Using Yorick's laughter

I'm sure you know Damien Hirst's recent work, For the Love of God. Created as the most expensive contemporary art work in the world, it is valued at about 75 million euros. Hirst underlines the value of the diamonds (about 30 million), and plays on the incapacity of judging the "value" of a work by giving it huge value since the beginning.
This business move, not uncommon among the creme de la creme of contemporary artists, is brilliant, of course. You either get it, or you don't. If you go for the bluff, it automatically ceases to be a bluff. Therefore, if you criticize it for being just a silly idea, or a great idea but with a silly number of zeros next to it, or for being a shallow philosophy for the nouveau-riches, then you just don't get it. Of course. Which makes it seem critique-proof.
So far, so good.
But it gets better.

"We must buy the diamond skull for Britain" - this proclamation was made to his countrymen by Jonathan Jones, a journalist of the Guardian to keep the"most amazing artefacts ever made in this country". Jones thus encourages the British to purchase this "work of art", made by"the treasure of Great Britain" Damien Hirst, which is currently on the market for 50 million pounds. Our British friends, we are coming to rescue you! Like the cheap Polish labour well known to you, Polish artist Peter Fuss wishes to relieve the British nation from such a great expense. "For the laugh of God" by Peter Fuss will be available in the Polish car on ART CAR BOOT FAIR at a competitive price of 1000 pounds. In addition, you may also buy a limited (1000 copies) edition of signed and numbered graphics for only 1 pound each. You will not have to wait for tickets anymore to seea skull set with diamonds, and the time of watching Fuss's skull willcertainly not be limited to 5 minutes! To make his work, Peter Fuss used about 9870 pieces of glass polished and cut to look like diamonds, worth 250 pounds and spent 18 hours to complete the piece. Income from sale of Fuss's skull and its accompanying graphics is supposed to amount to 2000 pounds - this is eight times as much as the invested amount! Before the skull goes to the trade fairs to London, it can be seen inPoland, during the Modelator event in Modelarnia, which will take place on28 June.

This is great. Answering another artist is really a delicate matter (and trust me, I know how it can fail). But here, the perfect match is created. It not only lives off the other work, and lives well, gives it a wonderful ironic twist, but also manages to play on the idea of production and even on the stereotype of cheap Polish labor!
One of the best aspects of this project is that it does not stop at an idea. It is not a conceptual work. Someone actually goes and does this, speaking on the very same level as the original statement. And with a terrific sense of humor.
Peter Fuss has been making some interesting work, most of it apparently attracted to controversy. I have been watching him from afar. Some of his previous work (see, for example, his Three Billboards About Love) is poignant and intense while remaining elegant, if not "beautiful". What I like about them, and what makes me uncomfortable as well, is the state of tension between the will of changing something and the need for a distanced, often ironic look, that tends towards a critical fatalism - if I can use that term (a situation where the work does nothing in the sense of working towards an alternative to whatever it criticizes, and appears to be presenting it as a horrible but unavoidable reality).
"For the Laugh of God" has the wonderful quality of being at the same time a critique and a development, a variation on a theme. Irony does not finish its scope. But then, of course it speaks a very different language. The lightness and double-meaning (after all, it is a skull) resemble Yorick's. There is a game between kitsch, luxury and rottenness that, to me, outplays master Hirst.
I would love to buy this. Unfortunately, not only am I completely broke, but I consider this is an opportunity that has to be understood, appreciated and used by the British. So maybe a print?


More on Damien Hirst's work here, on Peter Fuss's art here, and on other Polish related artists here.

Technorati: fine art, art installation, visual art, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Defining place

I am here:

For a synchronic look, you go here (wonderful!). For a diachronic one, you go here. (and explore the rest of the blog as well).

Technorati: photography, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Changing Identities

1.Redesigning flags according to clients' wishes.

2.Redesigning your identity in Second Life.
Notice the guy's t-shirt : "World without strangers".

