Thursday post 10/29/08

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 and an individual crit which was positive. I had a lot of questions about the work which were addressed very well.
* What was the most motivational or creative moment of the past week?
Placing 386 cross dissolves in my work over the course of one weekend. It’s a record.
* What do you want to achieve in next week's studio practice?
Have a lot of feedback on my work and make some decisions on how to proceed.
* What did you achieve in your studio this past week?
“Finished” a piece for crit. Tried once more to pair orphan clips to create meaning.
* What has been an artistic failure this week?
Not enough sleep and scraping supposedly saved work.
* What was the most profound thought in relation to your practice this week?
That there is validity in the instinctual.
* If there was a visiting artist this week, what is your impression of their work and process in relation to your own?
NA
- Post 1 picture, video, etc. of your choice

If you thought you ever had a bad crit!

Sunday post 10/25/2008

MARINA ABRAMOVIC

Since the beginning of her career in Belgrade during the early 1970s, Marina Abramovic has pioneered the use of performance as a visual art form. The body has always been both her subject and medium. Exploring the physical and mental limits of her being, she has withstood pain, exhaustion, and danger in the quest for emotional and spiritual transformation. The tensions of abandonment and control lay at the heart of her series of performances known as Rhythms (1973–74). In Rhythm 5, Abramovic lay down inside the blazing frame of a wooden star. With her oxygen supply depleted by the fire, she lost consciousness and had to be rescued by concerned onlookers. In Rhythm 0, she invited her audience to do whatever they wanted to her using any of the 72 items she provided: pen, scissors, chains, axe, loaded pistol, and others. Truly ephemeral, Abramovic's earliest performances were documented only by crude black-and-white photographs and descriptive texts, which she published as an edition years later. Since 1976 she has utilized video to capture the temporal nature of her art. Cleaning the Mirror #1 shows videos of a haunting performance in which Abramovic scrubs a grime-covered human skeleton on her lap. Rich with metaphor, this three-hour action recalls, among other things, Tibetan death rites that prepare disciples to become one with their own mortality.

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










- a link to an interview with the artist or a review
http://www.jca-online.com/abramovic.html

- link to gallery representing artist
http://seecult.org/v-web/gallery/albums.php
- artist website
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=338869754

Complete

Paul Thulin has read your blog up to this point/entry. Your blog is currently up to date and complete.


-Love the "what they did versus the what they are video". Next week lets focus on the intrique -- the motivational force of your work. What are the insights given to you by your current portfolio? Share the energy with me.

Thursday post 10/23/08

Thoughts of interest – Week in review

- Answer the following questions:

* Did anyone critique your work this week? If so, what were their impressions?
Yes, I met with Sonali today and we spoke of a variety of things, including sound textures I made for one of my video pieces and how that was working- which was good. And we talked about how I want to integrate some of the videos that I have been shooting into a full piece and how that will manifest.
* What was the most motivational or creative moment of the past week?
Feeling like I have a clue for what I am doing that isn't so obvious and technical
* What do you want to achieve in next week's studio practice?
Put it all together and shake it all around. And get critiqued on it.
* What did you achieve in your studio this past week?
Swapping files and managing memorey, not spelling well and recording sound.
* What has been an artistic failure this week?
Not having a large enough hardrive...yet(its on order)
* What was the most profound thought in relation to your practice this week?
That I am really angry and I needed to recognize it instead of suppress it.
* If there was a visiting artist this week, what is your impression of their work and process in relation to your own?
NA
- Post 1 picture, video, etc. of your choice

One Word 10/22/2008

Word: Physicality

Definition:
Main Entry:
phys·i·cal·i·ty Listen to the pronunciation of physicality
Pronunciation: \ˌfi-zə-ˈka-lə-tē\
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural phys·i·cal·i·ties
Date: 1660
1 : intensely physical orientation : predominance of the physical usually at the expense of the mental, spiritual, or social 2 : a physical aspect or quality


Artist 1:

Artist Name: Kate Gilmore

Reason for Choosing:
Kate's work resonates with me in terms of her use of her own body in her art at the cost of her flesh. I think that with the artist I have chosen there is a sense of being present in their work. A sense of guts- at the expense of the flesh.... I think what sets her apart from the rest is the empathy one feel after and while watching her work.
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Outside Review of Artwork: A 2-3 paragraph quote
Kate Gilmore loves a challenge. For her performance-based video works, she sets up a difficult physical task—a precarious tower of strung-together furniture to climb, for instance—dons lipstick and a fancy dress, and documents herself making the attempt. She has jumped rope on a perforated wooden platform while wearing stilettos (Double Dutch, 2004), ascended a slippery ramp in rollerskates (Cake Walk, 2005), and forced her satin-clad body through a tiny tunnel (Main Squeeze, 2006).

