Artist Lecture - Brad Troemel

Brad Troemel, in his lecture "Free Art" (February 4, 2011) at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec, discusses that even through Duchamp's Fountain market value has always been the value measure of art.

Beginning with Readymade and three rules the readymade reveals about the arts
- authorship
- context that declares it to be art
- property

These happen to be the same rules that govern capitalism and capitalist exchanges. Aesthetizied commodities and commodified aesthetics. "Our IDEA of what art is follows capitalist policies".

Art's discourse is dictated through the art market's buying power.

We are so reliant on businesses to define art's canon that we as producers lost the ability to define ourselves.

The challenge for art is to unlock its long-tail.

Art is inherently utopian idea, the beauty of art comes from the fact that it's unnecessary. We involve ourselves in art in a way that we've never seen it. The perfect impossibility = utopia.

Art is not a job, it's a utopian fascination.

Profit motivations are a form of self-censorship.

Two different ways that art may be distributed separate from current models = capitalist or socialist (one to many)
- dual sites - decentralized network, selling is not goal or motivation, smaller audiences but more people involved, foot traffic is supplemental to online presence

- rhizome network - art as meme
As an artist is included on more websites, the concentric circles of a viewer-percieved image tug increasingly further from their middle point. This rhizomatic pull is even capable of severing the relation of an artist to a work entirely as each entity lives its own existence without many viewers' recognition of who made the work in the first place. Anonymized art usually comes in the way by images that have been recirculated deep in the networks of web 2.0 users. Just as a tire's treads wear away with use, the contextual backing of an art image is stripped by its own applicability among networked bloggers. In this way, the removal of an artist's name, and work title or date, is the highest honor bestowed upon today's networked producer. It is this art that has resonated so well that its image has preceded its own description.

Zwelethu Mthethwa

Zwelethu Mthethwa's photo portraits were interesting in content, and well-executed, but the stories he had surrounding those images were far more compelling to me.

Just another example of the stories behind the work being more interesting than the work allows, than the images speak for themselves. That's the whole reason I started drifting away from taking images in the first place. The experience, the performative aspect of taking pictures wasn't coming through in the images. The experience and the image were so different, it was difficult to reconcile them.

I feel that may have been one of the driving elements in Zwelethu's branch out to making videos. They certainly had a perception/reality, image/subtext dialogue built into them. It was interesting to see this expansion into video. Zwelethu's portraits are so traditional, with so much historical foundation, his video works seemed to be by a different artist.

This is where I find myself now... at this crossroads where photography can't (or maybe I can't make it) carry the message I need, and my skills in other disciplines are mediocre, unrefined, and sophomoric.

Visiting Artist Lecture - Deke Weaver

Deke Weaver's stage performance was amazing. With minimal props, and no vocal amplification, he commanded the audience so completely. His bizarre stories of animals standing in as metaphor or allusions to stories that root in human nature, or even more specifically Deke's life, felt so understandable, so true. There was a surprising level of accessibility.

There's something so primal about the storyteller. Deke's writing was biting contemporary social/personal commentary, and with his minimal set, he became the modern day Shaman. More than a bard, or jester, his writing is extremely refined, with very little improv in his performance. He writes with a sideways glance at his subject matter- his stories take place around the frame, not within the frame.

Deke uses animals often in his work; his father is wildlife management worker. Having grown up around animals, in proximity to someone who works with animals, they become humanized characters. He's been working on larger series - "The Unreliable Beastiery" based on 26 animals, 1 for each letter of the alphabet.

When asked what was his inspiration for stage work, Deke responded that it was the only place where he could access "really stupid ridiculous ways of catharsis." To him, performance is a place where artists are supposed to be able to do anything. Performance allows him to pursue his interests in texture, in movement, and in playfulness.

The work of his influences- Spalding Grey and Reverend Billy, led him to stage performance, realizing that stage work communicates with a visceral quality that can't be achieved with any other medium.

Artist Lecture - Mika Rottenberg

Mika Rottenberg said that she likes to utilize certain signifiers to actually de-signify, so point to specific ambiguities. In the way that marbled linoleum can reference a store floor, but can be one of many many different kinds of store. In this way, she said she sometimes utilizes this strategy to "erase culture" in a work.

