Firstdraft Emerging Curators Program
Upcoming April-May 2011 exhibition that I am included in at Firstdraft, curated by Kim Fasher and Sarah Mosca at SuperKaleidoscope.
SuperKaleidoscope http://www.superkaleidoscope.com/current-projects.php
A Room for Emma Goldman
Photo credits: Sevak Dilanchian
I would especially like to thank Sevak Dilanchian, Kim Fasher, Sarah Mosca, SuperKaleidoscope, and the National Art School Sydney for their help, support, encouragement and love. Thanks Y’all.
This recent work, A Room for Emma Goldman, is one I had been thinking of for some time now, and had the opportunity to realize for the occasion of the SuperKaleidoscope ‘Featured Artist’ page for november 2010. Upon that page is text written by myself, and a bio put together by Sarah Mosca, along with some imagery of the installation. For this (fuck you image) post the aim is to go into the ideas behind the work in some more depth outside of the SuperKaleidoscope site, which can be viewed here.
I’ve always considered this work (the initial idea at least) best functioning as a duality, a contradiction, between what one is viewing, through the projection, to what one is potentially hearing via the headphones. In this work, the audio is the image maker, being facilitated through an Apple iTunes visualizer setting, using the Fountain Music plug-in as a means to generate imagery through the sound as it is played through iTunes.
This particular plug-in was chosen purely for its visual qualities. I really wanted to produce imagery that was alluring and beautiful, that generated a visual form to function as something inducive of a certain state. Here, the state I was after was one of bliss, akin to the transcendent aims of psychedelia and mysticism. This becomes the platform to create a shock between how the actual imagery appears, and the vehicle which gives that imagery its form.
iTunes functions well as the location for the audio, and the projection through the visualizer as it adequately facilitated my purpose as a means to bring together the visual, with the aural, components of the work. The aim was to give form, through a visual language, to the text of Emma Goldman.
This visual element becomes duplicitous, determinate on the viewers level of interaction with the work, through the audio text streamed within the headphones. The audio within the installation, that facilitates the generation of imagery through the iTunes application visualizer, is a reading of Emma Goldman’s 1927 book Anarchism and Other Essays (available through LibriVox). Here, then, arises a contradiction between the ‘blissed out’ intent of the imagery, and the content that allows that imagery to become manifest. I was very much interested in the possibility for the negation of a visual state, or experience, upon contact with the means that allowed the illumination to become manifest.
With the headphones positioned with the beanbag’s, the invitation is to become comfortable before the work. Beanbag’s could be understood as a means to relax into a ‘blissed out’ type of space through their cushioning and enveloping of one occupying them. Certainly there is a reference to the Beatnik generation of ‘zoning out’ , facilitated through drugs, music, and psychedelia. On the flip of this, there is action, for it was in fact this generation that articulated the philosophies of people like Emma Goldman through protests, equality, sexual liberation, and destabilization of government. I like also the formal quality of coloured beanbag’s dispersed throughout the room. There is an interconnectivity of people within a space through the form of the beanbag, even though there exists a clear spacial separation between individuals. This is why I was adamant in their usage, even when they proved difficult to obtain and other options were more readily available for the installation.
At some future point I aim to discuss more in-depth the work of Emma Goldman and my interest in the philosophy of Anarchy in the context of what we now view as Subculture. I’m sure there is a dominant cultural thread that I am missing, and everything outside of this is either categorized as “kitsch’, or ‘sub’. Many subcultural groupings that I have experienced clearly have a lineage to the thought and outcomes of Anarchy. Punk is an obvious one, but skateboarding, disco and surfing culture have an invested location within ideas expressed in Emma Goldman’s Anarchism and Other Essays. Some of these ideas and resulted sociological shifts, are what gives developments like Punk the possibility to exist.
A Room for Emma Goldman is a working project with an intent toward demystifying the stereotype of a male dominant expression of Anarchy, identified through the image of a young man hurling a bomb, crystalized through the May 4, 1886 Haymarket affair, where a pipe bomb was hurled at police, killing an officer. This image served to solidify public resent at the time toward the movement, and help form our (mis) understanding of Anarchist philosophy and action today: namely violence. Emma Goldman was arrested, jailed, deported and persecuted. She was however, often praised and celebrated as an academic and thinker, the outcomes of which are experienced day, and adequately negate the stereotype of Anarchism equating to destruction.
