Afronomics is the currency of African–Americans’ cultural production. Like
economics, there is Afronomics. It describes how we as African-Americans deal with
language, slanguage, jazz, poetry, slavery, hip hop, middle passage… those experiences
that we have had as a people and how they still come into play in our present day lives. It
comes from our lost history and our need to reconstruct parts of it. It is the currency of
understanding a vast cultural progression of black people.

SW: In American society.

SB: Not solely, but that is the perspective I am most experienced with that. But, it can’t
exist without the larger African Diaspora for that is ultimately the genealogy from where
we come."

What is Afronomics?

Afronomics as I understand it with out repeating or plagiarizing, the idea that the ideas, concepts, images and symbols that pop up into my brain currently come from somewhere previous to me as a person of culturally black blood. I am a person living currently within a continuity that includes my experiences and history but extends and encompasses others that came before and will continue after. It is the understanding that by simply existing I am contributing to something that has already begun and will continue, but that I am not apart from it even though sometimes I do not recognize the connections. Images of wooden structures may not reoccur because of wooden boats carrying slaves or stocks where children were separated from their families but my associations may still have roots derived from personal histories and experiences. That even if it is not about race I am still black and that primarily I come from black people.

"SB: I use a much coded language in my work, but at the root, I think all of my pieces are
basically autobiographical.
The Black Madonna project, for example, goes from Atlanta, to Warsaw, to questions
about faith, origin and Afrocentrism. So do I. The Mandala break-dance floor series
refers to my childhood as a dancer and my studies of Buddhism while living in Japan.
It’s just a way of dealing with things in my life through symbols."

What is the relationship between art therapy and autobiographical work? What is the difference or how are they the same?

I have often wondered about so-called art therapy and art as therapy. It seems that art therapy is a way to assist others in surviving life changing traumatic events. It is in what some may call the lower arts. I say this because it is something that can be prescribed for everyone. The sole intent is to help access symbols and events locked in the psyche that may help in the mental recovery of the patient. Art as therapy may be seen as a statement where the physical act of creating is a meditative or self-renewing act in of itself. Additionally interaction with physical materials can be seen to help with relating to or interpreting space and therefore fostering a connection and understanding of the world. The autobiographic element in art can be seen as the situation of the artist with in his or her own artwork. It is the anchor if you will to the piece. The reason, the context, and the formulation of the work. Brancusi’s bird in space doesn’t exist because of what it is and what it represents, but rather because Brancusi was interested in working with the specific material he did, came from the particular background and the specific time in which he created work. I feel that Art therapy becomes demonized because it is accessible to all and can be seen as demystifying the idea of the altruistic visionary artist. Where in fact all artist seem to be haunted by events real and theoretical. Consciously or not they seek to work out and negotiate symbols, space and materials in order to interpret their own historical present.

"SB: We’re Afronauts! We are griots looking for the next frontier. That’s what this is all
about. But, what that means for us is that not only do we need to travel and communicate
what we know, but learn what others know as well. You know how it is when you are
abroad; you see yourself and your homeland through a much less obstructed lens. As if
you are looking in on your own existence and you can know understand and
contextualize it in a much clearer and yet abstract way."

How do you negotiate the compressed time spent in grad school with the ability to pull back and get perspective on your work?

I don't know and haven't really been able to figure this out. School becomes such a compression chamber with ideas and personalities flying just below your eyes and above your mouth. It's hard to keep perspective when your constantly trying to strengthen and challenge it at the same time. I am not quite sure what I am doing in terms of "what I am doing in journeying towards a thesis." I feel like I need to choose something but not at the expense of a result with the most payoff.

Sunday post 09/14/2008 Pia Linderman

Highlight an artist of interest that relates to your work. Provide the following information:

- Artist Biography and brief explanation of work (can use quotes from critics or galleries)
Pia Linderman
Born in Espoo, Finland, Pia Lindman received her MFA from the Academy of Fine Arts in Finland, and then as a Fulbright scholar received a Master of Science in Visual Studies from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She now lives and works in New York City.