Telling stories. Andy Huang times two

There are two Andy Hunag's living in the US and making great animation.

1. Andy Huang, a student of arts and animation at the University of Southern California, brings us Doll Face, a fairy-tale about... to be honest, I was so pleased with the visual aspect of the video, at first I completely missed the story. Let me give you this opportunity, too.

So, the story is, well, simple. But the doll is charming, the melancholy lightness of it, the delicate texture. Should we always ask for more?

2. Andy Huang, a graduate of communications design from Pratt University, introduces us to a world where design meets animation meets a baroque sense of humor. His is a polyphonic world, one that flies in all directions, cares not about narrative but about a certain shape, balance, impact.

Both Andys have some things in common. Their work is slick, clean, well-focused, it is not afraid of pop, of a certain type of flashiness.
On the other hand, they represent two different choices. One tends towards clean narrativity, a beginning a middle an end, (and in this order...), the other seems much closer to visual arts, chaos is welcome, Flash animation, clean powerpointy cuts, the new digital collage...
This is really a very serious issue: the consequences of each of these options are impressive. Of course, they can be combined, interpolated, tried out and thrown out at will... But there is such a thing as a body of work, career progress, or artistic development. And there is a need for storyline, for things happening that cause other things happening. Causality. And yet, from the perspective of contemporary art this seems so petty, so ridiculous, when you have all these broken, mashed up, re-redone languages... As if it weren't an issue. New playwriting? Experimental cinema? Installations? Maybe. And yet, while participating in all these experiments, while promoting them and enjoying them, I somehow still feel the deep thirst for story.

Lose virginity - the right way

...at the Lost Virginity World, by Dominic Wilcox.

Ursula Sokolowska - the self as projection

Indeed, it looked suspicious.
You see, the combination of a mouth and a flower is usually considered sensual.
But in Ursula Sokolowska's art? This may be erotic. Actually, it may be considered sexual. But there is something too disturbing about it to make us think of a feminine, sensual image. The way the mouth is open, somewhat like at a medical exam - and then there's the projected image, which highlights some of the traces while completely eliminating, flattening out others. Thus, the mouth is both deep and shallow. The image spreads, but is strangely attached to the body that supports it.
See another example, my favorite:
Here, the limits are out-of-focus, only the lips remain crystal clear. And the void inside. This is one of the most purely baroque images I know, combining an apparent decorativeness with a powerful tension between the still and the life. As if beneath the surface of artistic illusion we received a sudden gust of reality.

And now, the proportions change. Sokolowska seems to focus more. Focus more on herself, and just focus more. The images can be seen as absolutely terrifying. Like some nightmare, some horrific vision.
And this is a vision, a vision of the artist's past, images of her childhood as the child of Polish immigrants. What we see are all the scary things one might associate with emigration: poverty, tough family relations, a feeling of loss and despair. A small child in hostile surroundings, be they a forest or a kitchen. And from time to time, the mother figure.


The child's face is taken from old pictures. And projected on faceless dolls. It actually looks like this face does not belong here. Which is possibly the most frightening.


But then, we should not forget the distance that is played out when using projection. Once again, the depth and the shallowness/surface play a subtle game. What we see is not a memory. It is a highly formalized game with memory. What captivates in these images is the uncertainty as to whether the form has made the ground safe enough for us to look. After all, a girl is staring at us from the picture. Funny thing, to use the technique of projection. As in a Freudian projection. Or in an image that is sent away from us, just to appear again. Paradoxically closer than the original.

Technorati: photography, visual art, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Pina Bausch Remix

And here is the original.


(via)

Technorati: dance, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Szpilman Award: carpe diem, one ephemeral step at a time

An absolutely delightful organization called the Szpilman Foundation (whose motto is "Organizing Moments for People") (and who unfortunately has a lot of their site in German) is for the 5th time organizing an absolutely delightful event:

The SZPILMAN AWARD is awarded to works
that exist only for a moment or a short period of time.