The dogged persistence of Gilmore's protagonists suggests the obsessive behavior that can characterize daily efforts to cope with high expectations. These dolled-up women seem desperate for success, love, or attention—desires traditionally bound up with gender and the condition of artmaking. In all of her projects, Gilmore strives for compositional perfection, and her incongruous party clothes are always perfectly coordinated with the installation itself. Combining physical comedy, palpable effort, and a whiff of real danger, Gilmore's work evokes time-based "endurance" work of the 1970s, such as that of Vito Acconci, and expands on feminist and performance art in the tradition of Joan Jonas and Marina Abramovic.

Bibliography of Review:
ICA: Institute of Contemporary Art. University of Pennslyvania. .


Artist 2:

Artist Name: Chris burden

Reason for Choosing:
I don't really care if he distancees himself from most of his early work, it is still very visceral and seems to tempt the concept of life. Sure it's from a very young minded perspective, very male perspective, but I think there are a lot of people in the world that very much align themselves to this way of thinking or at least spirit. For good or ill.
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Outside Review of Artwork: A 2-3 paragraph quote
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 1970's 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 performance pieces were considered somewhat controversial at the time. Shoot, for example, involved Burden allowing an assistant to fire a loaded rifle at his arm. Another such "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.

Bibliography of Review
"An introduction to Chris Burden." Thomas Moronic. .

Artist 3:

Artist Name: Joseph boeys

Reason for Choosing:
The mythology of Joseph Boeuys is vast, but it is the combination of the desire to be in the world, and apart of living in this world that is most interesting. Again it is this sense of being physically here-present with in the work that comes out and extends this sense of artistic mythology, the ability to be so at times misunderstood or perhapse mysterious but at the same time often be so clear and direct.
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Outside Review of Artwork: A 2-3 paragraph quote
This is a dense, evocative exhibition that presents Beuys as both teacher and artist; it is accompanied by two videotapes that demonstrate the considerable charisma he brought to each activity. It gives us an artist of rich, not always resolvable contradictions, a man as interested in ancient myth as in television, who used videotapes to mythologize himself. It reveals an artist who deployed eccentric, often decaying materials like felt and fat in his sculptures and performances, yet who was a consummate draftsman in the traditional sense of those words.

As Beuys says in one of the videotapes on display here, he believed in ''creativity as a revolutionary means existing in everyone,'' and his frequent use of multiples - art objects produced in large editions - made his work widely and, for a time, inexpensively available. Yet, with the ego and assurance of a great artist, he also turned such things as Polaroid negatives and felt blackboard erasers into artworks simply by adding his own signature.

Bibliography of Review
SMITH, ROBERTA. "Review/Art; Joseph Beuys asTeacher and Artist." New York Times. 25 Nov. 1988. .

Artist 4:

Artist Name: Ana Mendieta

Reason for Choosing:
Anyone that play with blood has my ear. playing with blood sounds cliche until you realize your actually playing with BLOOD! The nectar of life the driver, the conduit for the pulse. There is a obviously a problem with the concept of primitive other however there is rightfully so a place who do it well. Ana seems to my mind operate as some sort of ghost rather than some primitive shaman(or priestess) someone working in between the here and now and the past, emotion and reason reminding us of the connectedness to all things....in a really disturbing way.
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Outside Review of Artwork: A 2-3 paragraph quote
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.
Bibliography of Review
"Ana Mendieta." Women's Issues In 20th Century Art. Keller Clark University. .

