O'Rorke, Imogen “Flipping the script” Mute 15 August 2008. Web. 1 June 2010
An artist and writer, Imogen O’Rorke lives in London and writes for the Guardian, Mute and other online journals.
In the conclusion of “Flipping the Scripts” O’Rorke describes the impact of 9 Scripts from a Nation at War as forcing us “to interrogate our roles in this conflict and reassess the position of citizen in relation to state” (O’Rorke 6).
I think this is fertile ground for discussion as the role of citizen changes especially in the US with the recent election of President Obama and the rise of liberal democracy. More and more the citizen is asked to participate in the decisions made by the government as democracy rises in the world.
In “Redefining the Role of Citizen in a Gov 2.0 World”, John Kamensky critiques citizenship under the Obama government. Kamensky see the role of the citizen in the US increasing. One such area, in which this change can be seen, is in an increased involvement in dialogue. The Obama Open Government initiative encourages agencies to converse with the citizens and engage them in meaningful dialogue around issues such as transparency and collaboration. People are being encouraged to contribute to public debate via text, email and online forums (Kamensky 1).
Exhibitions such as such as “9 Scripts from a Nation at War” are particularly pertinent during this climate of change for inciting the dialogue of the citizen, which may then be communicated to the state. I think at this level, the artwork works as information that may warrant further thought and then be transformed into action.
References
Kamensky, John “Redefining the Role of Citizen in a Gov 2.0 World” The IBM Center for the Business of Government Feb. 4 2010 accessed from
http://bizgov.wordpress.com/2010/02/04/redefining-the-role-of-citizen-in-a-gov-2-0-world/
08 June 2010
Friday, June 11, 2010
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Reading 2: Medina
Medina, Cuauhtemoc, “Contemp(t)orary: Eleven Theses”, E Flux 12 Jan 2010 accessed from www.eflux.com/journal/view/103 41 17 Feb. 2010
Cuauhtemoc Medina is and art critic, curator and historian. He lives in Mexico and has a PhD from the University of Essex where he researched and wrote on Fluxus non-art and anti-art.
Medina claims in section two of “Contem(t)porary: Eleven Theses” that an indicator of contemporary arts lack of substance is the way in which galleries and museums define their contemporary collections by a chronology that begins at an arbitrary point after modernism. Such collections normally begin with artwork from the 1940’s (Medina 1).
On the contrary, I think it is a testament to the substance which contemporary art continues to provide us, that galleries often devote a large amount of wall and floor space to presenting contemporary collections.
It is possible that the period from mid 19th Century to mid 20th Century be an exception to the common system of curation due to its chronological position in the art historical landscape. The artwork made during this period is old enough to be categorised into art historical groups such as abstract expressionism, pop art etcetera, but is new enough to be interesting in a contemporary art context.
The idea that the period of art from the 1940’s until some not yet specified date could be coined “contemporary” one day in an art historical categorization is interesting but I think it more likely that with time it will be broken into smaller categories. These categories are likely to be related to the trends that are emerging in recent art.
In February 2006 Kay Larson wrote an article “Beautiful Mutants” for ARTnews magazine that identifies one trend for writer Robin Cembalest who was attempting to identify the top 10 trends in contemporary art. She calls it “Postmodern Mannerism”. Larson describes Postmodern Mannerism as includes art that is “sweet and sad, sentimental and repulsive, cute and creepy”(Larson 1). Postmodern Mannerism is one such category that some contemporary art maybe placed into sometime in the future.
Whether recent art one-day falls under the official label “Contemporary” or another, I do not see the current state of chronological categorisation to be an indicator of a lack of substance as proposed by Medina.
References
Larson, Kay “Beautiful Mutants” ARTnews 6 Feb. Accessed from http://www.artnews.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=2002 08 June 2006
Cuauhtemoc Medina is and art critic, curator and historian. He lives in Mexico and has a PhD from the University of Essex where he researched and wrote on Fluxus non-art and anti-art.
