Thursday a.m. Idea Post 09/17

While in my public library today I noticed in the photography section the only books to choose from were the over published now cliché’ “Photography for Idiots” books and the entire collection of Anne Geddes photographic history. A bit disappointed, I selected a book published in the 80’s titled “How to Compose Great Photographs: Learning to see creatively”. The first line said “Photography is a way to bring your imagination to life on film…” After a thorough 45 page explanation of lenses the section titled “Elements of Design” dug right in and stated “…powerful compositions stand in sharp contrast to most pictures taken by amateur photographers. In their haste to record the image, many end up with pictures that have too many points of interest. The resulting confusion alienates the restless eye, motivating it to see visual satisfaction elsewhere.” Instead of having too many points of interest in my images, I am struggling with having too many confusing parts to my concept therefore weakening my final product. The text’s solution to solidify the many pieces is to pay close attention to line, shape, form, texture, pattern, and color. My performances are known to be with clean lines in the subject and the background. Occasionally the object is what is off and constantly in transition. The shape and form depend on the act of the performer is doing. For example a performance from last semester started out with most of the weight in the top portion of the image (while the clothing was still on me). By the end of the performance the balance had shifted and now most of the weight was in the lower half of the frame creating a thorough transition from top to middle to bottom. When thinking of texture, pattern, and color I have a hard time responding because usually the garments on the subject are not what is important.
Knowing all of this I am still having struggles with the amount of confusion that is present in my new work. In my meeting blog I spoke a lot about the anxiety I am feeling about just creating and producing. I listened to a mini lecture by Jeff Koons and he explained that when he was young he used to feel that “art was a vehicle that created anxiety…it was about performance in a way. Once you start becoming aware of other artists and how you can relate to them…” breaking down those anxieties becomes more accessible. In Mike Figgis’ book Digital Filmmaking, he explains the struggles and frustrations he had when he moved from the stage to behind the camera. “Before I came to film, my background was performance and music, so I was reared on the idea that whatever I did creatively, I would have a direct relationship with my audience… Then I started making films and I realized that your role as director put you many steps removed from this possibility of an instance response. You do a lot more planning, you set it all up, but then you kind of watch from an angle. And the main relationship from that point takes place between the camera person and the actors.” This is exactly how I feel. I feel completely detached from what I am doing that sometimes I think that maybe my presence is not even necessary. And because I feel that way, the streams of ideas have come to a screeching hault and I am becoming bitter and ambivalent towards my work. I have a small obsession with having things be straightforward and resolved before I part with them for the night. I have not been able to resolve much with my work yet, so I guess I will be sleeping with it tonight.

Monday a.m. Artist Post 9/14

Recently, I was in the library and I came across a DVD about Bruce Nauman titled “Make Me Think”. This DVD moved the audience through the dynamic collection of Nauman’s work including sculpture, photography, neon, video, drawing, printmaking, and performance. A native of Fort Wayne, Indiana, Nauman has been exhibiting since 1969 and has been said to film the viewer in a voyeuristic sense with different sizes and scales. Also, throughout the DVD, several fellow artists spoke about how he is aware and conscious to how you as a viewer respond to space and in some cases making you excruciatingly uncomfortable.
After studying mathematics and physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Nauman received his BFA in art with William T. Wiley and Robert Arneson at the University of California Davis. In 1966, he became a teacher at the San Francisco Art Institute while simultaneously working in film with Robert Nelson and William Nelson. Nauman has a strong use of language in his work and believes “as the role of the artist as supposed communicator and manipulator of visual symbols” he explores the limits of every day situations in a playful in dept manner. He has shown at Nick Wilder’s gallery in Los Angeles, Leo Castelli in New York, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum in New York. In 1993, he was awarded the Wolf Prize in Arts and in 1999 the Golden Lion of the Venice Biennale. He was awarded the Praemium Imperiale Prize for Visual Arts in Japan in 2004. Also, in that same year he received the Beaux-Arts Magazine Art Awards for Best International Artist in Paris. Most recently, the US Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs selected Nauman to represent the United States in the 2009 Venice Biennale. Some of Nauman’s influences include Merce Cunningham, Meredith Monk, La Monte Young, Steve Reich, and Phillip Glass.
While watching “Make Me Think”, I noticed Nauman works with a broad range of size and texture. Compositions for his performance were either framed up tightly around the subject and object, or the viewer was pulled back from the act and seeing the performance as it scanned from one side of the space to the other. Described on the DVD, Nauman wants the viewer to question him/herself what it would be like in any different scale and how does the viewer imagine him/herself in relation to what’s around you. I like the fact that the audience can interpret his pieces according to the way they feel in a specific space. For each person, their feelings toward size and spaces will inevitably be different therefore creating a large spectrum of different conceptual thoughts for each piece.
For my upcoming pieces I would like to incorporate a stronger sense of playfulness while maintaining balance. I found his pieces that evoked tension and issues of morality were the most interesting. For example, he had one piece that comprised of a room with four white painted walls, a speaker on two walls barking strange noises back and forth, and reverberating sounds throughout the room. This piece had a strange amount of negative space that kept the viewer thinking something was going to jarringly appear in the foreground.

