the activated spectator

After some thinking I have decided that I need to incorporate a blog into my website to further my art writing and interest in pursuing academia.

OLD WEBSITE

Therefore, I have made a new square-space website using the Kingston 1/2 price offer!

NEW WEBSITE

I’m really happy with the outcome of this website resign and blog addition. Having the blog will be great to send to prospective employers whilst giving me an online space to develop my thinking and reflections.

I finally discovered a residency that is funded! Months ago I subscribed to ArtJobs weekly new letter that shares open calls, opportunities and residencies etc and it was here I came across Art Like Salt a residency hosted by LampLab in South Korea. 

The residency is for 12 weeks and the winner receives £3000 + a 5 week exhibition in Korea. The theme for the residency is anticipating the future, so I applied with images from my FMP as they discuss this metamorphosis of being needed to better move into and towards the future. Below is my pdf application. 

I am starting to find iG quite restrictive because the work I post has to be visually consistent or at least visually evolving over the page...there are side projects I’m working on that I would like to have a place to share and talk about in a lot more detail.

I looked at when my website was renewing and it is scheduled for the 1st of may - I have made the decision to cancel my cargo collective subscription and begin one with squarespace - squarespace has an offer with kingston uni so I can get it half price and it allows an integrated blog / easy sales integration. 

iG Has proved useful the past few weeks in connecting me with artists and collectives.

My friend Lucas has begun a group called ‘distance collective’, everyweek a new word is published, last week “reflections” and you have a week to respond to the word in whatever way you can. 

I am receiving an online portfolio review from a  member of Revolv Collective.

I have been thinking about the future quite obsessively since the pandemic hit. The space away from so many things has affording me profound reflection and being back home is helping me listen to my intuition - I do know what is best for me, for a while I feel like I have been making all the wrong decisions, but I am about to make some right ones.

Masters Courses - I have found myself wishing to be more academically challenged at Kingston and I desire to work on my writing craft. 

Edinburgh College of art

MA Contemporary Art Theory Unable to find tuition fee approx £11,000 - but if I could get a scholarship!! £9500 Andrew Grant Post-grad Scholarship

Goldsmiths

MA Contemporary Art Theory

https://www.gold.ac.uk/pg/ma-contemporary-art-theory/

Modules: Transforming Critical PracticesReading the performativeSex, Gender, SpeciesTranscultural MemorySpatial BiopoliticsPsychopower and subjectivityThe Ocean as Archive.

£8640

No scholarship

MA Cultural Studieshttps://www.gold.ac.uk/pg/ma-cultural-studies/

Modules: Cultural Studies and CapitalismPlus other modules from Anthropology to sociology - dependent on year

£8040

Revolv Collective are offering free online portfolio reviews to 3rd year students. I have applied and hopefully will get a response by next week!

April 21st -

I was gifted a portfolio review with artist Victoria Doyle I was super nervous but wow it was great! We spoke mostly about my final major project and a little bit about my future plans. It is a great confidence boost to speak to someone from the industry and she had some very good pointers for continuing this journey outside of the institution. 

My notes:

- Mask as concept - Photo book has a filmic quality and the images are very fluid, think about the transition between images in the sense that film scenes transition between images. - Create a digital and physical portfolio to share with galleries - A parallel between reading and moving that you present as a dynamism in the images - Bringing that dynamism into the physical image object - Studio’s in Devon? If you can't return to London? - Creating an experiential display in the gallery space

I thought that I would quickly update you guys on competitions. Recently I have applied to two. 

The first organised by Photo Meet X Northern Natives. I submitted my FMP as a work in progress and created a cute little portfolio exampling the work. The submission required an explanation of missed opportunities due to the pandemic and thus I wrote about the new utilitarian conditions I am in working from home and my lack of access to facilities as hampering the development of my project. 

The second I applied 10 images from Tracey Turner to Female Focus, a competition organised by BJP. Due to the lockdown BJP are offering 3 months subscription for £1 and this includes free access to all of their competitions over the next 3 months. 

I recently found this website which very clearly and explicitly highlights the simplicity needed for an artist CV. I’ve been struggling with the term creative cv because I thought it mean it must be designed beautifully an carry a lot of colour etc but actually my work is what carries the colour and my CV needs to only share real factual information about me. 

