CICHON

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Vanishing & Becoming/Video

I seem to struggle with size issues in Premiere ;)

When I think of vanishing and becoming, I realize those are two words which truly define myself through life.  I have felt myself vanish and, more recently, I have felt myself become...constant transitions in a state of movement.  

This project was somewhat inspired by my performance piece, or the idea of walking and moving through life while simultaneously feeling and absorbing environments around me.  As I started this class with the ideas of living in two worlds of the past and the present, I end this class still treading within these two dimensions.  I live in the mountains with my child, in a strange state of reality with his father, yet I head to the city for the conscious decision of slowly transitioning onto a different path in a new life.  My way of life as I have known it is vanishing.  I get to become what I have wanted...but yet both will always be inside.  

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Project 5: Vanishing & Becoming

This piece is inspired by a scene from a Jean Luc Godard film entitled 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her. The scene takes place in a café and describes a relation between strangers. During the relation there is a voiceover of Jean Luc Godard whispering about language and the structuring of worlds, a topic he has visited in many of his films.  I was interested in his construction of time as well as his technique of using a vanishing and reappearing cup of coffee to allow the viewer to have access to the universal. I have attached the clip link below so you can watch the two together.

In my piece the cup of coffee is seen visually by the viewer and then cut away to a “memory” of moments before in the making of the coffee. It then reappears again many times over the one-minute duration. Conceptually, the man in the film is revisiting a café that he founded for the last time as it has just been sold to new owners. There is a feeling of becoming as he makes a coffee drink for the first time under these new conditions, but as he did so many times as the owner years ago. After a hiatus of several years, a “vanishing”, he returns and becomes, if for only a moment the owner behind the bar one last time.* This film is a true story  *

All video and audio produced by (me) Ashley James.

Jean Luc Godard clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0i8XR9Cztc

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the audio is such a strength in this video...beautiful. 

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(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mM2TXfwFLTw)

Artist Note

Sometimes we are moving so fast that we forget to take a moment to see what’s actually going around us or to appreciate the small things. We have so much going on, do we really know whats going on. 

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This is so great Shay!!! Jealous of your editing ;)

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A Page from the Drawing Papers Archive

This page from Drawing Papers 92 features Himmel (Sky), a watercolor and pencil on paper drawing created by Gerhard Richter in 1984.

The 2010 exhibition Gerhard Richter: “Lines Which Do Not Exist”  focused on approximately 50 of Richter’s works on paper and explored his complex personal relationship with drawing over a period of five decades from 1966 to 2005.  When comparing painting to drawing, Richter once noted, “The paintings, even when they are abstract, are in a certain way more analogous to what is represented. That already happens through the colors, because everything is exactly executed, even in gesture painting.  The drawings are always dissimilar to what is represented. They have lines which do not exist.”

The Drawing Papers are a series of publications documenting The Drawing Center’s exhibitions and public programs and providing a forum for the study of drawing. For more information about Drawing Papers 92, click here.

 -Kate Robinson, Bookstore Manager

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Born in 1947, Austrian artist #FranzWest who belonged to the generation of artists exposed to Actionist and Performance Art of the 1960s and 70s. West instinctively rejected the traditionally passive nature of the relationship between artwork and viewer. West’s artwork is typically made out of plaster, papier-mache, wire, polyester, aluminum and other, ordinary materials. He started to produce paintings, but then turned to collages, sculptures, portable sculptures called “Adaptives” or “Fitting Pieces”, environment and furniture – “welded metal chairs and divans, some minimally padded and upholstered in raw linen.” “Drawing Dialogues: Selections from the Sol LeWitt Collection” is an exhibition featuring over 100 works by more than 60 artists from the renowned artist’s extraordinary collection. On view Wed-Sun 12-6pm | Thurs 12-8pm #LeWittCollection #FranzWest Image: Franz West, Untitled, 1988. Mixed media, 24 x 43 inches. LeWitt Collection, Chester, CT. Courtesy of the legal successor of the artist. (at The Drawing Center)

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Vanishing and Becoming

After reading Cubitt’s words a couple times, I have been looking back into art history thinking about how projection is completely natural and humanistic.  Cubitt makes the argument that this modern art form is truly much older than we think.  Although technology such as cinema, television, telescopes provided metaphors for human projection, essentially the idea of using light and thought is a human trait.  