Erasing culture is an interesting idea. Upon hearing her say that, I thought of it in a negative sense, but seeing her use made me realize that erasing culture can make a piece more universal. The strategy is also a fantastic way to work with the hide/reveal balance. I think of other examples of "erasing culture", and the other end of the spectrum presents itself. The multi-culture rich environments of Blade Runner or 5th Element's dystopian future show a muddy, twisted, confused mix and mash of cultural signifiers that seems to signal the melting pot/tossed salad gone haywire. These two ends of a spectrum have their uses, perhaps the subtractive strategy (as opposed to the additive) would be a good element for me to consider in trying to make my works "universal".

Another element of cultural, or at least social, signifier is her use of the marxist extension of people to things, back to people. People made all things, so things can be considered extension of people. Her connection of bodily functions to mechanical functions in very Rube Goldberg-esque machinations certainly illustrates this in a visceral way.

This leads to another method in her work, using the work as a mirror, to show the viewer processes in their own life, and compare/contrast the subjective internal with the objective external. The level of engagement (mostly accomplished with close-up shots of the mechanical and the corporeal, and with high key post sound work) is an element I'm trying to understand. I'd prefer a more subtle approach in my own work, yet have so far found my work to be somewhat lacking in its engagement. While Mika's approach seems (and is appropriate for her work) wildly heavy-handed, I need to add some seductiveness to my work to be more successful with the level of engagement it functions on.

McCoys - Artist Lecture

The McCoys' presentation was interesting in a few ways, mostly in the way they talked about and approach their work. It's interesting to hear they way they use musical notation vocabulary to discuss pacing and rhythm of their work. They defined the different speeds of the different elements of their work as "different time signatures". As well as discussing the element of focusing on "something that's happening in that moment" to help critique, deconstruct, and reconstruct their pieces.

They seem to place a lot of importance on deconstruction to distill to the core of the work. Starting with the idea of using models as stand-in, and then as subject, and stripping away at the work to discover "where is the soul of the piece", and "what can survive and still be the piece"?

They referenced the music of Bradford Reed.

Notes
- different time signatures
- Something that's happening in that moment
- model shot
- where is the should of the piece
- what can survive and still be the piece
- Bradford Reed - composer

Steve Roden - visiting lecture

Twice, Steve Roden's work was interrupted by nature with an amazing result. During his talk, he was showing his piece and a thunderstorm blew into town Since we were all in the Commons Theatre, the sound was really muffled, and it seemed as if the rain and thunder sound were a part of his piece. But, alas, when his piece finished, the rain and thunder sounds continued. And again, during his workshop talk, he was playing some work, and there was the sound of birds chirping in the background. And again, when his piece stopped it was revealed that the bird sounds were indeed not part of his work.

Both of these occasions were interesting to me, that perhaps I wanted to use nature sounds in my work. I certainly want to incorporate natural elements, so blending field recordings into the sound seemed like a natural fit. In both of Roden's pieces, the sound seemed like it was made stronger with the "field recordings". The work was abstract, and slightly wandering, and at times decisions that seemed heavy-handed to me. The large-scale wooden installation with localized sound and colored light certainly had some strong decisions- a few giant abstractly constructed piles of work scaffoldesque structures, scattered around a large room with speakers under each pile, piles being lit with different colored light- all of which were visually very strong decisions, but seemed to be completely arbitrary, as if the piece wasn't aware of itself.

At first it seemed liberating for me- just go ahead and do what you want, however you want it. But during his talk, there never arose evidence of strong conceptual foundations. There were elements that seemed to quite literally be the structure of the piece, that turned out to be not more than a visual flourish, filling the space.

I was left with the liberation of being encouraged to do what resonated most with me, yet a confirmed sense that decisions need to be intentional, supported, responsible.

Aki Sasamoto

mosquitos, climbing in fish tanks, bad girl attitude,

"let's go drink!! woo!!"

singing john lennon, hanging upside down while on a guy's shoulders

scripted flow association presentation much like alexandre singh's

a couple laugh out loud moments from the crowd.

physical acrobatics, climbing on her partner's shoulders, hanging upside down

the absurd, mixed with the familiar, mixed with the mundane

utilizes, exploits? her language barrier to absract and confuse, to stylize... sometimes makes me feel like i should be understanding as an honest opening up, but makes me fear that it's all an act, even the language difficulty.