1. Personal / Contact info

Annie King (b. 1996, UK) anyotherkingdom.com | [email protected]

2. Education

Kingston School of Art, KU, Bachelor of Arts Photography, 2020 Akademie der Bildenden Künste Wein, Bachelor of Arts Erasmus Program, 2018-2019

3. Exhibitions

2020 Off The Record, Kingston School of Art 2019 Ausgang, Akademie der Bildenden Künste Wein 

4. Bibliography

5. Collections

* do make a list of people who own your work - even if they didn't pay for it // only include people who have agreed to be collectors of your work

6. Texts

7. Teaching

8. Curatorial Projects

9. Awards and grants

10. Residencies

Now I am unable to complete the last 7 sections as I my career is really not advanced enough at this stage. 

In terms of a job going forward my end goal is education but to achieve this I need to get myself through a masters course. The only direction I wish to continue with my art practice is as an artist I do not want to work commercially.

As my CV is going to look quite bare I will also be including:

* artist statement

“Annie is an emerging British artist, working with and against the photographic medium. Informed by vast bodies of research the narratives flowing through her projects are guided by the evolving research. Working in an interdisciplinary manner Annie embarks upon long term projects situated between critical reflection and artistic reaction.”

* planned / forthcoming exhibitions

2020 Degree Show, Kingston School of Art,  (postponed due to covid-19)

2020 Group Show, Four Corner’s Gallery  (postponed due to covid-19)

Finally

Include an image of your artwork (not usually recommended, but between that and the blank page, one image is better).

Center your text with large margins. Yes, this is cheating when you’re writing an essay. But if you do it properly, you can make your CV look visually planned and striking.

Include an artist statement and CV on one single page. Often these are asked for separately, but if you are able to combine them, it’s a great way to make your presentation look great.

From Dust We Came and Dust We Shall Be (2020) is a long-term and open-ended project that has been informed by vast bodies of scientific, philosophical, academic and cultural research. With such an interdisciplinary approach the project sits in a constant state of flux between a reflection of, and a reaction to the research material. 

Annie King is a British artist working with and against the photographic medium. Informed by vast bodies of scientific, philosophical, academic and cultural research, her practice focuses on the duality of absence-presence. The narratives that flow through her projects are intertwined and guided by extensive bodies of evolving research. This interdisciplinary approach allows Annie to embark upon long-term, open-ended projects that often sit in a constant state of flux between a reflection of and a reaction to the research material. Through the unification of image and text, Annie fabricates character driven narratives that explore the human condition or comment upon society at large. Her key influences include: Duane Michals’ photographic sequences, the timeless narratives of Italio Calvino, the integration of image and prose in the works of W.G Sebald and Ilya Kabakov’s character creation.

Annie’s latest project began with a written investigation into the art of participation and its long standing alliance with anti-establishment and anti-art movements. The research grew towards a close reading of The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord (1967) and ultimately prompted the question, what does spectacle look like today? Surveillance technologies capture our faces, our bodies, what we like to wear and what we like to think. Collectively, this information is termed big-data and consists of data points that can be used to predict an individual’s behaviour - this is the latest currency of capitalism. Spectacle has transitioned beyond the image and into the machine that reads the image. In response the artist has constructed a series of masks that rest upon the vast history of spiritual and physical protection aligned with covering the face. The mask represents protection from the pacifying spectacles of capitalism and the grand narrative of consumption. Using 3D technologies, the artist created a virtual imprint of each mask. This process is considered a digital upgrade yet it is a low-resolution visual downgrade for the human spectator. Opening the virtual copy file in a text programme reveals the machine language: computer code, bits, pixels, symbols, letters and numerical commands. Printed on large sheets of paper the colossal length of the code is exposed, it creates patterns that the eye can read but the true content and purpose of the data remains illegible.  At the heart of image-making today sits a dichotomy between the image’s physical presence and its digital absence, the machine language of the 3-dimensional scan exposes this contradiction.

My first observation is that artist CV’s seem more in use by commercial photographers or those who use commissions to support their artistic practice. Therefore the CV denotes examples of commissions. Now, for an artist such as myself who does not desire this way of working but would rather an academic route to make money through maybe an academic CV is more suited to my desired progression. 