Video Data Bank
Sperone Westwater
Art 21
"Make Me Think" DVD Directed by Heinz Peter Schwerfel

Thursday a.m. Idea Post 09/10

Taking into consideration all of the comments I have received since my last meeting blog posting, the majority agreed that I need to maintain control of my performer in terms of their clothing but I should release them in the act so they can interpret with their own minds. However, after starting my subject, object, duration exercise, I am now feeling more confused as to where I am trying to get. In the past, I have not paid much attention or put much importance on whom the subjects of my pieces were. Also, the costuming has just been more of a blending method so the subject would not stand out from her surroundings; I did not want that to be a distraction. I began writing down people that I encounter on a daily basis as subjects, but then I started thinking those characters seemed arbitrary when the point of this exercise was to figure out why I do these performances. On the flip side, because of these bizarre and random subjects I was choosing, I did find an entrance into a new idea that I had not thought of yet. I imagined having subjects and objects in juxtaposition to each other; like having an uncommon act for one of the subjects to perform. On that point however, I am still thinking what would possibly work for that. I know the possibilities are endless but having too many options is my problem. I am finding it hard to work through the obvious to get to the acts that would be the most clear and strong.

After seeing Robin Rhode’s work and doing a good amount of research on him, I want to bring more of a comical aspect to my work. I am thinking that using my juxtaposition idea with the subject and object I could bring that humor into my performances using that direction. What I really liked about Rhode’s work is that he was able to use simple tasks and make them have meaning when it was all said and done. It was not just an act that was done. They were acts that symbolized his feelings about the past and present state of his home country.

I hope to include these thoughts in my next performance and also to incorporate an idea from one of my classmates on my last meeting posting. She suggested that I use a specific sentence and give it to my performers and then let them go from there. Basically, use their own judgments and capture the different directions they all take these prompts.

