CofP(5

R E S O U R C E  F I L E S

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Situations, Alien Locations and Art in Context

What would happen If you went to the Fishmonger and instead of a beautiful display of freshly caught fish on, surrounded by green furls of parsley you were presented with socks. This is a Fishmongers so these must actually be fish. The Fishmonger assures you they are fish. But they’re not are they? They’re socks. This isn’t a subjective thing either. The person in the queue next to you isn’t likely to take one home to cook for tea any more than you would.

Accepting that it isn’t Jesus running the gallery, what is it that an exhibition space does that can turn socks into fish?

To think beyond the gallery, outside of the white cube, is to be creative. To understand how art might work in different situations and contexts allows that art to be understood in different ways. However, it remains the 'white cube' exhibition space that is accepted and recognised by the public as a place where objects or activities can be understood as art. The 'priming' offered by the conventional exhibition space is significant.

With few exceptions the place to fully appreciate film is the cinema and likewise with live performance it's the theatre. These are focussed experiences. We are more easily immersed when the extraneous world with its constant flow of interruptions and interferences are removed - we even attempt to recreate that experience in our own homes when watching a movie on T.V.  We set aside a couple of hours, some 'time-out', to be exhilarated, to be moved to tears, or frightened half to death, our senses aroused and emotions heightened. We experience different lives, different worlds.

These often deeply felt yet passive encounters are highly valued and their affects taken out from the focussed cinematic or theatre experience to diffuse and disperse through our active engagement with the 'real world'.  The skilled, talented, creative film and theatre makers extract from the real world, these concentrations are presented and experienced in a focussed situation that excludes the real world, it is experienced in that situation and it then subjectively re-emerges out into the real.

anyone taking anything and putting it anywhere is art. and it to the point where art galleries have become playgrounds

Duchamp's urinal and Joseph Beuy's assertion that everyone is an artist have caused a dilution. We are asked to consider that anyone taking anything and putting it anywhere is art. and it to the point where art galleries have become playgrounds

 contemplative experience of a visit to an art gallery or exhibition seems

 Not everything is art: and not everywhere.

  If those changes in perspective offered by presenting beyond and outside of the context of the gallery in alien situations and unusual contexts be recreated within the gallery might this not offer the public the best of both worlds.

 This what the public expect when they chose these experiences. They are immersive, passive and when successful are deeply felt.

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Building in Prescience

Setting out to use ‘smuggling’ in my work does bring with it certain flavours - such as roguish, arrogant, pretentious and naughty. Such a rascal! The cheekiness does suit certain work but perhaps if there were a more serious or poignant message to deliver things might need to be looked at differently.

Prescience is a fascinating word - by definition, it's knowledge of things before they exist or happen; foreknowledge; foresight. This is a compelling word that needs picking apart.

Hindsight is a  wonderful thing - when things are looked back on ‘in hindsight’ there is an implication that certain information or a situation did exist at a previous point in time, but at that time was not apparent. There are spaces here for exploits and adventures.

What is it that exists when faced with a choice? Two possible futures? So you decide to follow one and at some future point the other route, the one you decided not to take, looks as if it would have been the better proposition. 

Maybe then at the start of a project, there are two possible messages/routes and at the fork in the road, their division, a binary comes into existence. You might be the subject of one of those routes while others take the alternative. If I am on neither, but objectively watching, I am in the gap between the binary.

What if I have created the fork - the fork in itself is an interesting place to be and to explore. What lies in that fork? If I then travel through time concurrently with the other two routes but between them, does the gap increase?

Prescience is a present point in time when looking back, a certain choice seems to have been correct - it's not that you had the knowledge or forethought, you might just as easily have taken the other route, but have ended up in an advantages position it appears that you had prior knowledge - you didn’t really. The choice is still a choice - it later becomes apparent which was the right choice, where the prescience lies.

‘The choice’ is laden with potency - within it resides two or more sets of information that play out through time in different ways. The set chosen to follow comes into existence - the others have a pseudo-existence as something that doesn’t exist but that can be compared with something that does.

So much space here to play with!

