paradoxicality : a blog on yes and no, polemics, p

This is a series of reflections and various media postings related to the artists and art-related readings I encounter in a course titled: Art Now, at Western University in London, Ontario, Canada.

These reflections take the form of a blog (as you can see), which will contain a reflection on each speaker I saw in class (the Nihilist Spasm Band being the exception; I was unfortunately absent for their performance). I will also post any and all photography, videos, sound clips, and art works that I may find to be related or inspired by what I have seen/heard/learned in class.

My reflective posts will focus on my thoughts and impressions of each of the presentations, as well as how I feel they/the artwork navigates the art world and interacts with their art practice and/or the art world around them.

You can navigate this blog as you would any other: by using the scroll bar. Once you get to the bottom of the page, you can click the next button at the bottom to move onward. If you desire to find a specific post, or posts relating to a certain topic, you can input terms into the search bar just under the image at the top, such as “Reflections”.

If you'd like to view a post by itself (rather than amongst the others on the page), you can simply click the time-stamp in the bottom left hand corner of the post, and you will be lead to a new page where only the post itself is featured.

You can view what I have “tagged” posts as (the terms I attach to the post, such as “reflections” or “artists”) at the bottom of the post in small font. I may also have occasionally added small notes on how I feel about something there, if it felt right to do so. If you'd like the view all posts of a certain "tag", you can input the term into the search bar (as mentioned above), or simply click on the "tag" at the bottom of a post.

I would prefer if you navigated the blog in chronological order. Because the nature of tumblr (this blog's host website) is to show the most recent post first, this means you must go to the last post and move backwards. So, if you go to the last page (click here) and find the twin of this post, and you begin at that very post and move backwards, and go from bottom to top on a page, you are doing it right!  However, if you choose to navigate in reverse (how one would conventionally read a blog), that is your choice (and how will I know?). This journey is yours now.

Markus Raetz. Yes/No. (Source)

This course has been an experience, to say the least. There were many moments where I was in absolute awe (Yes! moments) of what artists had to say, or the work they have produced. But there were also moments of confusion or disagreement (No! moments) where I either did not understand or did not enjoy or did not agree with what artists were saying or producing. But, to each artist their own. It is not my place to judge, only to take in and interpret and make for myself.

What I appreciate the most about this experience, is the expanding of artistic horizons that I underwent as a result of these presentations. From electromagnetic waves that became sound art, to a body broth, to a completely blue film, my field of Yes! (this is art!) has been expanded to engulf the No! (this is not art!). The world is art if one believes it to be. If you live as an artist in every aspect of your life, all those moments become art, if you so choose.

Thank you, Art Now! for exposing me to the Yeses and Nos of the art world. May your Yes! always take precedence, and may your No! be wisely considered. 

Stills from Pascal Grandmaison's SOLEIL DIFFÉRÉ (2010). (Source)

Olivia Boudrea's La Brèche (The Breach), part of the VideoZoom exhibition.

"In the dead of a night, in a country house, two young women are awakened by the feeling of a strange presence. They stare at each other in silence, as if the least sound could unleash the unknown. Time seems to stop; nothing moves, execpt floathing dust particles. The gap between the bed and the floor is mysterious, like a passage between the viewer's space and the screen space, between the site of our imagination and the site of the story." (Source)

Louise Déry’s presentation was a confusing one for me. She talked about a variety of things with no real allusion to her own actual practice or involvement in the art world as a whole. She mentioned her place at l’UQAM and her interest in working with university students in a university gallery environment. She gave a short list of some of the artists featured at l’UQAM, gave a quick history of how art changed in Quebec (from “savoir-faire” to “savoir-penser”), and mentioned some of the issues facing artists, but it all felt so scattered, it was difficult to find a uniting thread that made sense of what she was presenting.

I did find the premise of VideoZoom interesting in that it gave 7 different artists a space wherein they could create something new, but with a time constraint. I feel that such an exercise would definitely be beneficial, especially in a university setting. However, she did not talk very much about it, so we were left to make our own conclusions at the McIntosh Gallery. I did not even get to really appreciate what I was of VideoZoom at the Gallery that night, because it was loud and crowded, and people were constantly going in and out of the room where the piece was being exhibited.

I wish I had more to say about this night, but overall, I found it to be a very disorienting presentation. I had no idea where Louise Déry wanted to take the audience with her talk, and how she viewed the art world or how she interacted with it as an artist. I only got the sense that she pretty exclusively works in the university art gallery “world”, but even then, there was nowhere near as much explanation as I needed. It was unfortunately an underwhelming presentation that did not expose the kind of creativity and possibility that an artist in her place would have.