Photo credits: Sevak Dilanchian
Photo credits: Sevak Dilanchian
Photo credits: Sevak Dilanchian
Photo credits: Sevak Dilanchian
Studio Happenings
This post represents some work I am making in the studio at present. They involve images taken from the Internet, in this the case G20 summit held in 2009. My primary interest was in the use of these pre-existing images within the framework of their original function, whilst using the material employed to demonstrate or articulate the source in a concrete form. This starts with the use of large scale black and white copies that, through the materiality, relate back to the source of imagery being worked within. The black and white reproduction, as a copy, reinforces the culture from where such use may be found. Paste-up street posters and underground political statements are distributed in such a form through cost; extremely cheap to run an edition, and lifespan; not being a permanent campaign or fixture, most likely to be removed within a short period from its pasting.
Upon the framed work itself is placed black tape that becomes an obstruction into the imagery being presented. The motif for the tape came about in observations and interest in construction occurring around the city where windows, as yet without signage or inhabitants, would be made clear through the use of tape adhered to the surface to warn the public of the fact there is a window or glass sheeting ahead. These often take the form of a cross that runs diagonally corner to corner, here being the clearest signal of negation.
What also became significant to myself was another layer that existed that related to the act of looking itself. As with Robert Delaunay’s Eiffel Tower paintings, where the viewer would be represented as reflection, these ubiquitous taped glass panels on renovation sites began to reinforce, for myself at least, the very act of looking itself. These simple safety mechanisms are actually put in place to make the public observe, through looking, a potential danger ahead, forcing one to become more aware of their vision in navigating space.
Treachery of Images
(with apologies to Rene Magritte)
or…Reconfiguring Content Through Language (Text)
Here is a difficult post for me to get my head around, and one that I have definitely been putting off for some time. Basically it will aim toward observing some of the issues I am working through in regard with image proliferation, or saturation, as it exists, and is available, throughout the Internet. Where is the potential for this visual information to be reconfigured, so that it exists as a new work of art outside of original intent? What strategies are to be implemented to effectively alter context toward informing desired readings?
Within my own artistic practice I am very much interested in photography. This said, the realisation at this point in time is that the interest in this medium comes more from its use value, or function, rather than as a visual form in itself. On a critical level I myself found it extremely problematic to actually take my own photographic material. It just does not feel pertinent, or perhaps more appropriately, there is much more excitement in discovering the images others have made, in the objective relationship I have toward them, and the cultural significance that may be visually attached, notwithstanding, the cultural phenomena that is their source; the place of archive they now inhabit.
Thinking on a recent conversation with a colleague, John Bloomfield, regarding an upcoming show at Peloton, and his relationship to the photographic medium; obliquely follows some of my own considerations. Consciously directing discussion away from a Deluezian dialectic, following Barthes and his seminal ruminations on photography, Bloomfield’s position, as I understand it, is one of acceptance, almost symbiotically, of the photographic medium within his own painting practice. This is no trivial detail. Photography has been the single most important influence upon the painted medium since the use of oil paint. Within this artists practice I see the photographic functioning as painting, importantly, outside of the dialogue that is dictated by modernist, through to Postmodernist, considerations upon the act of photography as a visual institution.
With this slight tangent, I am aiming toward an understanding of this functionality touched upon in the context of photography. Artists, I am arguing, have realized that the parameters of discussion relating to photography have shifted. I certainly can’t help but wonder if the functional shift within this medium, through digital formations like Flickr and Photobucket, cheaper cameras and printing, phone cameras, and more to come, liberate visual artists, like Bloomfield, to exploit, or explore, other implications outside of these past dialogues? If so, photography then has emerged as another visual tool at the disposal of the contemporary visual artist. Hierarchies have became destabilised and artists are much more willing to negotiate an idea using whatever visual language is out there toward their own purposes. This varies from the Modernist hangover where a responsibility, or allegiance, toward a particular medium, style, or whatnot, is indistinguishable from holistic praxis.
An immediate problem that presents itself in re-using photographic material is this placement or context that locates the imagery outside, or in a more interesting interstice, than display, of the chosen work (as pointed out by my supervisor Su Ballard following my MFA seminar presentation). Merely displaying serves no purpose and is artistically lazy. The problem remains however to successfully reform the imagery outside this area of display and into a new formal placement of purposeful intent, and criticality.
One area of focus within my practice is manipulating chosen images from my collected photographic archive on the computer, and arranging them somehow into new modes of interpretation and understanding. The problem is realizing new forms to make this task possible. The first area of praxis I am working through is changing context through subtle, or non-intrusive means. By creating an environment for the images to function within, independent of their original source, the intent is that alternate registration is obtained through this act of placement, or displacement, dependant on your position.