At the start of the project the pseudo-existence is created - it appears real - at the end the true existence reveals itself - just a true existence always reveals itself - and the artwork is the looking back at the ersatz and seeing it as it is.

So if I create this situation, what is it that I’ve done?

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INTERNATIONALLY is this BIG enough?

This has distinct possibilities for exhibition application - can become site-specific by the choice of cardboard used - i.e, Coventry’s twinning with both Dresden and Stalingrad (these three cities being the most war damaged in WW2) would mean if I could obtain printed boxes with German, Russian and English corporate identity, would not only be saying  ENOUGH to war but also post-war capitalism?

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let’s not speak too soon

l e t ‘ s  n o t   s p e a k    t o o    s o o n - an idea in developement

This is a strange one! To say or predict something that might not happen or turn out to be true or correct - often used in the past tense “spoke too soon”, here it is used in the present tense and is offered free of context and unrelated. It offers a future event or time that is unspecified - when might it become spoke too soon?

It creates a suspension of time or has a liminal feel, as if something is about to happen

There’s something autobiographical about it - not just to me, but to anyone reading it. We’ve all done it and ‘spoken too soon’

maybe displayed with sound effect

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The Power of Smuggled Information

We had a great session with Sarah-Jane today in which we had to write something on a post-it note with regard to the art practice of everyone else.

Lin Mathias  wrote for me “You are the King Of Smugglers”

Back when I submitted my formal proposal for this module I wrote, “The project also will include the production of marketing material surrounding a piece exploring the possibilities it presents of durational priming”.

Durational priming is exactly how I smuggled with I N S I D E. But it isn’t just about smuggling a piece of information or meaning beneath something else - like how a joke works with a set-up and delivery of an unforeseen punchline. r even a magic trick, again set up and reveal. Its about the power that a meaning can obtain from having been smuggled.

Obviously, the contraband has to have value in itself - the challenging of the expectations that the audience brought to the Project Space was a powerful thing, but it was its delivery that made it so much more valuable an experience.

Following I N SI D E somebody said that they’d never see the Project Space event in the same way again. I think had we all been sitting in A18 discussing the conventions of the use of the space, say in the White Cube lecture, and I’d brought up considerations of challenging the PS everyone might have agreed but that conversation would never have been very impactful.

Had I, at the beginning my PS week, overtly advertised some ‘new way to use the Project Space - you’re all going to perform’ then it might have been a bit offputting and resulted in the audience seeking external direction. The piece was made for smuggling and that smuggling effected a performance.

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I N S I D E   O U T

the word ‘INSIDE’ being inside the word ‘OUT’ - is that reflexive or is it tautologous? The title somehow is the same as the piece and the piece is the title - weird thing going on there 

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TEXT and working with words

What I do with text isn’t quite the same as say Wool, Weiner or Kruger. Other than the typesetting and font choices they are just letting the words do the work.

My text pieces are designed to present a degree of puzzlement in reading.

Got the idea from the work I did with the piece foregin poilcy

“There is Cambridge University research that states that it doesn’t matter in what order the letters occur as long as the first and last letters are in the same place we can read any word.”

The Gestalt theory of perception describes how the brain visually groups elements into larger wholes to make sense of the world. We prioritise for simplicity, clarity and order. Even when the elements within a grouping appear as entirely separate entities, we see the whole thing as other than the sum of its parts. In design practice this is known as the Law of Emergence described as:

"the process of forming complex patterns from simple rules. When attempting to identify an object, we first seek to identify its outline. We then match this outline pattern against shapes and objects we already know to find a match. Only after the whole emerges through this outline pattern matching, do we start to identify the parts that make up the whole."

In typographical terminology kerning, expanding the space between letters, is an adjustment usually used to make a font more legible. However, in the case of my text pieces, I intentionally reverse this, joining the characters, making it difficult but not impossible to read. Mounting them vertically, top down or bottom up, adds a further degree of perplexity. This is something called foregrounding perception as a dynamic experience and offers the viewer reward. 

