Phillip Glass and Leonard Cohen together is better than anything they could have done apart. Perhaps the summer picnic at Ravinia buttered my toast. It sounded like Einstein on the Beach with complex lyrics and without the agitating repetition.
A blog of interest and unrest
epicromance.blogspot.com
Erin
The writing on your blog is fascinating. While I anticipated the relational project that we were assigned, I was curious to know what you would come up with given the high standards you set with your previous questions and comments. I’m afraid to say that your “Dirty Numbers” project disappointed me. But take into account your brilliant revue of the diy show and all those smart questions you asked Rainbow Video. The project didn’t really stand a chance. But its still a good project. I love binary information, especially when I look at all those zeros and ones on dirtynumbers.blogspot.com and know that they translate into something dirty. (I once knew this guy who had just immigrated from Mexico and the only English he knew he learned from porno flicks.) Epic Romance seems an appropriate title, because the sense I get from your blog and the way you use language is on one hand a gross reduction of communication into code, or on the other hand romantic and celebratory of subjective interconnections. These opposing elements could give birth to many more interesting combinations.
A blog of interest and unrest
http://asil-themiddleofnowhere.blogspot.com/
I’m trying to relate Lisa Majer’s project on her blog to the rest of her work, and I think I've got it figured out. At first I didn’t get it, I didn’t understand why she replied to a survey about language. I guess the point is that the language you speak can be alienating and isolating as well as connective tissue. Vaguely, I think Lisa explores the dark side of culture, or at least she considers the disconnect in humanity. Looking at her paintings is like spelunking into a foreign bedroom where the bed hasn’t been made for weeks and laundry is way overdue and don’t even think about looking underneath the bed. Domesticity, as a metaphor of all things internal is equivalent to your culture’s native language.
this revue of Leafcutter John's album "The Housebound Spirit" seams relevant.
http://tinymixtapes.com/Leafcutter-John,1474
A blog of interest and unrest
http://thebarbeque.blogspot.com/2007/05/sanjaya-bill-vendall-and-golfwidow.html
The trouble with anonymity. I think I know who Yum Yum is. Lord of Yum Yum may be Paul Velat, but my wife tells me that Yum Yum is Chris Holmes. The last time I spoke with Chris was maybe 4 years ago, and rumors were the topic of the conversation. He had researched rumorology in school, and at the time I was making weird parallels between conceptual art and rumors. But anyway that was 4 years ago. Today my friend Julie Rudder is a contestant in a competition to be the next NPR talk show host. Her last entry talked about a rumor that the American Idol contestant Sanjaya is actually the invented persona of an art student at RISD. I hope its true. I also hope Julie gets her own talk show. Is their still time to vote? We need to get some buzz going, rally the troops. Maybe a good tag line like “I’d Rudder be listening to NPR”. She needs a rumorologist, (Chris are you reading this? Is it true that you were once detained at an airport for trying to carry-on your grandmother’s brass knuckles?) I’m familiar with Julie’s work as we were in grad school together and she has consistently questioned power structures, big ones like religious institutions. It seems inevitable for Julie’s work to move into the public realm, like talk radio. Lane makes some excellent points in his comments to her blog entry; the importance of anonymity and the importance of weak social ties to the economy being that they support creativity and innovation. Now that I consider Julie’s NPR project and her blog entries I think of her videos differently. "The Greater Sense" (2007), and "I Have so Many Things I Just Don't Know" (2007) In the Block Museum of Art at Northwestern, she has two videos in which the audio is her voice manipulated and multiplied in a way that confuses the integrity of the narrator. Now I see the character in the videos as anonymous and shifty as the blogger or chat room alias. Vote for Julie, lets get her on the air and maybe we’ll find out who she really is.