Monday a.m. Artist Post 9/07

After talking with Jeff on Thursday, I started researching Robin Rhode and his performance work. Rhode has specific reasons for doing each performance and knows beforehand why he is documenting the new art piece in the desired manner and also what medium his performance will take to be completed. These are key things that Jeff suggested I become aware of with my performance work in the future. I would like to figure out why I am documenting my performances this way and why I am using the subjects and objects that I do. But in the meantime, insights into how other artists figured out their work’s reasoning is great help into figuring out how to get to that point.
Born in 1976 in Cape Town South Africa, Robin Rhode became all too aware at a young age the challenges in life that he would have living in an apartheid South Africa. The apartheid in South Africa had began around 1948 and would last until around 1994. Rhode grew up in an area of great civil unrest and this upbringing would later on be the basis of all his art work. His early education includes a National Diploma in Fine Art from Witwatersrand Technikon in 1998. Also, Robin Rhode graduated in 2000 from the African School of Film with a degree in Television and Dramatic Arts in Johannesburg, South Africa. Rhode’s work has been shown in the Perry Rubenstein Gallery, The Wexner Center for the Arts, and various countries including London, Italy, Germany, Japan, France, and Spain.
Rhode’s ideas include every day activities such as basketball, skateboarding, and gymnastics and are carried out with “his signature method of attempting to playfully transform flat renderings of every day objects into illusory three-dimensional ones through his physical interactions” (llesamni Article). In that same article, Rhode is described as one who “approaches his multidisciplinary and unconventional art practice through the high energy of street inventiveness and youth culture…often drawing on the subcultural codes of hip hop, popular sports, film, and fashion to render the every day as art.” Drawing from his background, at the root of many of his performances are ideas/issues with culture, identity, history, and the past and present socioeconomic problems in South Africa. One of Rhode’s more controversial pieces is titled Park Bench and was completed in 2000. Because Rhode grew up in apartheid South Africa there is good amount of his work that responds to what his family, friends, and he went through several years prior. The performance titled Park Bench was Rhode’s creating a life size drawing of a bench on the side of the Parliament building which is an area that is off limits to everyone except white South Africans. Dressed in dark clothing, Rhode was arrested shortly after for being found damaging private property. Another performance that is well known is titled “Color Chart.” This performance was shot from above in a stop motion animation style. The subject was lying on its side and dressed entirely in white and is said to “slowly dispatch several enemies one at a time, with bricks”. Also said, “the photography and the way it’s animated has a powerful zen-like quality, similar to that from Rhode’s Stone Flag”.
Because I have been strongly considering changing my ways of presenting my performances, I find Rhode’s stop motion very attractive but also I enjoy his performances in grid like form as well. I think that for my next performances I am going to shoot them the same way I have shot my first two performances this semester but I am going to try out presenting them in grid like form and see what feedback I can get from that method.

Clip of Rhode's Performance
Perry Rubenstein Gallery Site
Cool Hunting Website with an Article about Rhode
Walker Art Center Article on Rhode

Thursday a.m. Idea Post 09/03

Today I shot the first two of my new performances for the semester and found it more difficult to stand back and watch the performer. These two performances were centered on uniformity and disarray and how the performer would get from one of those to the other with the specific tasks set forth. The time leading up to when I shot these performances, I felt in complete control because I was the sole creator of the concept and the rules that I would give my performer. I have spent a lot of time with how I thought it would turn out and even photographed a trial run of one of the performances and decided that I did not like the amateur lighting used. Because of that trial run, I decided to move all of my future shoots into the studio and photograph these performances in a clean, spacious, and bright space. I felt very much under control choosing the background color, selecting which strobes to use, the distance the lights were from the background and subject, the use of umbrellas, the position of the camera, and desired angle for the whole performance. Once I pressed record on my video camera to record the sound only of the performance I relinquished all power to my performer. There were specific moments during the 15-minute performance where I was getting restless, anxious, and just wanting for something to happen unexpectedly. For example, there was a point where I thought my performer was getting quite frustrated with her task and I was hoping for some sign or noise of that struggle. I wanted her to move around, make the shot interesting and dynamic. But then I realized that I was subconsciously attempting to fabricate the performance and my main intent for these performances is to have the performer perform; and not in my way. But, I wanted it. I really wanted that extra hint of what was going on within my performer’s head.
I have found myself relating my new performances to Sarah Oppenheimer’s “Lecture” performance and Yoko Ono’s “Cut Piece”. I admire these two women for their work but now especially I admire them for their ability to create work that they have little power over. I feel as an artist, my own work is something sacred and very much about who I am as a person. Therefore, naturally I would want to know exactly how my pieces are going to turn out and be done with it. This new spin that I have put on my work for the semester is serving up some different challenges for me. However, I am hoping these new challenges are strength builders in terms of me as an artist and me as a person