Presenting a word in isolation yields multiple possibilities for interpretation affording it a strangeness. Specific meaning is unfixed allowing it to openly converse, entangling, weaving and interchanging with anything and everything around it - an isolated word both absorbs and exudes context.

This is called ‘undeterminancy’. An idea expressed, despite undeterminable intentions, is still received by the audience. They, through the context in which the piece is shown, assume it relevant and seek resolution. Undeterminancy becomes a material with which, subjectively, the audience become creative.

"The first question we should ask ourselves when looking at a work of art is: – Does it give me the chance to exist in front of it, or, on the contrary, does it deny me as a subject?" BOURRIAUD 

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www.broadwaybrass.co.uk

Brass Plating

Brass Plating Properties Include:

Corrosion Resistance

Highly Polished Gold Appearance

Highly Decorative Finish

A decorative finish, available in

Polished Brass

Antique Brass

Satin/Brushed Brass

Sealed with wax or Lacquer

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Richard Wentworth

Yellow Eight

the Warwick Dials

This work was commissioned for the Warwick Arts Centre in 1999; the artist explained his aim as follows:

“To celebrate the outright victory of analogue over digital time, I propose a solution which simultaneously celebrates the theatricality of the clock face and the semaphore of the hand, but also asks some questions about our habitual perception of this device”.

The passing and recording of time is intrinsic to the Arts Centre; particular times of day signal the start of theatre, dance, music, cinema and gallery events. The audience arrive in advance of their event, they immediately clock into 'Arts Centre time' and then, with ten minutes to spare, buy a coffee, registering each minute that passes before the performance begins.     The Warwick dials encourage visitors to become more conscious of the importance of time and their need to clock-watch in the Arts Centre. Visitors have to work to piece together information provided by each clock face and focus on all three hands equally.

profit and loss

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Christopher Wool

Christopher Wool, best known for his paintings of large, black, stenciled letters on white canvases, possesses a wide range of styles - using an array of techniques, including spray painting, hand painting, and screen-printing, he provides tension between painting and erasing, gesture and removal, depth and flatness. 

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Lawrence Weiner

Lawrence Weiner is an American artist and an integral figure of the Conceptual Art movement of the 1960s best known for his text-based work, Weiner creates subversive installations that alter an existing space or environment.

Declaration of Intent (1968), created during the heyday of Abstract Expressionism, brings a wry criticism of the nature of art by creating a list of simplistic written terminology. One such line, “The piece may be fabricated,” addresses whether the imagined gesture or actual creation of a work have any hierarchal difference in regard to the assessment of art.

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bruce nauman corridors

Nauman takes architectural features and transforms them into exhibits. This is a little like considering a space as materials

His corridors allow the audience to walk down them, and, in so doing, put in their own performance. These pieces are simple, gypsum-walled walkways, into which the artist sometimes introduces lights, video cameras and monitors, or speakers; some were too narrow walk down; others were wedge shaped.

They’re less works of visual art than  physically coherent objects on display – the audiences are supposed to walk down these corridors, yet they’re not wholly inviting places. Nauman changes the way we experience art.

he’s the lab scientist and we’re the rats.

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VOICES FROM I N S I D E

Voices from I N S I D E  -  a poetry response from some of those that performed I N S I D E The metal thing said something, I didn't want to look. I licked it, And there was that uncomfortable feeling, Although, many people weren't in the space. I don't think Dan was there at that point. He didn't know about this. I can remember playing with sweets, And thinking there should have been some lemon in the jug. In vain I looked behind the space, down the stairs, and then noticed the camera. I can't give you anything.  You had to be there... at three. Was this the swapping over? A stand-alone piece in Bauhaus font? Is he going to appear? Who put L E M O N in the water? There was this beautiful sound, (Julia had it backwards) a reading. Hugo did it really well. Everyone was looking at that screw, I feel sad you didn't get that there and then. Dan rounded us up and proposed a vote. Waiting, looking for clues, talking about QR codes, Hugo read, 'or you can just be absent'. And the floor shone.

