Artist Talk – Chris Kraus and Ruth Novaczek

Chris Kraus

Chris Kraus is an American writer and filmmaker, during this talk she read an extract from her new book Social Practices.

The Chance events 

The Chance Event: Three Days in the Desert: Primm, Nevada, November 1996. Curated by Chris Kraus, Chance brought together Jean Baudrillard, Rosanne Alluquere Stone, DJ Spooky, Diane di Prima, the Moapa Band of Paiute Indians, visual artists, garage noise bands and 600 participants to investigate the mystery of chance at Whiskey Pete’s Casino.

I found this idea of curating an events series of this kind very interesting, it reminds me of the concept of relational art and aesthetics, the idea of creating work that brings people together.

 

Ruth Novaczek

 

‘Footnote’ (2016)

Footnote is a short film in which Franz Kafka, Chris Kraus and Eileen Myles think about love. A film about revolution. Includes found-footage. It is a film by Ruth Novaczek.

There is a dream element to this piece, it feels very cut up in the way it is edited in terms of cutting sharply to some found footage or back to an interview of someone talking about love.  I would love to make a surreal film like this and sample found footage aswell as interviews.

Artist Talk – Simon Bill

 

Visual Perception

Simon Bill’s talk primarily focused on the topic of Visual Perception. He gave a short history on optical illusions and Op-art, something that as a painter I was interested in a couple of years ago, in terms of the philosophy and bright visuals.

He broke down how to approach perception into two main ways; Philosophy and Neuropsychology. This part of the talk was very interesting and engaging.

On the philosophy part he referenced various philosophers that I am intrigued to find out more about e.g. ‘sense and sensibilia’ by JL Austin. which deals with questioning sense data theories of perception.

The artist’s work is very aesthetically pleasing to me and i can relate to the apreciation of Op Art paintings, to me his work looked more like Robert Delaunay’s Circular Forms (1930) (image below)

HQ Piece – Soundtrack

The idea for this new piece of work comes from experiencing the live trivia quiz app ‘HQ’ and seeing the dystopian situation of a whole room going onto the app at a certain time everyday. I found this an interesting topic to explore through a sound based immersive installation.

Firstly I started by recording a live game with a Tascam sound recorder and then cutting it up and editing it to form a more collage approach. I later added a small series of abstract Piano and synth layers to bring the emotional/immersive qualities that can act as a metaphor for what i would like to get across.

The idea for the rough narrative of this instrumental piece would be to have it simulate the situation i was talking about earlier, (A) a crowd of people to talking, the positive social aspect of that is reflected in the uplifting melancholic piano and synth layers until (B) the app sends a notification and a countdown can be heard (a surrealist loop of machinery can be heard to reflect the app starting up as everyone clicks on it (C) People are fully engrossed and all you can hear in the room is the voice of the presenter echoing ( this is reflected through an unsettling altered recording of the presenter along with an abstract sound piece in the background to create an odd dystopian atmosphere for the piece. (Listen Below).

An additional element I wanted to incorporate into the work was the idea of Semantic Satiation, this is the repetition of a word or phrase that is spoken until it loses its meaning. I wanted to add this in somewhere as its an interesting idea and can fit into the theme of this piece as the potential to win money by using this app at a time they choose perhaps one would start to loose sight of the situation and not realise that they are becoming cattle, what is really going on might lose its meaning just like a word would is you repeated it.

In terms of music i have continued the influence of Brian Eno’s synth based soundscapes aswell as adding in a little of John Cage’s Silencing and All sound theories within the mixing and editing/ looping of the sound layers. I will now consider the visual side to this piece now and start work on developing how I can best reflect the concept of the piece and its soundtrack.

Artist Talk – Ami Clarke

 

Ami Clarke is an artist, writer, educator, and founder of Banner Repeater. Her practice is primarily conceptual and focus’s around the themes of Fake News, Technology and social media; specifically “new behaviors emerging from technological in socio-economic” sectors.

Her piece ‘Correction: An introduction to future diagrams’ tackles the issues of fake news in light of the allegations of rigging and the use of fake news in the US election. The piece is primarily a spoken word performance by Ami reading out random articulations as well as articulations on socio-political issues, backed up by a looped soundtrack to get across the motion and rapid pace of content and information we are bombarded with in today’s society.

Another piece of work titled ‘Low animal spirits’ is a twitter bot account that posts future predictions at a fast rate with the information given from a software called data miner, this acts as a parody or use of the same loss of truth that fake news has which appears to be the aim.

Overall I think her combination of sound and performance fit together well and is something i can identify my practice with.

 

 

Artist Research – Kazimir Malevich

Malevich – The Black Square (1915)

Kazimir Malevich is famously known for his Suprematist paintings that are no iconic within the Artworld today. His work focus’s on paintings of abstracted and simplified shapes that convey a narrative or feeling within them. This idea really appeals to me and i would like to attempt a similar thing in my next piece.

I feel there is link here to music, in particularly Ambient music as they often are simplistic yet can have an emotional depth to them e.g. Discreet Music by Brian Eno.

There is also a metaphysical aspect to his work through the representation of infinity (the background) and the shapes reflecting universal emotions and/or narratives.