Medina claims in section two of “Contem(t)porary: Eleven Theses” that an indicator of contemporary arts lack of substance is the way in which galleries and museums define their contemporary collections by a chronology that begins at an arbitrary point after modernism. Such collections normally begin with artwork from the 1940’s (Medina 1).
On the contrary, I think it is a testament to the substance which contemporary art continues to provide us, that galleries often devote a large amount of wall and floor space to presenting contemporary collections.
It is possible that the period from mid 19th Century to mid 20th Century be an exception to the common system of curation due to its chronological position in the art historical landscape. The artwork made during this period is old enough to be categorised into art historical groups such as abstract expressionism, pop art etcetera, but is new enough to be interesting in a contemporary art context.
The idea that the period of art from the 1940’s until some not yet specified date could be coined “contemporary” one day in an art historical categorization is interesting but I think it more likely that with time it will be broken into smaller categories. These categories are likely to be related to the trends that are emerging in recent art.
In February 2006 Kay Larson wrote an article “Beautiful Mutants” for ARTnews magazine that identifies one trend for writer Robin Cembalest who was attempting to identify the top 10 trends in contemporary art. She calls it “Postmodern Mannerism”. Larson describes Postmodern Mannerism as includes art that is “sweet and sad, sentimental and repulsive, cute and creepy”(Larson 1). Postmodern Mannerism is one such category that some contemporary art maybe placed into sometime in the future.
Whether recent art one-day falls under the official label “Contemporary” or another, I do not see the current state of chronological categorisation to be an indicator of a lack of substance as proposed by Medina.
References
Larson, Kay “Beautiful Mutants” ARTnews 6 Feb. Accessed from http://www.artnews.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=2002 08 June 2006
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Reading 4: Gerald Matt on Amal Kenawy
Matt, Gerald. “Amal Kenawy.” Ed. Gerland Matt. Vienna: Kunstalle Wein, 2008. 134-144. Print
Amal Kenawy is an artist who lives and works in Cairo. She works in many mediums but the work discussed in this article is performance, video and installation.
Gerald Matt is a curator and the current director of Kunstalle Wein in Vienna. He specialises in interviews with prominent artist and comes from a law, business and art history academic background.
During the interview with Gerald Matt Kenawy is questioned on the influence her gender has on her artistic practice and the relationship between her artwork and the artwork of feminist artists Louise Bourgeois, Eva Hesse and Charlotte Scheeman.
Kenawy replies that any feminist content in her works is not conscious. She concedes that her emotional engagement with an experience is tempered by the values that her society has given its women. In this sense her identity as a woman alters the way she responds to and interprets an experience and this is evident in her work. Kenawy feels that she is often grouped with the above artists for two reasons. The first is their use of similar symbolism. The second is the simple fact that they are women (Matt 135-136).
In June 2009 Kenawy’s “Tomorrow You Will Be Killed” featured in the traveling exhibition Off the Beaten Path: Violence, Women and Art curated by Randy Jane Rosenberg of Art Works For Change. By positioning herself in this feminist political context, Kenawy encourages a feminist critic. How can she not be conscious of the effects this positioning has on the content of her artwork?
In the article “Feminism: Three Views” by Jennifer Doyle, Gilane Tawadros and N’Gone Fall, Doyle explains that one can have feminist content in their work, but still not consider themself to be a feminist (Doyle 3) Perhaps this is the case in Kenawy’s work.
Tawadros points out that it seems that the artist has two options: They can deny the impact of their identity on the content of their work, or let their work be categorised by their identity (Paragraph 2 p.4). But Kenawy seems to reach some kind of middle ground by qualifying her rejection of “feminist artist” as an identity by saying that “gender may be said to play an indirect and unconscious role in my work…” (Matt 135-136). I think this reflexivity separates her somewhat from her categorisation as a feminist artist as she does not see it as her foremost critical concern.
References
Exhibitions Art Works for Change. Web. 2 June 2010 http://www.artworksforchange.org/exhibitions_moo.htm
Doyle, J., Fall, N. & Tawadros, G. “Feminism: Three Views” Frieze April 4 2007. Web. 2 June 2010
Amal Kenawy is an artist who lives and works in Cairo. She works in many mediums but the work discussed in this article is performance, video and installation.
