research paper discussion (in practice event)

I had my practice event today and we got to discuss our 1000 words (the deadline is in a week and I have not started to write yet,  I'm a bit overwhelmed/feeling lost but very interested in the works I basically listed in the proposal.) I'll post my proposal here and the transcript of the discussion with Jon and Paul, which was very helpful.) 

This research will be a celebration of the ways in which contemporary artists use the ridiculous and mundane to mark the human experience. I am aware the ideas proposed now are very broad, but will hopefully be specified with a research question after some time spent with further research. 

From 1970 till his death in 1977, Douglas Huebler worked through an aspiring project for which he proposed "to photographically document the existence of everyone alive.” (The Guggenheim Museum, no date) It is this ridiculous impossibility that is admirable for the claim and commitment to the concept that might just be possible. The series would then not only be displayed in categorised groups, but “editions of this work will be periodically issued in a variety of topical modes: ‘100,000 people,’ ‘1,000,000 people,’ ‘10,000,000 people,’ ‘people personally known by the artist,’ ‘look-a-likes,’ ‘over-laps’ etc.” (Huebler, quoted in Ronald J. Onorato, 1988)

The claim mirrored a playful ambition in Peter Liversidge’s proposals, which range from the straightforward to the impossible, typed from a portable typewriter. In a 2016 interview he mentioned his realisation on the physical quality of the presented text,  “..I was making not just text-based works, but a sculptural intervention with the paper, or as much as a drawing, rather than just typed text …” (Liversidge, quoted in Studio International, 2016) The physical presence of the text came to be a significant part of the work, elevating an air of authority to the, at times, whimsical nature of what is written. 

The physicality of On Kawara’s series I Got Up, a collection of post cards sent to friends and colleagues with the date and time he got up adds an additional layer of significance with the medium of the souvenir, through mundane documentations. His ‘I am Still Alive’ series alternatively gave a more existential meaning, with the weighted words written instead. There is an undeniable playfulness on the medium of the postcard and simple message, an everyday momento designed to travel with words set in a moment in time. Kawara was a Japanese conceptual artist that often looked at the themes of time and documentation, with prominent works such as the Today series where the date is carefully painted against a black background. The work is permeated with a meticulous recording process - for example, swatching paint in a separate journal every time a date painting was made. (Tate, no date)  

It seemed that these works were trying to document, however absurdly, something about the human experience, possibly with the desire of ‘making a mark’. The varying conception of the human voice and presence is prevalent here. 

Susan Hiller often makes work in the collecting of outsider and bizarre experiences - Dream Mapping (1974) invited participants to spend a night sleeping in fairy rings in order to collect dream maps the following morning, and creating a collective diagram at the end by layering each contribution into one. It was a successful experiment to take from the very personal subconscious space and into the collective. (Susan Hiller, no date) Similarly, Witness (2000) presents suspended speakers playing people’s recollections of UFO encounters, again presenting a collection of experiences, spoken as a collective. 

In preparation for his 2000 show North East South West Haim Steinbach visited a number of people and selected a group of their objects to focus on. With the camera recording the arrangement of objects, the owner spilled each of the object’s histories. The resulting videos were then displayed on separate monitors in the space, along with the borrowed objects displayed around scaffolding structures. (Steinbach, 2012) Steinbach has also suggested that his objects can be read as text, bringing the example of a rubber dog chew, which was an item that has “become a recurring motif, and perhaps a kind of punctuation,” (Steinbach, 2012)

Ceal Floyer’s White till receipt, in contrast, is a document of a one-time individual experience, reading like an absurd poem as the grocery list reads down with the suggestion of the colour ‘white’ in the purchased items. By displaying it with certainty on the white wall, a legitimacy is given, apprehending the viewer to take the possibly ridiculous document seriously. 