Even in the earliest of art, such as drawings found in caves of Lascaux, the inhabitants had to use light to see the images.  Standing in front of the fire while moving hands and bodies would have also projected transforming images on the walls.  This of course is echoed by Cubitt’s example of the origin of painting, the daughter of Butades of Corinth, who traced the outline of her lovers face which was projected on the wall from a candle.  Even with the structures of Stonehenge (amongst other sites and objects), we still contemplate the idea of light projecting shadows on the ground during different times of the day.  

Taking this prehistoric idea of using light and projection, we also blend it with the humanizing element of projection, which the reading introduces with the psychoanalysis of Melanie Klein. Although her studies refer to children, we can see even in adults we often project our inner most thoughts and emotions onto others or even things.  

The reading moves us through time into the present technologies and contemplates Baudrillard’s thoughts on semiotics, including representation and consumption of images, which is associated with the vanishing and becoming of projection.  Where we are (inside of ourselves or even physically), how we see (physically and intellectually) all contributes to the process of seeing or understanding art.  

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Chapter 6: Time and Motion

I love time and the thought of expressing time.  Time is such an abstract quality that is completely palpable, as we move through life.  It may seem to pass quickly when reflecting on large chunks of time, like a decade of your life.  Or, it crawls painstakingly, suspended in emotion of perhaps a rough point in life.  

Motion is necessary.  Everything moves, even if only at the cellular level.  Time moves.  Our bodies move.  Nature moves and changes, constantly reflecting how life constantly transforms and transcends.  

Chapter 6 provided good examples of using time and motion in art.  For me, in the past, I predominantly created art through two dimensional means of drawing.  I always was drawn to the idea of expressing time, however, it was a difficult achievement in such a stationary medium.  Performance art, film, photography, environmental sculptures, are examples of art which can truly express the passing, or freezing of time.  Although painting and drawing do this as well, by just the mere year the image was painted, art which physically moves obviously has the benefit of embracing time in the physical sense.  Motion (implied and actual) is a part of texture and manipulation.  We see the examples of Muybridge taking a photographic series of body movement to the abstracted motions of Elizabeth Murray’s paintings.  In the end, sometimes implying movement or actually moving also delineates time.  

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Exercise #5 

I wish I knew why my video is small...ugh.  But the fact I got to this point makes me rather proud ;)  I actually cut video...

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MODULE 4/PERFORMANCE ART

Nature has always been influential in my life.  Growing up in New England, I spent half of my childhood exploring the farm fields and  thick woods of Connecticut and Vermont.  Often I wandered the woods with my father in search of deer to feed our family over the winter.  My legs were my vehicle.  I learned to walk quietly, parallel with the twigs, not to make any breaking noise.

Living in the mountains, I am always surrounded by quiet spaces.  Almost every morning, I take my two german shepherd for long walk through sagebrush and boulders, up through the evergreens and aspens.  Spring time brings pungent smells of a moist earth.  As the snow melts into the ground, the dirt is rich and the moss is reborn.  My performance is of my feet feeling the textures of earth and rock.  The connection between this earth is undeniable for me.  If I was bold, I would be nude rolling around on the earth :)

I actually have become more interested in performance art since this project began.  Sometimes I believe I have yet to find my medium and find it imperative I must examine this vehicle as means of expressing what lies inside.  

