6) Portfolio reflection

By using myself as the subject matter, I am attempting to show what occurs to everyone in everyday life in my portfolio piece ‘MASKED.’ 

When we first meet someone, we automatically make assumptions about that person, and quite often, we never look further into that person’s life or know that everyone is masked. And that is the message I’m trying to bring into light, through a mixture of ideas from other established artists. Everybody is masked, but by seeing the ‘Artist as subject,’ masks are taken away, and an audience can experience deep human emotions or ideas through these radical pieces.

"When we first meet someone, we immediately judge them, put labels on them, see them 

through a certain perspective.

They are who we believe them to be. They have turned into our own creation, a 

creation one can’t escape from."

The labels the world puts on us

The decision in creating a transdisciplinary portfolio piece allowed visual prompts for the audience, so they could witness the 'truth' of what society has put upon us. In many everyday photographs, people are smiling or in some sort of ‘disguise’ of true emotions, which is juxtaposing what I show, of my face being covered in labels given to me by others, and later, always being shown wearing a literal mask, or hiding my face in some way. 

Storyboard draft

William Blake's 'The Sick Rose'
1794

The following photographs in the presentation captures the actions of: sleeping (representing vulnerability), reading (representing escapism) and listening to music (representing listening to true emotions), which I portray with accompanying short poems. This idea of using different sensory prompts: visual and written, with the intention to show how language can be performed to affect one’s thinking, or in this case transforming initial assumptions made by the public. This is inspired by William Blake, who would commentate and criticise society through these mediums. 

In 'MASKED' however, I continue to use an audio prompt, of background music, the choice of song 'Lies' Marina and the Diamonds from her album ‘Electra Heart.’ This album was written taking on the persona of a fictitious character of Electra Heart, each song telling about her tragic love life. With this anthology of songs, that Marina claims that reflects on her own life to some extent, are in itself a self portrait. Many of these songs are dark and delve deep into the human psyche, with ‘Lies’ falling perfectly with the concept of how people are always masking these complexities present inside the mind. And this relates back to the idea that art is inextricably linked with psychology. 

The decision of ripping up the photo’s in my short film is representing the fragility of ones self, that once exposed to others, can easily be torn apart and discarded. And by ripping up the images of myself, I am ripping up my instillation, and by destroying my own artwork, I have in affect ‘killed the author.’ This concept is adopted by Sherrie Levine, who used "photography to examine the strategies and codes of representation...exposing and dissembling mass-media fictions." (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2014)

"You may manipulate me on the outside- write all over my face, 

but inside my mind…

there is a garden of words , songs, images, that you cannot destroy.

Instillation of quotes from portfolio

 This is what is behind my mask… "

References:

Blake, W (2008), Blake and Poetry and Designs, A Norton Critical Edition (2nd edition), United States

Marina and the Diamonds, 17th July 2013, Marina and the Diamonds, Part 10: Lies, (online), retrieved 29th May 2014 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsnlBtlimBA

Metropolitan Museum of Art 2000- 2014, The Collection Online: Description (online), retrieved 29th May 2014 from http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/267214?=&imgNo=0&tabName=gallery-label

Pinterest 2014, Pininterest (online) retrieved 24th May 2014 from http://www.pinterest.com/pin/59813501274396423/ 

5) (Re)searching for art: archive of sites and practice

Art and history go together, hand in hand, with art used as a way of archiving and documenting events, views and values of societies and individual people of a particular time...

****

Reading Marsha Meskimmon's book 'Women Making Art: History, Subjectivity, Aesthetics', we can see that history (and therefore, art) holds bias and lies, which is expressed by Linda Nochlin's "account of her early feminist research, teaching and curatorial work"(Meskimmon M, 2003, pp. 1):

“…it was no mere passive conduction... but rather an active engagement and participation, a sense that I, along with many other politicised, and yes, liberated women, was actually intervening in the historical process and changing history itself: the history of art, of culture, of institutions and of consciousness.” (Nochlin L, 1999 pp. 33)

which describes "the significan[ce] of long-forgotten women and their art" that has "beg[un] to unfold in scholarly articles, highly-charged classroom experiences and exhibitions." (Meskimmon M, 2003, pp. 1) Meskimmon further discusses that the uncovering of the "substantial body of evidence" of women's impact in the cultural world, that isn't displayed in the major galleries in the world, reminded me of the artist Fred Wilson.

Fred Wilson's work 'Mining the Museum' 1992, where he rearranged the pieces in the Maryland Historical Society, promoted the idea that “What they put on view says a lot about a museum, but what they don’t put on view says even more.” (Fusco C, 1994) Wilson's 'correction' of the museum's identity entailed "bringing things out of storage and shifting things already on view," which "created a new public persona for the historical society.” (Wilson F, 1992) This project brought to light the slavery and inequality that society was built on; exposing the gaps in the archives and exposing the 'truth.'