Gerald Matt is a curator and the current director of Kunstalle Wein in Vienna. He specialises in interviews with prominent artist and comes from a law, business and art history academic background.
During the interview with Gerald Matt Kenawy is questioned on the influence her gender has on her artistic practice and the relationship between her artwork and the artwork of feminist artists Louise Bourgeois, Eva Hesse and Charlotte Scheeman.
Kenawy replies that any feminist content in her works is not conscious. She concedes that her emotional engagement with an experience is tempered by the values that her society has given its women. In this sense her identity as a woman alters the way she responds to and interprets an experience and this is evident in her work. Kenawy feels that she is often grouped with the above artists for two reasons. The first is their use of similar symbolism. The second is the simple fact that they are women (Matt 135-136).
In June 2009 Kenawy’s “Tomorrow You Will Be Killed” featured in the traveling exhibition Off the Beaten Path: Violence, Women and Art curated by Randy Jane Rosenberg of Art Works For Change. By positioning herself in this feminist political context, Kenawy encourages a feminist critic. How can she not be conscious of the effects this positioning has on the content of her artwork?
In the article “Feminism: Three Views” by Jennifer Doyle, Gilane Tawadros and N’Gone Fall, Doyle explains that one can have feminist content in their work, but still not consider themself to be a feminist (Doyle 3) Perhaps this is the case in Kenawy’s work.
Tawadros points out that it seems that the artist has two options: They can deny the impact of their identity on the content of their work, or let their work be categorised by their identity (Paragraph 2 p.4). But Kenawy seems to reach some kind of middle ground by qualifying her rejection of “feminist artist” as an identity by saying that “gender may be said to play an indirect and unconscious role in my work…” (Matt 135-136). I think this reflexivity separates her somewhat from her categorisation as a feminist artist as she does not see it as her foremost critical concern.
References
Exhibitions Art Works for Change. Web. 2 June 2010 http://www.artworksforchange.org/exhibitions_moo.htm
Doyle, J., Fall, N. & Tawadros, G. “Feminism: Three Views” Frieze April 4 2007. Web. 2 June 2010
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Reading 3: David and Rogoff.
David, Catherine and Rogoff, Irit “In Conversation.” From Studio to Situation. Ed. Claire Doherty. London: Black Dog Publishing, 2004. 82-89. Print
An art curator and theorist, Catherine David was the principle director of the 1994-1997 Documenta X in Kassel. In 1998 David took charge of Contemporary Arab Representations in Europe. She was the principle curator of the 2009 Lyon Biennial.
Irit Rogoff is a curator, theorist and writer. She published “Terra Infirma: Geography’s Visual Culture” in 2001. Rogoff founded Goldsmiths College at London University in 2002 at which she holds a professorial position.
In “In Conversation” Irit Rogoff puts describes the two modes of or approaches to “fieldwork”. One is Rapport; the other is Complicity. She relates these different models to site-specific artwork.
Rapport is described as investigative approach, which exposes and reveals hidden things. It involves an insight to and understanding of a location that is assumed. The assumptions are based on an empathy with the location. Rogoff notes that rapport involves conceits and illusions but is an analytical approach (Rogoff.86).
Rogoff describes complicity as an emergent idea. It is about the artist’s/curator’s collusion with a place. In this sense the artist uses the location covertly to create artwork that creates a deception that works against the location itself. The artist uses the discourse of the site itself to work against itself (Rogoff 86-7).
I would like to extend on the concept of site-specificity and therefore the bounds of the notion of complicity.
It is apparent that Rogoff’s conception of site-specificity is not entirely geographical. When talking about the idea of collusion within complicity she references enabling contexts and situation as well as language (Paragraph 6, p86). I take this to mean the discourse around the location.
What we see more and more in contemporary art, is the site becoming and being utilised a cultural and socio-political position to either create rapport or complicity with. The geographical locale is not longer the specific, but the discourse associated with it. Therefore work that does not exist in a specific geographical location may still be regarded as site specific. This includes artwork in the gallery space/presentation space, broad casted and web-based artwork.
