Blog Post 6 – Critical Response to Portfolio

Tags

analysis, exploring creative arts, portfolio

 

As required for the self-portrait exercise from Week 4, ‘The Artist as the Subject’, I presented a series of journal entries and accompanying photographs from one week in my life. Inspired by different measures of visual culture in the arts, notably John Berger’s Ways of Seeing and Erica Scourti’s “Life in Ad Words”, I wanted my final portfolio pieces to be tightly compressed, while allowing space for an expansive cross medium. Through my own research, I was further influenced by the artistic layout of personal statement in a public arena. By hanging word cut outs in the outside environment, it was as if as presented by blogger Anna Ladd’s portfolio piece ‘Things I Told the Internet, but Didn’t Tell My Mom’, and began working segments of my own writings: thoughts, experiences and observations. Following the format of Ernest Hemingway’s famous ‘six word novel’: ‘Baby Shoes: For Sale, Never Worn’, in the field of flash fiction, I narrowed my journal entries down to small extracts, and compressed the diary from several pages into 7 six-word sentences. Crossing private thought with a public platform, I allocated my posters to various spots around my hometown, places I walk by every day but have never truly engaged with. By leaving personal statements outside for everyone to see, I aim to highlight the juncture of privacy and revelation, mirroring the way we readily use the internet to declare personal information without really taking into consideration the exposure that is out of our control. Through this piece I hope to put into perspective the cross currents of communication through seven separate stories that may be read as one, pieced together and understood however one may please, according to context and arrangement, the way people understand each other or even themselves, according to communication, perspective and circumstance.

Six Words, Seven Stories (2014)

Tags

exploring creative arts, jessica gregor, portfolio

Six Words, Seven Stories (2014)

My final portfolio piece for creative arts class.

Artist: Jessica Gregor

Photography: Zoe Gregor (lady-dolphin)

Inspired by:

http://www.annaladdphoto.com/things-i-told-the-internet

http://www.sixwordstories.net/

 

 

 

Bite the apple, Eve.

Tags

andres amador, community gardens, fallen fruit, sustainable art

SUSTAINABLE ART.

During the late hues of summer, a main street in my hometown introduced an ongoing community garden project. Locally prominent for its bustling restaurant strip, O’Shanassy Street is inhabited with garden spaces that once offered very little more than dry shrubbery and rotten garbage. These public spaces weren’t beautiful, and they certainly weren’t efficient. Over the recent months, the street’s environment has taken a turn for the better. The gardening project, which I believe, was proposed by the owners of Sunbury’s local fruit market, has blossomed successfully. Once neglected garden beds are now growing lush with herbs and green vegetables, and these plants are tended to lovingly by townspeople. Some are even used as ingredients in the restaurant kitchens.

Sustainable art projects such as this are becoming more and more available for wide consumption. Notable is the Los Angeles-based Fallen Fruit, built of collaborative team of David Burns and Austin Young, whose various projects use fruit “as a filter to examine distinct places and histories, issues of representation and ownership, and address questions of public versus private space.” Part of the ‘Fallen Fruit Manifesto’ highlights certain principles of the organisation, one standing out in particular: the aim to “Open dialogue within neighbourhoods about public spaces”.

There appears to be a mystery in the power of nature in the neighbourhood. Every time I take a walk through town, somebody is nurturing chives, removing windblown litter or straightening the little dividing fence, and it’s quite pleasant to see these subtle little glimmers of love during the average day. In the past, vandalism had been a prominent deterrent regarding many community projects, but astoundingly these young gardens are growing well and unobstructed. The growth of a vegetable garden seems to mirror growth in community. Perhaps these shared practices are protected by a safe, familiar archetype, a sense of home. The very idea of ‘gardening’ triggers in my mind a picturesque scene where a quaint old couple are pottering around pot plants in straw hats and overalls, saying hello to the neighbourhood kids and sharing a pitcher of lemonade in the shade.