'Mining the Museum' Fred Wilson

One of his instillations that particularly stood out to me was the room where there were six busts: three of them already at the museum featuring Napoleon, Henry Clay, and Andrew Jackson, none of whom played a part in Maryland history. Meanwhile, the other three were empty busts, with labels reading Harriet Tubman, Benjamin Banneker and Frederick Douglass,  who were African-American's who actually were important to Maryland history, but  who were "overlooked by the ostensibly 'local' institution." (Ginsberg, E)

        

                                                                                                       

“Culture belongs to each and everyone one of us, right? And we’re allowed to celebrate it anyway we’d like.” (Tucker, M, pp. ix) but, as demonstrated in Fred Wilson's work, "the culture represented by European fine art has not always belonged to everyone... [with] history which violently excluded people of the African diaspora." (Meskimmon M, 2003, pp. 35) It has always been the case that artists documented history, but it is only now that society is willing to display the untold stories. 

References:

Coco Fusco, “The Other History of Intercultural Performance,” TDR: Journal of Performance Studies 38, no. 1 (Spring 1994): 148

Ginsberg, E, Case study: Mining the Museum (online), retrieved 15th May 2014 from http://beautifultrouble.org/case/mining-the-museum/ 

Meskimmon, M (2003), Women Making Art: History, Subjectivity, Aesthetics, Routledge, New York

Nochlin, L, ‘Memoirs of an Ad Hoc Art Historian’, in Representing Women (NY and London: Thames and Hudson, 1999), pp. 7-33 (quote, pp. 33)

Tucker, M, ‘Foreword’, in Cameron et al., op. cit., pp. ix, cited in Meskimmon, M (2003), Women Making Art: History, Subjectivity, Aesthetics, Routledge, New York

Current social practice groups

Some social practice groups that are worth visiting their sites:

Field Theory: 

Mission Statement: “We believe in making things happen. We also believe in evolving what we do”

About: This year they are working on four new projects, but past projects they raised $20 000 in six months just by asking and developing a community of support around unknown and obscure and barely conceived projects.

Field Theory (online), (2012), retrieved from www.fieldtheory.com.au

SPARC (Social Practice Arts Research Centre)

Mission Statement: “Fosters knowledge exchange and project building between artists, scientists, the public and others with a vision towards active social and environmental change. Working across disciplines, we aim to engender and support collaborations and projects that have a local, national or international impact on the public sphere.”

SPARC (2012), Social and Environmental Practice in the Arts at UC Santa Cruz: bringing together artists, specialists and the public to build creative projects for social and environmental change (online), retrieved from http://sparc.ucsc.edu/index.html 

Project V.O.I.C.E (Vocal Outreach Into Creative Expression) 

Mission Statement: “An international movement that celebrates and inspires youth self-expression through Spoken Word Poetry… explore and better understand their culture, their society, and ultimately themselves.”

About: Led by Sarah Kay and Phil Kaye, both spoken word poets who tour around the world to perform and to spread their love for poetry and to inspire others- project voice is focussed at school children. 

Kay, Sarah (2014), Project Voice (online), retrieved from http://www.project-voice.net 

4) CONTEMPORARY ART: Social Practice and New Engagement

Previously... Relational Aesthetics in contemporary art, focusses on the "artistic activity striv[ing] to achieve modest connections, open up obstructed passages..." (Bourriaud, N, 2002, pp 8)

****

What is social practice? My own understanding of what it is, is the idea to engage with the audience, the people. This involves a 'mean' of bringing people together, to interact and engage in an activity, not dissimilar to Rirkrit Tirivanija's exhibitions mentioned previously. Artists have the intention to infiltrate subtly into a community/ a group of people, to make differences to some extent, and to establish a relationship between the audience/ participant and the art. This is eloquently explained in Rebecca Strokes article on Tirivanija's exhibition at MOMA:

“In this deceptively simple conceptual piece, the artist invites the visitor to interact with contemporary art in a more sociable way, and blurs the distance between artist and viewer. You aren’t looking at the art, but are part of it—and are, in fact, making the art as you eat curry and talk with friends or new acquaintances.n this deceptively simple conceptual piece, the artist invites the visitor to interact with contemporary art in a more sociable way, and blurs the distance between artist and viewer. You aren’t looking at the art, but are part of it—and are, in fact, making the art as you eat curry and talk with friends or new acquaintances." 
(Strokes R, 2012) 

Another example of social practice, where the 'viewer' becomes part of the art, is WeTubeLIVE- Dance Massive, where “young or old it is the same: go to you youtube and select a clip or several and from that/them make a solo.  This performed response can be a copy, a comment or an investigation of themes:so long as it fits in a 1 meter square space, pretty much anything goes.” (Speth B, 2013) This 'massive' is taking a well known space (in this case, the National Gallery of Victoria) and turning it into a place for members of the public to express themselves. 