The purpose of the award is to promote such works whose
forms consist of ephemeral situations.

The project is brilliant. I still haven't been able to figure out why one of the elements of the prize (besides a 'dynamic amount of money') is a residency in the Polish village of Cimochowizna. But hey, they pay for transport and all!
As for the winners. Well, so far I am not convinced... Which might mean there is room for one of us! The projects I seem to like the most are the ones made by the very people from the Szpilman Foundation (outside of the contest context), such as creating a performance with a lot of strangers and extremely little time.

Of all the finalists and winners of the Szpilman Award from previous years, my favorite one, I think, is this one:


Shannon Bool, Partially Renovated Floor

Shannon Bool purges the floor in her studio at the academy of arts
of the paints and muck of the last 15 years in order to bring back the
original oak parquet.

I am ready to admit that it's very simple, and that similar works have been around for a couple of years. And I like it.
What I like about Bool's work is the sense of transparency. In her later works she insists even more on the relation between what is found (and so, present, previous, old) and what is introduced (see her portfolio on the link on this page). There is an element of vandalism that is always intriguing. Still, I find that this earlier work is so special precisely because it plays the vandalism card like a double-edged sword. For once, we can say that the original, wooden floor is the vandal! This is something to think about, in many contexts. Art history, architecture, urbanism, but also more general: the offense of going back.

Another question is if this should qualify for the Szpilman Award. Generally speaking, many of the selected works do not seem to be as ephemeral as one might want them to be. They are too well documented, too gallery-conscious, too stable, and that, to me, makes them problematic. Not that I insist on total formal rigor, only the time factor seems to me like the very essence of the Award. Beyond the fact that it makes the works often difficult to "sell", or at least to consider on par with other types of art, it simply is about something slightly different. Lighter, maybe.

Technorati: contest, art contest, visual art, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Artist's Development Toolkit: introduction to a review

This is extremely difficult. Trying to analyze yourself as an artist is a hell of a job. There seems to be never enough distance, and especially in contemporary art the frontiers are blurred, not only between genres, but also between types of activity. Some ideas are half-realized, some become realized too quickly, or in a direction I don't necessarily find ideal. The core I am left with is a very unstable one. Of course, this is probably saying more about myself than about the general state (!) of being a "contemporary artist".
The Artist's Development Toolkit is perfect for someone who already knows fairly well what he is doing and where he is heading. It helps in organizing ideas, in realizing the roads that still remain under-explored, and above all, in looking at the (mainly production-based, not artistic) obstacles in your career in a cool, distant way. All this through a self-help methodology. You answer questions, than you read your questions and get some suggestions on how to analyze them. (Don't forget to click on the little "+" signs, they give you extra info that is often much better than all the rest).
To someone really confused, it might bring only despair. It doesn't give answers, doesn't guide you. And we're not talking artistic guidance, but production, career guidance.
It is also an extremely long process. For the patient ones.


So if you're patient, not too lost, not too desperate, if you have a specialized field you're working in, a public, if you pretty well know where you are heading, this may help you. If you really, really need help, then maybe it's better you go and get some - and maybe use this as additional support.
Let me know how it worked out for you!

Oh, and if you want more artist resources, see here.

Technorati: contemporary art, art, contemporary art, vvoi

The match made of wood: David Lefkowitz

Some of the most brilliant work being done these days is tautological. (And when that is not bad, it is good). It brings about the best of what is absolutely unspectacular - while managing to keep it at an incredibly low-profile level. It brings about thrilling experiences of the nearly-left-over or nearly-forgotten. At the same time it gets eerily close to both the esoteric and the trivial. And that is a fascinating tension.
If the depth of art cannot be imposed, doesn't that signify there is room for fetching the trivial and bringing it all the way to the esoteric? Isn't this a road we make constantly, constantly redefining what we mean by trivial, and what is too far out?



See more of Lefkowitz here and here. Buy his work here.