The trouble with anonymity. I think I know who Yum Yum is. Lord of Yum Yum may be Paul Velat, but my wife tells me that Yum Yum is Chris Holmes. The last time I spoke with Chris was maybe 4 years ago, and rumors were the topic of the conversation. He had researched rumorology in school, and at the time I was making weird parallels between conceptual art and rumors. But anyway that was 4 years ago. Today my friend Julie Rudder is a contestant in a competition to be the next NPR talk show host. Her last entry talked about a rumor that the American Idol contestant Sanjaya is actually the invented persona of an art student at RISD. I hope its true. I also hope Julie gets her own talk show. Is their still time to vote? We need to get some buzz going, rally the troops. Maybe a good tag line like “I’d Rudder be listening to NPR”. She needs a rumorologist, (Chris are you reading this? Is it true that you were once detained at an airport for trying to carry-on your grandmother’s brass knuckles?) I’m familiar with Julie’s work as we were in grad school together and she has consistently questioned power structures, big ones like religious institutions. It seems inevitable for Julie’s work to move into the public realm, like talk radio. Lane makes some excellent points in his comments to her blog entry; the importance of anonymity and the importance of weak social ties to the economy being that they support creativity and innovation. Now that I consider Julie’s NPR project and her blog entries I think of her videos differently. "The Greater Sense" (2007), and "I Have so Many Things I Just Don't Know" (2007) In the Block Museum of Art at Northwestern, she has two videos in which the audio is her voice manipulated and multiplied in a way that confuses the integrity of the narrator. Now I see the character in the videos as anonymous and shifty as the blogger or chat room alias. Vote for Julie, lets get her on the air and maybe we’ll find out who she really is.
Interview with Teena McClelland
Teena McClelland and Michelle Maynard on the set of Death by Design, Co. at Gallery 400 in 2006.
Teena's in* interior interventions headquarters in 2004
In* Interior Interventions is a business that provides customers with an unconventional interior design service. With the help and consultation of Teena McClelland, founder of In*, clientele have their homes redesigned to be completely nonfunctional. Recently, Teena has been collaborating with Michelle Maynard to create Death by Design Co., which provides participants the chance to star in their own horror flick. In Michelle's previous work, she wrote, produced and starred in her own horror movie "Throb". I started to become more interested in Teena and Michelle's work while studying relational aesthetics in graduate school, so I asked Teena if she would answer a couple questions.
(Cole)
Your projects seem to take place in a post-Rirkrit form of Relational Art, where you offer a service, but the service is very
unconventional. I'm thinking Death by Design, as well as thenonfunctional interior design project in 2004. I'm using Rirkrit
Tiravanija as an example because his practice of inserting the everyday into an institutional setting is designed in a way that suggests there is no separation between the two spheres. In Rirkrit's case we notice the difference after the fact, so we notice how an art gallery changes a dinner party. In your case, it seems that you approach a project with the knowledge that the everyday will be affected or transformed when it is placed in a gallery or museum. So you offer a service of redesigning my closet so I can't reach my clothes. Am I on the right path here? Are your unconventional services a comment on service-based artworks, contract-art and the history of relational aesthetics? Or, does it come out of a reaction to economics and the service industry expanding into every nook and crevice?
(Teena)
My ideas for my work employ similar sentiments to Rirkrit Tiravanija's motives of creation, for sure. Rirkrit creates a situation in the gallery which is not about looking at art--but it is about "being in a space, participating in an activity, and the nature of the visit has shifted to emphasize on the gallery as a space for social interaction." My "businesses" exist as installations in galleries much like Rirkrit's aftermath they "function like scientific experiments: the displacement becomes a tool and exposes the way scientific thought processes are constructed. The visitor becomes a participant in that experiment."
There is a difference here between Rirkirt and I. The businesses I create are earnest establishments which have little choice but to exist in the art gallery (since another venue does not exist for such services just yet) and these businesses are often seen only as an "experiment" and are somewhat hindered in their mainstream ability because they cannot get a foothold in the commercial business realm. Ideally, my in* interventions interior design firm would have existed in a real commercial/retail space where it offered the new formula I employed for interior decorating.