Below I have gathered 4 artists and photographers to examine their CV’s. 

Charlotte Young

Charlotte Young created in 2011 a very dulcet video statement. Although this is a statement rather than a CV I wanted to include it amongst CV research due to its superb creative merit.

 I really enjoy this because it takes a knife to the throat of the artist stereotype in a wonderfully humorous way. I wonder if she actually sent it to any employers...or it was simply an art piece of its own right, because it probably wouldn’t get you a job? However, I think if I was in a position of power at a gallery or art institution and a young person sent me such a creative CV I would be excited by it.

I have previously considered a video CV but I’m not sure how I would like to come across. I mean because I play a lot of different characters within my work potentially I could adopt a Jean-Luc Goddard kind of female character. The vision I’m having right now is a femme fatale? Or powerful slightly mischievous woman I’m also looking out of the garden window right now and its really windy but the sun is creating beautiful vividly moving shadows of the tree branches and they would look wonderful in black and white on a video. 

Ben Yau

Artist CV’s can be used for application to exhibitions, galleries, funding, potential commissioners, awards, competitions, agents and residencies. 

Personal Details - website / agent if applicable

Artist Statement - context / meaning / process / development Exhibitions Competitions / Awards / Scholarships Commissions Education and Professional Development Art-related Employment / Placement Publications

I’m worried because I don’t have any of these things....

**remember digital CV’s will probably be printed out in monochrome on a laser jet printer - you have no control over final product**

Academic CV

I wish to pursue a Masters in the next year or so...therefore an academic CV is probably the most applicable to me. 

Research Experience Publications Professional Development Employment Presentations Skills Professional Membership References

** It’s the role not the sector that indicates using a professional or creative CV **

For example, throughout my university education I have gained work experiencing within the video production industry. All the online advise for approaching the ‘film industry’ is to keep your CV simple, professional, black and white. On the other hand, video production teams are generally small and you are required to multitask or be interdisciplinary - in this instance a creative CV could be more useful 

Types of creative CV

* Video CV - a video CV actually appeals to me the most, it establishes so many factors about you without you having to go into an interview, it especially ticks all the boxes in the ethnicity and diversity form that companies l.o.v.e. The things mentioned in the video should be backed up by links and images to examples of the work you have mentioned. 

* Portfolio Taster -  Include an artist statement and a short biography about artistic development , this is the CV that revolves around art work. 

* Infographic CV - this type of CV is best suited to someone who is applying for a software based roll in which computer and system literacy is of the upmost importance. It would involve working out what kind of data or information you would be asked to present in an interview situation. Also by looking at the way the company already presents their information may help mould the design of an infographic CV. 

https://implied.gallery

With lockdown still in effect and going to be extended beyond the initial 3 weeks I have been using iG entirely for my art-fix. Last week I found this virtual exhibition by Implied Gallery. 

Curation by: Shanon Turnball & Olly Bromham Programming: Olly Bromham Enquires: [email protected]

Inhabiting an online space with art actually gives you a lot more space to curate in no-space-at-all. Each room in the exhibition hosts 1-3 artists each artwork occupying one wall per piece. Designed as a simplistic white-cube exhibition space with wooden floor the layout is simple, a greyed out door shape is accessible in every fourth wall to be strolled through, swallowed in darkness and thrown into the next room. 

Favourite piece: Carbon Copy (2800 Photographs of Men and Women) by Lucas Gabellini. What an interesting way of working with the photographic image and questioning the image-object. The piece on the wall is a virtual copy of photographic ash that the artist harvested after burning 2800 Photographs of Men and Women. Fire is the ultimate transformative process, but every transformation leaves behind residue of that which was before, even if only in the words of the title. 

This work is presented in a room next to Reticence by Harriet Davey’s. The word reticence means reserved or uncommunicative. This idea fits both of these works, their visual presence is uncommunicative. The works do not look upon each other but occupy adjacent walls: their meanings are refused entwinement.  

There is no overarching theme amongst these works except that they are contemporary discussions of the photographic/digital image and presence of the digital realm. 

The only promotional material I have found for this VR expo is on iG.