Kat's Curiosities

All the Muck that's fit to rake

[katscradle7]

Desire lines

Desire line: An informal path that pedestrians prefer to take to get from one location to another rather than using a sidewalk or other official route.

Ever since Melissa mentioned Desire Lines months ago I have been thinking about them and have been hyper- aware of them around campus. I have noticed that I actually use desire lines (on campus) more than designated routes. This has a lot to do with both parking and lack of time. I find these paths fascinating on a philosophical level. Great minds think alike right? Well so many have thought of the same idea (direction to travel) that they have created new paths all over the world!

[katscradle7]

participatory art

Being a performer, I am always doing participatory art. My talented peers and I combine our talents into a show and for a few hours life is completely art. Sure it's full of glitter that you cant ever quite get rid of, but it is art. Without the performers there is just an empty stage. The shows themselves are art pieces created by a temporary community.

[denbeckartculturepolitics]

Matthias Gommel - Delayed, 2002

Matthias Gommel’s piece ‘Delayed’ deals with the perception of speech through a 3 second delay. When you get to this exhibit the first thing you see are two headphones that have microphones attached. There are no instructions as to what to do with the headphones—It’s left open to invite the viewers to partake in a conversation with each other through the headphone/microphone headset. However, when you talk into the microphones there is a 3 second delay between when you speak and when the speech actually arrives in the headphones. I think this piece really speaks to this day in age. This is definitely the age of technology and this piece allows us to become aware of the problems associated with certain technologies.

[katscradle7]

My thoughts: I think this piece is clever in that it reminds people how far technology has really come. People get upset if someone doesn't receive their text immediately, but it basically needs to go to space and back - give it a minute! Remember carrier pigeons? And telegrams? Now  a few seconds doesn't seem so long, does it? I am curious as to how long people kept up these conversations? Did it make hings get awkward at a faster rate OR were people given time to think about what they would say next, and therefore kept it going? Did people get frustrated and give up? Or think it was broken? 

[katscradle7]

participation in a project

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncs_3uiczB4

I went to a museum in Seattle that was featuring the Avatar movie, including things like the making, the ideas, and quite a few interactive exhibits. This is a video of me in their interactive room and then emulated into a character. This is fascinating because it takes exactly what the person is doing and forces it onto a new character. Side note - they were directing me on what to do/ where to step. That's why I look so awkward!

[nblausacp]

Derive and Psychogeography

A group of us from the class ‘art, culture, and politics’ imitated the Situationist International by ‘deriving’ and gathering phsychogeographical data.

We went to a local grocery store to examine the space from the perspective of an un-assuming observing, considering forms such as parking spaces, check out lines, security camera, and the apparent mood of shoppers.  It was interesting to observe the direct and indirect forms of control that were built into the environment.  Going through this process caused us to relate to this familiar space, the grocery store, in a new manner and have a moment of interacting with the space in an un-intended way—as psychogeographers.  However small this shift might seem, it was still a ‘mini-revolution’ within our day and was in the spirit of the Situationist’s effort to disrupt the everyday with our actions within space.

‘Dérive’ is described as “goal-less ‘drifting’” and was a mode of interacting within an organized space in an unintentional and organized way in order to cause “behavioral disorientation.”  In certain instances for the Situationists this manifested itself as bar hopping with friends and acting belligerent in order to shake things up. 

‘Psychogeography’ examines the relationships between one’s physical environment and their psychological state.  The Situationists used data collected from the research of psychogeography to inform their dérive’.

[katscradle7]

 I was a part of this group as well (mohawk!) It was interesting to see how people interacted with one another, especially based on whether or not you were staff. The staff at Market of choice had a general smile on their faces and greeted people with a kind tone, because that is what they should do in their position. However, the customers had a hurried, frustrated, or distant look about them; because smiling isn't in their job description. 

[katscradle7]

This is the link to the Postsecret website. Each week Frank and his staff choose from thousands of postcards to feature on the site. You can also find information for Postsecret events on this website. Frank Warren travels around the world talking about secrets he has received as well as themes and invites people to share their secrets live onstage. There are also Postsecret events where galleries show off hundreds of selected secrets. 

[katscradle7]

Participatory art project

"Postsecret is an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard"

I found out about Postsecret when I was a freshman in highschool. It is a ridiculously cool project started by a man named Frank Warren. People from all over the world put their personal secrets on a handmade postcard and send it off to Frank. But as it is a postcard, anyone handling the mail along the way is able to read it. The concept of sending off your secret can be both freeing and terrifying. This project makes you face and accept your secrets. I believe it has the ability to make us a little more human. 