That's something I've been realizing more and more as I've sat in Artist lecture visits. That it's all an act, and that actually, it needs to be. No magician would stand in front of a room full of people and proceed to reveal his secrets and methods bullet listed in an hour long powerpoint.

Of course, with Sasamoto, who is doing performance work, and presented a performance piece, that makes sense. But it's the detritus on the margins that attracts me. Perhaps I'm looking for kinks in the armour, a slip of the tongue or body posture that reveals that it's all an act. What act do I put on, what act SHOULD i be putting on. Can I be completely transparent but still interesting? powerful? meaningful? Can I be normal, and invisible, and be meaningful. Do I want to be weird? Can I choose to be weird?

Sasamoto is trying to be "weird". Perhaps it was a natural and organic process arriving to the structure and format of her performance pieces. But now that it's been structured and scripted, it's no longer weird. Now it's a structure, just like any other structure. How many times do I need to watch the second hand revolve around the face of a clock before I can feel confident that I don't have to stand there and see if something new is going to happen.

This makes me worry about "one-upmanship" in work like this. Now she has to be weirder. More props, less props, more acrobatics, more something, louder something.

I want to be quiet, invisible. I want my ideas to dwell in the blood, and whisper in the capillaries of the brain while you sleep.

Laurel Nakadate

Nakadate's work seems to share a slight resonation with my own... interacting with strangers, reaching out to build friendships/relationships, spring forth from a place of loneliness; but there's something I didn't quite trust from her lecture. There's a air of exploitation that's all-to-easily dismissed with a carefully scripted response. Much of the work begs to be redone with sexes of the main characters switched.

While daring and reckless, some of the work shows the artist's youth in ways that poke at cracks forming in the script and polish. There's such a dependence on certain processes that wouldn't come across if they hadn't been communicated in the lecture.

Nakadate's insistence that the work is collaborative and more of a two-way communication with her performance partners is problematic as well... The pieces, with her participants able to lead the piece in any direction, end up so closely following an expected path the works seem scripted, with people becoming caricatures as opposed to humanizing them as she claims in her lecture. Even the works she's done with the gentleman she's had a 12-year friendship with come out feeling canned, predictable, strictly, tightly, almost suffocatingly formulaic.

I feel perhaps that the visiting lecture format did her work a disservice. It's almost impossible to examine her early works without the lens of today's ubiquitous digital interactions and networks- facebook, youtube, (and she repeatedly, almost pathetically, tried to erect a historically distant construct for the audience to engage the work with- "this was before cellphones", "you've got to remember, this was before facebook was around"... while brushing quickly passed her current works, which may be stronger in the contemporary setting.

I felt like she was unsuccessfully swimming her early work upstream against a monstrous wave of culture, while attempting to isolate the current work from it. I've seen more socially and culturally poignant pieces randomly uploaded to youtube and littered about on tumblr and ffffound.

Kathy Rose

I had a strong negative reaction to Kathy Rose's work.I felt that aside from her very early hand-drawn animation work, the work since then was immature, and technically poor.

The lecture underscored an issue I find often in the arts, when technical ability takes a back seat in the name of expression or concept. Except that in this case, the technical ability seemed stagnant, with almost no change in a body of work that spanned more than twenty years. The elements Rose used to build her video collages were used over and over again, not changing much over 20 years, growing stale over the course of the presentation, like bad clip art used on every design by a cheap design firm.

One one of the pieces had a musical score that wasn't awful, but it turned out her friend had made it, and Rose was just using the musical track in her video piece.

I tend to cringe when I see an artist of a certain racial/national/cultural background take a deep interest in and produce work that strongly references influence of another race/nationality/culture. Rose had visited Japan, and was strongly affected by her visit, including many Japanese icons and references in her work. I feel that this undermines the work, and while it's a wonderful thing to be inspired by a different culture, by a foreign experience, including references to that experience is such a slippery slope. Rose's efforts came across as that of a tourist who visited once or twice, and then returns to spout off horribly mispronounced, ill-used greetings at the local sushi shop, while the sushi chefs grit their teeth and politely smile.

I want to see Rose take some time off from the digital aspect of her work, return to using her hands to create marks, and returning to herself, to create work that springs from herself, as opposed to from her influences. In the mean time, perhaps she could look into deepening her knowledge and understanding of those influences, allowing her to incorporate them into her processes with sensitivity.