Artist 5:

Artist Name: Matthew barney

Reason for Choosing:
His work seems so body centered as it is, not to mention the theatricality of how the body moves seems to superceed all else. His concepts are very obtuse at times but are pretty. However it is the fact that his films are a circus for the body to work out all these different stories, conflicts, puzzels, etc.
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Outside Review of Artwork: A 2-3 paragraph quote
Barney has an eye for a certain kind of repellent modern beauty, the look of the cyborg age. His love affair, as an artist, is with the inorganic. He has discovered a new sculptural material, a range of sophisticated modern plastics that look weirdly fleshy: "prosthetic plastic", in his words. It's not hard to see the contemporary pertinence of this. Today, with science-fiction fantasies of robots and artificial intelligence no longer fiction, he's the Jean Cocteau of this cyborg age.

Some kind of cyborg does seem to have been at work in the Serpentine. In the big, domed central gallery, you come across the detritus of a sinister ritual act. There is a metal pole soaring straight up from the floor into the dome. Around the floor are bizarre, clumsy shoes, oil drums full of vaseline, a bunch of umbilical cord-like appendages and hoists; at the four corners of the room, tiny climbing footholds; and four rough, shaky drawings high up. This room is by far the best in the exhibition. It shows the sceptic why Barney matters: no one else has captured the aesthetic of our mutant age so well. It's just as well it works - because nothing else does.

Bibliography of Review
Jones, Jonathan. "Barney's rubble." The Guardian. 20 Sept. 2007. .

Artist 6:

Artist Name: Carolee Schneeman

Reason for Choosing:
Because there seems to be an abandon about her in terms of her art and use of the body. Not recklessness but a willingness to give herself over to art and explore from a very 1st person point of view. It also seems that it is a very "I will show you" sort of mentality-"I will teach you" I feel might not go into how I feel about beuys but still very close.
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Outside Review of Artwork: A 2-3 paragraph quote
Carolee Schneeman's artworks can have the impression of innocence. The viewer, upon first glance, see's red dye dripped on snow in heart shapes or sees red paint applied to delicate sheets of tissue. The viewer then looks at the gallery tag and reads the media involved in the work. Blood. Menstral blood on tissue. Blood as a feminine symbol of power and beauty instead of a symbol of violence.

Schneeman's art work originates from the female body's urges and it's media is the body's functions. Through interior contemplation of the rythmns and desires of her body, she creates artworks that are shocking and physical. Primarily a performance artist, her body explorations are varied experiences. She writhes naked with a group of others amidst chunks of raw meat or she pulls a scroll stained with menstral blood from her vagina. By shocking the audience, in a subtle way or not, Schneeman has created compelling works that challenge the taboos associated with the female body.

Bibliography of Review
"Carolee Schneeman." Women's Issues In 20th Century Art. Keller Clark University. .

Artist 7:

Artist Name: Francis Alys

Reason for Choosing:
Pushing a block of ice through the streets seems like a great and powerful statement without having to articulate any sort of intellectual viewpoint. But Alys work especially centered around community and connectivity on a social side is very interesting and I admire true street artists (as I call them) as it seems that what the represent is not a random or obvious comment on society but seems to encompass so much more.
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Outside Review of Artwork: A 2-3 paragraph quote
The procession took place on June 23, beginning at MoMA's midtownlocation at 11 West 53 Street and moving across the Queensboro Bridge, up Queens Boulevard to MoMA QNS on 33 Street. Participants in the procession carried palanquins holding representations of works in the Museum's collection by artists such as Pablo Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, and Alberto Giacometti. The event-with its rose petal-strewn route and brass band-had the feel of a religious procession, like the one in Little Italy's famous annual San Gennaro festival. "Francis Alÿs has responded to this moment of transition for the museum by devising a timely and provocative performance," said Ms. Montgomery. "With this piece, he has encouraged us all to reflect fondly on our relationships with modern icons and to find mystical meaning in unexpected contexts."
For Alÿs, the street is a site of invigorating possibility and confluence, a space where the complexity of popular life collides and interacts with the practice of making art. Since 1991, going on paseos (walks) has been the centerpiece of Alÿs's artistic practice, and the urban streets, especially those of Mexico City, have been his primary context. His works in various mediums are born out of these walks, during which he often carries a prop and adheres to a whimsical route or pattern of behavior. He records his path and the results of his walk, collects artifacts, and stores images, all of which he later uses in his drawings and paintings.