The two images of the male and female portraits above are configured using such a visual structure. Each a webcam self-portrait (although I feel this is an inaccurate terminology on my part) these people have taken and posted online, I imagine, under the auspices of social networking. My interest in this as subject came out of the space where personal and private collides in a very formal way. There is an engagement with the screen (looking), and through posting, indication of an awareness of the broader online community, purging this of an intimate communicative act. What does this act do the individual? To what purpose? In any case, by taking these separate images out of the ‘computer’ space, and into an actual space, with actual form, the photographs, being placed opposite each other, enter a new form of dialogue. The images, detached from the online, take an alternate registration through relationships created within their placement and interaction within new visual constructs.
The second method in reconfiguring context is more intrusive through the use of text, or literature, to successfully (and most evidently) direct new readings for the imagery being re-used. Although interested in both applications, I am particularly curious about this direction for the implications that exist beyond this project, and consequences for broader artistic viewing and understanding within exhibitions, Museology, and other relative functions. Important for my current considerations with pre-existing imagery is the manner in which wall text functions toward understanding and viewer comprehension of works of art within their exhibits.
Presently, I am not aiming to make an argument for, or against, exhibition wall text. What is of interest is the methodology and mechanism institutions implement in directing viewer engagement and experience within their spaces. Such texts sit anywhere from purely didactic information relating to artist, title, material, provenance, etc; toward full explanation and artistic intent regarding artworks. These evidently, become very powerful devices in negotiating the public not only around an exhibit, but in establishing relationships with individual works and artist’s practices.
The possibilities for manipulating meaning and shifting context in my own re-use, or remix, of pre-existing photographic imagery become infinite. If Magritte raised the point that a painting of a pipe is not a pipe, (“Ceci n’est pas une pipe” (“This is not a pipe”). Rene Magritte La trahison des images (The Treachery of Images) 1928-29.), text then, is able to function in a way that potentially tells us anything. As long as there is a part in us that wants to believe it.
Digital Informations
The above is a screen-saver work that I made after arriving in Sydney from Dunedin. With no studio I turned to the computer as a means to create work that I was starting thing about whilst in New Zealand. This initial exploration into constructing work came out of my time spent researching and thinking about the space, and relationship, with being within the space of a computer, as object, and the virtual space that is the territory of the Internet.
After making this work I discovered the Twitter feeds of the artist On Kawara that relate to his telegram works, regularly posting “…”, followed by, “I AM STILL ALIVE”. This successful usage of the medium, or platform, Twitter, articulated what it was that interested me as an underlying proponent of social networking on the Internet. It seemed so much of the use value of such sites really functioned as a form of online graffiti, affirming to others that “I am here”, or in On Kawara’s instance, “I AM STILL ALIVE”.
I’m giving away the YOU screen-saver to anyone who wishes at no cost. Just contact me through the ‘Contact’ page under the header with your computer type and specs, and I will reply with information on how to install as a screen-saver if your system supports it.
Some of the most recent investigations being made (aside from a proposal being made for the Dunedin Public Art Gallery) within the studio is a series of digital works that look at web-based communication and information delivery. With Something More Real the text comes from actual news events from the date 20th February 2010. The accompanying A Quest for Something Different is a stream of my own thoughts which are directly configured to relate to Twitter feeds on the Internet. Each word used is added onto a coloured background (or alternate black and white) and run at .05 seconds each, creating a dizzying succession of colour, and a stream of undecipherable text that aims to function similarly to web information.
Lesser Abstraction at MOP Projects
This is an updated version of the invite/poster for Lesser Abstraction at MOP Projects, from 15th April to 2nd May, in Sydney. Here is a brief media release (that is still being written and finalized);
“Lesser Abstraction as a title for this MOP Projects exhibition has been arrived at with much careful and considered deliberation. The decision is important in defining a context for a broader dialogue around painting that these artists choose to enter, and an understanding of languages role as a determinate factor that sits parallel to a critical artistic practice. The title is the first piece of verbal language this dialogue confronts. Lesser Abstraction initially reads as cryptic, maybe descriptive of a certain type of painting, but inherently defines the simplicity of this exhibition as a curatorial concept; the possibility for abstraction as a visual construct to even exist. It is easy to think of paintings of painting, a formal concern of a specific medium, but these artists more engage with paintings of a culture: a culture that is already full of other paintings, and artworks, and images, and televisions, and street signs, and stuff.”