 Ben Speth's WeTubeLive

    

New engagement with art and audience, allows artists to establish spaces where creativity can be expressed; creativity that is outside of the 'traditional' works found in already existing institutions. We can look at Linda Nochlin's article "Why have there been no great women artists?"(Nichlin L, 1971) and realise that even to this day, some national art galleries in the western world have remained to display what they consider 'the best of the best,' that "it is in our social arrangements: the white Western male viewpoint, unconsciously [is] accepted as the viewpoint of the art historian." (Nichlin L, 1971, pp. 1) And this what contemporary artists are striving to move away from...

                                                                       WeTubeLive 

References:

Bourriaud, Nicolas (2002), Relational Aesthetics, Presses du reel, Paris

LALA (2014), WeTubeLIVE- Dance Massive (online), retrieved from http://lalaishere.net/2013/04/we-tube-live/ 

Nochlin, L (1971), Why have there been no great women artists?, retrieved online from http://davidrifkind.org/fiu/library_files/Linda%20Nochlin%20%20Why%20have%20there%20been%20no%20Great%20Women%20Artists.pdf

Stokes, Rebecca (3 February 2012), Rirkrit Tiravanija: Cooking Up an Art Experience (online), retrieved from https://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2012/02/03/rirkrit-tiravanija-cooking-up-an-art-experience  

3) Situationists to Relational Aesthetics

Like society, art is forever changing and forever progressing...

1950's 

Inspired by Dada and Surrealist art in the first half of the 20th century, Letterism was an art and literature movement led by Isidore Isou (self portrait to the left, 1952). By using letters and symbols with the intention (like Dadaists) to break free from the confinements of words and language it was a new possibility of artistic practice, a possibility of liberation with the concept of destructing art and art as destruction. Their strategies were to not only be present within art, but in society.
Guy Debord, a founding member of Letterist International in 1952, later founded the Situationist International (1957); the theory of 'constructed situations.'


These 'constructed situations' is described by art historian, Claire Bishop, as "participatory events using experimental behaviour to break the spectacular find of capitalism. Constructed situations, in which the audience is an active participant, have been an ongoing point of reference for contemporary artists with live events." (Bishop, C, 2006, pp 96)  The situationists "theory resolutely  asserts a non-continious conception of life" (McDonough, T, 2004, pp 48). This is demonstrated in this avant-garde's last action, 'The Naked City' map of Paris, which "illustrat[ed] the hypothesis of pyschogeographical turntables..." and the "spontaneous turns of direction taken by a subject moving through these surroundings in disregard of the useful connections that ordinarily govern his conduct" (McDonough, T, 2004, pp 243), hence the gaps in this radical map.

Definitions established by Situationists:
Derive- a way of thinking, relinquishing moving through spaces, making one aware of everyday life
Detournement- elements can serve in making new combinations (recontextualised)

1970's 

Continuing the idea of 'turning the tables,' during the 1970's a notable revolution was taking place. With the increasing pressure during the Thatcher years, the Punk Revolution was underway in Britain. Punk was to be an entire movement, with clothes and design, music, etc, all stemming from the anarchy and chaos produced by the youths who wanted to be free from constraints.

Iconoclastic artist, Jamie Reid, created what has become one of the most iconic designs for the punk group, Sex Pistols. "God Save the Queen" is recognised worldwide and extends the Situationists perspective of breaking down conformity through shock tactics. In an interview, Malcolm McLaren (manager of the Sex Pistols) stated: "take the notion into your own heart, and redesign it accordingly with your own soul... how are we to redesign our lives?"


1990's to Present

Art movements addressed at so far, were opposed to authoritarianism; moving art away from the bourgeoisie and privileged. Contemporary artists have increasingly become more interested with the viewers involvement, which enters the idea of Relational Aesthetics. Nicolas Bourriaud voices "artistic activity strives to achieve modest connections, open up obstructed passages..." (Bourriaud, N, 2002, pp 8) which is demonstrated in Rirkrit Tirivanija's exhibitions where he prepares and cooks dishes in a gallery space. With the smells as part of the experience, visitors are able to eat the food, while the left overs remain in the space afterword and become the artwork. By recontextualising, this activity is an example how the people create the artwork with social interaction; food being the means of creating an atmosphere.