Bibliography of Review
"MoMA Projects 76." Postmedia. Museum of Modern Art. .

Artist 8:

Artist Name: Vito Acconci

Reason for Choosing:
Part of the physicality of thereness I think is a wierd sort of spectre of myth and playing with a flimsy sense of reality in reality of being. The seem to be very few people that challenge the fabric of the way we percieve things-especially in art and I think that in an age where even what we do "see" can be justified as fiction, it is important to be physicaly present and tangeble that as views change there is a visceral quality that cannot be escaped.
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Outside Review of Artwork: A 2-3 paragraph quote
In a side gallery, Other Voices for a Second Sight offered another version of this obsession with the presence of the artist. Originally shown at MOMA in 1974, the installation is built to resemble an audio recording studio, complete with walls paneled with brown acoustical board and a swivel chair facing a bank of audio equipment. On either side of this studio is a reflective window looking onto another room, where images of Acconci, projected by means of slides or film loops through translucent plastic sheets and fabrics, are rendered barely legible by flashes of light. In the central room, the sound of the artist's running autobiographical recitation competes with other, assorted recorded noises.

In this work Acconci's body is placed largely outside the field of vision, leaving only audible traces of his presence. Is it the artist or the viewer who is meant to assume the role of sound engineer? In any case, in this "theatricalized" setting the distance that usually separates scene and audience, artist and viewer, effectively collapses.

Bibliography of Review
Marino, Melanie. "Vito Acconci at Barbara Gladstone." Bnet. Nov. 1998. Art in America. .

Artist 9:

Artist Name: John Bock

Reason for Choosing:
To a certain extent it is his absurdly reality that makes him interesting. In all manner and shapes and sizes humanity exist. To exist is to reaffirm being and to confront and overcome the average, the status quo, everyday that is john Boch. Again like I said before you can fake somethings just with CG and a TiVo. John Boch's videos are so grounded in a way that me pause to say "that is really wierd...but I can relate to it."
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Outside Review of Artwork: A 2-3 paragraph quote
John Bock's Lectures are performances where the artist uses his own sculptures as sets and props and his own manipulated words and invented language as a means to challenge and confront human relationships. Admittedly frantic and devoid of 'proper' syntax, his Lectures integrate theories and terminology from psychology to economics and from art history to popular culture, while Bock engages in a continuous role-playing of different illogical personae, interweaving stories and situations that emerge as absurd, often hilarious, sometimes threatening or violent, and poetic.

Bibliography of Review
"JOHN BOCK A Lecture & Film Retrospective." E-flux. 22 Oct. 2008. .

Artist 10:

Artist Name: Paul McCarthy

Reason for Choosing:
It pretty much the same sort of thing. I am still kind of learning about him but it goes back to the idea that the body does something and is important-the physicality and the presence that comes along with is powerful. I am not talking about how the statue of david is a body and has presence rather the way bodiess react and cerate space by being and moving in real time, it isn't simply about the body but what it does, and what it means to be present and active.
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Outside Review of Artwork: A 2-3 paragraph quote
In short, professor McCarthy, who has taught art at UCLA since 1982, continues to annoy, and in the process resists either art-rag or art-establishment packaging. A West Coast rather than an East Coast favorite, he is neither the last of the Destruction Artists nor the first of the shamans. "Paul McCarthy: Central Symmetrical Rotation Movement" at the Whitney until Oct. 12 offers up a disconcerting chunk of his sometimes clownish but almost always provocative/evocative anti-art displays. His 2001 New Museum extravaganza was nearly destroyed by faint praise. His most disconcerting works - e.g. a performance involving sticking a Barbie doll into his rectum or the 2007 Santa Clause with a Buttplug inflatable --- are nowhere to be seen. Someone is cleaning up his act.