Its all Porn
This post relates to drawings I have been making in Photoshop of URL links that have been cut and pasted from the Internet. The idea started out of an interest into the functionality of imagery and a conscious intent at understanding this willingness to continue the creation of even more images. The Web has been a location for my investigations into the proliferation of images, and served as a means for myself to better comprehend the use function of pictures once they enter into this virtual medium.
Currently the drawings that relate to this investigation have intent at creating one image, or work, through the drawing, that directly precedes another image, which exists on the Internet. In presenting one image, there is the anticipation of something else, whether the promise of information, or even more imagery, the URL link acts as a precursor to something outside itself. Using the Internet as a source for imagery I made the decision, once exhausting investigations in Photobucket, Flickr and other platforms to locate the images to use, pornography was decided as the originator for the URL links. The primary motivation here is in the fact that pornography is pure image making. The reason this industry exists is to produce images, in fact it is inherently an image-making machine. Here it is worth emphasising that the graphic nature of the pictures used in this work was not so important in the decision making process, as to the fabrication of the images that was being referred too.
At this preliminary stage of the drawings I have been looking at varying methods of presenting the URL through the medium of Photoshop. Whether the drawings incorporate the somewhat painterly form, or the text only will be better known through studies and seeing the work in their printed state. This thinking will allow deciding on future forms to best articulate these URL works. Paintings are an obvious choice, but after making Stay Forever, neon could be a potential also.
Although very much at an investigative stage, I feel these drawings set work up for the commencement of my MFA at COFA, which will continue on for a very productive and creative year at the School of Art in Dunedin, New Zealand.
AM
Photo credit: Max Bellamy
Scaffolding, laser lights, strobe light, U.V. light, fluorescent lights, coloured lights, disco ball, smoke machines, Perspex, acrylic paint, plastic sheets, extension cable, clamps, cables, wiring, glass, multi-media speakers, mp3 player, sound
On 28th August 2009 Adam Goldstein was discovered dead in his New York City apartment. Better known as DJ AM, a celebrity deejay who has worked with pop mega star Madonna, was found to have accidentally overdosed from a mixture of cocaine, Oxycodine, Vicodin, Ativan, Klonopin, Xanax, Benadryl, and Levamisole (a drug used to cut cocaine). Late in 2008 DJ AM survived a Learjet crash that killed four, and injured the two other passengers on board, one being Goldstein, who subsequently began taking medication for post-traumatic stress as a result.
Upon hearing the news of DJ AM’s death, and the volume of web based reportage that proliferated from blogs and music websites (I actually first heard of his death through Twitter), I became interested in the cult that became DJ AM after the overdose. There was in fact a cult of DJ AM before he died, but it did seem afterward this status was magnified enormously. On so many levels this story appealed to me. Firstly, I was at the time, working and researching music sub-culture, and the studio work at this point was predominantly Disco, as evidenced in the Maybe, In the End, It Was a Dream show. There was also the interest in some type of immortality, as discussed and evidenced in the work/post Stay Forever, where the celebrity status of the individual lives on after death. Further is the nature of such environments, the veneer that at times is paper thin, and individuals within those cultures, like DJ AM, in their youth, famous and talented, exists such a tenuous and fragile existence that totally contradicts the image created of himself, and of the party, clubbing environment he was a part of.
An influence in the use of certain materials, such as the Perspex sheeting, was an effort to address the shiny façade, the glittering surface that presents the outer image of that environment. The veneer that was mentioned in this case took form with cheap plastic sheets that were subsequently painted in black acrylic paint. This produced a lustrous mirrored surface that reflected the space and activity that occurred around it. In the performative action of breaking this surface up, the tenuous outer image that ended with DJ AM’s overdose, existed in the form of these fractured, displaced shards that became a part of the work through its representation of the environment.
With the work AM my intention was to create an environment that was total visual destruction, falling apart, but nevertheless still functioned; within the crumbling structure would still be the ability to party amongst the ruins, defying, or oblivious to the surrounding chaos. I found that the most logical and cohesive way into this environment was through the materiality itself, which resulted in the usage of the stuff from such situations. Strobe lights, disco balls and laser lights are unmistakably fundamental elements of dance culture and club environments. One only needs a torch and disco ball to create such a context. So placing these objects within a collapsing structure served my intentions well as it allowed me to play off two, I guess, disparate formal relationships to achieve the final work, and I believe statement, that is AM. It is possible to see the work in two states, simply lights on and lights off. With both there is a definite beauty, but combined, referencing each, the dark underpinnings of the work as a whole become evident, and the veneer cracks, leaving everything around in disarray and disharmony.