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However, as for the VideoZoom pieces, I took time outside of class to go and watch it. I was alone in the room when I saw the pieces, which I think added to the experience for me. I was pleasantly perplexed by each and every piece, in different ways. I both loved and hated that there was no available explanation of the works, because each had its own ambiguity that was difficult to process.

For example, in Pascal Grandmaison's Soleil Différé, the viewer is exposed to clips of nature: a couple minutes of a surfer and waves, and a leaf that floats mechanically as if hung from a string, are some of the focuses of the piece. The entire thing is in black and white, with only the sounds of wind and waves as aural stimuli. And then there is the strange dark cut-out of a person that occasionally confronts the viewer. I was thoroughly curious as to the intent and message (if there is one) of the piece, but I never got an answer.

Sophie Bélair Clément's work was similarly mystifying, as a strange and seemingly unrelated narrative unravels in between shots of various countryside and city shots, presumably all taken in Canada (I recognized her shots of Toronto). The music that plays alternates between a sort of big band jazz, and an almost cacophonic melody. It is only after the film that the viewer learns that the strange words on the screen was actually a mixture of different narratives, intertwined. Still, however, that did not satiate my curiousity for the reasons behind said narratives, and the film shots used.

I could go through each of the pieces and explain why they all perplexed me, but I think it would be simpler to say that the whole experience was confusing - in a great way. Each film was unapologetically bewildering, leaving no explanation for the viewer but rather a sort of challenge to try and understand, or at least create your own narrative.

Christine Swintak's Dumpster Hotel. (Source, source).

Photos of Christine Swintak and her piece Body Broth (2012). (Source, source).

Christine Swintak’s presentation was, for me, a very mixed experience. She began by describing her process, telling the audience to “consider the world as your studio”, “say no if it doesn’t feel right”, “say yes if you aren’t certain”, “do the wrong thing the right way”… All statements that struck me as important, and having value; I was impressed.

She then began speaking of spaces, and how different spaces are set up differently, and used in different ways. It became clear very quickly that Swintak approaches her art practice with a great focus on architecture and space. She experimented with a shed in a gallery space in Self-Aware Shed, and playing with “inside-outside” and “daytime-nighttime” relationships before the shed was moved and used for a variety of other purposes. She moved an entire house by hand, again into a gallery space. She created the “Tower of Babble”, an impressively tall stacked tower of abandoned objects – “a pile with nothing holding it together”.

Perhaps my favourite of these building/architecturally focused pieces was her Dumpster Hotel, where Swintak transformed a city-issued dumpster into a fully functioning hotel room .Her business model was simply to “go in to business, and then go out of business,” which definitely struck me as something very artistic: creating the dumpster hotel for the sake of creating the space, and then letting it go. It seemed to me a great commentary on what can act as a living space, where a furnished dumpster can be just as functional as any hotel room.

However, I was definitely more than a little shocked at her project “Artist’s Soup”. Although interesting in concept, to have been actually executed and for the soup to have actually been consumed was a little much to hear. However, my problem with it was simply a hygienic and principle-concerned one, rather than a concern with the idea itself.

Christine Swintak

To be honest, I found Nandita Biswas Mellamphy's presentation to be one filled with an overwhelming amount of repetition, and relatively confusing rhetoric.

It seemed that she was simply reading the transcript of one of the readings we had been assigned for that class - no other thoughts or insights seemed to be added at all during her presentation. I also found that there really did not seem to be a real link into the art world or art practice. Though arguably, some of the concepts mentioned could be applied to an art practice, Mellamphy did not seem to view or apply them in this way at all. Her presentation was simply an analysis of two films, and the characteristics they shared. Furthermore, much of her presentation seemed to be composed of quotes from the materials she was analyzing, rather than her own thoughts!

However, I did enjoy some of the ideas she presented, and the thoughtfulness of them. For example, I found that her statements involving conception and deception being interrelated and co-existing (“conception involves deception”) to provoke questions of what really is deception and what is not. I also found her ideas of the boundaries between human and technology interesting, though it was not offered as a fully fleshed out idea so much as it was a statement with relatively feeble examples provided through quotes from the film Ghost in the Shell 2: Inosensu.

Her ideas involving “aporea” and it’s incorporation into the film Inception provided some interest, as well as its involvement and comparison with logos (logical intelligence) and metis (cunning intelligence), were relatively engaging. However, I still found that her definitions of these words (as well as many of the concepts in her artist’s talk) were loosely defined and confusingly employed in her speech.

Although enjoyable at points, I simply found that while trying to understand her presentation, I constantly found myself asking what the point of her presentation was, and how it relates to the art world we live in. That question never really found an answer. If I wished to employ the concepts Mellamphy presented in my own art practice, I would have to do an analysis of my own; her talk did not seem to link any of these ideas with the art world, but with two films uniquely.