Nevertheless, even Whitney curator Chrissie Isles when she tries to confront the pared down McCarthy can't quite pin him down. In her catalogue essay, she traces McCarthy's work to the influence of Destruction Artists such as Ralph Ortiz and Hermann Nitsch, but then connects him to everyone under the flag of darkness, from Francis Bacon to Vito Acconci. Isles does her best to weave all available references and citations together in a critical fiction that almost reaches coherence, yet still misses the convulsive nature of McCarthy's art. Convulsive art deserves a convulsive text. If it can still be said that there are Dionysian and Apollonian extremities of the art spectrum, McCarthy belongs with those of the Dionysian persuasion.

Bibliography of Review
Perreault, John. "Paul McCarthy Spin; Eliasson Falls; Bourgeois Fails." Artopia John Perreault's art diary. .

Hassan Grad Research Assignment: Discussion Questions on Article or Essay

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

The Article is entitled Bocio.

In the article William Pope L. asks the question whether or not he as an African-American can appropriate bocio for his own uses as an artist. He did not come up with the original association between his own work and the concept of bocio; Cair Crawford has done this for him. Bocio translates to “empowered cadaver” and comes from West Africa, its traditions similar to voodoo. My question is: At what point can you claim and therefore take ownership to a concept that someone else places on your work? This I find as a paradox of intention vs. interpretation. Pope L. posits this “Why look a gift horse in the mouth?” meaning if someone finds something of interest in your work that was unintended the best answer is to try and understand what that means and what it ultimately means or can mean for yourself. I think part of the idea of writing this article was to express just this point. To be on the record on having thought about it and therefore making an attempt to speak to the claims that this other person has staked upon his work. It is not to deny or demean but simply to weigh in on the idea. I say to not demean, in that Pope L. recognizes that he is not a scholar in the field of bocio or West-African studies. He knows what he knows. This also speaks to the notion he expresses a concern as how to separate what his interpretation will and can be from the expectations of others knowledgeable or not.
In his article Pope L. talks about the need and uses of masks employed by black people in this country over the years. Is the aim of the article to simply answer a simple claim about the relationship of Pope L.’s work and bocio or is there some other aim at work? I feel that there is a fair connection that should be made between the idea of adopting an idea or concept when someone else has struck a new claim of knowing what your work is about. An easy way of approaching this subject is to speak of the “sell-out.” Ms. Crawford has asserted this so-called connection to bocio in Pope L.’s work and he certainly has a right to accept or defend his work against such a claim. There is a sense that such an endorsement in the form of academic interest only lends Pope L. more credibility in scholarly and artistic communities. Pope L. seems to take this opportunity to point out this odd boon if you will. The opportunity to don a mask of cultural acceptability. Pope L. uses examples like Cab Calloway, Bert Williams and Jean-Michel Basquit who all in a way (you might say) sold out to a persona, one that was offered by mass culture/dominant culture. The opportunity of the mask such as outsider artist, minstrel, and showman would provide the assurance of work and pay if not the ability to pursue ones craft. But each had its drawbacks, their own limitations even if one eventually rose above them. Bert Williams for example performed in black face because it was unacceptable for several years for a black entertainer to be less black than the black make up that comprised the “black face.” Each instance or mask reduces the artist down to a single dimension rooted in some sort of primal simplification. So Pope L. Seems to answer the complexity of the gift horse that is bocio, this ancient mysterious thing, in a way that is on one hand reluctant acceptance but also a vigorous challenge as well. After all it is a little weird “that one of them [white people] knows more about me than I do?”

Sunday post 10/19/2008

Francis Alÿs

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



b. 1959, Antwerp, Belgium

Francis Alÿs was born in 1959 in Antwerp, Belgium. He attended the Institut Supérieur d'Architecture Saint-Luc in Tournai, Belgium, from 1978 to 1983 and the Instituto Universitario di Architettura in Venice from 1983 to 1986, where he received a master's degree in urbanism with a thesis on the presence of animals in medieval and Renaissance-era European cities. After graduation, he moved to Mexico City, where he worked in the workshop of the weaver Jacobo Islas Mendoza in collaboration with Felipe Sanabria. The abundant presence of street animals in that city inspired the early work The Collector (1991–92), in which the artist "walked" a magnetized sculptural model of an animal through the city, extracting random metal detritus from the street. The sculpture, along with photographic documentation of its use, was exhibited in Alÿs's second solo exhibition, at the Galería Arte Contemporáneo in Mexico City in 1992.