[vanmatret]

… many of our daily activities—-escpecially those involving communication among friends, or within activist groups, even occasions of transient affiliation—- resemble particatory artworks. In this sense, both art and everyday life are becoming more contemporary than ever before.

Terry Smith (via vanmatret)

my thoughts: This quote reminds me of Shakespear's "All the world's a stage". We constantly presenting ourselves to people. I am not sure if this is exactly what the quote is referring to - just my interpretation. There have been many studies, specifically on social media websites like Facebook, about the way people portray themselves. In my opinion, we have never been more aware of the things we do and how we look when we're doing them. This world has become obsessed with the concepts of beauty and perfection. 

[katscradle7]

Audience participation

Audience participation can be found in a lot in performance art. For example magic tricks, sing-a-longs and acts like this: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCiluWOvZWQ&list=FLcLolMH1fyOWpmE5VyERCcg

this is Inga Ingenue, a well known burlesque dancer, using the power of audience participation to embellish her act. She does this by having the audience repeat the song she is dancing to when appropriate. In acts like this, without audience participation, the piece would be far less interesting as well as far less effective. Having audience participation keeps the audiences attention and gets them directly involved in the piece. 

[bostonreview]

But social practice’s identification with ethics and politics should lead us to ask what’s prompting its allergy to the aesthetic. I’ve already mentioned the art market as a system with which many artists do not identify; this represents a bigger problem, which is a widespread dissatisfaction with free market capitalism and the inequality and disempowerment it produces. I think social practice also says something about our relationship to technology. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that social practice arises simultaneously with the digital revolution. Face-to-face relationships are becoming important as we spend more and more time online.

Claire Bishop on social practice (participatory art)

[katscradle7]

Discussion question for the class

Do you consider Mapplethorpe's photographs of children to be pornographic? Where is the line drawn? How do you decipher between offensive and artistic?

[sgcny]

[katscradle7]

Womanhouse: Chicago and Schapiro's teaching is based on group operation where twenty-one young women artists were elected to join this exclusively female class. The way of teaching is circular, "more womb-like," describes Schapiro. The primary concern was to provide a nourishing environment for growth. In the group, laws are based on mutual aesthetic consent to encourage and support artistic needs of the group.There are some unwritten laws regarding the appropriateness of subject matter for art making: dolls, pillows, cosmetics, sanitary napkins, silk stockings, underwear, children's toys, washbasins, toasters, frying pans, refrigerator, door handles, shower caps, quilts, and satin bedspread. The content of the project Womanhouse was to reverse this mythical thinking.

The initial idea to create Womanhouse was Paula Harper's. She helped to conceptualize the project at the beginning. Later, the conception of Womanhouse continued as a topic for discussion in one of the class meetings. During the discussion, students asked what it would be like to work out one of their closest associative memories, the home, which as a culture of women have been identified with for centuries. It has been the place where women struggled to please others. The students wondered what the home would be like if they pleased no one but themselves as women and began the project.

The relationship between biology and social roles formed the foundation of Womanhouse. Most of the rooms replicated areas of the house while at the same time challenged the activity of that room and the meaning of that activity to women's self-image through creative exaggeration.

(source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Womanhouse)

My thoughts: I am completely fascinated with the concept of Womanhouse. I haven't given too much though as to the intricacies of what it means to be a woman. From birth society has made it so that our gender defines us. If you are a girl you play with dolls and an easy bake oven (to prepare you for your future role as homemaker). Girls are automatically associated with the color pink and are seen as the more nurturing of the two sexes. This piece/ installation delves deep into what it means to be a woman, to be defined as a woman, our responsibilities and roles - everything.  

[katscradle7]

Discussion questions and answers: Antfarm

Ant Farm

1. The types of media Ant Farm made use of in their works consisted of video, performance, and installation art. They also made use of architecture, including inflatable architecture. 

2. Three elements of historical context for Ant Farm activities include the free speech movement, antiwar demonstrations, and the summer of love. It should also be said that communal living, sexual liberation, and mind-altering drugs were popular during this time. 

3. Ant Farm is known for their videotaped performance piece called Media Burn. For Media Burn, members Schreier and Michels drove a 1959 customized Cadillac into a flaming pyramid of televisions. This collision of icons – the car and the television set – was meant to exploit the very medium it opposed. In laments terms, Ant Farm is exploiting television by blowing it up, but the only way you can see this performance, without being there, is to watch it on your television.

[safeteens-blog]

Cuban-born visual artist Félix González-Torres’ constructed this piece called “Untitled (Portrait of Ross in L.A.)” soon after his partner Ross Laycock died of AIDS in 1991.