Photo credit: Max Bellamy
Another point that became apparent with this work after it was created in the space was the manner in which it functioned as a stage. A stage ultimately creates a barrier. And as mentioned by Su Ballard during my MFA review of this work, was the constructions resistance to a three-dimensional, or sculptural registration. With this reasoning, AM existed on a frontal, two-dimensional-ish plane where the audience was blocked from fully investigating the work in the round. This was never intentional, and I can align this with my 2D painting sensibility. But in hindsight, now reflecting back on the work, there is something within this comment that I think is quite important in the context of what I have just mentioned regarding staging. If the physiognomy and the location of AM acted as an obstruction, then its function proved to be extremely similar to that of a stage within a club, gig or concert where there is a distinct demarcation between audience/performer.
An important factor with all the current work being made, as with in the past, is the use of material, and how this affects the registration and meaning. In actuality this can act as a signifier that is integral to the reading of the work itself. In making AM I identify a developmental shift in my methodology that has used actual material sourced from the environments of the places the work refers toward. This does seem like a logical and somewhat unremarkable discovery in that this particular effort was looking directly at dance culture. What I really try to articulate here is that it is often difficult in ones own involvement within their practice, especially out of a painting discipline, to bypass the ‘creation’ of the stuff used. That is not to suggest that the work as a whole is not ‘created’ by myself, but in using material that has been made outside of myself, most likely in a factory somewhere, has been an important direction in ‘creating’ an artwork out of that which already exists, not making or producing it from scratch.
Photo credit: Max Bellamy
In this context I am thinking directly of Nicolas Bourriaud’s Postproduction and his arguments for the role of artist as cultural deejay. My way of reading Bourriaud in this context has clear parallels with Lawrence Lessig and his concept of ‘Remix culture’ where both talk about the use material/medium that has a definite cultural relevance independent of the work of art being made with those materials. Lessig directs his argument, being a lawyer, toward issues of copyright and cultural control, but nonetheless uses the function of applying a pre-existing source to a new work as a cultural necessity, from reggae, through to artists like Girl Talk, where sampling other music defines their output. Bourriaud talks about the artist as someone who takes cultural signifiers and applies these toward their own practice. The idea of ‘sampling’ elements from the world into a new artwork is nothing new, Picasso and Braque used actual things from the world, like rope and newspaper clippings, to give the paintings a referent that already existed, that was identifiable, and questioned the ‘construction’ or fabrication of a work of art. Marcel Duchamp and the idea of the ‘Readymade’ is an obvious heir to Picasso and Braque’s philosophy of visual appropriation, but I do believe Bourriaud’s argument here, although similarities are evident, differs significantly.
Bourriaud’s remix’ or post-production, takes Duchamp’s Readymade as its starting point, and utilises the philosophy of manipulating existing forms to exist in a new context. This is exactly what his urinal did when submitted, and rejected, to the Society of Independent Artists 1917 exhibition in New York. The artists Bourriaud discusses in Postproduction appropriate objects similar to the methods of Duchamp, but are however much more concerned with the implications and signifier of those chosen objects when applied to their own work. As a deejay would sample records to suit her own context, Bourriaud’s argument is that artists are more freely using actual objects in the same way, sampling the stuff of the world, that has a history, or a use function, or a cultural significance, so all these relationship that are recognized carry over into the new work produced. An example of this is seen in the work of Gabriel Orozco and his political voicing’s through the manipulation of cultural instances and utilitarian objects. A family sized Citroen converted into single person vehicle, or the cultural institution of sport used for political purposes, such as a round billiard table, Carambole with Pendulum 1996, eliminating corners and the omission of pockets, renders its purpose mute. Examples such as these function because the objects taken have cultural significance; one can clearly imagine being engaged in an endless billiard game with no clear purpose. Learning of Orozco’s Mexican citizenry, and that countries political and historical past, associations are evident in Carambole with Pendulum with that climate the artist lives with.
The ‘sampling’ here occurs through the use of objects as material that are recognized and give the artists work a context to create new meaning and understanding that is dependant on the signifying potential such objects contain. This is what I was thinking with AM in the preparatory stages, through to its creation, and completion in Maybe, In the End, It Was a Dream. It was known that as soon as these elements from dance/club culture were used within this work, that the context I was trying to initiate would be clear and immediate. In fact many visitors to the exhibition commented that they felt like dancing within the space, inhibited only by the fractured structure and dark underpinnings that were coming through within the work. Myself could no doubt create these visual effects, in the craft sense; laser and strobe lights I imagine could be made to replicate the light the work emanated. Their strength however came from there use value, the way that these objects interact and are located within the world, and it is in this signifying capacity that they were used to create AM.