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A Catalystic missile

Back in the promotional video, the wording 'a performance' with its proximity to 'david saunders'  inferred the piece be a performance provided by me. Had the word 'by' actually been there it would have been the operative word. However, the minimalist aesthetic of the video, the brevity of text, led viewers to assume its presence. It acted as an operative word despite its absence. It was however a liminal space in which the operative information was unseen - a message that existed through its non existence.

 The 'request for permission' at the event was the discharging of a catalytic message. Time was utilised as a vehicle to covertly deliver smuggled meaning from the launch to the situation at the end of the week. At the point of delivery it became indicative of their performance and, with the presence and awareness of a hidden video camera any expectations of coming to observe were dispelled as observers became the observed. Bourriaud quotes Benjamin "The studio shot, wrote Walter Benjamin, is particular in that it replaces the audience by the camera. . . The camera turns into an instrument for questioning people"

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VOICES FROM  I N S I D E

We live under surveillance, yet have become habituated to the cameras that monitor our presence. We are even told that we may be being watched in our homes through our computer equipment and recorded by Google by our phones. This ‘operation’ creates a feeling of never quite knowing if we are being observed and is supposedly an effective measure in modifying potential anti-social and criminal behaviour based on the Panopticon, a watch tower devised two hundred years ago by philosopher and prison reformer Jeremy

Bentham. Seen as analogous to the omniscience of God, those with power are enabled to observe our behaviours, effectively locating bodies in space in relation to each other, establishing the ‘power position’, enhanced by a presence that is felt but unseen - anonymous, ubiquitous observation to which we have become frighteningly immune.

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VOICES FROM INSIDE

The video, VOICES FROM I N S I D E, is a record of what I did 'in' The Fine Art Project Space - this dissertation, as an exploration of my practice in action, is a record of what I did to make that happen.

I arranged and organised, in Art Theory terms, the deterritorialisation of The Project Space - the unmaking of its extant territory, both its internal forces - the expectations and assumptions brought by the invited audience and its external forces -  master narratives and dominant cartographies of inherited cultural.

In my terms I pick-pocketed my way through its received wisdoms, eviscerated ambiguities and idiosyncrasies and exposed what had been previously unregarded.

In Art Theory terms I had offered the potential, allowed for movement and connection for a re-arranged constellation of points, created the conditions for a new situation, an assemblage, to come into existence.

In my terms  I had undressed its conventions, re-assigned, re-associated, re-defined and re-presented them in costume.

In Art Theory terms this complex constellation of objects, bodies, expressions, qualities and territories, set in advance, connected with one another in ways that could not have been foreseen,

produced meaning through relations with one another through the temporality of the event creating  a new form of functioning in The Project Space.

In my terms a new situation was coaxed into existence. An invited audience of spectators who had come to 'excavate for meaning' were persuaded to collaborate with each other, the space, the materials provided and, in collaboration with me, engage in a performance, a re-definition of The Fine Art Project Space. In our terms, a differentity was created.

The conception and execution of this piece was achieved, at the time, without reference to art theory. The video may well be the embodiment of Deleuzian rhyzomatic systems in practice, but this was consequently discovered while dishonestly fracking for art theory with which to ascribe the project with academic kudos - which to me feels much more akin to an act of sophistry.

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1st draft - voices from inside

response poetry from those who performed

David Saunders is in the project space

There were so many people that weren't in the space.

There was that uncomfortable feeling.

-I can't give you anything.  You have to be there at three.

The metal thing said something. It was about the swapping

over, in Bauhaus font.

Dan didn't know about it.

I can remember playing with the sweets.

There should have been some lemon in the dish.

I looked behind, down the stairs, 

and then noticed the camera.

I didn't want to look at it.

-Why didn't you put lemon in?

There was this beautiful sound,

there was reading. Julia had it backwards,

Hugo did it really well.

-Why was everyone looking at that screw?

Dan put that to the vote.

Is he going to come?

Is this a stand-alone piece? 

I feel sad you didn't get that there and then.

Dan rounded us up. Hugo

said 'or you can just be absent, waiting,

looking for clues, talking about QR codes'.

How did you make the floor so shiny? 

I licked it. I don't think Dan

was there at that point.