References:

Bishop, Claire (ed) 2006, Participation,  MIT press, London

Bourriaud, Nicolas (2002), Relational Aesthetics, Presses du reel, Paris

Malcolm McLaren on Situationism and the invention of punk rock at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmVxNoNaWaY

McDonough, Tom (ed) 2004, Guy Debord and the Situationist International- Texts and Documents, MIT press, London

2) Fluxus- Is this art?

Duchamp's Fountain

What is this? Well, it is an urinal... with someone's name written on it.

How is this art? To be honest, the first time I saw this piece of "art," I was very skeptical; because let's face it, it is a urinal and there is absolutely nothing special about it. HOWEVER, this urinal has been considered the most influential piece of art in the 20th century.

Once again, returning to the question of "how?" And the answer simply is: because it is not the work itself that stole the attention of the world (because it is really just an urinal), but the idea that French artist, Marcel Duchamp had of placing it into an artistic space. By placing this everyday object into such a space, he was able to recontextualise this device, turning it into a sculpture... it has become Duchamp's famous "Fountain."

 ****

This new method of communicating and experiencing art in everyday life was what the FLUXUS artists of the 1950's and 60's had the intention of doing. Stemming from the Dada movement of the 1920's, claiming that the artwork made doesn't exist unless interpreted by an audience, Fluxus "was a groundbreaking and idiosyncratic imaginative avant-garde"(Andreas Huyssen (1995), Twilight Memories: Marking Time in a Culture of Amnesia, pp. 191) 

When discussing Fluxus art amongst fellow Creative Art students, the quote "An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way"  said by Charles Bukowski, entered conversation. Divulging into this statement a bit further, some concluded with the opinion, that was very eloquently put by student Elizabeth Sly: "Dadaists are intellectual wankers." Whether I agree or not with this assertion, I'm not sure, as both Dada and Fluxus are complex concepts that challenge the individuals first assumption to what "art" actually is. Does this make Fluxus actually an intellectual activity than an artistic one? We could take this pondering further, however that would enter a more philosophical discussion, but I now have a better appreciation for their works.

Do you think this is art?

Total Art Match-Box, Ben Vautier (1966)










       Flux-Smile-Machine, George Maciunas (1970)

****

In contrast, there's the idea of the SELF PORTRAIT.  During the 20th century, the establishment of 'performative' styled self-portraits "open[ed] up an entirely new way of thinking" (Amelia Jones, "The "Eternal return": Self-Portrait Photography as a technology of embodiment," 2002, pp 949), which is similar to the concept of Fluxus. With the invention of the camera in the late 19th century, this device- being readily available for people- not only captures a moment, but also captures art. Amelia Jones concludes in her paper that "photographic self-portrait is like history or the memory that forms it," which is true. This can be said about all art forms, hence why the Duchamp's 'Fountain' is still a recognised piece of 'art.'  

1) St Jerome's Laneway Festival 2014

On the 1st February this year, Melbourne hosted the St Jerome's Laneway Festival, where an array of musicians performed at the Footscray Community Arts Centre and along the river. This typically Melbournian setting provided an atmospheric day full of an eclectic mismatch of different genres.

Artists included the universally acclaimed singer, Lorde (a seventeen year old from New Zealand), along with other international names, like Drenge, Kurt Vile and Daughter, while also being the stage for popular Australian bands, for example The Jezabels and solo artist Vance Joy.

Amongst these performers, lies a heterogeneous mix of sounds. As it is impossible to acknowledge each individual act, I have decided to comment on two musical ensembles that demonstrate the diverse selection of this fabulous day:

Vance Joy is most famous for the no. 1 hit on Triple J's Hottest 100 in 2013, 'Riptide.' He is a solo artist from Melbourne, whose music conforms to the alternative rock genre. The acoustic sound that he produces contrasts greatly with Drenge, a post-grunge brothers duo. [Post-grunge is inspired by the hardcore punk and heavy metal that was widely popular in the 1970's and 80's] 

Like that of a collage, this music festival had acts that were so varied, which allowed for everyone who attended to enjoy what the day had to offer. Using the phrasing of the official website  (http://melbourne.lanewayfestival.com) the Laneway Festival is "about leading new and revered seminal music" for music enthusiasts to celebrate.
Throughout the day, the blaring music made hearts beat in time with the drums, and as the burning sun began to set, the light effects on the stage allowed for another dimension of the songs to come alive. Although my emphasis has been on the music, what made the day unique was the audience themselves; with their ability to transform these Footscray streets into an incredible atmosphere of vitality. While each individual had their own agenda, in the crowds of thousands, we were united together by the same joy,  love and passion for music. And it was this which made the 1st of February really stand out.