Another prominent contender in the world of sustainable art are eco-paintings. Andres Amador is an artist in the field of sustainability who uses the beach as his canvas. During the hour before the tide recedes, Amador skilfully creates sand drawings using a single stick. His method creates beauty completely independent of waste and materials and the art is washed away naturally by the tide, fleeting awe and entertainment of whomever may be lucky enough to pass by. While these sand drawings may not fill the stomach like fresh produce, they are definitely food for thought. Sustainable art continues to be practiced in endless varieties all over the world, and the wide response is hard work, celebration and comradeship. It goes to show that in the Age of the Screen, people still gather around nature – a little elbow grease can go a long way. 

Relational Aesthetics

Tags

Look Up documentary, Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational aesthetics, Smart phones

Do you ever feel as if your daily activity doesn’t really exist unless broadcast online? You didn’t really go backpacking in Europe if you haven’t updated your travel blog. I certainly didn’t go out for drinks with friends if I haven’t posted a haughty mosaic photoset of the evening on Instagram. What exactly does this evolving dependence on technology mean? It is The Age of the Internet and we are the competitors in a virtual rat race.

For decades now, the art of socialising has been descending at a steady rate. Geronimo. The world, one time our oyster, is now clammed shut. We measure each other based on the content frozen before us on a hand-held device, we are on-air and interpersonal. By informing some-hundred acquaintances of our latest meal, latest motive, and latest vague musing, we lack the means to communicate what actually matters. We scroll as we stroll, acknowledging a gratuitous snap of somebody-or-other’s new scarf and due failing to help a passer-by catch theirs racing in the breeze.

Every day, trains are running and filling with people shoulder to shoulder, tired and quiet with eyes downcast, while behind the screens our profiles, timelines and chat apps are burgeoning with deliberate vivacity. Life is communicated vicariously through gadgets. By the end of 2013, global smartphone penetration exploded from 5% of the global population in 2009, to 22%. That is in an increase of nearly 1.3 billion smartphones in four years. (Heggestuen, 2013). Through obsession with the menial, have we personified the mortal fear of becoming obsolete, or is mortality a concept too Keatsian for this era of 24 hour surveillance?

A recent documentary entitled ‘Look Up’ by writer and director Gary Turk urges us shut down our devices and start up our interactions. The irony is, this piece is communicated because it was spread virally around the internet. Although reception is shaky, the movement has proved eye-opening for millions of networkers. This recognition of cultural shift rings similar to the work of Nicolas Bourriaud, art critic, philosopher and Director of the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, an art school in Paris. In his collection of essays ‘Relational Aesthetics’ published in 2002, Bourriaud states:

“We feel meagre and helpless when faced with the electronic media, theme parks, user-friendly places, and the spread of compatible forms of sociability, like the laboratory rat doomed to an inexorable itinerary, littered with chunks of cheese…For anything that cannot be marketed will inevitably vanish…The social bond has turned into a standardised artefact.” (Bourriaud, 2002)

I believe the crux of Relational Aesthetics magnifies the ‘departure of the whole of human relations and their social context’ (Bourriaud, 2002). A field of participatory art, this social movement made a retaliatory attempt to quash social isolation, urging “interactive, user-friendly and relational concepts” in the agitated and unwelcoming atmosphere of typical museum structure, which is beginning to mirror the human world, the constitution of art and beyond.
Presently, we see that the structure of relations are flimsy, if not forgotten. The internet becomes the museum, organising our archives into systematic triviality. As long as we are profiling every little movement, we become less prolific – take a break, and look around.

Bibliography:

 Book

Bourriaud, N. (2002). Relational aesthetics. 1st ed. [Dijon]: Les Presses du réel.

• Website
  
•  Heggestuen, J. (2013). One In Every 5 People In The World Own A Smartphone, One In Every 17 Own A Tablet [CHART]. [online] Business Insider Australia. Available at: http://www.businessinsider.com.au/smartphone-and-tablet-penetration-2013-10 [Accessed 13 May. 2014].
• DVD, video, or film
• Look Up. (2014). [film] Gary Turk.

