Politically Engaged Art

BA FA Stage 2, Territories of Practice

[artyms-blog]

Republic of the Moon at Oxo Tower Wharf

I could rave for hours about the various works featured in this brilliant group show, but this blog is about the politics of making and showing art, so i'll try to stay on topic. I was drawn to this exhibition for many reasons: firstly, the content of the works on show appealed to me. Some of them were mesmerisingly beautiful (such as photographer Leonid Tiskov's, Private Moon series), some employed high-brow intellectual concepts, such as Katie Paterson's Earth-Moon-Earth (in which she bounces a Beethoven piece off the Moon's surface) and others were witty or just plain absurd. Agnes Meyer-Brandis' Moon Goose Colony (see below) ticked all of these boxes. Another part of the show's appeal was the form of a group show in which many different voices can be heard, yet when these voices are combined they make a single statement: That we need to reflect on our relationship to the Moon now, before it is divided up by counties or corporations in the global battle for real-estate and the rights to exploit natural resources. Sadly i couldn't make it to any of the workshop days, but i did pick up a copy of the Manifesto, which includes 'scientific papers, images, poems, rants and other expressions of how it would be, a half-century or more on from the Moon landings, to occupy the Moon'. I think this show was a brilliant example of how art can pose weighty political questions without being a tedious bore.

[artyms-blog]

Agnes Meyer-Brandis, Moon Goose Colony This has to be the best thing I've seen this year. Inspired by a 17th Century science-fiction novel, in which a man is flown to the Moon by swans, artist Agnes Meyer-Brandis raised a flock of rare, long-necked geese and filmed their exploits as she put them through a series of training programmes to prepare them for space travel. I was hugely impressed by the seriousness with which she goes about this absurd task and documents the whole process in the form of an installation that feels like a museum exhibit. I'd love to write more about this, but it's more fun to experience the work for yourself. The Republic of The Moon exhibition continues at the Bargehouse, Oxo Tower Wharf until 2nd Feb.

[artyms-blog]

I recently came across this work online, which is part of a series titled 'Operation Supermarket' by Farhad Moshiri and Shirin Aliabadi, a couple of conceptual artists from Iraq. The modified labels on the plastic containers are in effect a form of culture jamming. I have also played around with changing the labels on household products in a piece of work I made in 2011, but this only exists as a digital image. I think that Moshiri and Aliabadi’s work is much stronger for using three-dimensional objects, rather than just manipulating digital images, because it increases the sense of familiarity, which is in turn disrupted by the message on the labels. I don't know whether these were displayed as objects, or as photographs of objects. Not much information is available online. Its interesting that a series of products are used. It seems the artists are saying that the westernisation of Iraqi culture is happening one consumer choice at a time, but only by noticing a pattern can you tell the extent to which Iraq as a whole has bought into the American lifestyle.

[lostprofiles]

[artyms-blog]

Liberate Tate’s action marking the first anniversary of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico at Tate Britain, 21 April 2011.

[artyms-blog]

Politics at the Tate

In light of the news that we are giving our Territories of Practice presentations at the Tate gallery, I've had to ask myself how this fits with my own political views. Several issues have arisen, the first being oil giant BP's long-standing sponsorship. The group 'Liberate Tate' have staged performances every year since 2010 in protest against Tate's partnership with a company famously responsible for exploiting and polluting the environment (remember Deepwater Horizon?). The performances have included a naked man covered in oil, and a giant wind-turbine blade, which activists delivered to the Tate.

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/apr/24/liberate-tate-arts-bp

The other elephant in the room is Tate Chairman Lord Browne, who's review of student tuition fees led to cuts in government grants and massive increases in student debt. A student protest against the funding cuts was staged at the Tate Britain during the 2010 Turner Prize awards ceremony. A Tate spokesperson was quoted as saying "There's a protest by about 30 students here against threatened government cuts to arts education funding. We understand that their protest is not directed at Tate." It seems pretty obvious that the protest was directed at the Tate and in particular, Lord Browne.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-11519642

So, in light of all this how do we as students, particularly if like me you care about environmental issues, handle such a conflict of interests? If a protest was staged what form might it take? Covering yourself in oil is getting cliched. Another option might be to mention Liberate Tate as part of our presentation. I personally feel that it's important to acknowledge that there are political issues at stake, even if we choose not to take sides in a debate.

[chubby-55-bunny-blog]

[artyms-blog]

Performance artist Jaqueline Traides, recently joined LUSH's campaign to fight against animal testing for cosmetics. I have campaigned for animal rights for a long time and wasn't really shocked by this performance (the reality of animal testing is infinitely more grim than what Traides' willingly went through). If anything, i'm surprised this hasn't been done before. The location of the performance (the window of one of LUSH's high street stores) helped the message to reach a more diverse audience than it would have in an art gallery. I don't think that this could have had the same impact in a gallery, since art audiences have come to expect anything from dead animals to artists being shot with bullets in the context of performance art.

[thcrstlshp]

[artyms-blog]

A great example of site-specific performance art. The presence of a real person in this work makes this a powerful reminder that the people who's homes and ways of life are destroyed by powerful corporations like McDonalds are more than just statistics. The work was staged outside a different MacDonald's restaurant each day during Banksy's recent New York residency.

[artyms-blog]

Untitled Performance, 22nd December 2013

On 4th December, following a series of peaceful student protests which ended in brutal scenes of police violence towards students and several arrests, the University of London obtained a Court Order, making sit-in protests within an area of central London illegal. The area encompassed most of the University’s main buildings, including SOAS, Birkbeck and LSE. I wanted to do a site-specific performance to highlight the fact that while students' voices have been silenced, our concerns have not disappeared. I made a banner from cardboard and wood and painted it white on both sides. I walked a around the parameter of the area defined by the court order (which I hung around my neck).