Previously, in the last paragraph I touched upon the unsettling quality that AM contained. This existed in the physiognomy of the work itself, but also through another quality introduced through my working on Hellvis, and that was sound. Inserted into this cacophonous environment was a slow, meditative audio loop of the ocean, of waves gently lapping onto the shore. This was intended to create a type of paradox, to introduce a calming space that was obviously not possible within the visual disarray that was AM. The sound of gentle waves called for a mediation on the nature on the culture the work was addressing. The conflict of the audio and visual forms interested me in this work in that instead of using, as I initially intended, the actual sound of dance culture, which would have logically fitted into the narrative, a disruption occurred through sound that was the antithesis of the visual.
Another important point I need to expand on, as pointed out recently in discussion with my colleague, Boyd Sanday, is the works insistence on light as a form. My interest in working with light, as discussed through Stay Forever, came out of an interest in Dan Flavin, and one could rightly ascribe here, a formal response in regard to the medium that the artist used. Flavin made sense out of my painting and two-dimensional construct of the work of art up to that point, of which I was very interested in the visual function alone that his work possessed. Stay Forever was clearly not a formalist work, and it is hence not appropriate, through my conversations with Boyd, to leave my use of light in Maybe, In the End, It was a Dream, particularly with this work, AM, to a loose reference in an individual artist based on form alone.
Photo credit: Max Bellamy
The use of light then, outside of the visual reference to Flavin, becomes a consequence of the environment, in this case sub-cultural, that is being worked within. Neon, laser lights, strobes, etc, carry with them an enormous visual presence, visual form even, but here, the use of the type of material (lights) becomes very specific, and in AM relates to and acts as a direct signifier for dance culture, of which I was interested. Some of my own favorite images that remain of this work are the ones that feature the structure with the lights off, the reason being that the type of affect being aimed at is till achieved without the overwhelming flicker of the lights in motion. In the images where there is no flashing light, the objects manage to maintain the referent; the stuff of the environment is recognizable even in stasis so that it relates clearly to disco/club culture. The point really here is that the initial visual allure of the medium of light was a defining factor in foreseeing AM through the early conception. Still, the importance of where that light source originates, its actuality as a product that exists in a real world environment, outside of an art making context, was an essential factor in the influence these objects had in imposing the disco construct that was achieved.
Photo credits: Max Bellamy
Hellvis
Photo credit: Max Bellamy
Single channel projection
This work was made as a result of a two channel video projection of images that I had been accumulating throughout the duration of my MFA. Some were my own ‘snapshot’ type images, most were sourced from the internet, and a large number were re-photographs I had taken of existing work from sources like books and magazines. The occasion for this presentation was my first MFA seminar at the Otago School of Art, which took place in September. Each individual image had been spliced with various types of colourful images, Photoshop produced geometric abstractions and monochromes, and through to patterns I took from the web. All photographic and ‘painterly’ images were rum through a movie program and given 0.1 second each on the screen. What resulted was a fast, schizophrenic run of visual overload that was extremely difficult to look at on the large scale, heightened by the multiple screen installation.
Hellvis developed out of this work, and in an ongoing interest in using imagery and material that already exists, looking at concerns from Lawrence Lessig’s Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy as well as an interest in the writings of Nicolas Bourriaud, especially his book Postproduction, and his ideas on artist as a type of cultural deejay. In this context, the use of Elvis Presley in a video downloaded from YouTube becomes something of a cultural referent that pre-exists. It is argued in fact by Lessig that the use of such culturally recognisable forms within a work is what allows it to actually function. By this argument, the idea of hiring an actor to play the role of Elvis to make the work, for example, does not perform, or function, in the same way as that which is already located within the cultural or sociological psyche.
The decision to use the image of Elvis within Hellvis was for this very reason articulated by Lessig. Elvis, for me, represented celebrity definitively, and his rise to fame, burnout and death is well known. His celebrity being a rock-star made it necessary, or logical to use his film, for my film.
Hellvis is, to use Lessig’s term borrowed from music production, a mash-up. Two clips have been sped up in an editing program, which have subsequently been broken down to a series of cuts that are all 0.1 of a second. From here the individual fragments from both films are spliced together in alteration, where the speed is then dropped to run at what was the original speed. This caused the imagery to jolt more frantically on the screen, whilst at the same time bringing the two totally disparate sound elements to work together more cohesive, or better, with less audible jerkiness. This speeding, then slowing back down unified the film, forcing to differing audio and visual elements to function as one work.