‘The Naked City’ – Guy Debord (1957)

During its lifespan of 15 years as an avant-garde cultural movement, the Situationist International (1957-1972) shed light upon many of the conditions and limitations of urban society – laying considerable focus on the way maps held a stern, designated structure over one’s perpetual spatial awareness in cities such as Paris and New York. Self-proclaimed front-runner of the Situationist International, Guy Debord was interested in a far more elastic and inspiring exploration of one’s aesthetic environment. Searching beyond the obvious limits of publicised maps, Debord was the drive behind the ‘derive’. This psychogeographical term was developed in order to define the journey of introspection within our environment and to challenge the ‘question of the construction and perception of urban space’ (McDonough)[1]. The French ‘derive’ translates literally to the English ‘drift’, and refers to an ‘unplanned journey through a landscape’ (Wikipedia, 2014). [2]

Removing the structures of cartography, Debord manipulates the derive in his “psychogeographic” map entitled ‘The Naked City’ (1957). Deliberately fragmented, Debord’s composition of 19 sections of a map of Paris demonstrates a “subjective and temporal experience of the city as opposed to the seemingly omnipotent perspective of the planimetric map” (Sant, 2004). [3]
For centuries, mapping has been used as tactic to allow navigation of space and place, providing dependable directions to get to your destination. Yet challenging the theory of objectivity, ‘The Naked City’, as an example of Situationist maps, provides “a useful example of visualizing a subjective view of the city.” (Sant, 2004)

While Guy Debord is believed to be somewhat of a revolutionary, art history Professor Tom McDonough, in his thesis ‘Guy Debord and the Situationist International: Texts and Documents’, retaliates that the idea of ‘derive’ was considered 300 years earlier, in 1653 with Carte du Tendre by French novelist Madeline du Scudery. This fictional map presents a ‘lover’s land’, using the allegory of the spatial journey ‘to trace possible histories of a love affair’ (McDonough). So it seems, the craft of derive is an age old truth, quietly chasing the efforts of cartography.

A technique to relinquish the confines of structural capitalism, derive allows any person to become an explorer of their own right. In these contemporary times, Debord’s ideology still exists. Pedestrian-based live art event ‘En Route’ promotes and organises the exploration of the contours of cities, urging a realisiation of our surroundings, in which “the private and the public, imaginal and concrete, intersect and overlap.”[4]

 

Sources:

1.McDonough, T 2004, Guy Debord and the Situationist International: Texts and Documents, MIT Press, Cambridge.
2.Wikipedia 2014, Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia, viewed 14 April 2014, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A9rive&gt;.
3.Alison Sant 2004, Redefining the Basemap, viewed 14 April 2014, <http://www.intelligentagent.com/archive/Vol6_No2_interactive_city_sant.htm&gt;.
4. http://www.onestepatatimelikethis.com/enroute.html

Grapefruit

Tags

yoko ono grapefruit pamplemousse creative arts

 

Yoko Ono’s ‘Pamplemousse’ (‘Grapefruit’) is a collection of bizarre and peaceful instructions containing a quiet rhythm, soothing, like a familiar set of hands clasping or a steady dripping tap. The craftwork of her pieces challenge the reader’s perspective in attempt open our minds a little wider to the environment around us and the movement within. It’s as if she knows something we don’t, and guides us calmly toward a great secret: the truth behind these pieces flows between the lines.

Throughout her career, Ono’s demonstrative pieces have always invited the figurative to meet the physical. This resonates within her Central Park Pond Piece and her Pea Piece, where she encourages us to leave clues and objects, to shed the load and leave pieces of ourselves in the places we’ve been. ‘Pamplemousse’ further invites us to reach beyond physical limitations, namely where Ono urges us to ‘fly’, to harness spirals of imagination and creation in order to develop a heightened sense of living.  Draped with a delicate mystique, these instructions are incredibly uplifting. Having been translated from Japanese prose to English, ‘Grapefruit’ rings with traditional earthy celebrations and focus on the imaginative plane.

