Lisa Darrer- Artist's Blog

Artwork, thoughts, processes and research

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Camera Reformation//Perception (2015). Clockwise from floor: Nikon FM2 (underneath paper), Digital print on linen paper (lay over camera), digitally printed image on paper (on wall), scanned image, printed (on wall).

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| ESPERANTO | ROWING |

Artist’s featured: Sean Raspet, Sean Townley, Emanuel Rohss, Zoe Williams, Amy Yao

- ‘ESPERANTO is the first multiethnic “Food of the World” restaurant chain founded by serial entrepreneur Mr. Bow.’

-  Use of corporate colour schemes, steel surfaces, designer lamps and open-plan kitchens that so often characterise today’s international restaurants.

- Artist’s culinary philosophies draw on past experience in the kitchen, but also personal tastes and a penchant for games and provocation.

- ‘In a constant oscillation between truth and fiction, Mr. Bow’s tale draws upon two spheres simultaneously, using a double language, the insider world of food bloggers and the visionary character of an overambitious entrepreneur who through his business sets out to achieve retroactive dream.’

- Start at absence to arrive at essence - emptiness is a good canvas to start from

- The characteristics of the place mingle with anomalies

- ‘We are in fiction, which seems more real than reality. It also does not matter that the food is not what it used to be. We only know that in switching between fiction and reality we are always living in two dimensions at once’.

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| ELAINE STURTEVANT |

-Remade famous artworks such as Warhol’s ‘Marilyn’ and Duchamp’s ‘fountain’.

- Rather than replicating a work, she ‘repeats’ a work.

- Never intends to make an exact replica but aims to take viewer on a conceptual journey from mistaken identity through to repetition. 

- The idea of a ‘double take’ is central to the works.

- Describes work as para-fictional (work that isn’t quite fake but not quite real, not trying to lie or be unethical)

- Creations of works are based on her visual memories of the pieces which assists in their differences to the originals.

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‘Locked Room’ - (1969)

In our first copy seminar, we learnt about traditional teachings of art through memesis and how the tutors at Central Saint Martins throughout the late 60′s strived to change this curriculum. The most infamous and drastic method was known as the ‘locked room’; a series of six consecutive weeks where fine art students were locked in their studio, unable to communicate and only allowed to create work with the particular material they had been set that week. Through this, the Chaîne opératoire was broken and the room became part of the process as well as the only site of production and subsequently part of the work. 

I’m really interested in this idea of this intense relationship with one material throughout an extended period of time. I’d be keen to use this method as a framework to create a piece of work myself, working with a completely new/different material over a set week. 

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Online publication

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Our groups finalised publication. 

After creating our initial text, we used Google’s dictation app, speaking the text aloud and allowing the computer to decipher the contents. Our vision was to create a publication that is not fully legible, corresponding to our feelings and conversations surrounding the idea that the collaborative project would never culminate in a resounding final piece; certain aspects would be misunderstood, disagreed with, lost, contradicted etc. As our final piece failed to achieve ‘zen’ (perfection, clarity, conformity), our publication fails in an equal sense. 

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Publication: Draft One

15 artists synthesised into one thing, disillusioned, a garden, a Post Garden. A collaboration of strangers unwilling or unable to reach a coherent ideology. But there is always an entropic ‘descent’ into failure. We soon realised in our search for cohesion, we could only find failure. We accept this, we desire to fail and use zen to fail. Post zen garden a post zen curation. Nature and escapism to tranquility. We are searching for Satori, “Seeing into ones true nature”, a sudden enlightenment. Using technology to find your zen. Finding zen quickly. Technology designed to enhance experience of finding your zen. But technology failing to connect us.

Musing on the term Plastic Information we expressed a desired to create a text of speculation, blurring lines between fact and fiction. A plastic publication; Manipulating information making use of languages malleable qualities. Materialising zen, garden objects, commodifying spirituality. Materials in essence, gentleness despite plastic materiality.

We need to consider culture and capital . Western culture’s appropriating Asian cultures has led to advertisement of an accelerated sudden enlightenment that is boasted by the zen life style. Zen has becomes a brand, a fad and a throw away relaxation buzz word, reducing it to the weight of the plastic emoji as a global symbol. It’s not a Zen Garden its an impoverished post zen garden. A Connecting network of capitalism. The work became a “Post capitalist/apocalyptic zen garden”.

Then the works itself. A hanging waterfall banner. The welcoming entrance to our work, it sets a premise. Images of zen like waterfalls blowing in the breeze of the street.