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Performance Art Reading/Movie

Starting with the reading, Roselee Goldberg provides a solid historical analysis of the emergence of performance art in the 20th Century.  As I have been studying art history, I am able to see the relevant movements she mentions (Futurism, Dadaists, Surrealists) as significant innovators of performance art.  The manifestos these groups produced were in essence collaboration pieces that were published or read to the public.  This is pivotal of performance.  Taking a stand and expressing ideas in front of groups of people.  I also agree that performance art is an effective medium for artist to convey ideas and visions that may not otherwise be expressed with more traditional art forms.  This idea of audience participation is also a major component of performance.  Performance is also a collaboration.  Even if the artist performs pieces on her own, there remains an audience which interacts emotionally, physically or mentally.  

The Artist is Present is essentially a love story about Marina Abromovic’s life.  Her intensity is constantly present and her work as a performance artist follows her beliefs that performance art is always about the state of mind.  Connecting the audience to that state of mind is extremely important and personal for Abromovic.  This is evident in the weekend getaway she hosts for her models of the MOMA show.  How they were to spend three days in solitude, without the outside world, in order to feel their minds was incredibly intense and beautiful.  Abromovic is not passive.  She is on a mission to express ideas using her body as the medium.  This film is quite stunning and truly depicts Abromovic as the evocative performer and emotional artist.  She is on a mission to give performance art the respect it deserves in the history of art.  

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Adrian Piper...she helped me gain an affinity towards performance art.

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Project 3/The Loop

When I was young, I was fortunate to have family who introduced me to the genre of classic films.  I often spent many days with my sister watching movies such as High Society or Singing in the Rain.  However, we also watched old, horror movies with my father.  My father worked quite a bit, and I loved the few moments we spent together on the weekends when scary stories or old movies were shared with popcorn and soda.  

This project was a journey back to my childhood and was inspired by the poor, flashing GIF I made from The Shining.  I am a lover of suspense, and the dramatics of film noir.  Each frame is a lesson in the contrast of light and dark.  I feel as if I have suspended time in each GIF, treading gently in the memory of my youth.  

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How do I get this to not flash?????? 

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The LOOP/Reading GIFs

When I think of GIFs, I often think of social media and current events.  Often we see satire in GIFS.  But with reading links to web pages associated with this first step in The Loop, I definitely started to think more about the form of the GIF and its’ place in the art world.  

Rarely do we think of GIFS as a form of high art.  Although they started as a way of animating on computers, GIFs have evolved into art and culture.  I liked the idea found in the first video as GIFs being a photograph in motion;  A moment captured which lingers in the psyche.  Some are meant for comedy others for artistic endeavors.  Anyone can make a GIF, which makes the form of expression very attainable.  

I like the idea of animating public art and spaces.  

I find myself being drawn to the most subtle movements.  

Reminds me of Twilight Zone and the fear of outer space often expressed in movies of the 1950′s. 

Sometimes the simplest images and ideas are most profound and expressive. 

Obviously, I am influenced by old movies and black and white film noir.  Simple is often most effective.  

Reminds me of the importance of negative space in photoshop collages.  

Means of expression seems limitless in GIFs.  

Flashing lights animate so perfectly.  

One can truly articulate cultural standards, norms and behaviors in short animation.  

Partial animation of a GIF can allow simple yet strong expression.  

Picked by my ten year old son who thought this was hysterical.  

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Artists have a variety of methods to make their mark. Every Friday we will share a photograph of an #ArtistInAction.

In 1957 Yayoi Kusama entered New York’s art scene when it was highly male-centric. Coming from a family in which painting was considered an act of opposition, Kusama managed to translate her traumas and obsessions into her artwork. The repetitive patterns and her signature polka dots serve as a coping response for those obsessions and are rooted in the hallucinations that she has grappled with since her childhood. Through her sculptures, installations, and performances, Kusama breaks the boundaries of space and transfigures the borders between the real and imaginary worlds. After achieving immense reputation in New York, she returned to Japan in 1973 and continued to work there as a premier artist. #YayoiKusama #5womenartists #WomensHistoryMonth @womeninthearts Photo: Kusama in Japan ©Tokyo Lee Productions, Inc.