As I am very much interested in Remix as a working methodology, as well as the social, cultural and legal implications it entails Hellvis was a good work for me. It also succeeded in giving myself hands on introduction in digital editing, for as the ‘videoing’ already happened, the making of this work was pure editing. This has given me a strong desire to follow up with other video works, and more purposeful imagery, in that I seek out and film my own material before editing. However Hellvis did work well within the Maybe, In the End, It Was a Dream exhibition because it was a strong link that brought the individual works together. I could not get “Elvis has left the building!” out of my mind when looking at Stay Forever whilst ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ epileptically squalled behind me.
Another element that Hellvis introduced me to that had not been present in my work up to that point, which is surprising in that music sub-culture forms a strong part of research interest, is sound. The sound, as it worked within the space of the show, outside of the jerky ‘Blue Suede Shoes’, was the formal qualities given that pervaded the exhibition. This work was presented as a single channel projection on the wall directly opposite Bridget Pistol Sex Riley and Stay Forever, but it had an obvious resonance throughout the gallery. Taking the audio alone in of Hellvis, and coming to terms with the form influenced the decision to include a sound component into AM as I was working on it within the space. With Hellvis, it did have me thinking of future possible works, which does frustrate me somewhat as it has clouded my ability to objectively look at Hellvis, of which I know is not just a gateway work, there is value in its own right, its just problematic at this stage for me to work through.
Photo credit: Max Bellamy
There is the benefit of putting on the exhibition, and furthering this through the blog, that allow one to confront work that is made very directly. Mounting an exhibition does this forcibly, whereas blogging requires an altogether different evaluation of the work made; the exhibition is de-stalled, which allows for objectiveness through distance and medium. Value that I see, with Hellvis now neatly packed onto an external hard drive, is in this grey area of Remix. As the image of Elvis is so recognisable, it is also one of copyright control. Here is a legal notice posted on elvis.com:
Elvis, Elvis Presley, Elvis Week, Graceland, and Heartbreak Hotel are Registered Trademarks with the USPTO. ©2000 – 2009 EPE, Inc.
One can only assume that an Elvis video of ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ downloaded from YouTube would fall nicely within the elvis.com legal category posted. Musical artists, think reggae and hip-hop, have been sampling other artists songs in their production for nearly fifty years, often with culturally significant results. And this is where I felt Lessig’s writing gave the potential to actually do something with this material, to take information that has been forced upon us unrelentingly, with the purpose to turn some of it, a micro amount of it really, into something new.
Stay Forever
Photo credit: Max Bellamy
Neon
The studies for this particular work is described in detail in a previous post STAY FOREVER, and for this reason the background to this current manifestation of Stay Forever, will not be discussed here. Which suits the purpose of this post for there is much I aim at going over with Stay Forever, from the installation within, Maybe, In the End, It Was a Dream, to the material used, as well as other issues that arose for me whilst spending time within the space throughout the duration of the show.
I always associated, through studies, to installing the neon in MITEIWAD, this work to be a happy work. The bright colourful neon flickering in a room, music sub-culture referent; Ween’s 2000 single “Stay Forever”, and the usage of neon in clubs and disco environments, added to a sense of visual aroma that would be all encompassing and beautiful. After install I still believe all these qualities were in fact present, but with time, and consideration of the work within the exhibition it was a part of, a more sinister reading began to permeate.
As mentioned in the previous post Bridget Pistol Sex Riley, this work was going to be installed directly on a white wall in the gallery, with its own space, so as to not disrupt other works through its flickering and visual luminosity. Whilst covering the wall in tape, and understanding from here he enormity of the space I was working in, I decided Stay Forever really had to be erected directly onto Bridget Pistol Sex Riley. This came out of a need to break the continuity of the wall drawing, but also to allow the neon to be placed directly by the door that is the exit to Maybe, In the End, It Was A Dream. With this positioning, I believe the registration of the work for the viewer changed dramatically.
Clive Humphreys, one of my MFA supervisors, described Stay Forever as an interior work, in that it pertained to environments that exist as an inside space: clubs, shops, and music venues, support this. The work was registered by the viewer within the entire space, but upon exiting there was an engagement that called attention to the function of leaving, and the work at this level acted as a plea not to leave the space, to in fact, stay forever…please. This was never an intention in the conception of the work, from drawings, studies, and finally into its neon production, but with time, being present within the exhibition as a whole, these further associations began to develop.