The goal posts, sacred VS common ground. Sacred but for a very small amount of time. Surreal posts. The functionality of the Goals is to score; A sudden rush of ecstasy. So we consider the aim, the goal to achieve the zen. But we’re aiming away from the target through the height and location of the hanging posts. It’s settling on the floor, theres a weightlessness to something that’s so integral to being grounded. Then the clay water fountain. Failing in its functionality. Ghost of a commodity. The romantic value of craft. A physical reproduction from the original virtual image. And painting exists on the ground laying in the sand. Using old eastern traditions, adapting to an empty space.

It is a forced resourcefulness. We appropriate work into a complex environment and think of its spirituality/lack of. The curation is the life of the garden and we consider it either having a future or representing one - a utopian idea of the future.

History becomes geography and time becomes spacial. Our Post Zen garden is a model of a modern day ecosystem.

Zen itself is a contradictory philosophy. It cannot be taught only found. And by actively trying to find your zen you will never encounter it.

This we can relate to the ultimate nature of our ideas. As we can never reach the idealist collaboration we were searching for. Were doomed to fail from the start, and so we choose to embrace that.

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An image created by myself as an additional piece to expand our online publication. As well as presenting our physical work through documentation and submitting our publication to the ‘post-zen’ tumblr, we have each created an individual submission that we feel to be relevant and reminiscent of the process. 

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Through careful curation, allocated tasks and a strong team ethic, our group was able to produce a show that seemed to soundly convey our thoughts and concepts surrounding ‘post-zen’. 

Reception was extremely positive and each piece seemed to relate well to the rest of the works, concluding in a cohesive and fluid final, collaborative outcome. Although there could have been subtle improvements in regards to various technical issues and limitations, we were successful in resolving these problems as a unit, working around them and helping with each other’s individual situations. 

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Images of final piece: 

The piece was finalised after creating a makeshift structure out of scrap materials to separate the two elements of the sculpture and adding a perspex table for the fiji bottle and bluetooth speaker to be placed on. 

The piece received positive feedback and seemed to convey my perceived concepts and ideas clearly. If we were to re-install this piece and gain more time, I would perhaps think about extending this work through exploring further forms of reproduction, constructing both virtual and physical versions of the original virtual image that further distance themselves from the original product.

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Video created to play on the monitor that sits back to back with the clay sculpture. The display depicts the found, virtual image we worked from and the sound is a section taken from a ‘zen meditation’ track, which can played via a bluetooth speaker during the day and due to rent store limitations, played from the monitor during the private view.

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Construction and curation of the show:

Making informed decisions together through our meetings about where to locate our work, sourcing materials and how to curate the individual pieces as one, we worked collaboratively in the space, ensuring that our collective vision was achieved and the work was created to a high standard, on time.

Upon selecting the space, we took into account the functionalities and limitations of locations whilst also thinking about which would work best to assist in conveying our concept. The entrance to the street seemed a prime location as it’s bustling atmosphere juxtaposes the ideals of a zen garden and reinforced our underlying concept of failure.  

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Images depicting the sculpture’s development. Using wet, unset clay on a scrap piece of wood to infer that the piece is supposed to be a failed attempt at a water feature. 

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Research combining text and images that inspired my personal piece to add to the group exhibition.

 Combining theories from our seminar studies with ideas developed through group communications, my piece aims to create a physical reproduction of a found, virtual image of a zen water feature. Using the craft of sculpting for its romantic values, the sculpture explores questions of authenticity, the ‘real’, reproduction and emphasise modern western culture’s failing attempts to follow the zen way of life; borrowing from the aesthetics but not the practice.  

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Development mood boards: depicting thoughts and ideas portrayed via mind maps, found images and created images derived from our regular group meetings and shared via a group Facebook page. 

Our imminent failure in creating a successful collaborative piece that fully satisfied every one of us began to consume our thoughts. This idealised, unrealistic final outcome seemed to mirror a zen garden; unnatural, perfectly manicured and with a set of extremely regiment, structured rules that do not have leeway for individual creativity.

The terms ‘post-garden’ or ‘post-zen’ became coined in an attempt to fee ourselves from this framework, allowing freedom, scope and allowing the prospect of ‘failure’ to manifest into a positive element which would drive us throughout our collaboration.

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Live screen recording collage.

Experimenting with quick time recorder in order to distort the audiences perception of what is live and what is pre recorded, emphasising the notion of technology increasingly abstracting our sense of reality.

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Sketchbook