PS: Have you noticed how this trunk (named Stump 2 by it's author) is elephant-like?

(via)

Technorati: painting, installation, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Ducky

Cathryn Jiggens, Ducky

What is this flight that doesn't take off, what are those hands that do not belong to the body, what are those wings that need rescuing, and this all too closed eye, and this all too open beak? What are the fingers whose tips have drowned?

Technorati: photography, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Six degrees of separation

You know the idea.
Now go here - and see where you get.

Technorati: internet art, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Notes on the show «Where Does The Light Go When It's Gone?» by João Fiadeiro.

Notes on «Para onde vai a luz quando se apaga?». Premiere May 4, 2007, Culturgest.

1. The performance does not concern the disappearance of light. Rather, it is about the disappearance of shadow. The shadow of causality, of logic, of story-ness, the shadow of the human realm as we know it. Here, what we have are states. Functions. The performers don't act, they remain in action. The very first scene, where the musician walks along all the walls of the stage scratching them with a small microphone, says it all: this is going to take time, and you better deal with it. If you're not happy with it, you might just as well leave now. I will remain as long as it takes. And when it's over, it's simply gone. This doesn't need to lead anywhere but here, to the sound table. It doesn't need to tell a story other than my trip from there to here. Unsatisfied? Yes, I can understand. But can't you just appreciate it, for what it is - somebody's notion of honesty?

2. What is your function? Are you being the person that listens? Or the one that speaks? Are you the guy that draws lines? Are you the dancer girl? And what does that mean? Do you fit in when you do your thing? Do you ever not fit in? What comes out of your standing here?

3. The dancer girl - Márcia - never actually dances. She sort of warms up, tries a jump or two, prepares her body. She gets comfortable. And leaves. While she does that, a snail race is being prepared. During the general rehearsal, when Lenaic put the snails, she didn't align them to make them advance in the same direction, and they just dispersed all over. I asked her after if it was on purpose. She said no, and at the premiere they are quite carefully aligned. And I miss the havoc. I regret having asked the question.

4. The risk is huge. About half of the show is improvised. The structure remains, but the way of filling in, of respecting the tough rules of Real-Time Composition, is up to the performers, and depends on every show. It can always go wrong. It would really make more sense to see two show in a row, every time.

5. The general rehearsal goes very bad. They are aggressive, tired, unimaginative. They choose either the simplest and flat solutions, or they jump off into something completely nonsensical and unrelated. Things seem chaotic. The show ends with a quote from Deleuze, about how happiness/joy empowers. It sounds ironic.

6. The premiere goes incredibly well. Everything is right. The improvised parts all come together. The performers are strong, at first still somewhat too heavy and inexplicably over-present (too dramatic, too «significant», as if they were constantly in the middle of to be or not to be), but the performance quickly gains a good pace.

7. At a certain point, Lenaic leaves the stage with a microphone, and we hear her describing everything she sees. At the same time, Gustavo remains on stage alone, creating an abstract and quite beautiful installation. She walks up to a security guard and starts asking her questions. When asked about what was important to her in working here, the guard answers that the people she meets: «So many good experiences and good encounters. Different people. Artists, normal people...» The audience bursts with laughter. Gustavo keeps on with his paper line.

8. These beautiful visual images, all created in front of our eyes. Imagine witnessing the creation of an installation. One that includes spoken text, and maybe an actor or two, from time to time. But really, it's just like watching a construction sight. Exciting, boring, curious.

9. I talk to the performers after the show. They all seem very happy. Only at a certain point Cláudia, João's long-time collaborator, looks at me and says: «Oh my god, what is it going to be like tomorrow? I don't know why it goes well when it goes well. I still don't know.»

10. For the neophytes: don't expect a fridge.

To see a video of a fragment cut from the final version of the show, go to re-al.org, then click on Artistas - João Fiadeiro - Para Onde Vai A Luz Quando... - Filmes - 1.