In T.J. Demos’s article, “Rethinking Site-Specificity” he critiques Miwon Kwon’s concept of site as discursively determined (articulated in “One Place after Another: Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity”2002). He posits that this idea suffers from a “potential referential reductiveness” (paragraph 5p 98). By this Demos means that Kwon’s model neglects the discourses surrounding material practice and history.
Rogoff’s idea of complicity will benefit from multiple conceptions of site. The materiality and history of a place may be colluded with as well as the socio-political discourse of a place. Rogoff’s idea may be extended to the gallery space and to the Internet.
References:
Demos, T J. “Rethinking Site-Specificity” Art journal, Vol. 62, No.4 (2003): 98-100. Jstor. Web. 23 June 2010
Kwon, Miwon. “One place after Another : Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity.” Massachusetts: MIT Press , 2002. Print
An art curator and theorist, Catherine David was the principle director of the 1994-1997 Documenta X in Kassel. In 1998 David took charge of Contemporary Arab Representations in Europe. She was the principle curator of the 2009 Lyon Biennial.
Irit Rogoff is a curator, theorist and writer. She published “Terra Infirma: Geography’s Visual Culture” in 2001. Rogoff founded Goldsmiths College at London University in 2002 at which she holds a professorial position.
In “In Conversation” Irit Rogoff puts describes the two modes of or approaches to “fieldwork”. One is Rapport; the other is Complicity. She relates these different models to site-specific artwork.
Rapport is described as investigative approach, which exposes and reveals hidden things. It involves an insight to and understanding of a location that is assumed. The assumptions are based on an empathy with the location. Rogoff notes that rapport involves conceits and illusions but is an analytical approach (Rogoff.86).
Rogoff describes complicity as an emergent idea. It is about the artist’s/curator’s collusion with a place. In this sense the artist uses the location covertly to create artwork that creates a deception that works against the location itself. The artist uses the discourse of the site itself to work against itself (Rogoff 86-7).
I would like to extend on the concept of site-specificity and therefore the bounds of the notion of complicity.
It is apparent that Rogoff’s conception of site-specificity is not entirely geographical. When talking about the idea of collusion within complicity she references enabling contexts and situation as well as language (Paragraph 6, p86). I take this to mean the discourse around the location.
What we see more and more in contemporary art, is the site becoming and being utilised a cultural and socio-political position to either create rapport or complicity with. The geographical locale is not longer the specific, but the discourse associated with it. Therefore work that does not exist in a specific geographical location may still be regarded as site specific. This includes artwork in the gallery space/presentation space, broad casted and web-based artwork.
In T.J. Demos’s article, “Rethinking Site-Specificity” he critiques Miwon Kwon’s concept of site as discursively determined (articulated in “One Place after Another: Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity”2002). He posits that this idea suffers from a “potential referential reductiveness” (paragraph 5p 98). By this Demos means that Kwon’s model neglects the discourses surrounding material practice and history.
Rogoff’s idea of complicity will benefit from multiple conceptions of site. The materiality and history of a place may be colluded with as well as the socio-political discourse of a place. Rogoff’s idea may be extended to the gallery space and to the Internet.
References:
Demos, T J. “Rethinking Site-Specificity” Art journal, Vol. 62, No.4 (2003): 98-100. Jstor. Web. 23 June 2010
Kwon, Miwon. “One place after Another : Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity.” Massachusetts: MIT Press , 2002. Print
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Reading 0ne: Craig Garrett on Thomas Hirschhorn
Garrett, Craig. “Thomas Hirschhorn: Philosophical Battery.” Flash Art 238 (Oct. 2004): 90-93.
Craig Garrett is an art critic and journalist. He has written articles for Art Nexus, Flash Art and www.papercoffin.com. In October 2004 when he wrote Thomas “Hirschhorn: Philosophical Battery”, he was the managing editor for Art Flash magazine. He is particularly interested in individual artists’ practices and philosophies and he conducts interviews with the artists themselves to explore these.