ESTABLISHED FORMULA:
home decor and arrangement--
ESTABLISHED BY--beauty/functionality/order=successful interior design
MY in* FORMULA:
home decor and arrangement--
ESTABLISHED BY--narrative/catastrophe/disorder=successful in* interior
design
So, here you see the idea of Rirkrit and that idea's attempt to use a formula to displace the audience and teach or show the opportunity of using an established context/site in a new way--but I am not interested in merely using it against/for the gallery or art itself. That is just the venue it is allowed to exist in at this time. And often that venue works out fine.
(Cole)
The two of you collaborating has complicated both of your practices, in a good way. Teena's twisted sense of the service economy is now more sinister, and Michelle's horror flick is now participatory. Sorry for this very generic question, but how do feel about this combination? What do you think this says about art that takes the form of a service or a social contract?
(Teena)
The projects in* and Death by Design, CO. are serviced-based as a draw for participants--Services are active and participatory and not static and stable. My main intention while working as an artist-is the idea of involving others, perhaps directly, especially others who might not normally be engaged in artwork/artworld. Ta da--so offer them a service! and then they will be part of the project and the project will rely on them...and even in the project's failure-no willing participants- we can find success (this is a longer conversation). Therefore, collaboration occurs not only with Michelle Maynard, who
will collaborate on the initial structure of the formula (the set, menu, contracts, methods of making and selling), but there is a collaboration with clients and with staff and with the gallery--and they all get to shape the outcome by adding their own to the initial formula.
Achieving entertainment is one key to all of this working out (entertainment can be the goal for a project and it can still have
valuable side effects) and it doesn't hurt to make it official by calling it a "business". That definitely adds an air of expertise to the whole package. In some ways, Death by Design, Co. allows Michelle to do what she would like to do most and allows me to do what I would like to do most. I would like for people to face a situation that I have arranged and leave that situation thinking that they must reposition themselves in relation to what is being dealt with--much like the goal of Rirkrit. I am optimistic and I hope for the best, for something to happen--and these services and spectacles seem like the clearest path for some kind of direct affect on the audience/participant.
http://www.deathbydesignco.com/flash.html
Free Mixed CDs
My "Free Mixed CDs" project has been a part of my studio practice since 2004. My MFA Thesis exhibition is currently at the Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University until June 17th. While the collection of songs is eclectic, the genre I use most often is ambient music. The experience of listening to ambient music adds an element to, or helps define the overall content of my work.
Its not all about things
Its all about things.
Three Walls Gallery
February 5, 2007 - March 31, 2007
Maldonado has transformed ThreeWalls residency/gallery into a flea market shanty auction house. I was informed upon entry that the show wasn’t complete without the artist being present, who was attending to an emergency. When the artist is present, the audience is invited to barter for Maldonado’s artworks, which are mostly small paintings that range from landscape to pop abstractions. The quality of the paintings mirror the eccentric aesthetic of his gypsy auction house, where they are displayed. Even without witnessing the performance, it was obvious to me that the artist was interested in human behavior in relation to material stuff, so I wondered why it was necessary for the artist to be present. Raw materials and messy murals constructed the environment, which was compartmentalized into a lounge, a private viewing room, a permanent collection room, and an exhibition space. The installation of IAAT is a Thomas Hirshorn version of a blue chip auction house. I hear that Maldonado will barter intensely for up to 30 minutes with a customer, yet I’m already hyper aware of the importance of materiality in the gallery space. Along with the bartering and trading, Maldonado documents the procedure with paperwork that feeds into his overarching practice, which is a study of the relationship between humans and things.
So there is the description.
Now here are some questions.
1. Is it really all about things?
2. Why is an impoverished flea market the setting?
3. Why is the aesthetic a manicured mess?
Answers:
1. It’s not all about things. It is a performance, an event that forces a relationship on the things. It may be participatory, and the artist might be engaging the audience, but the event is still a mediated experience, a reproduced performance. Maldonado states that this project is a way to study a person’s relationship to things. If this is the objective study that Maldonado claims, the theatrical scene and performance is going to skew the results. Maybe the statement should be reconsidered, because the real content of IAAT lies in Maldonado’s relationship to things, or more specifically his relationship to aesthetics. This scenario at Three Walls is a pronounced version of context determining value. So it’s not all about things, it’s all about a contrived context. Maybe it’s all about context. There is a stage, props, and performers of this play. Even though he solicits audience members to speak about their emotional attachment to knick-knacks, it is still Maldonado’s stage.
