lecture notes

home | in studio | research | about me

[jseabraportfolionotes]

Gravity of 4th of December | LIVIA MARIN | Livia works with everyday objects, giving them a twist in their morphology. She build her work has she goes, picking up stuff that interest her in markets, fairs, and them working on them. She says the objects give her "clues" about what to do, and she would never do the same thing with a brush and a teacup for instance. I did like the way she works with the concept of mass production, trying to give everything a new identity. It's also interesting how, despite her work being a bit "escaping from the ordinary" and "causing chaos in everyday objects", the way her work is organized in a very orderly way.

[jseabraportfolionotes]

Transmission of 25th of November | VANESSA PLACE | Vanessa's lecture made me think about quite some subjects. I found interesting the idea of how a letter, a note, or other common way of writing can become a poem, even if the author is unaware of it. I also found it interesting that she would use twitter as a way for students to hand in their assignements. At first I thought it did put a limit, an obstacle on their poems but, in second thought, sonets and poems also do have pre-layed out structures as well. Later in the lecture, while talking about art in general she explained how art is/used to be a representation of grandeur, of power, of all things extraordinary. She explained it using the dicotomy "David/Dave": Michelangelo's David show a strong, victorious young man, while Dave would represent reality, which is always a bit more dissapointing.

[jseabraportfolionotes]

Transmission of 18 of November | GWYNETH HERBERT & MEL BRIMFIELD | To be honest, watching their lecture I wasn't very clear what their pratice was about. I did get the subject, and what they did, I just didn't get why they did it. I did get that they often portraied the usually less known female artists in the shade of their artist husbands, such as Lee Krasner and Barbara Hepworth, and that did seem interesting. Also, I had recently just found this article - http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/news/whats-the-biggest-problem-with-women-artists-none-of-them-can-actually-paint-says-georg-baselitz-8484019.html Though I didn't get much from the lecture, I went to Site Gallery later on where their residency is being held, and their work seemed much more interesting. I found the mental map of the play very interesting, and really liked how it was in a big scale (and I couldn't not link it to David Clegg's and Waren Neidich's lectures). Also the video was quite informative and I did really like the fact that they use these big themes, very high art, usually just for upper classes, and turn it into a more playfull show, accessible to all.

[jseabraportfolionotes]

Transmission on 11th of November | WAREN NEIDICH | This was one of the lectures I most enjoyed. Sadly I had to leave early, but It was super interesting anyway and I did learn a lot. I relate this lecture with the David Clegg one, probably because both of them talk about perception and take on a different speech about art than most lecturers do. He started by pointing out that usually when we talk about the "best brains" or "greatest minds" we refer to physicists, mathematicians, scientists, but rarely artists. He also talked about the concepts of "consumer neuroscience" and "cognitive capitalism", explaining how platforms such as the internet, instead of enlarging our knowledge, narrows it. Whatever we do online is registered and later used to reafirm our on ideas and show us what we like. This can obviously be used to sell us all kinds of products. Later he explained the concept of "neural plasticity", which is the ability of the brain to be shaped. I found this very interesting: apparently only 40% of our brain's connections are made when we are born, the other 60% are malleable. To illustrate this he showed a image of the arborization of a geniculocortical axon in the visual cortex of a cat when it was a baby and when grown up. In the first one, there are lots of conections, all desorganized. In the later one, there where much less connections. Website http://www.warrenneidich.com/

[jseabraportfolionotes]

Gravity on the 30th of October | DAVID CLEGG | With formation in sculpture and painting, David Clegg started working in a gallery soon after he graduated. However, he felt unconfortable: he felt like most people in the art scene where completly oblivious of the real world. To him, it felt preposterous that someone would pay millions for something like an acrylic banana in a plinth when we live in a world where people die of hunger everyday. I felt very engaged from the beginning of the lecture, specialy because I strongly related to this reality he expressed, which is usually a topic that no one addresses in such an honest way. He explained how he proceeded to work with people with dementia, he figured he could do something usefull for these people, enrich their lifes. He then told several stories about the people he had worked with. What really interested me was his views on memory. It was very interesting when he pointed that whenever we reminisce some event we add something to it, it's like we re-live it. (there's actually a saying for something like this is portuguese: "quem conta um conto acrescenta um ponto", which means something like "whomever tells a tale, adds a dot")

[jseabraportfolionotes]

Transmisson on the 28th of October | STEFAN SZCZELKUN | Stefan opens with explaining how in 1851 there where much more people in the cities then in the countryside, do to the Industrial Revolution and consequent rural exodus. At some point, this working mass in urban areas started gaining a working class consciousness, they wanted work safety, specific legislation, right to vote, etc. In the meantime, Stefan explains how this urban massification dissolved the culture of people who came from the countryside.They used to collect and preserve the typical songs from where they were born, kept in book, "like dryed flowers". However, in 1918, when education started being mandatory to everyone, kids from different backgrounds started all learning the same songs in schools - songs which were the same for about 50 year, according to Stefan. This, along with the mass media such as radio and TV, started educating people in a standardized way. At the same time, the cultural habits and, for instance, songs, people brought from their place of origin, started to being regarded as "tacky" and "vulgar". Stefan says this is a form of oppression: "The systematic devaluation and hunting of one social group or class by others who see themselves as superior" I really did like this lecture, it brought up subjects I'd never really thought about and that are a reality in pretty much every industrialized country. I found it very interesting when he said he felt like he had no true culture because he was part of a generation that learnt everything form the mass media.

[jseabraportfolionotes]

Gravity on 23rd of October | SOPHIE MOLINS | Sophie made sort of an memorial website of her mother when she passed away. Very interactive, this website contains pictures of a lot of her mother's objects that she didn't new what to do with after she passed. I did think it was an interesting idea, but at the same time it is something quite personal, not everyone will fully understand the website. However, it is aesthetically pleasing, and I guess that justifies it on his own. Her mother's memorial website http://deepdowndarkhorse.com/ I found two more of her websites, I particularly like the first one http://sundialinmoonlight.com/ http://dontforgetthemonkey.com/

[jseabraportfolionotes]

Transmission on 21 of October | SIMON AND TOM BLOOR | Born in Birmingham, the two brothers works together in building big projects for public structures. Talked about their project "As Long As It Lasts" (Birmingham, 2009), insipired by John Bridgeman's "Play Sculptures"

"As Long As It Lasts" Simon and Tom Bloor

"Play Sculpture" John Bridgeman John Bridgeman's play sculptures are an embodiment of what became art in public spaces after the second World War: it became more for the public, the civilians. It was now more common to see murals or play sculptures as opposed to the pre-war idol veneration sculptures. Besides "As Long As It Lasts", they've also made other works inspired in Bridgeman. More playfull pieces, always in the city, because as they explained, kids in the countryside have places to play in; in the city, those places have to be incorporated. For instance, "Terra Ludi" where tree branch made out of metalic material is incorporated in a garden. They explain how important it is to adapt the piece to the place. However, they do point out that it's not their objective to mimic the countryside elements but to create solutions that adapt to the city. Website http://www.simonandtombloor.com/