[artyms-blog]

Culture Jamming

Culture Jamming is the practice of modifying or hacking existing media - mainly advertisements. One group that is famous for its modifications of billboards and glossy print ads is Adbusters. Adbusters often use professional techniques to discreetly change text or images in existing ads, subverting their meaning to the detriment of the company that it is meant to be promoting. Of course they are not the only ones... It is a great anarchist tradition (in the UK at least) to deface advertising billboards, especially the campaign ads featuring smug-faced politicians that appear every few years in the run up to general elections.

[youaintpunk]

[artyms-blog]

Corporate Slavery, Jamie Reid A different approach to appropriating corporate branding in order to create a new meaning. I've always really enjoyed making political collage... somehow the more repugnant the subject (and therefore source material) the more enjoyment i get from cutting it up and rearranging the horrid elements to suit my own subversive purpose.

[heatherstone]

[artyms-blog]

H&M advert modified by Adbusters (note the addition of a Photoshop toolbar). A simple and very effective culture jam, which reminds us that everything about this ad is unreal.  

[artyms-blog]

These are stills from a video of a performance i have been working on, which explores ideas about the absurdity (impossibility?) of fulfilling every expectation of the ‘perfect woman’ - ie: flawless make-up, high heels and a cleaning product in each hand! I definitely didn’t set out with a feminist agenda in mind. I actually began with a found object - a vacuum cleaner, which my neighbour left in the rubbish. It was while exploring the physical possibilities of this object and musing about my own relationship to it that a theme started to emerge. The first time i performed this it was more theatrical (with various props in the background and even a music soundtrack). This time i wanted to strip it down to the bare essentials, to focus the gaze of the audience where the real meaning of the work lies. I had also been looking at performances by La Ribot, who i greatly admire. I realised from watching her "distinguished pieces" that I could perform my actions more slowly, and that this could hold the attention of the audience just as well as any theatrical 'devices'.

[mothernaturenetwork]

[artyms-blog]

Photographer Chris Jordan shocked the world when he captured these disturbing images of dead birds with their stomachs full of plastic debris, including recognisable items such as disposable cigarette lighters. On the remote pacific island of Midway, the native Albatross population are dying in their thousands from consuming plastic waste that has accumulated in the surrounding ocean. These abject images drive home the urgent need to address the toxic legacy that our consumer habits are creating. I plan to make a sculpture in response to this, by using plastic junk that i have collected locally, from the streets or in the park. I'm also thinking about ways to animate my sculpture using puppetry.

[artyms-blog]

Not Working, Hayley Jukes (2011)

I made this collage in response to the Dirt exhibition at the Wellcome centre. The exhibition hand-out included images of the word’s biggest land-fill site ‘Fresh Kills’, which was originally given the name by Native Americans due to being an area rich in wildlife. Today, it's a mountain of rubbish that is visible from space. I tried to express the sense of utter futility I felt when i looked at these images. I had also been reading Roland Barthes essay on the psychology of advertising soap powders and detergents (Mythologies, pp36-38). It struck me as absurd that one the one hand, we are obsessively buying into the idea of perfection through cleanliness in the home, while in reality our consumer habits are creating waste on a scale so large that it may never be possible to clean up.

[ucresearch]

[artyms-blog]

Barbara Kruger is an artist whom I admire, both for the political content of her work and her subversion of advertising techniques to create her own distinctive visual brand. Kruger’s work often comments how women are represented by the media, as well as how we define ourselves in relation to such imagery or expectations. I am particularly interested in how she comments on consumer culture and the role played by women in this elaborate and dangerous game of desires, which can never be fulfilled. I am exploring similar lines of enquiry in my own practice. Namely, how does women's role as consumers work to construct our identity? (most adverts are directed at women, as primary shoppers for their household). And how can this zombie-like consumer behaviour be interrupted, so that women re-examine the roles assigned to them and start making choices about how they live their lives, instead of seeking fulfilment through the empty promises of spectacular commodity culture.

[artyms-blog]

Our identity is fictional, written by parents, relatives, education, society.

Genesis P Orridge

[artyms-blog]

Identity and Transformation

We talked quite a bit today about the politics of transforming one's identity - and what makes this act a political or artistic, rather than merely alturistic one. It seemed reasonable to suppose that this could be determined by whether the resulting transformation was aesthetically pleasing (at least in the eyes of the person being transformed), an act of 'self-improvement' if you like. Inversely, if the transformation resulted in the person being merely different (eg: Oreet Ashery dressing as an orthodox jewish man), bizarre or ugly (eg: Cindy Sherman's clowns) then this must be for a higher, more artistic purpose, right? ... This line of reasoning quickly fell apart.

What about Orlan's cosmetic surgical modifications, which could be likened to what Katie Price is doing to herself? Is Orlan's transformation art, simply because she says it is? Is it merely artistic snobbery to deny Price equal status as 'performance artist'? I feel that the intention of the artist ought to play some part here. Does the work address questions about the human condition (by challenging perceptions based on appearance), or serve a decorative purpose (ie: fashion)? Orlan's modified appearance doesn't conform to conventional ideas of beauty, but it is these conventions that she hopes to critique through her work. Price on the other hand is an over-blown charicature of conventional ideals. The motive behind her transformation is not to question or challenge, but to ensure mass (sex) appeal. The question of 'high' and 'low' art raises its ugly head again here, but it seems that both types of personal transformation can be described as forms of art.