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Project #5

This project really had me torn because the outlines given were so open that it was difficult to choose which direction to take it. In the end, I decided to go as simple as possible and make some sort of fortune teller. I used to make these all the time as a kid and my friends and I would treat the answers like a Bible. They were almost our creative version of a magic 8 ball where we would ask questions and took the response to be our fate.

These past few weeks have been full of endings as the end of the semester came a close, finals loomed, I walked in my CCD graduation officially closing that chapter of my life, and my boyfriend finally reaching the end of his education career as he graduated from college. I know that endings such as graduations can be extremely stressful times as students enter a new beginning that may not be certain. As such, I decided to dedicate my project to those going into new and scary times by writing "everything is going to be alright" on every single optional answer because I think that sometimes, no matter what, people just need to be told that. I actually left these in nooks and crannies around my graduation and plan on leaving more in other places this summer so that hopefully whoever finds them gets a little boost they might need.

One of my favorite discussions to have surrounding art is that of public vs. private space and how the display of art can effect these concepts. For both Jenny Holzer and Robert Montgomery, this dichotomy becomes extremely important in their choice of presentation, both in placement and in their choice of using words to convey meaning rather than a different visual art form. These decisions ultimately boil down to the question of accessibility in art. Of course, historically, art has been considered something high-class and reserved for those who could afford to enter a private space and have the intellectual prowess in order to appreciate what they were viewing. However, as time has worn on - particularly with the introduction of postmodernism - this idea of art for the masses has become increasingly popular and available, culminating in the expression of art through attention-drawing text. While traditional art forms such as painting or drawing can seem daunting for the “average” person to understand or interpret, words are a part of our daily lives and can communicate extremely effectively to that average viewer. I think the most fascinating thing however while reading through this is how art was originally a form of communication meant to convey meaning in an overwhelmingly illiterate world and now that these circumstances have flipped, our art is beginning to reflect that.

Project #4: “University”

***Disclaimer: This handle of vodka was actually filled with water! No need for concern as I refused to deal with hangover this would’ve brought or trying to attend classes tomorrow smelling like a distillery***

As an intro, I’m not sure if I’ve discussed this before in this class but I actually began my post-secondary schooling as a pre-med major at the University of Iowa. Located in a small city in the middle of the otherwise predictable Iowa cornfields, the University of Iowa was notable for its celebrated Writer’s Workshop and, during my short two-year tenure, it’s ranking as the #1 party school in the nation.

Throughout my 7 years in college, I must say that MSU Denver and the general Auraria Campus are simply unique in their lack of overall collegiate drinking culture. Perhaps it is the lack of university football tailgates, the lack of dorm culture, or even my older-than-the-average-freshman age, but I truly feel that even with a brewery on campus, Metro is worlds away from the damaging college drinking culture that seems to seep throughout every other major college campus I have ever set foot on.

Despite this separation of drinking culture within my current college community, I still find this to be a massive and overarching issue throughout the nation. When I went to U of I, underage drinking was essentially required in order to maintain friends in the dorms. And while this party atmosphere begins as a “fun” way to blow off steam, it quickly becomes a stressful form of societal maintenance that drains you of any other ability to focus meaningfully on academics and learning.

Verb List:

1. To Stress

2. To Worry

3. To Pace

4. To Sob

5. To Go

6. To Learn

7. To Own

8. To Be

9. To Rip

10. To Mourn

11. To Miss

12. To Run

13. To Trick

14. To Hurt

15. To Question

16. To Want

17. To Reject

18. To Scare

19. To Intimidate

While Roselee Goldberg’s essay “Performance: A Hidden History” is highly informative when discussing the audience-artist relationship of performance art and the general discourse surrounding its relevancy, I found the documentary to be more engaging and realistic in its portrayal of those who have found true ingenuity and even fame through this art form.

As a tumblr-obsessed teenager, I became extremely aware of Marina Abramovic and Ulay through their often reblogged images of intertwined hair and counterbalanced bow and arrow pieces. Going into this documentary, I knew that my somewhat immature view of Marina was about to change as her generally polarizing personality is well known in the art world, however instead of clarifying my opinions I honestly emerged from the documentary even more conflicted on both Marina as an artist and on my view of performance art than I have ever felt before. 

If one were to judge art purely through the value of being the first to do it, Marina is a true genius. Each of her pieces hold a unique place in the world of art as the first of their kind, often both horrifying and intriguing viewers in an otherwise saturated painted art world. But as a person, I find Marina to be pretentious and egotistical which causes an issue for me when viewing her artwork as I begin to view it through these lenses as well. Seeing her essentially force young artists through the world’s weirdest summer camp in order to bring them to a “proper” mindset to imitate her works was both uncomfortable and unnecessary. I understand her desire to help them gain a more patient view of the world in order to cope with the trauma that her works might create or induce, I felt that the entire process was thoroughly self-absorbed.

For this project, I focused heavily on the concepts of creation vs. destruction in relation to the term “vanishing”. I also found a lot of inspiration in Sean Cubitt’s quote “Art has always been an attempt to cheat or at least outlive death; to secure some record of presence that would fill in for the real absence of the deceased.”

My grandma passed away last week and so this concept of living in memory and in action after death has stayed heavily on my mind. I considered creating a piece detailing the lifetime of a person (starting as nothing, creating a life, and then vanishing once again into “nothing”) but due to the time constraints of the video I decided to continue brainstorming. Then, I began to think about Cubitt’s piece again in terms of surveillance. As an art history major, I am constantly fascinated by the documentation of life, and I began to think of the documentation of our cities and the destruction that often befalls them.

With this in mind, I turned to videos of controlled building explosions. Initially I meant to begin with the building exploded, build it back up, and then have it explode again, but it felt a bit redundant. If you already know the outcome of a scenario in a video, people are generally less likely to view it. So, instead of viewing vanishing and becoming through the lens of creation, I decided to view it through the lens of destruction. Through this video, I’m hoping to potentially convey that destruction of an object or the clearing of a space that was once occupied can, in itself, be a method of creation and becoming. Also, in the taking of these videos and through pictures from decades past, though these buildings no longer exist they still live on in our memories and in our histories.

From a technical standpoint, to be honest I’m fairly unhappy with the outcome of this piece. While I felt comfortable with the last exercise, something didn’t seem to click with me while attempting to edit in Adobe Premiere this time around and I really struggled throughout the process to the point that I essentially decided to call it “good enough”. I hope to continue experimenting and return to this video in order and add many more layers of dimensionality. I also struggled with the time constraint as it felt difficult to convey a meaningful narrative in such a specific amount of time.