Still an advocate for spreading peace, Yoko Ono urges the movement for unity and serenity on a global scale. With her continuous transdisciplinary work, her career and artistic/political influence has survived far beyond the 1950s-1960s. Ono’s philosophies are voiced almost daily in this modern era, she is active on Twitter and recently held an exhibition as part of the 2013-14 Sydney International Art Series at Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art.

Arguably one of the world’s most legendary, Yoko Ono remains a highly relevant artist, musician and activist, ‘Grapefruit’ continues churning with concerns, ideologies and experiments which are still incredibly relevant, almost 50 years after the publication. Yoko Ono’s offers trajectories revolutionary thinking is bound and captured with Grapefruit, and it is clear that her union with John Lennon (see introduction) allowed each of them a fruitfulness beyond the structures of time and space and matter. After reading ‘Grapefruit’, it’s easy to believe Ono’s words are the ointment for our wounded planet. Some may think her to be stuck in a realm of the psychedelic and hallucinogenic, but regardless, her art communicates a contemporary expressionism like no other, and this iconic woman brings to the page a trigger for wild creativity and meditative liberation.

-A SATURDAY NIGHT MANIFESTO-

Tags

exploring creative arts

 Attending a 21st Birthday

THE GIFT:
People never say what they mean. “You don’t have to get me anything” actually translates into:
“I expect you to spend half of your paycheck on a birthday present that I’m going to put aside quicker than a check out chick packing groceries”. So we must fashion a window of time to accommodate to the search for a collaboration of last minute gifts for the birthday girl:
Vodka from the tattooed man, perfume from the sweet scented chemist, a bright pink lei, etc.

PERFORM BAPTISM:
A solid explanation as to why the shower needed to last an hour.

SATURDAY BEST:
Put on a mask and choose a costume. Practice in the high shoes. It’s important to be proud and tall.

LET THE GAMES BEGIN:
It’s crucial to savour the first sip in solitude. Notice how the neurotransmitters in your brain begin to spark. Get in the car and go, thanks for the lift, Ma.

ALLOW EGOTISM:
Spot the hostess in the orange dress. Happy birthday, don’t panic, you look great, and so do the desserts, to which she said “I know, I made them.”

DRINK TOO MUCH:
The magic potion of alcohol has been provided for a reason: social elasticity. Enjoy yourself, mingle.
Next time slow down before taking part in the annual rounds of tequila shots (a major component of any Sunbury residential event.) There’s always next time.

DISCLAIMER: It seems apart from biological obligations, extended relatives attend birthday parties to tsk tsk at the thirsty youth, and judge the new home décor.

If we could allow a brief moment of rest while the room is spinning:        ____________________

 

CUE EXISTENTIAL CRISIS: Something about the hyperactivity of any local birthday party sends the average consumer into a half hour of muddied self-reflection. Honesty and delusion combine to create wild philosophies and staccato monologue. This was of course to be shared with a vague acquaintance, as close friends are unquestionably disinterested.

HAND OUT COMPLIMENTS: After recovering from the dramatics, when able to wander around more freely, I spot my friend and his new Dali-esque moustache.
“Hi, you look surreal.” (and I quote…myself). He didn’t get the joke. So we got some pizza.

THE BALLROOM THEORY: The clock strikes 12, and in lieu of turning into a pumpkin, everybody at the ball decides to dance. The music syllabus includes: 80s hits, a disgruntled DJ, demonstrative dance circles with the odd wobbly waltz and shabby salsa. Then there’s awkwardly running into your ex while he presents a jolting rendition of The Robot that matches his awful haircut.

HOMERUN:  As the evening came to an end, and off ladies’ feet came the shoes, it was time to call Dada to pick me up and the end of the performance came by washing away Saturday night’s surrealism.