Pushing against “rational” and “scientific” categories is something that can be found in these artists’ works. The playful investigations could also approach variations of the possibly oxymoronic or paradoxical instances such as: fictional logic, the faux-educational, and folk-taxonomy. In the newest edition of the Antennae journal: Remaking Nature, Anna Walsh presents her series ‘Lessons in Things’. A direct translation of the French Leçons de Choses, this was the title of a book of posters and method of teaching by Emile Deyrolle which emphasised to children categorised boards of the world around them. Walsh works with natural history imagery and her own categorisation methods. Instead of a scientific process, her categories are “more social and based on local or personal knowledge”, (Walsh, 2020) often bringing an element of humour. Big Cats of Britain maps the exaggerated sightings of big cats over the years, contrasted with the careful observational drawings of the animals. (Walsh, 2020)

In the essay The Analytical Language of John Wilkins, Jorge Luis Borges expresses that any kind of categorisation of the universe would be arbitrary attempts because we do not know what the universe is, however also stating that “The impossibility of penetrating the divine scheme of the universe cannot dissuade is from outlining human schemes, even though we are aware that they are provisional,” (Borges, 1975)

These attempts to ‘make sense’ of the universe and the human experience by categorisation, or the gathering the evidence to form an archive of collected experiences, seem to be part of the human experience itself. 

From Fischli and Weiss’ Questions (hundreds of hand written questions projected onto the wall, where “the profound slips into the ridiculous”(Tate, no date)) to Martin Creed’s refusal for hierarchies in Work No.944 (framed sheets of A4 paper each coloured by different felt-tipped pens), the commonplace phenomena with objects and text is explored through investigations with a hint of play. 

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Paul: on kawara’s I GOT UP series, as a sort of ridiculousness, but also existential profundity. All of his works seem to move people, in a way cos its so close to the essence of our lives or something, the fact that we are ‘still alive’, or we ‘got up’ this morning. Floyer white till receipt which takes something mundane, takes a kind of OCD approach, becomes ridiculous but then once again the mundane is somehow serious. In your examples the mundane takes us somewhere important, essential. Was a bit confused about how it mapped across into taxonomy except for where you mentioned Steinbach maybe or, I suppose Floyer’s work could be seen as curatorial choosing all the white objects in the supermarket.

Me: yeah, I guess I was thinking about categorising as making sense of something that is impossible to make sense..

Paul: Supermarket’s an impossible place..

Jon: yeah, I like the idea of possibility and impossibility, but there’s also the apparent ridiculousness of, from a multicultural perspective of categorising things which seem to be beneath categorisation or not worth that kind of attention, but of course that was a major shift that occurred, I suppose, post-Duchampian sense, in the fifties and sixties, in certain aspects of pop art and conceptualism. I think that you mentioned Douglas Huebler for example, and I suppose there is a fixation on a very small-scale things and connecting the dots in ways that one wouldn’t normally or habitually, classify things together. And it gets done to an almost obsessive degree, and that obsessiveness, associated with repetition, is something that you can link to on kawara, and many other practitioners from this time too. I’m also thinking of a sort of parodic(?)takes on these kinds of conceptual forms and structures. There was an exhibition on at the Wellcome collection, called the institute of sexology a few years ago, and Carolee Schneemann has work in that, and it was a huge chart which referenced a whole series of her sexual encounters between certain dates, and she categorised the men that she met, and wrote the details of where they met, the duration of the sexual encounter, and size of genitalia, all of these things which, are giving serious attention to an aspect of her life but in a very unconventional area of one’s life to be exhibited on that sort of, serious play with - is it absurd? Is it ridiculous? What is it, it might be worth considering what these terms describe. What their relationship to the objects and practices that they’re attached to, how they actually work. What’s the difference between the ridiculous and the absurd, for example.
me: yeah, I think the reason why I was so interested in so many conceptual artworks is the deadpan quality of the language that they used. It felt like they were statements, like they were just stating the thing as it is. And there’s something ridiculous about that I think, but also mundane as you said, so yeah I don’t know what I’m trying to get at with these.. I feel like with the 1000 words I felt like I was listing these works but I don’t know how to go at them, with a question, maybe like why are we so interested in tackling impossibility? But yeah I’ve just been thinking about that.

