Life Under a Rock

From top to bottom: Voidsketch 013, Encroachment Study (Variant 006), Spheric Cubes-Vertical Sustension (Homage To Gabo), Sustension 2-45

               The first time I watched Michael Robinson’s The General Returns from One Place to Another, I was bored. Then I noticed that when the camera went out of focus, the trees had a more interesting texture, but after the first few transitions between focus and out of focus, I was bored again. The sound didn’t seem to match the visual, but it didn’t seem out of place, either. I noticed the subtitles but I paid little attention to what they actually said. The second time I watched the video, I realized the text posed a question to the viewer, actively involving them in the experience. This question was somewhat unsettling and distracted my thoughts for the rest of the video—should the images I find aesthetically pleasing that Robinson is showing me be offensive? And what does it mean if I’m not offended by them? It’s almost as if he is talking about the beauty of things decaying, which is darkly romantic. I can’t seem to find the words to accurately describe what I think is going on in this video, or how it makes me feel—and that was the same response I found when I researched others’ reviews of this piece. The video creates a very ethereal mood that sucks you into the video, and it’s a bit of a jolt when it’s over because you’ve suddenly been removed from this otherworldly place—and not just because you left, but because it doesn’t exist anymore, it disappeared when the video ended.

               The first time I watched Ed Atkins’s Death Masks III, I thought it was boring, and I was annoyed at some of the sounds because they seemed out of place and were louder and longer than I would’ve liked something at that pitch. The second time I watched the video, however, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I missed due to being sleepy during the first time I watched it. The beginning of the video with the coughing and scene cuts was oddly entrancing (I felt like I could’ve watched something like that much longer than the clip in the video), as were the scene cuts with the head against a black background. I also noticed that the waves were moving forwards and backwards, which was disorienting the longer I stared at them.

               In an interview, Atkins talked about how death and illness were not uncommon themes in his work, and that struck a chord with me because of what the girl at the ocean scene reminded me of: my cousin wrote a screenplay based on his experience beating leukemia, and the ocean was an important part of the mood for this movie. Without knowing any of the themes or ideas the artist wanted to convey with the video, I made the same connections based on my own personal experiences, which also ties back to what he said in the same interview: “You realize through personal proximity that expressions and representations of death are always personal.”

Dror Benshetrit

From top to bottom: Volume 60-10-12-3-12, Guggenheim Wall, Playground, Foundation of Knowledge

               After reading the provided materials and thinking about how this information relates to the film Beautiful Losers, my question is this: Is credit now more important than the experience of making and sharing art, and of inspiring others?

               It seems like the only reason people want credit for their artwork nowadays is for monetary gain. Not only does this depreciate the act of art-making, it raises questions like “How different does your piece have to be to be considered appropriated versus copied?” and “Can art really be new anymore?” With artists claiming ownership of such small creative details in their pieces, it has become increasingly difficult to be original, with any medium. Especially considering the rise of digital media and use of digital manipulation, you take images from other sources, change them and put your ‘new’ piece online for others to pick apart for their own pieces and the cycle continues. This borrowing and sharing of ideas and artistic elements is what creates energy between movements, and I think it’s a necessary part of the art world and of being, yourself, a part of that world.

               The way the artist in Beautiful Losers talked about painting the Cyclone made me take a step back and look at ownership in a different way. Until recently, I had always assumed ownership of the things I make, whether it’s a stupid doodle or a sculpture. When this artist talked about ownership, however, he said he initially wanted everyone to know he painted it and that it was his work, but then he realized he wanted others to know it was actually theirs—they use it, they enjoy it, it’s for them, it’s theirs.  This seemed to be a subconscious transfer of ownership that was then consciously realized.

"The dancers printed themselves on black velvet in the sexual position ascribed to the zodiac sign of Leo. Following the performance, we hung the painting on the gallery wall and it became part of my series "The Astrological Ways." " -Rosenberg

Untitled (Astrological Chart) The Golden Age

The Dialectical Porn Rock

Headshots

The first pieces I saw of Rosenberg's belonged to the The Dialectical Porn Rock collection. I knew something was 'off' about the picture I was looking at, but it took me a second to realize it was a pornographic image. I enjoyed the juxtaposition created by placing such widely known 'fakeness' into the real and natural world.

Aura Rosenberg began using pornography in her work during 1988 and has since worked with the idea of a feminine gaze. Her collection, Headshots, exemplifies this idea: she focused on what males look like when they orgasm since that is so rarely portrayed in media, including porn. She's also explored the idea of landscape by juxtaposing staged pornographic images with the natural outdoor scenes. When talking about the similarities between her pieces in The Dialectical Porn Rock and The Golden Age pieces, she said, "I tried to give both the rocks and the paintings on porn a skin. Skin is the organ of touch, so it adds something sensual to the pleasure of looking."