How dare we make art?

After World War 2, Karl Jaspers wrote a by now classic text about guilt, The Question of German Guilt. In his taxonomy, one of the categories of guilt is the "metaphysical guilt", which could be explained as the guilt for not sacrificing ourselves to help others. That is, living our lives and not doing everything we can to make a difference.
The question is, how far can we go? Shouldn't we abandon all forms of art (and entertainment), then, if we are to concentrate all efforts on saving the world? Is there an actual possibility that it would change something?
Of course, that sounds rather extreme. (And that's why Jaspers considers this a metaphysical guilt, shared by everyone and beyond the possibility of making it disappear in any way but through self-sacrifice). But somewhere here lie very difficult issues: why should one spend my time making quite self-centered installations when one could be working in an effective, world-changing organization? Should art be justifiable, like any other product, service, activity?
It isn't about art giving the possibility to do more. Because quite frankly the above video is an exception, and works exactly because it is one. Maybe, it is about the possibility of assuming uselessness?
Beauty is a great motivator. Indeed. (In João Fiadeiro's most recent performance (soon more about that), a sentence from Deleuze (roughly remembered by me): «I started reading Leibniz's Ethics. I am discovering that joy brings more power to act»)
But can we honestly say we make art, and see art, to motivate us? Isn't it a goal in itself? And if so, can't we spend our energy in a better way? How dare we make art?

Addart

Here's a brilliant step in the long and often difficult challenge of playing the market's rules as an artist. More precisely, the idea is to use the same mechanism that keeps ads away from our web browsing - and turn it into art.
Adblockers are pieces of software that help filter out the commercials that appear on most web pages. Addart goes a step further - and replaces the empty left-over space with, you guessed it, art. So what you get is actually a sort of a virtual art gallery in all the places where you had publicity. Wouldn't it be nice to apply that in real life?
The work is still in prototype mode, but looks promising.
In the example below, the publicity is replaced by Mario Bros. clouds.


(via)

Looking through canvas. Małgorzata Ata Warias

This is definitely too gray, too melancholy, too self-abandoning. Looking from left to right, into the end, curving himself from somewhere where the beginning hasn't even started - straight into the blue, self-effacing space. And look at his look. A sight that has more shadow than seeing.
I like it.

Sticks

Contemporary art could be described as the look-out for presence. There are very pragmatic ways in which presence can be experienced. If anything can be art when given the right focus, we need to look for ways of better focusing. So when we get it, we get it. Thus, it is a constant game between what we know and what we think we might have known, had it been a slightly different setting. Darren Harvey-Regan is a beautiful example of finding what is already there, of creating what had already been there and just giving it that delicate push which makes us grow our of here and into the work.
And if you think you know exactly what it is, it might just mean you need to look more carefully, and take the time to see the landscape he has found.

Off topic: Playboy celebrates 31 years in Brasil

Cowscapes by Rachael Sudlow

You can spare yourself the trouble of reading the artist's statement. These landscapes speak for themselves. See the online gallery here. I labeled this post as 'funny', though I don't consider it just a joke. It has real beauty (come on, stop chuckling...). Somehow, though, I didn't label it as land art.

Technorati: photography, land art, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Simply enjoying design

The two lowest steps of this staircase are used as shoe drawers. Found here.

This is what this chest sounds like. Unfortunately the people that make them seem to think children are the only ones who would enjoy this type of furniture. Found here. This rings a bell - I remember discovering an amazing installation, a table where one would hear sounds through the vibrations going through your body. Does anyone have a clue?

There is a pleasure in the usable object that is simply magical. This glovy feeling - it fits like a glove, and it feels like a glove, and it can be the most exquisite thing. Some sort of harmony, I guess. As if design gave us the world as we had imagined it ought to be, though only now does it live up to expectations. Artsy art rarely seems to head that way. (If we insist on distinguishing the two).

Technorati: design, interior design, furniture, art, contemporary art, vvoi