2. Bartering is the tool that Luis Maldonado uses to engage his audience. Face to face communication. Maybe I am still answering question number one, because this direct engagement of talking trumps all other aspects of the project. This also makes me question why the gallery is outfitted in murals on cardboard walls, exposed 2x4’s and tarp. A few years ago I visited my friend Michael, and he had turned his apartment into one expansive sheet tent. Every ceiling and every wall had sheets tacked onto them. He told me that his apartment had undergone a Halloween transformation. This makes sense. It was Halloween. I don’t think it makes sense for Luis Maldonado to transform a gallery into a shanty auction house. Does he need an immersive environment in order to talk one on one to audience members? And why an environment that is a sign of poverty? It seems that Maldonado does want to address class issues and systems of value, but why does he model his project after a third-world bazaar? This seems inconsiderate to say the least. I don’t understand why bartering is better than a monetary system. Is it because he wants a stronger connection to his audience? My confusion that you, yeah you the reader are sensing is because the IAAT project is inconsistent. If Maldonado thinks that one system of exchange is better than another system of exchange, don’t mix them together. IAAT is sectioned off into paintings worth money, and paintings worth bartering.
3. For Maldonado, aesthetics are used to devalue the discreet art object that he calls a “thing”. Aesthetics are props and stage settings for an event to take place. Maldonado needs a site that can be used to barter and talk to people. Why does he need a gallery? David Hammons sold snowballs on the street. I wonder if a public intervention might be better suited for IAAT. But then Maldonado would have less control over the Brechtian in your face performance that is the core of the project. Since the performance is the forefront of Maldonado’s project, I don’t understand why he creates an immersive environment. The cardboard and tarp functions as a sign for poverty. This sign is distracting and unnecessary for a performance of Maldonado haggling with an audience.
Three Walls Gallery
February 5, 2007 - March 31, 2007
Maldonado has transformed ThreeWalls residency/gallery into a flea market shanty auction house. I was informed upon entry that the show wasn’t complete without the artist being present, who was attending to an emergency. When the artist is present, the audience is invited to barter for Maldonado’s artworks, which are mostly small paintings that range from landscape to pop abstractions. The quality of the paintings mirror the eccentric aesthetic of his gypsy auction house, where they are displayed. Even without witnessing the performance, it was obvious to me that the artist was interested in human behavior in relation to material stuff, so I wondered why it was necessary for the artist to be present. Raw materials and messy murals constructed the environment, which was compartmentalized into a lounge, a private viewing room, a permanent collection room, and an exhibition space. The installation of IAAT is a Thomas Hirshorn version of a blue chip auction house. I hear that Maldonado will barter intensely for up to 30 minutes with a customer, yet I’m already hyper aware of the importance of materiality in the gallery space. Along with the bartering and trading, Maldonado documents the procedure with paperwork that feeds into his overarching practice, which is a study of the relationship between humans and things.
So there is the description.
Now here are some questions.
1. Is it really all about things?
2. Why is an impoverished flea market the setting?
3. Why is the aesthetic a manicured mess?
Answers:
1. It’s not all about things. It is a performance, an event that forces a relationship on the things. It may be participatory, and the artist might be engaging the audience, but the event is still a mediated experience, a reproduced performance. Maldonado states that this project is a way to study a person’s relationship to things. If this is the objective study that Maldonado claims, the theatrical scene and performance is going to skew the results. Maybe the statement should be reconsidered, because the real content of IAAT lies in Maldonado’s relationship to things, or more specifically his relationship to aesthetics. This scenario at Three Walls is a pronounced version of context determining value. So it’s not all about things, it’s all about a contrived context. Maybe it’s all about context. There is a stage, props, and performers of this play. Even though he solicits audience members to speak about their emotional attachment to knick-knacks, it is still Maldonado’s stage.