Many of Alÿs's subsequent works examined the act of walking through an urban environment. The Leak (1995) consisted of a walk through Ghent with a punctured can of paint, which left a trail behind him. In Paradox of Praxis (1997), he pushed a block of ice through Mexico City until it had completely melted away. His work also developed a political edge; in Patriotic Tales (1997), he led a flock of sheep into the Zocalo, the central square of Mexico City, in reference to the bureaucrats who authored the suppression of a protest there in 1968. For the photographic series Sleepers (1999), he took photographs of animals and homeless people sleeping on the street. In his recent project When Faith Moves Mountains (2002), which was exhibited at the Bienal Iberoamericana de Lima in 2002, his focus shifted from the urban experience to notions of collective myth making: five hundred volunteers used shovels to move a sand dune four inches from its original location.

Alÿs has had solo exhibitions at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Mexico City (1997), Musée Picasso in Antibes (2001), Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut (2002), and the Museum of Modern Art in New York (Projects 76, 2002), among other venues. In 1999, he produced a web project for the Dia Center for the Arts in New York. His work has also appeared in the Bienal de La Habana (1994), Bienal de Arte Tridimensional in Mexico City (1997), Bienal Barro de Am�rica in Caracas (1998), Melbourne International Biennial (1999), Mexico City: An Exhibition about the Exchange Rate of Bodies and Values at P.S. 1 in New York (2002), and Moving Pictures at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (2003). Alÿs was a finalist for the Guggenheim Museum's 2002 Hugo Boss Prize. He continues to live and work in Mexico City.
.
- 4 images and / or video/sound clips of artwork






- a link to an interview with the artist or a review
http://www.postmedia.net/alys/interview.htm

- link to gallery representing artist
http://www.davidzwirner.com/

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

Thursday post 10/16/08

Thoughts of interest – Week in review

- Answer the following questions:

* Did anyone critique your work this week? If so, what were their impressions?
Simen Johan took a look at my work this week. He liked the visuals that I am working with now, but suggested to be sure to further exploring other metaphores other than water just to make sure that it is the correct expression. Other than that he really liked where my photos were going at the beginning of the sememster last Fall LOL!

* What was the most motivational or creative moment of the past week?
To have someone look at old unexplored work that got left behind and show interest.
* What do you want to achieve in next week's studio practice?
Wrap some stuff up.
* What did you achieve in your studio this past week?
Shot more footage read more
* What has been an artistic failure this week?
Not being 100% well enough to drown my self some more.
* What was the most profound thought in relation to your practice this week?
That I might just figure out where this is all going.
* If there was a visiting artist this week, what is your impression of their work and process in relation to your own?
See #1
- Post 1 picture, video, etc. of your choice

Sunday post 10/12/2008

Ann Hamilton
- Artist Biography and brief explanation of work (can use quotes from critics or galleries)
Bio-
Ann Hamilton was born in 1956 in Lima, Ohio. She trained in textile design at the University of Kansas, and later received an MFA from Yale University. While her degree is in sculpture, textiles and fabric have continued to be an important part of her work, which includes installations, photographs, videos, performances, and objects. For example, following graduation she made “Toothpick Suit,” for which she layered thousands of toothpicks in porcupine fashion along a suit of clothes that she then wore and photographed. Hamilton’s sensual installations often combine evocative soundtracks with cloth, filmed footage, organic material, and objects such as tables. She is as interested in verbal and written language as she is in the visual, and sees the two as related and interchangeable. In recent work, she has experimented with exchanging one sense organ for another—the mouth and fingers, for example, become like an eye with the addition of miniature pinhole cameras. In 1993, she won a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship. As the 1999 American representative at the Venice Biennale, she addressed topics of slavery and oppression in American society with an installation that used walls embossed with Braille. The embossed Braille caught a dazzling red powder as it slid down from above, literally making language visible. After teaching at the University of California at Santa Barbara from 1985 to 1991, she returned to Ohio, where she lives and works.