Ono's "Cut Piece" Article

Monday a.m. Artist Post 8/31

Sarah Oppenheimer, mixed media artist, received her BFA in 1995 from Brown and her MFA from Yale in 1999. She has been a part of shows at places like the Bronx Museum of Arts, Yale Art Gallery, the Sculpture Center in New Jersey, Ostrobothnian Museum in Finland, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Massachusetts. She has received grants from The Space Program, The Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation and the Schoelcoff Travel Grant to China from MacDowell Colony Inc. Oppenheimer currently lives and works in New York City.
Often described as an artist who creates interactive sculptural installations. A very popular current installation is one titled VP-41 and was shown at the Art Unlimited at Art Basel in June of this year. This is a “periscope embedded within a particular architecture. The periscope itself is constructed out of bent plywood and two mirrors” (Vernissage TV). Also included in this article about the VP-41 piece is a short video interview with Oppenheimer at Art Basel giving a brief overview and conceptual background information on this piece. The project took four months of detailed planning and a great portion of that work was done in Ohio and New York, and then shipped to London in pieces to prepare for the show. Also, her pieces were the only interactive sculpture at the art unlimited. “The importance of his focus lies in the fact that whereas most contemporary installation artists talk about their concern for the viewer Oppenheimer is demonstrating it. The viewer’s movements in her installations observed-directly or via video- become the input for her sculptural sensibility and the output is expressed via her alterations to the sculptural-architectural environment” (Hidrazone.com).
One of her pieces that I felt I could identify with was the performance titled “Lecture Hall.” This performance involved a group of people in a lecture hall and they were instructed to give a talk about Oppenheimer’s work. “Placing casting calls in StagePool, Oppenheimer auditioned Swedish performers to present a single lecture on her work. Four selected lecturers present an identical power point presentation” (artist website). “The audience became increasingly bored, and then aggressive…leaving the lecture. One later returned to remove her clothes while the lecturer diligently continued their presentation…This piece was ultimately exhibited as a two-channel video projection in which video documentation of the audience was projected on the side of the room and the lecturer the opposite side. The work, accordingly, positioned the viewer in a virtual space in between audience and lecturer” (artist website). Because I am now playing the part as the director and not the performer, I enjoyed how Oppenheimer did the same but still maintained her presence in the piece by prompting the performer to make a lecture about her work. Also, since I am considering changing my methods of presentation, I enjoyed the idea of projecting both the lecturer on one wall and the audience on another. I feel that that presentation utilizes space well and keeps the viewer’s eyes moving and entertained.

Artist Website
Artist Statement
Link to Interview with Oppenheimer
Lecture Hall Article by Graham Coulter-Smith

Thursday a.m. Idea Post 08/27

At the conclusion of the previous semester, I wrote my last blog about holding myself accountable to being aware of how important growing in this contemporary art world is and maintaining awareness of the strong peers and professors that surround me and how we can only aid each other in our roads to success. With that said, keeping myself accountable also means being willing to accept the incredible amounts of change that are occurring in the transition from one semester to the next. Different peers, mutating concepts, and personally being in a different location. Because situations change, picking up where you left off is not always the ideal situation one would expect to be waiting for them and in turn can hinder one from pursuing that growth. For example, I recently moved from the Fan area to Midlothian and in that move I also had to move my cat with me. Like humans, animals sense change equally and my cat tended to remove himself from the world that continued on around him the days leading up to our move. Transporting him, the initial change of scenery, shot a rush of uneasiness and worry through him that his entire body rebelled and any sort of bodily projection that could happen, did. Once arriving at the house he did what any human or animal would, he clung onto the only familiar physical object that now was in this new place; a comforter that smelled of the old house. That familiar comforter is my metaphor of my work from last semester. I became very acquainted with my process and my motives for those performances that up until recently I have clung onto them and feared moving forward. However, with the start of a new semester and still holding myself accountable for how pertinent growth is, clinging onto the familiarity of last semester is doomed to stunt that growth of my future work and me. After that realization, I am pumping myself up for a new installment of work to add onto my last while keeping the same concept but giving it a face lift and a bit of freshening up.

Change is defined as “to make the form, nature, content, future course, etc., of something different from what it is or from what is would be if left alone” and “to substitute another or others for; exchange for something else, usually of the same kind.” This word pertains quite well to my new work in that my new ideas are branches of my old ideas but reaching into other areas in hopes of bringing in new and different feedback from my viewer.