2x lectures: 1st dean kenning lecture, monument/sculpture + paul (memory, durham, catcher in the rye)
The way that La Jetée was constructed almost entirely out of still images reminds me of this quote from Roland Barthes' Camera Lucinda: "The physical impossibility of nature’s arrangement in the museum enables it to strike the spectator in a single moment, similar to how news photographs are received ‘all at once’" (Barthes, 1982, p. 41).
later that night I was experimenting quickly with some zoomed in photographs and low quality phone video recording of the camera (and handling it), as well as using this 'vhs' tape aesthetic filter on ig which is interesting to use on new technology capturing old-new technology..
^^^ this chunky layout is sort of like a digital sculpture...
anyway, rough notes:
___ 10.11.20 arts and politics of statues. MA art in context lecture.
statues existed for thousands of years, glorified, politicians kings celebrities etc. battles. can be though of as sculptures or monuments, marking something, communal significance, thinking sculpture as material form, content, but also political form. eg what does it mean raised above the ground, or in public place?
Toppling of statue of Saddam Hussain, Baghdad 2003. sense that it achieved victory. statues often symbolise regimes, symbolise end of power or at least shift in values. actual taking down icon itself. Toppling of statue of Edward Colston, (BLM) merchant made much of fortune from slave trade.. instigated heated debate. cultural identity. most not known about Colston. election in US, brexit. is it vandalism or political act, which may resurrect. symbol of freedom. the way these things get inflamed around cultural icons.
Cecil Rhodes, many statues of him in South Africa. Big movements of taking them down. diversity within university class and racial justice, statue can me centre point in which these things come a figurehead for these other battles.
Marc Quinn, A Surge of Power. known as YBA young British artists from nineties. one of statues on Trafalgar Square. he installed his own statue, now empty plinth where Colster . black power salute, woman, in protest, 3D scan and resin. raised controversy. Was this an act of solidarity, calls to look into imperial legacy. or was it a PR stance from white artist.
Thomas J Price, Reaching out, 2020. black woman in ordinary clothes. quote: people like quin.. colonised the plinth.. become news story.
Rodin, Balzac. statues in terms of contemporary art practice. article by Rosalind Krauss. one of those figures who took up theory and philosophy, rethink contemporary art. modernism, shift, post-modernism. before modernism, sculptures that have a realist look. logic of sculpture at that time, is inseparable from logic of monument. pre-modern idea of sculpture. commemorative. Rodin - doesn’t have realist, much more commemorate Rodin rather than Balzac. when we look at Colston, think of him and not sculptor. at the time Balzac was rejected for those reasons. Krauss think about placeless. statues - think about where they’re placed, near parliament, reference figure, not self referential. what Krauss means by nomadic. your art can be shown anywhere. is that art specific to any site? any gallery, someone’s home. Krauss saying modernist sculpture and painting - is nomadic, can be shown anywhere. through fetishisation of base. away from actual place. own materials and process of own construction, own autonomy. really important term - means to follow own rules - autonomous. art doesn’t follow rules have to look like something. more in modernism, move towards abstraction, actual forms of art. deal with it’s own materiality rather than depict some figure or have own story. illustrates this nomadic autonomous, with Brancusi. from Rodin to abstraction. plinth on top of plinth. almost no sculpture. endless, like it could be extended forever.
_after breakout room_
Krauss talks about autonomous, sculpture doesn’t have to serve another function like political. does art just have to make a statement- boring if it’s just doing sth obvious? If it’s not about themselves. isn’t it just a tool, instrumental.. art just serves another function, disconnecting. most artists reject it being a tool. conceptual process. Context, including history of discipline, can’t be limited to this pure role. different notions of autonomy - is the fact that the artist focus on material - true autonomy? representation in art world. question of economy. aren’t these questions about autonomy, certain ideas of modernism would say art shouldn’t be involved in politics, become tool. should be about colour, shape etc sculpture what could be done formally. isn’t that limiting. true autonomy to address these wider issues to do with audience influence of money, collectors, representation.. very big discussion. _question about british museum - ongoing cultural politic issues. for decades the Greek gov demanding back. Full of stuff removed from other countries during imperial expansion. a lot of countries - a lot to do with sacred things - they have spiritual functions. doing symbolic damage. __ power of commissioning agency. art is always beyond agency of artist, begins and ends at artist. never works like that. if done anonymously, would have been entirely different - Marc Quinn. banksy, the sculpture taken down should be replaced by people taking it down. __ solidarity and collaboration. Marc Quinn claimed it’s a collaboration. well known as artist, getting permission from woman.