In this “portrait,” González-Torres creates a spill of candies to approximate Ross’s ideal weight of 175 lbs. As viewers take pieces of candy one by one, the spill slowly dissolves, leaving a diminishing pile of brightly colored wrappers to parallel Ross’s fatal weight loss and suffering.

Gonzalez-Torres stipulated that the pile should be continuously replenished, thereby sustaining the memory of his deceased partner for years to come.

[katscradle7]

We briefly discussed this piece last class. I think it is important to focus on the idea that throughout time Ross's weight diminishes due to his illness. This is paralleled in gallery-goers taking candy. I would like to point out that this particular candy spill is rainbow colored - to represent Gonzalez's gay lover. I wonder if it would have the same emotional effect if it were a solid color? I think this piece is relatable to anyone who has/ had AIDS as well as anyone who knows/ knew someone with AIDS. This is a very powerful piece and I would like to visit one of Gonzalez's candy-spills one day. 

[katscradle7]

Discussion questions and answers: AIDS activism

12 February 2013

AIDS: Cultural Analysis/ Cultural Activism & 

Names Carried in the Future: an AIDS Quilt Unfolds 

Three practices or approaches to AIDS that Crimp finds problematic are:

a. We can confront physical people, like government officials, but how do we confront a virus?

b. People are putting too much blind faith in science. We need to also focus on educating ourselves as to what exactly we are putting money towards and supporting – specifically with AIDS research. 

3. Money is a passive response to this social crisis, whereas Crimp believes art has the ability to save lives. 

Three merits that offer valuable strategies in confronting the AIDS crisis according to Crimp:

a. They are collective endeavors

b. They are employed by their collectives’ members as an essential part of their AIDS activism

c. They go beyond the art world

Four ways in which the NAMES project functions as ritual:

a. There is community involvement

b. It focuses on remembrance/ memory

c. It is multigenerational, local, and socially tuneful

d. It is a means of communication and is also a sort of record

side note: I found this reading to be particularly interesting. I think it's amazing when art has a real purpose - making people think and get involved. I also found it intriguing that we compared the NAMES project to a ritual. I would also like to note that very recently HIV was cured - apparently our money has been useful.

[katscradle7]

these photos remind me of everything we've been learning in class about performance art and redefining what art is.

Edit: this post was not for an assignment which is why I didn't use the minimum word count. However, I would like to elaborate on why I posted it. Both pictures have to do with breaking boundaries - in this case, I related those boundaries to the "rules" in the way we make and see art. I  also relate said boundaries to people's personal boundaries. We have been focusing on artists, especially with Dada and happenings, that aim to make people uncomfortable. A big supporter of this sort of art is Claire Bishop. 

[katscradle7]

Social Sadism Made Explicit

Social Sadism Made explicit

Oscar Massota’s ‘happening’ To Induce the Spirit of the Image (1966): 

-Aggressive attitude towards participants

-mediation / semiotics/guilt

-elderly people paid to stand in front of an audience and be subjected to fire-extinguishers, deafening sound, and blinding light after Massota had given a lecture about control. To participate in the event was much more expensive than to watch.

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Oscar Bony’s The Worker’s Family (1968):

-challenged convention

-class association

-live material 

-a working class family was paid twice their salary to sit on display for 8 hours a day in an exhibit

-made an ideal out of an everyday family

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The Group of Avant-Garde Artists’ Cycle of Experimental Art (1968):

-desire for autonomy (own space, own shows, and writing about own work)

-based on a common idea

-consisted of 10 actions (1 every 15 days)

-9th event: Rodolpho Elizalde and Emilio Ghilioni staged a street fight to get the public to directly interact and to take the art outside of the exhibit

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Tucumán Arde (1969):

- media, press, informative

-counter propaganda in defense of exploited sugar workers

-call to revolt

-wanted to expose viewer to injustice and generate press to exploit the situation

-the exhibit was covered with banners and newspapers covered with names and shocking statistics and phrased regarding the sugar workers’ situation. There was also a giant pile of donated food, coffee without sugar, and frequent blackouts to symbolize the deaths of the children affected by the issue. 

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Augusto Boul’s Theater of the Opressed:

-broke identification as a key theatrical device

-changed audience/actor relationship

-social antagonism

-invisible theatre: a type of public and participatory action that cannot be detected by the authorities

-you can see the show without seeing it as a show

-constructed situation in which a cast of actors attends a restaurant and play the patrons while the restaurant workers unknowingly participate. The restaurant eventually turns into a public forum.