Lindman takes the site-specific art tradition as a point of departure. Her work evolves around the themes of social context and space, as well as the performative aspect of making and experiencing art. By engineered social contexts like the Hybrid Sauna at M.I.T. in 1999 and Public Sauna at P.S.1 in 2000, Lindman aims to provoke members of the audience to perform and experience a particular social practice, forcing a re-evaluation of notions of corporeality and public sphere. Lindman’s approach to drawing is informed by the tradition of performance art. After videotaping herself re-enacting gestures of mourning captured in photographs in the New York Times, she traced these gestures from video stills with pencil. By exhibiting both the tracings and the enactments, she tries to illuminate some of the relationships between a photograph, its mediation, and the idea of original content, in this instance human emotional reaction to terrorism.
Lindman has mounted solo exhibitions and screenings at “the lab”, N.Y.C., Galleri Leena Kuumola in Helsinki Finland; the Institut Finlandais in Paris, France; Artist-in-Akiya in Tokyo, Japan; Kluuvi Gallery in Helsinki, Finland; and Galleri FABRIKEN in Gothenburg, Sweden. She has been included in group exhibitions and screenings in New York such as: “Premieres” at the Museum of Modern Art in N.Y.C., “BLIND DATES” at Sculpture Center L.I.C., "The Suburban Backyard" at Socrates Sculpture Park L.I.C., "Lobby Projections" at Museum of Modern Art in Queens; "New Views, World Financial Center", with Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and the World Financial Center Arts & Events; and "Greater New York" at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, L.I.C. Her video series Thisplace is in the MoMA collections. She has shown internationally in galleries and art institutions such as: Kunsthalle Exnergasse in Vienna, Austria, Millais Gallery at the Southampton Institute, U.K., San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, SF, FIAC with Luxe Gallery, Paris, France, Kunstbunker in Nuremburg, Germany, Helsinki Museum of Contemporary Art, Finland, and Beaconsfield in London, UK. She has lectured widely, among other at Yale University School of Art and Architecture, New Haven, New York University School of Visual Art, Institut Française d’Architecture in Paris, France, and the Rhode Island School of Design. She has received numerous awards, including those from AVEK (The Promotion Centre for Audiovisual Culture in Finland, FRAME (Finnish Fund for Art Exchange), the Council for the Arts at MIT. Lindman’s work has been reviewed in many periodicals and journals including: Times Higher Educational Supplement, PRINT Magazine, Rethinking Marxism, Artforum.com, Brooklyn Rail, Art Press, The New York Times, The Village Voice, ARTnews, Technikart, Thresholds, Time Out New York, and Time Out London.



- 4 images and / or video/sound clips of artwork






- a link to an interview with the artist or a review
http://www.re-title.com/artists/Pia-Lindman.asp
http://www.m-cult.org/performingplaces/presenters/lindman.htm

- link to gallery representing artist
http://www.luxegallery.net/web/default2.asp?active_page_id=166

- artist website
http://web.mit.edu/pialindman/

Thursday post 09/11/08 Thoughts of interest – Week in review

Did anyone critique your work this week? If so, what were their impressions?
No
What was the most motivational or creative moment of the past week?
Finally not being sick and able to work-to find 6 books that are actually relevant to my practice.
What do you want to achieve in next week's studio practice?
Tie up the loose ends in my new work
What did you achieve in your studio this past week?
To create those loose ends
What has been an artistic failure this week?
My last shoot wasn’t effective enough-I need to shoot more.
What was the most profound thought in relation to your practice this week?
That I was able to tie in Edward Hopper to what I want in my studio practice.
If there was a visiting artist this week, what is your impression of their work and process in relation to your own?
NA- But next week!

Sunday post 09/07/2008

- Artist Biography and brief explanation of work (can use quotes from critics or galleries)

Chris Burden (born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1946) is an American artist.

He studied for his B.A. in visual arts, physics and architecture at Pomona College and received his MFA at the University of California, Irvine from 1969 to 1971.