Thomas Hirschhorn is a Swiss sculptor working in specifically in installation in Paris. He has a background in graphic design. Hirschhorn creates site-specific “hypersaturated” installations out of basic materials like tape, paper and cardboard, which often offer philosophical messages in written form to the observers. He is represented by Stephen Friedman Gallery in Paris.
Hirschhorn defines himself having a fanatical rather than a fundamentalist response to the philosophical writings he uses as the physical material for his installations. He sees this fanaticism is the topic of his art rather than the theories that the philosophers espouse. He wants to work out the absolute truth and for his work to be precise and his ideas to be clearly expressed to the observer. His vehicle for achieving this however, is a language of excess (Garrett 90, 91).
In this sense the Hirschhorn is contradicting himself somewhat. When I think of seeking truth, I associate this process with stripping down of superficial layers to expose the brute facts that underlie life and existence. This could be seen as an act of “Rapport” as described by Irit Rogoff in “In conversation”. Hirschhorn on the other hand, uses a language of excess to access truth. This can be seen as colluding with the material in an act of “complicity”. This is consistent with the philosophies of truth held by Foucault whom Hirschhorn purports to not understand (Rogoff 84).
Because of this, it seems to me that Hirschhorn has more of an understanding for the philosophies that he speaks of than he lets on. He is utilising them in the creation of his work in a complicit was, which is not illustrative of the behaviour of a fan by his own definition:
”A fan is someone who shares with other fans the fact of being a fan, not the object of his love.” (Garret 92).
Is his work more effective if we believe he does not understand its content? Does this reduce him to fan status? Or perhaps he is unaware that the connection he has made between truth and layering is integral also to Foucault’s philosophy.
References
David, Catherine and Rogoff, Irit. “In Conversation” From Studio to Situation. Ed. Claire Doherty. London: Black Dog publishing. 2004 82-89
Craig Garrett is an art critic and journalist. He has written articles for Art Nexus, Flash Art and www.papercoffin.com. In October 2004 when he wrote Thomas “Hirschhorn: Philosophical Battery”, he was the managing editor for Art Flash magazine. He is particularly interested in individual artists’ practices and philosophies and he conducts interviews with the artists themselves to explore these.
Thomas Hirschhorn is a Swiss sculptor working in specifically in installation in Paris. He has a background in graphic design. Hirschhorn creates site-specific “hypersaturated” installations out of basic materials like tape, paper and cardboard, which often offer philosophical messages in written form to the observers. He is represented by Stephen Friedman Gallery in Paris.
Hirschhorn defines himself having a fanatical rather than a fundamentalist response to the philosophical writings he uses as the physical material for his installations. He sees this fanaticism is the topic of his art rather than the theories that the philosophers espouse. He wants to work out the absolute truth and for his work to be precise and his ideas to be clearly expressed to the observer. His vehicle for achieving this however, is a language of excess (Garrett 90, 91).
In this sense the Hirschhorn is contradicting himself somewhat. When I think of seeking truth, I associate this process with stripping down of superficial layers to expose the brute facts that underlie life and existence. This could be seen as an act of “Rapport” as described by Irit Rogoff in “In conversation”. Hirschhorn on the other hand, uses a language of excess to access truth. This can be seen as colluding with the material in an act of “complicity”. This is consistent with the philosophies of truth held by Foucault whom Hirschhorn purports to not understand (Rogoff 84).
Because of this, it seems to me that Hirschhorn has more of an understanding for the philosophies that he speaks of than he lets on. He is utilising them in the creation of his work in a complicit was, which is not illustrative of the behaviour of a fan by his own definition:
”A fan is someone who shares with other fans the fact of being a fan, not the object of his love.” (Garret 92).
Is his work more effective if we believe he does not understand its content? Does this reduce him to fan status? Or perhaps he is unaware that the connection he has made between truth and layering is integral also to Foucault’s philosophy.
References
David, Catherine and Rogoff, Irit. “In Conversation” From Studio to Situation. Ed. Claire Doherty. London: Black Dog publishing. 2004 82-89
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