Paul: *shows Gino De Domincis 'Attempt To Create square Ripples* this also relates to the idea of the impossible, that this impossible folly, this ridiculous act, is nevertheless worthy of attention, that its worth doing, that there’s a reason for doing it, that it produces something. It may be producing some kind of possibility that didn’t exist it was done, or something like that. I like that line of thought about impossibility and ridiculousness in a way, the relationship between them. The artist might use ridiculousness and impossibility to keep open, so-called common sense. We think of as worthless, pointless and stupid and valueless. But in a way there is a search for.. transcendence? Or a search for belief in something outside of our given value system. Or what people might call common sense, almost upholding this religious aspect, that sort of transcendent aspect of art, that has a responsibility to keep alive, something beyond the mundane, beyond logic, reason. So it’s a kind of heroic activity in that respect.

Jon: those two, Carolee Schneemann and Gino De Domincis represent two very different strands/approaches to the idea of seriousness and what serious art practice looks like. There’s perhaps something very gendered about the types of enquiry that’s going down here too.

Paul: and there may be something historical about it as well, in that Floyer’s piece is sort of of nineties piece isn’t it, but wonder where the contemporary artist is in this kind of, field if you like, where’s the contemporary ridiculous, where’s the contemporary debate or dialogue with the ridiculous. I remember those performances by Mark McGowan where he would claim to push a peanut with his nose from Brighton to London or something, and get all the television cameras to come and document and watch him, but then he wouldn’t really do what he said he was going to do, but he did enough of it to convince most of the country that he was pushing a peanut from Brighton to London with his nose. You know, it’s all kind of absurd, it’s all kind of ridiculous, and yeah it serves some purpose for art and it serves some purpose for the mainstream media, sort of what they need as well, they need art to be ridiculous, eccentric. In a way to maintain the status quo, maintain the common sense, media has to have this wacky artist on the news to say that this kind of activity is not what we do.
But I enjoy the series of connection that you made, Susan hiller, on kawara, Douglas huuebler, hein stainbach, fischli and Weiss,

Jon: yeah, think about how you’re going to frame the whole enquiry, whether its going to be more focussed on staging the impossible, to what extent do you want to give a more detailed enquiry into the ridiculous on certain forms of art practice, what kinds of connections you want to make between those two things.

Paul: and I like that deadpan - Steve McQueen did a piece called deadpan, didn’t he, based on a Buster Keaton movie, interests me that the idea of the clown, Charlie Chaplin or buster Keaton, when they just look out the camera or look at you with no expression. Something kind of fascinating about a face that supposedly has no expression, deadpan quality.. not sure what I’m going with that, but it’s interesting. Steve McQueen does actually tie a link between what he’s doing in the sort of millennial period or nineties right back to the nineteen twenties, that connection to buster Keaton, and in a way making himself comparable with that kind of figure, so the fine artist is somehow comparable with this clown figures from these twenties side of movies.and again I suppose another thing he’s doing with that piece is he’s showing something sort of mundane and ridiculous and deadpan and yet sort of deadly serious, again.. sort of like on kawara’s work, got a kind of existential element to it.

in my tutorial before this event with marc, he also gave helpful comments which I have detailed in my tutorial form but will drop some notes here..

(metaphor: impossibility of describing something, a substitution, rather than direct account of sth, exposes something about impossibility of language - not possible in language to account for experience) 

but On kawara very banal facts/statements = another absurdity in that. 

also deadpan quality (fantastical rooted in mundane, a particular vein of absurdity) (my shift from dream-like surreal to fantastically rooted in the everyday) 

detective story like in study statement 

in artists mentioned, element in archiving experience (personal like kawara or other like steinbach) (making a mark?) 

idea that categorising things is crucial, can’t live without it

making sense of something that’s nonsensical = impossibility