Burden's reputation as a performance artist started to grow in the early 1970s after he made a series of controversial performances in which the idea of personal danger as artistic expression was central. His most well-known act from that time is perhaps the performance piece Shoot that was made in F Space in Santa Ana, California in 1971, in which he was shot in his left arm by an assistant from a distance of about five meters. Burden was taken to a psychiatrist after this piece. Other performances from the 1970s were Five Day Locker Piece (1971), Deadman (1972), B.C. Mexico (1973), Fire Roll (1973), TV Hijack (1972), Doomed (1975) and Honest Labor (1979).

Several of Burden's other performance pieces were considered somewhat controversial at the time: another "danger piece" was Doomed, in which Burden lay motionless in a museum gallery under a slanted sheet of glass, with a clock running nearby. Unbeknownst to the museum owners, the concept of Doomed was that Chris was prepared to remain in that position until someone from the museum staff interfered in some way with the piece. Forty-five hours later, a museum guard placed a pitcher of water next to Burden, thus ending the piece.

In 1975 he created the fully operational B-Car, a lightweight four-wheeled vehicle that he described as being "able to travel 100 miles per hour and achieve 100 miles per gallon". Some of his other works from that period are DIECIMILA (1977), a facsimile of an Italian 10,000 Lira note, possibly the first fine art print that (like paper money) is printed on both sides of the paper it is printed on, The Speed of Light Machine (1983), in which he reconstructed a scientific experiment with which to "see" the speed of light, and the installation C.B.T.V. (1977), a reconstruction of the first ever made Mechanical television.

In 1978 he became a professor at University of California, Los Angeles, a position from which he resigned in 2005 due to a controversy over the university's alleged mishandling of a student's classroom performance piece that echoed one of Burden's own performance pieces.[1] Burden cited the performance in his letter of resignation, saying that the student should have been suspended during the investigation into whether school safety rules had been violated. The performance allegedly involved a loaded gun, but authorities were unable to substantiate this.

In 2005, Burden released Ghost Ship, his crewless, self-navigating yacht which docked at Newcastle-upon-Tyne on 28 July after a 330-mile 5-day trip from Shetland. The project cost £150,000, and was funded with a significant grant from the UK arts council, being designed and constructed with the help of the Marine Engineering Department of the University of Southampton. It is said to be controlled via onboard computers and a GPS system, however in case of emergency the ship is 'shadowed' by an accompanying support boat.

- 4 images and / or video/sound clips of artwork




- a link to an interview with the artist or a review
http://artforum.com/diary/id=8299- link to gallery representing artist
http://www.gagosian.com/artists/chris-burden/
- artist website
- NA

Pitts Grad Research Assignment: Discussion Questions on Article or Essay

From: THE VISUAL GRAMMAR
OF SUFFERING
Pia Lindman and the
Performance of Grief
Kriss Ravetto-Biagioli
PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art - PAJ 84 (Volume 28, Number 3), September 2006, pp. 77-92

(This article refers to "the New York Times" performances by Pia Linderman)

"She does not address particular site-specific issues, such as genocide or mass rape in Sudan,
terrorism, human rights abuses of prisoners in Iraq, etc. Instead she draws on images
of people who have suffered abuse or the violent death of loved ones to explore how
the representation of vulnerability calls on us to react. I read her work as paralleling
the discourse of Judith Butler and Adriana Cavarero who have turned away from
arguments based on the notion of feminine experience to explore how any “structure
of address” introduces its own “moral authority.”4"

1. Is this a question of how does one remove the question of personal/secular bias on the part of the artist?

I find it interesting that points were brought up in this article concerning bias of representation as Lindman's work questions representation and the authority of re-representation. This is something that I do not have much background in questioning or considering. I have always come from a point of view of the "artist." That the artist has a viewpoint- and orientation, a grudge if you will. It seems that to use race and gender or other sujects deemed as unequal in current power structures invites by default a sense of victimhood. So it would seem here in Lindman's work it is preferable to avoid such subjects to get at the meat of the matter- not to let the specifics of wheather it is a korean monument or a vietnam memorial- the polotics of/ the history of get in the way of what she is trying to highlight.