2. Bartering is the tool that Luis Maldonado uses to engage his audience. Face to face communication. Maybe I am still answering question number one, because this direct engagement of talking trumps all other aspects of the project. This also makes me question why the gallery is outfitted in murals on cardboard walls, exposed 2x4’s and tarp. A few years ago I visited my friend Michael, and he had turned his apartment into one expansive sheet tent. Every ceiling and every wall had sheets tacked onto them. He told me that his apartment had undergone a Halloween transformation. This makes sense. It was Halloween. I don’t think it makes sense for Luis Maldonado to transform a gallery into a shanty auction house. Does he need an immersive environment in order to talk one on one to audience members? And why an environment that is a sign of poverty? It seems that Maldonado does want to address class issues and systems of value, but why does he model his project after a third-world bazaar? This seems inconsiderate to say the least. I don’t understand why bartering is better than a monetary system. Is it because he wants a stronger connection to his audience? My confusion that you, yeah you the reader are sensing is because the IAAT project is inconsistent. If Maldonado thinks that one system of exchange is better than another system of exchange, don’t mix them together. IAAT is sectioned off into paintings worth money, and paintings worth bartering.
3. For Maldonado, aesthetics are used to devalue the discreet art object that he calls a “thing”. Aesthetics are props and stage settings for an event to take place. Maldonado needs a site that can be used to barter and talk to people. Why does he need a gallery? David Hammons sold snowballs on the street. I wonder if a public intervention might be better suited for IAAT. But then Maldonado would have less control over the Brechtian in your face performance that is the core of the project. Since the performance is the forefront of Maldonado’s project, I don’t understand why he creates an immersive environment. The cardboard and tarp functions as a sign for poverty. This sign is distracting and unnecessary for a performance of Maldonado haggling with an audience.
Coming Soon!
Interview with Teena McClelland and Michelle Maynard, the masterminds behind Death by Design, Co.
Sharon Hayes Notes
Here are the notes I took during Sharon Hayes' artist talk.
Saussure
demonstration based performance
-speech act
-performer/auudience
-performance as singular event
documentation as event in and of itself
event and nonevent
respeaking, the perfomative, does rather than says
-contradiction in time
-moving backword and forward
through what
gift
voice and vote, confused
following sound, indirect, general questions
in affiliation with subjectivity
how does the speech act create meaning
words-body-time/place
protest what protest
installation- unfixed, transient
respeaking history
readymade? action
translation
impossibility of the simultaneous moment
non-expertness
never forgetting
metonymic/metaphoric
work to be done in disabled
disrupted cognition- failure
gaps in speech, fissures in language
Saussure
demonstration based performance
-speech act
-performer/auudience
-performance as singular event
documentation as event in and of itself
event and nonevent
respeaking, the perfomative, does rather than says
-contradiction in time
-moving backword and forward
through what
gift
voice and vote, confused
following sound, indirect, general questions
in affiliation with subjectivity
how does the speech act create meaning
words-body-time/place
protest what protest
installation- unfixed, transient
respeaking history
readymade? action
translation
impossibility of the simultaneous moment
non-expertness
never forgetting
metonymic/metaphoric
work to be done in disabled
disrupted cognition- failure
gaps in speech, fissures in language
Exciting News
I was excited to learn that Murcof was from Tijuana and there was possibly a minimalist electronic music scene in Tijuana, Mexico. It was about the same time that I had visited Ajo, Arizona which is a dusty desert border town abandoned by a copper mining company who refused to settle a worker strike 70 years ago. The atmosphere reminded me of dirty ambient music. Dry and textured. At this time I was also reading about a bunch of political art sprouting up around Tijuana and the US/Mexico border. I started to wonder whether or not a strife ridden geographic location was the impetus of both abstract audio art and public political art. Tijuana could be an example of a situation that was inciting both escapism as well as protest. But Murcof no longer resides in his hometown of Tijuana, where he was part of the Nortec Collective (which sucks like a club chill out room). He didn't make brilliant music until he moved to Barcelona. Another theory out the window.