Artist Research – Iman Issa

Iman Issa – 2018

Recently I visited an exhibition titled ‘Materials for 2018’ (2010-2017) in Bristol’s Spike Island gallery by the Artist Iman Issa, who’s work deals with personal and collective memory, the relationship between the two and how they can be communicated through objects and language.

her piece seen above on the top left ‘Material for a sculpture representing a monument erected in the spirit of defiance of a large power’ (2012) subverts what you would usually find and instead gives us a sculpture abstract and different from the title text on the wall.

What i find interesting about her work is that there is a simplicity to the way a piece is structured (the minimal aesthetic of the sculpture and the text of the title on the wall), whilst having entry points into the work as well as having an abstraction of meaning allowing audiences to potentially grasp the meaning from these works and possibly apply their own meaning onto them, which Iman Issa has done herself, by combining collective and personal memories and abstracting them and joining them together.

 

 

Original Forms – Final Piece

 

‘Logo 1’ and ‘Logo 3’ being painted

After working through careful planning on the size of an colour of the sculptures i would need, i set about making them out of wood, assembling the pieces together using PVA glue and an Air-gun drill, to put nails through the sides of the piece.

Plans for each piece

Plans for each piece

Two of the sculptures

Whilst waiting to be able to construct the third sculpture I recorded a demo version of the soundtrack as an idea of what i will have in the final piece (below) I wanted to create an ambient soundscape reminiscent to Brian Eno’s work, to be played allowed in the space with the three sculptures. I want to create an ambience that provides pockets of space for the audience to wonder into when viewing the work.

Overall I feel this work is successful in its intent, once fully assembled in the studio space along with the soundtrack it will be complete. The combining of ideas and influences to create a piece that is somewhat contemporary and otherworldly has been achieved here.

Original Forms – Development/Planning

In order for this piece to be more contemporary in form and subject, i have decided to look at brand logo’s and how in Baudrillard’s view we are in a world of signs that are linked to the Real however have now been cut loose from their original meaning or purpose. I would like to take Malevich’s ideas from suprematism and apply them to Brand logo’s that we find ourselves swamped in, in daily life.

after looking at several popular Logo’s in Western Culture i decided to choose Facebook, BBC and Levi Strauss as my three logo’s to focus on. using the influence of Iman Issa’s sculptures in her recent exhibtion i want to reduce and abstract these three logo’s back to a simplified 3D sculpture.

Logo 1 – Facebook

Logo 2 – Levi Strauss

Logo 3 – BBC Logo

Abstracted Logo’s Mockup For Possible Painting

I will make three abstract sculptures using wood and then display them on a white plinth. I will then combine this with an ambient soundtrack (similar to Brian Eno’s Music for airports) to use as a device for the the audience to feel the sense of revealing a truth or to feel enlightened in an emotional way, in order to connect them to the work and the theme of the work through music.

 

Original Forms – Ideas

Combining the interesting abstract sculptures I saw at Iman Issa’s 2018 Art Exhibition and the inspiration of Malevich’s Suprematist painting e.g. The Black Square (1915) aswell as Jean Claude-Baudrillard’s Hyperreality Theory and mixing/subverting them together to form an Art Installation is my idea for this piece of work.

I want to take Malevich’s idea of reducing and abstracting images down to their basic shape and colours to convey emotion and narrative and create an installation/series of sculptures similar to Iman Issa’s ‘Material Series’ (2018) to abstract Three popular brand logo’s back to their Original Forms as basic shapes and colours. The reasoning behind is that i feel there is a truth or enlightenment to this process that you can see in Malevich’s suprematist works, which i want to capture and bring it to contemporary culture in terms of subject and medium, I want to create an audiovisual experience of this instead of an Oil Painting.

 

Iman Issa – 2018

Malevich – The Black Square (1915)

 

The Divide (Final Piece)

Photo from ‘The Divide’ Final Piece

This piece consists of a soundtrack (played aloud through speakers), White Led Lighting and a Video piece being played on Three box TV’s.

Once the Soundtrack was complete, i started work on a video piece. For the footage i wanted to sample establishing shots of an early 20th century ship (which is where the Spoken word poem in the audio is set) I wanted to create a fictional narrative/world with this piece similar to Pierre Huyghe’s ‘A Journey That wasnt’ which samples found footage of an expedition to an island, that is presented as a fictional journey to a fictional island.

The footage I sampled comes from a 2002 documentary ‘Shackleton’s voyage of Endurance’ in which i took and edited establishing shots that feature a ship (similar to the one that was sailed by them’ and slowed them down to fit which the narrative and structure of the soundtrack/spoken word piece.

Establishing Shot of the Ship being played back

Once I had both the video and Sound pieces i set them up on three box TV’s which form a sculpture for the audience to view the piece, a device i have used in several previous pieces in an attempt to get the audience to view the work in an enjoyable way.

I then set about using lighting to contrast with the Purple/white light given off by the TV’s on playback.

Overall I feel this piece is successful in conveying a relevant political issue (that being Brexit and the Divide it has created within British society today) through the use of metaphor and poetry within the soundtrack, this combined with an immersive audio experience allows the audience to have entry to the work and read as much into it as they like with regards to the political messages, however they can also enjoy the work as an escapist piece. A clip of the piece can be seen below.