1. How does one get to the point where one can strip down all the elements to what Kevin Everson refered to a fighting weight?

I am not exactly sure yet. I am unsure of how to make my own work that is at once personal, make it accessable as universal but not be specific about it to land it in a trap where it gets mired down and exploited? I believe thatt one of the things that I believe in art is that everyone should have a voice, both in art but also in life. So I tend to come back to art that speaks for those who can not speak. I could not speak for a time, and then I fear I spoke too much. This speaking too much is that trap. I do not wish to do art that speaks to victim hood rather bears witness to it and can speak outwardly to everyone.

"The journalistic photograph lies precariously between empirical evidence (the witnessing of the Other’s pain) and outright propaganda (the manipulating the way we see). The image also cultivates a public awareness of the plight of the Other. It constitutes public taste and the aes-
thetics of Otherness. In the process, it tells us not only who the Other is, but how
to read the Other. Through an intricate process of identification, “we” are addressed
as a virtual subject and then are asked to witness “events,” experience these “events”
by proxy, and ultimately react to such “events” by giving consensus."

Thursday post 09/04/08 Thoughts of interest – Week in review

Thoughts of interest – Week in review –
Sometimes you find wierd coincidences and-but even moreso on the web.
One of the terms/ art vocab thown around last year was the myth of Sisiphus. The implication for my work and others was the idea of unending or fruitless tasks. I raqndomly found a website called "The Sisyphus Files -Climbing up the mountain again and again…" so if you want you can go there if you want a brief recap about who Sisyphus was:
"He was a king punished in the Tartarus by being cursed to roll a huge boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll down again, and repeat this throughout eternity. Today, Sisyphean can be used as an adjective meaning that an activity is unending and/or repetitive. It could also be used to refer to tasks that are pointless and unrewarding.”

You can also go there to find out what the author thinks of artist Pia Lindman!? Funny and small internet world of blogging. Paul posted something on Pia for me the other day so I could check her out. And I have!
- Answer the following questions:

• Did anyone critique your work this week? If so, what were their impressions?

I have had no such contact

• What was the most motivational or creative moment of the past week?

Oddly enough Kevin Everson may have been the most motivational and the National Portrait Gallery was the most creative moment-well in addition to the Native American Museum. The NAMU is crazy contemporary in it's attention to...well being contemporary. Everything is looking forward while looking back. Usually you might expect a curatorial direction of "primative." So that we as visitor can come look at the corpse of native american. This is quite the oposite- we are encouraged to see the past present and future possibilities of the Native American Indian.

• What do you want to achieve in next week's studio practice?

To do something else other than read and write!

• What did you achieve in your studio this past week?

Nothing of note other than read, check out book and read..I mean watch videos.

• What has been an artistic failure this week?

Succumbing to the sicknesses of the flesh.

• What was the most profound thought in relation to your practice this week?

That I shouldn't let criticisms infect the direction of my work, and I need to define that for myself.

• If there was a visiting artist this week, what is your impression of their work and process in relation to your own?

N/A
- Post 1 picture, video, etc. of your choice

9/3 @ 9AM blog post (200 word statement) Artist Statement

My work explores the fears, frustrations and alienation that occur in institutional settings. The institutions: the office, the school, the hospital, places that are historically thought of as umbrellas for the masses. Harboring each individual with their own sense of history, culture and sense of self. The specter of the institution has proven often to be just the opposite. These spaces that should canonize acceptance, care and guardianship are in fact a place of ostercization, humiliation and conformity. These are surrogate spaces that attempt to function as homes might have.
Issues of repetition, restlessness, tasking without resolution, boredom, confusion and complacency are all themes that are found in my work.
The use of video allows the viewer to experience the weight of time as well as the actions portrayed in each work more effectively that the single photograph. Contrived sound is integral as well as it allows the viewer auditory clues and prompts offering tools to better interpret the visuals spectrum.
Institutions such as hospitals, high schools, churches and factories are fundamental contributing factors in the history of progress. However, in the same breath these same institutions have resulted in many grievous wrongs against the history of the human condition.