- a link to an interview with the artist or a review
http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/hamilton/clip1.html
- link to gallery representing artist
SeanKelly Gallery: http://www.skny.com/
- artist website
http://www.annhamiltonstudio.com/

Thursday post 10/09/08

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?
NO, but someone will on later on today.
* What was the most motivational or creative moment of the past week?
I watched Tounges Untied by Marlon Riggs
* What do you want to achieve in next week's studio practice?
Keep shooting and maybe find a large bath tub 6ft long? Scout locations for 1 project
* What did you achieve in your studio this past week?
Did test shots for next project set up for interview exercise/possible project
* What has been an artistic failure this week?

* What was the most profound thought in relation to your practice this week?
That I may have something to say, an idea a storyboard….wow!
* If there was a visiting artist this week, what is your impression of their work and process in relation to your own?
NA
- Post 1 picture, video, etc. of your choice

Pitts Grad Research Assignment: Discussion Questions on Article or Essay

This is a text also taken from "The Friendliest Black Artist in America."
This article is by Kristine Stiles entitled "Thunderbird Immolation: Burning Racism."


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


I have chosen this text in effort to reign in t some semblance of order my research regiem. I am genuinely interested in reading this text as I honestly believe it to inform my present direction and studio practice.

1. I find this a just one fascinating tale of a streets performer, William Pope L. I wonder at the courage to take "public art" to such a degree both with Thunderbird and the crawls and other such pieces. Where does this sort of art situate currently in the "art world?"
I do not really know where such a performative type of engagement finds a home in the art world right now. This is the discussion I would like to have. Are there any other artist who engage on the same sort of resonant levels or are they still fringe type artist.
2. How does the art of william Pope L. fit into the idea of institutional critique? Does it? What is your take on institutional criticism.
It seems like it does not if the term institutional critique is only looking at the art world. But does it, that's what I am asking. And also is William Pope L. also critiquing in this piece specificly the art world by staging it in fron of 420 west broadway? Is it a double stab? I think obviously so but when I read writers write about such a cult personality I begin to wonder if what I am reading is an aesthicization of the event. I don't know what do you think? My mind has not quite grown so large to grasp the yellow in the piece. I'm sure it is there for a reason. If anything that is the only thing I don't understand. The rest is just powerful.

Sunday post 10/05/2008

Jillian Mcdonald
- Artist Biography and brief explanation of work (can use quotes from critics or galleries)
Bio-
Jillian Mcdonald is a Canadian artist, currently living in New York. She is Associate Professor of Fine Art at Pace University, where she also curates and co-directs the Pace Digital Gallery. Originally from Winnipeg, she dreams of the snow-covered prairie.

Recent solo shows and projects include Moti Hasson Gallery and Jack the Pelican Presents in New York; Third Avenue Gallery in Vancouver; The San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery; Third Avenue Gallery in Chicago; 1708 Gallery in Richmond, Virginia; vertexList Gallery and ArtMoving Projects in Brooklyn; TPW (presented at The Drake Hotel) and YYZ in Toronto; Video Pool in Winnipeg; and Edge Media in Newfoundland. Group exhibitions and festivals featuring her work include The Edith Russ Haus for Media Art in Oldenburg, Germany, The Krannert Museum in Illinois; MMOCA in Wisconsin, The Whitney Museum's Artport, Year Zero One in Toronto, Manifestation d'Art Internationale de Québec, 404 International Festival of Electronic Art in Argentina, La Sala Naranja in Spain, The Sundance Online Film Festival in Utah, The Cleveland International Performance Art Festival, La Biennale de Montréal, ISEA 2004 in Estonia, and the Centre d’Art Contemporain de Basse-Normandie in France.

Mcdonald received grants from The Canada Council for the Arts, Soil New Media, Turbulence, The Gunk Foundation, NYSCA, The Experimental Television Center, Thirdplace.org, and Pace University. She lectures regularly in North America and Europe about her work and attends numerous residencies including The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's Workspace Program and Harvestworks in New York; DAIMON, Sagamie, and La Chambre Blanche in Québec; CFAT in Halifax; Em-Media in Calgary; and The Western Front in Vancouver. She is a 2008 resident at The Headlands Center for the Arts in California and a 2008 New York Foundation for the Arts Video Fellow.