The clear disco/club component, coupled with the adjacent Elvis projection, forced the neon work into a commentary, or narrative on this culture that I was seeking to obtain, but not necessarily with this individual work. Su Ballard’s perception of the ‘bleeding’ that occurred between the works, affected the way Stay Forever was ultimately perceived. If ‘stay forever’ is an impossibility, an oxymoron, it certainly is a possibility within celebrity, or in the minds of one who wants to be famous, the Elvis imagery performed this completely; through fame, it is possible to indeed ‘stay forever’ outside of the physical.
Photo credit: Max Bellamy
An installation within Maybe, In the End, It Was a Dream, titled AM, also played off this idea of staying forever, in the recent death of celebrity Deejay, DJ Am, who died of an accidental overdoes in New York. Here again is the bleeding quality of the works on one and other, where the context and proximity to each had a direct reading on seemingly disparate elements within the show. In fact, I found the relationship to these two works quite strong, and AM affected the way I looked at, and engaged with, Stay Forever significantly. There could really be multiple reasons for this. The first and most straightforward is that AM is a blinding, epileptic and fractured installation of broken objects, light and scaffolding, and in this context Stay Forever is a sort of reprieve within the space. Even though this work itself is visually jarring, with bright neon and flickering movement, this was insignificant within the same room as AM. The second, and more interesting for me, not only for this show, but with future works also, is the cross-over, or bleeding these works espoused upon each throughout the entire installation. AM in fact is not a dark work, but with so much happening visually within the space, there was just too much stimuli for the show not to be seen as dark. Like the party sub-culture AM was referring to, there was excess, and Stay Forever was ultimately another element in that excess.
Photo credit: Max Bellamy
Actual install of Stay Forever was initially going to be horizontal, and sitting low to the ground to maximise reflection from the polished concrete floor. With Bridget Pistol Sex Riley on the wall, it was evident the neon work would need maximum presence within the enormity of the space, and the tape wall drawing itself. Moving the individual letters around the floor, constructing a mental image of the possibilities on the wall, became an exercise in understanding text as form, not just about words being displayed. Here I decided the form would be STAY/FOR/EVER stacked in a square format (painting) that takes on a significant amount of wall space. The transformers were set so that one word, or section of the text, illuminated in sequence while the other two remained unlit, the glass being clear, was not visually present whilst in this non-illuminated state. Through the lighting, a minor visual narrative occurred, positive and negative interspersed in creating a singular cohesive image.
As mentioned previously, Clive Humphreys rightfully referred to this work as interior, and I am very much concerned with this interior type of space within the context of this show, and my MFA at large. It simplifies the issue too much in stating that the fact the exhibition in inside a room, that the space is also interior. We’ve really got two types of interior here (and in talking about interior, one must also look at exterior purely through its exclusion from an interior). One is through physicality: within a room, inside: whilst the other being an insular, personal or psychological space. The former relates to the confines of an environment. Within this environment are tools, and props that facilitate the type of event being generated. In this case it was disco/club culture, so the material here is laser light and disco balls, the material within the exhibition signified this, and this allows the audience to enter immediately the space of that environment. The neon here is a part of that interior domain, whether that be inside a club venue, inside a shop for advertising, or outside a shop or club advertising the type of space that is inside. This was enhanced within Maybe, In the End, It Was a Dream where what should have been outside through the windows, was a reflection of the inside, keeping the work, the environment, clearly within an interior.
Photo credit: Max Bellamy
This is where the inside/outside becomes interesting. Stay Forever was positioned to receive best access from the outside. Two window panels the height of the walls faced entry into the School of Art campus, where this work could clearly be seen illuminating. This decision did refer to signage, and in a sense was a part of an appeal to the outside, but always with the intention of the audience, being with the work on the inside. This is where my painting mentality is clear, for a painting is made (murals aside) to be within a space, I am not a sculptor, so I can’t so much see work I make as existing with an exterior space.
Another way of thinking about this, and less formed or articulate on my part, is the psychological space certain environments create. My research within this area, particularly with Neil Nehring’s Popular Music, Gender, and Postmodernism: Anger Is an Energy, is with sub-cultural environments, or movements facilitating social cohesion through a psychological exterior. In other words, the kid who is at home, listening to her ‘strange’ music and dressing weird, finds a commonality within such groupings. Punk, Rave’s, Disco, Metal, Doof’s, or whatever act as a forum for like minded social unity, and act as a place where real exterior, Otherness can be achieved psychologically through this environment that has the ability to locate one outside themselves, even if just for a while.
Photo credit: Max Bellamy
Photo credit: Max Bellamy
Photo credit: Max Bellamy