Thomas Hirschorn, very well known. utilising, material aesthetic form, public squares, where people rest hang out not necessarily pay attention - serve practical for people. Made from materials that are not lasting. most are made bronze resin etc. good artistic act for the clash? is he working with local people. isn’t clear answer to this. problematics. to have moved out of modernist paradigm. Krauss talked about nomadic in modernist sense. issues of site specificity and publicness
_john ahearn, white artist lived in this community for many years. mostly black and Hispanic. Would cast portraits completely outside art context. miwon kwon wrote one place after another. -(quote) ahearn emphasised a social integration. -question of time. Colston was immediately on social media, excitement very quickly, happened in much longer time. blm protest, suddenly focus. What might have taken decades in governmental process. one of main problems, of Quinn maybe not so much he’s white but more that he doesn’t live there, just comes in, used this site. contrast with ahearn - did get into trouble. installed at sculpture park - just local people cast, young black girl, black man with basketball and puerto rican with pit bull and got into trouble. both angles. two commissioning agents who happened to be black accused them of being racist, didn’t have right to represent black people. community, complained that these people particularly male didn’t represent community. ordinary people. thought of them as frightening characters. realised this difficult situation and decided the problem was publicly commissioned rather than in community.
Vera mukhina. Dave beech ‘the reign of the workers and peasants will never end’ - not just politics of statues in terms of politics they represent but also ethics what is being representation if it is progressive, reactionary. Famous statue by Vera mukhina, take down Russian empire and so on, replace by workers. a lot of statues. even statues of factory worker - female farm worker, still subscribe to political form of statue in the sense of being monumental - faces nazi statue of the same time. what beech says. quote: occupying public space is one aspect of this political form. legal protection. we are not in the position in attending to monuments - symbolic violence, harm doesn’t have to be political hard. something that serves us. certain people graffiti on Churchill sculpture could be cyclical harm to cultural values to very important. can’t attack these sculpture without criminal prosecution. also form political nature of these political statues.
Jeremy Deller, battle of orgreave, reconstruction. deller in side who lost. instead of monument, re-enacts. David beech criticises. as soon as you hand it over to reenact ion society, already lost the collaboration or agency of community of ex miners who were involved in playing characters. channel 4 film made of it.
Momento park, Budapest. question of what to do with old statues - placed in garden, from Hungarian communist party, symbols of communism.
Agnes Varda female film maker documentaries
female figures hold up archways roofs up etc, people don’t notice them, stack of potatoes, physically carry them in, question of unnoticed labour.
Tatsurou Bashi, Villa Victoria, turned into hotel, can stay in it . Completely out Victoria at ground level, remove plinth, make accessible. play with political form of statue.
Yinka shonibare, nelson ship in a bottle. memorialised on enormous plinth in Trafalgar Square. fourth plinth commissioned, chosen. commenting on nelson, with African materials.
Hahn/cock Katharina Fritsch- phallic, comical way of the men - fritsch didn’t get blue cock associated with french,
Paul session Durham 10.11.20
pdf materials, some writings for reading in email. on first page; kim h-h Ghosts spies and grandmothers. the show held in Seoul, which he saw in person. relationship between ghosts spies and grandmothers and what that has to do with history memory tradition. one of best shows he’d seen, particularly Taiwanese artist.
title not just about past and history but involves all of these terms. past and history something else, not the past, memory and tradition, multiple different terms.
Memory. on Sunday - remembrance Sunday. he ventured out to west minister on the day, at the time where people were dispersing. found himself in crowd, profound experience, felt like he was looking at a kind of art that was as far away from contemporary art he could think of. interesting that looking at this extremely different ritual uniforms medals poppies cathedral monuments etc stuck by the fact that every culture has their art, all valuable. helped him think about what contemporary art is. notice that on memory looms national on remembrance Sunday.
own blog. just moving house, literally picking up every single thing and evaluating, really constitute that in a new space. the part that memory plays. relationship between Matter and Memory (henri Bergson) hold onto what it was rather than what it’s going to be. in a rush to become something else, leave everything in past and then it’ll be nothing. making universe hesitate take time. memory would play a much
bigger part in. Barthes wrote in death of the author. quote. Proust works his way in memory. device seen in cinema..? end of novel could be written by person who written it. end is beginning, beginning is end in novel. modern world all about progress of change.
