#oreet ashery

[rubbernecked]

Oreet Ashery, Party for Freedom (Monkey Bum Factory), 2011

[is71076acs]

Week 7 Computational Art and Touching Visions

This week we looked at the affordances of touch and artworks that address these micropractises. As a class exercise my group listed some ways that we touch through devices and interfaces. We then considered these ontologies in relation to work by Sondra Perry, Mona Hatoum and Oreet Ashery to reflect on how touch emerges.

In the site-specific installations of video artist Sondra Perry she explores the troubled histories of black identity in art and media. Her process is made legible through video production technologies, such as chroma key, and how they are incorrectly calibrated for black or brown skin. Through these immersive environments Perry is commenting on matters of labour and agency as well as the “physicality of how video is displayed.”

In Corps Étranger by Mona Hatoum she uses endoscopic footage of her own internal organs as an amplified commentary on touch and intimacy. Despite being literally inside the artist’s own body there is still a sense of clinical distance by making us aware of the material reality of touch itself. This piece reminded me of more contemporary examples such as Jesse Kanda and Arca’s film project Trauma.

Lastly, we looked at Passing Through Metal by Oreet Ashery which is a “poetry performance” that juxtaposes doom metal band Pyramido against forty people knitting. Admittedly my group were not sure how this playful work relates to touch in any way but nonetheless found it intriguing.

In terms of project progression, I read through Karen Barad’s essay On Touching - The Inhuman That Therefore I Am, since it seemed relevant to the topic of this week’s class. It explores the act of touching on a quantum level by debunking the classical physicist notions that touch is merely an “electromagnetic interaction”. The quantum theory of touch is radically more complex or as Barad would say an “infinity of infinities.” On a subatomic level each electron draws energy by self-touching itself but remains alone within the void due to electric repulsion between neighbouring entities. By discussing the human element within this, Barad is reconfiguring matter itself while also deconstructing issues surrounding human identity and accountability.   

References • https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/exhibitions-events/sondra-perry-typhoon-coming-on • https://fourthree.boilerroom.tv/film/mona-hatoum-corps-etranger-1994 • https://pitchfork.com/news/55109-arca-and-jesse-kanda-go-inside-someones-mouth-in-next-clip-from-ongoing-film-trauma/ • http://oreetashery.net/work/passing-through-metal-2017/ • https://read.dukeupress.edu/differences/article/23/3/206/97723/On-Touching-the-Inhuman-That-Therefore-I-Am • Barad, Karen, 2012. On Touching-The Inhuman That Therefore I Am. Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, 23(3), pp.206–223.

Image of Typhoon Coming On by: Sondra Perry https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/exhibitions-events/sondra-perry-typhoon-coming-on

Image of Corps Étranger (1994) by: Mona Hatoum https://fourthree.boilerroom.tv/film/mona-hatoum-corps-etranger-1994

Image of Trauma Scene 2 by: Arca and Jesse Kanda https://pitchfork.com/news/55109-arca-and-jesse-kanda-go-inside-someones-mouth-in-next-clip-from-ongoing-film-trauma/

Image of Passing through Metal (2017-18) by: Oreet Ashery http://oreetashery.net/work/passing-through-metal-2017/

[onlywhatshere]

[statesofexception]

Oreet Ashery — ‘Party For Freedom medley’ (2014)

Music by Woolf, Timo-Juhani Kyllönen, Chyskyyrai and Morgan Quaintance

[statesofexception]

Oreet Ashery/Pyramido — ‘Passing through Metal’ (2017)

[wearewia]

OREET ASHERY WINS 10th FILM LONDON JARMAN AWARD 2017

Oreet Ashery still from REVISITING GENESIS web series by Oreet Ashery

This evening at a special event at the Curzon Soho in London, Oreet Ashery won the 2017 Film London Jarman Award.  Inspired by visionary filmmaker Derek Jarman, the award recognises and supports artists working with moving image and celebrates the spirit of experimentation, imagination and innovation in the work of UK-based…

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[pxssagat]

detail from Oreet Ashery, Party for Freedom, 2014. Courtesy the artist for Ibraaz

[hyperallergic]

(via The Psychedelic and Porcine Provocations of Oreet Ashery)

LONDON — If you like bacon and don’t have a menial job, here’s the show to make you feel bad. Both the fate of pigs and professional cleaners hang in the balance at Waterside Contemporary’s Oreet Ashery: Animal with a Language, where you are prompted to consider your own role in their exploitation. But the installation and film work now on display troubles you with nothing less than humor, forgiveness, and a touch of psychedelia.

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