Mcdonald's work is featured and reviewed in The New York Times, Flash Art, Art Papers, The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, and The Village Voice, among others. A discussion of Me and Billy Bob appears in Stalking, a book by Bran Nicol.

Recently she discovered playing keyboard, backpacking, rock climbing, cycling, and running half marathons with Beckley Roberts. In 2007 she ran her first marathon in Atlanta, GA. Some of her favourite people are strangers.

Artist statement-

My work in video, web art, and public intervention is often performative and relational.
In my recent videos, I am interested in the American cult of celebrity, the fantasy that buoys extreme fandom, and the mechanisms of fear as entertainment at work in horror films. I am interested in the ways in which film genres affect their audiences, and in the fan sub-cultures that fuel them. The presence of my image in this work serves not as a self-portrait, but as a projection of universal emotions such as desire or fear. Screen Kiss features romantic scenes from Hollywood films starring popular actors into which I insert my image and manipulate the existing narrative in a soft critique of celebrity obsession. In Screaming, I trespass digitally into popular horror films such as The Shining and Alien, screaming at the monsters to scare them away or blow them to smithereens. Zombie Loop is a two-channel video in which projections on two opposing walls position the viewer in the center of a visual loop, wherein a gruesome zombie endlessly pursues a running survivor. On screen, I play both zombie and survivor.

Hollywood films and their fans also inspire my web-based artworks. Snow Stories is a data-driven story engine where visitors' written stories are translated into audio-visual stories culled rom a database of film clips; Me and Billy Bob documents an ongoing obsession with actor Billy Bob Thornton and sincerely participates in his online fan culture. Caitlin Jones, of Rhizome, wrote that my "work is distinct from many other artists also concerned with the cinematic. Not simply interested in issues of narrative, time, space, or the like, Mcdonald looks specifically at the genres romance and horror and how these constructions become a part of our own experiences" (Rhizome, Oct 8, 2007).

In public works, I engage an audience comprised of a very general public that is not necessarily expecting art or gathered in established arts venues. I interrupt the flow of daily public exchange, inviting strangers into momentary relationships. I engage with passersby as a means of orchestrating activities away from their usual context and my audience is made up of willing and chosen participants. Zombies in Condoland is an upcoming large-scale piece where passersby are invited to play a part in the spectacle of a horror film shoot: instantly cast as actors complete with makeup, costumes, lights, camera, and action scenes. In Horror Makeup, I apply makeup on a daily subway commute, transforming myself into a zombie rather than beautifying my face. With a base largely made up of strangers, I shampoo hair in a salon in Shampoo, offer free non-professional advice in Advice Lounge, radically transform clothing in Tailor Made, bring houseplants into private homes in House Plant, sew protective messages in participants' garments in Seams, and borrow personal objects for a month in Borrowed Things. Sylvie Fortin (Art Papers magazine, Sept / Oct 2005) writes of my practice, "relationships are her medium, fleeting encounters her material".
- 4 images and / or video/sound clips of artwork





- a link to an interview with the artist or a review
http://www.jillianmcdonald.net/press/kasprzak_transmedia.jpg
- link to gallery representing artist
http://csis.pace.edu/digitalgallery/index.html- curator
- artist website
http://www.jillianmcdonald.net/

Thursday post 10/02/08

Thoughts of interest – Week in review

- Answer the following questions:

* Did anyone critique your work this week? If so, what were their impressions?
No- no actually some one did. They felt like my installation experiment was interesting and I should keep testing sites and configurations. I should also investigate my symbols more rigorously.
* What was the most motivational or creative moment of the past week?
Finally getting to read something I've been waiting to read for a while. "The Friendliest Black Artist in America"
* What do you want to achieve in next week's studio practice?
Shoot a new segment and possibly more once I figure out some angles.
* What did you achieve in your studio this past week?
A new idea perhaps writing a lot, reading some....
* What has been an artistic failure this week?
not doing as much Work work as I want to
* What was the most profound thought in relation to your practice this week?
I need more time-I ned more control over my time, I need to read more.
* If there was a visiting artist this week, what is your impression of their work and process in relation to your own?
no
- Post 1 picture, video, etc. of your choice