_donna: ghosts spies and grandmothers, family stories, our history/story/evidence that we exist, who curated family history. -grandmother often one who curates family history.. technology probably changed.. title of film; summer hours by Oliver Assayas, Idea of family curator, home like gallery, objects and their value, what families do with them..
_anna: how does one relate to things we have. often feel overwhelmed - photographed and got rid of. he kind of did opposite of that, kept everything but went through processing organising them. difficult decide object suddenly becomes thing you need to destroy. extracting through process of destruction what made the things into art what stops us from destroying them.
_zhongling: is history a result of selective memory - organised, chosen? something like the past is disorganised.. do people give different emotions to same historical objects. shows selective memory at work..
‘In search of lost time’ proust.. memory becomes new fascination .. can go searching for lost time through the novel - Barthes says by time of end of novel . can be written . lost time is regained ..
_donna: bbc4 Barthes, mythologies of the 21st century.
_medb: punk memorabilia.
_adam: I’m thinking of ending things quote. A memory is it’s own thing each time it is recalled. It is not absolute. Stories based on actual events often share more lights fiction than fact. Both fiction and memory are recalled and retold. they are both forms of stories. stories are the way we learn. But reality only happens once.
_lauren: baldessari’s decision fo burn all the paintings he made between 1953 and 1966 in the cremation project.
_josefine: Japanese concept of wabi-sabi
_mishima’s temple of the golden pavilion
_medb: sometimes making something leads to nothing by Francis alys (1997)
Jimmie durham story. he came across this artist whilst research... the incredible importance of the museum - shows that you are modern. museum rises with modernity which seems ironic. modernity is all about the new. we can play with the museum. Azule , racism representation etc leading back to origins of empire, colonisation European . durhams simple assemblages, like Joseph Cornel, museology like Marcel broodthaers. strongest when we’re laughing. even things that make us hurt or angry. humour, more enduring or powerful. his work grows out studio practice rather than archive library, by chance. although he mostly makes books now, always feels like his processes defined by things make in studio. he re-read catcher in the rye J D Salinger. might recall anti hero protagonist, arranged to meet his sister, but missed. thought about school trips in the museum. taxidermised, fixed, taxonomised. how Native American Indians described in museum as completely fixed. Novel quite sardonic but children being told over and over again what they are.
*Chris Marker - La jetee.
indigenous people frozen forever. historisized as over and gone. like durhams making of subtle playful objects. comparison between playful way of these objects and J D Salinger’s protagonist way to speak not with anger, but underlying horror of museum machine.. came across images modern cars by enormous rocks with faces painted on them. to open Sydney’s biennale. this rock released by crane will have impact, audience were teased by Durham, slowly lowered. instead of modern style spectacular shock, but the car did get destroyed. crowd seeing piece assumed rock would be dropped in typical modern violent. different implications, erode. allusion to natural world. aboriginal Australian culture. Share similar fate, native Americans fate of modernity. while red car seems to symbolise all things modern, the rock with slow descent, age weight mass, all that is not modern still retains. against modernity. smashing something is kind of comic. dramatically comic. eloquently speak about tradition over modernity. those ancient forces reassert themselves symbolically superior. aboriginal Australian, belief system, contain spirit of some kind, seems to be why Durham painted faces. cars have own faces and spirits .. also in logo . modern people still invest spiritual value in symbols eg Mercedes logo. here contradiction in a thesis of rock and car when actually they share similarities.
catcher in the rye classic piece of writing. kind of ideas that Durham is coming across. comparison of war canoe and Cadillac
-something exciting and creative about connecting two things, intellectual pleasure simply in connecting. what he does in research.
_natasha: controversy over Durham self identifies as Cherokee.
_lauren: comparison between war canoe size of Cadillacs, a lot of cars and bikes use Native American names..
_natasha: Salinger’s tech and durhams work, not at expense of the culture / people. perhaps fetishised.
_anna: marina abramovic has interesting section in her biography, about her encounter with aborigines.
_the way la jetée is constructed almost all out of still photos, reminds me of this quote from camera Lucinda: the physical impossibility of nature’s arrangement in the museum enables it to strike the spectator in a single moment, similar to how news photographs are received ‘all at once’.
_lauren: Wade Davis review brought to mind introduction in Alan Weismans ‘the world without us’. Indigenous native to Amazon forest believed that they descended from spider monkey. Men resorted to shooting them for food as forest could no longer sustain them. When were down to eating our ancestors .. what is left?’ ... humour in Salinger and Durham, but there’s horror, genocide, wit, clever conceptual art etc. death of language people, incredible brutality of gaming lands and belief systems.