If you are stuck for where to begin your research towards assessment 1, here is some inspiration:
1. Art and design often explore relationships between humans and non-humans, the environment and ecology. How can contemporary art and design propose new possibilities for imagining the ‘human’ and the environment?
> Exhibition ‘Human-Non-Human’ opening on the 9th of August at the Powerhouse Museum. It is curated by super smart curators Lizzie Muller and Katie Dyer and features the work of artists Lindsay Kelley, Liam Young, Maria Fernanda Cardoso and Ken Thaiday and Jason Christopher. The central questions for this exhibition are: What makes us human and how might humans adapt in the future? This exhibition is an potentially an excellent resource for starting to research this question. It doesn’t open until next week but you can research the work of the artists involved.
> ‘All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace’ is a brilliant documentary series by Adam Curtis about the concept of ecology. Here’s a link to the first episode: https://vimeo.com/groups/96331/videos/80799353
The title comes from this poem:
All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace
I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.
I like to think
(right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.
I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.
2. Can creative acts be rebellious when rebellion has become canonised in art, design and media histories? What would a contemporary creative rebellion look like?
> There is an excellent series of reference books surveying seminal concepts in contemporary art titled Whitechapel: Documents of Contemporary Art there is a very good one about ‘failure’ edited by Lisa Le Feuvre. You can also have a look at the list of artists discussed within and research their practices directly: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/failure
> There is also a great analysis of the psychology of failure in the book The Art of Failure: An Essay on the Pain of Playing Video Games by Jesper Juu. Here is a review: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/555702/pdf
3. How does collaboration create communities in art and design? What challenges do collaborative approaches face and what are some of the solutions?
> Current exhibition at Artspace by local artist Keg de Souza is a great place to start! There are lots of public programs associated with this exhibition that are really crucial in understanding how this exhibition activates ideas of collective and communal approaches to the construction and sharing of knowledge. https://www.artspace.org.au/program/exhibitions/2018/common-knowledge-and-learning-curves-keg-de-souza/ (Images above are relating to this exhibition. They’re also more poster inspiration too.)
> You can also begin your research by searching for ‘socially engaged practice’, ‘community arts’, ‘activist art’ or ‘new genre public art’ which should yield lots of examples of creative projects through which practitioners have activated existing communities or attempted to generate new modes of collaboration.
> Check out the archive of projects from the recent iteration of Sculpture Projects Münster 2017 (10th June - 1st October 2017). This is a very ambitious art festival that takes place every 10 years. The description for the last iteration was:
‘The basis of the exhibition in 2017 was the conviction that art in urban space can activate historical, architectural, social, political and aesthetic contexts, creating spaces and not primarily occupying them. Many of the invited artists dealt with forms of collaborative production. Re-enactments, workshops and interviews expanded her artistic work and sculpture concept.’
https://www.skulptur-projekte-archiv.de/de-de/2017/
4. Contemporary art and design often looks at the idea of constructed binaries, such as man/woman, soft/hard, straight/gay, dirty/clean, organic/synthetic. Considering the history of these ‘pairs’, how can art and design interrogate these binaries and offers new insights?
> Perhaps, you might begin with looking at the concept of deconstruction proposed by Jacques Derrida. If you are interested here is a super well distilled intro video to get you started: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0tnHr2dqTs
> Otherwise, you can begin your research by picking a binary and focus on starting experimentation with how the two terms might be related.
And now I’m going to have a cup of coffee.
