STAN DOUGLAS: Television spots/Monodramas

TELEVISION SPOTS (1987/88)
In 1989, his first series of short works for television, the twelve Television Spots, were broadcast in Saskatoon and Ottawa amid regular programming, as if they were commercials. Unidentified, the short scenes depicting open-ended, banal activities baffled viewers.


MONODRAMAS (1991)
Douglas's "Monodramas," ten 30- to 60-second videos from 1991, conceived as interventions into commercial television, interrupted the usual flow of advertising and entertainment when broadcast nightly in British Columbia for three weeks in 1992. These micronarratives mimic television's editing techniques, but as kernels of a story they refuse to cohere. They are tales of dysfunction and dislocation, misanthropy and misunderstanding. When the videos were aired unannounced during commercial breaks, viewers called the station to inquire about what was being sold, their responses evincing how the media can refocus attention from content to consumption. -- Nancy Spector

Tacita Dean- Kodak

After discovering that the Kodak factory in Chalon-sur-Saone, France, was closing its film production facility, Dean obtained permission to document the manufacture of film at the factory with the soon-to-be obsolete medium itself. The 44-minute-long work Kodak constitutes a meditative elegy for the approaching demise of a medium specific to Dean's own practice. Kodak's narrative follows the making of the celluloid as it runs through several miles of machinery. On the day of filming, the factory also ran a test through the system with brown paper, providing a rare opportunity to see the facilities fully illuminated, without the darkness needed to prevent exposure.

Francis alys: seven walks

TS Eliot: Choruses from 'the Rock'

'dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.'

Katri Walker 'Keep us together Tear us apart'

radio 4: Analysis- thought experiments

Studies have shown that if the smell of fresh bread is in the air we are far more generous than otherwise. In the past few years, a fascinating range of experiments has begun to shed light on the moral choices humans make. Philosopher Janet Radcliffe Richards asks whether the results can tell us not just how we tend to behave, but how we should behave.

WORK (term 3)

in frame: 'myths prime function is to make the cultural natural'

09/04/09

14/05/09

lasso, salla tykka

from print the legend exhibition march last year.
narrative
music

publicity's dreams, john berger

from 2:49

Epistemology

Epistemology Is knowledge a subset of that which is both true and believed?

language and culture

language and culture

words (concepts) and their meanings

words (concepts) and their meanings:

sociology

anthropology

enthnology

hegemony

paradigm

esoteric(esotericism)

idiosyncratic

individual

socialization

intangible cultural heritage

intangible cultural heritage (wikipedia)According to the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, the intangible cultural heritage (ICH) – or living heritage – is the mainspring of our cultural diversity and its maintenance a guarantee for continuing creativity. It is defined as follows:
Intangible Cultural Heritage means the practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, skills – as well as the instruments, objects, artefacts and cultural spaces associated therewith – that communities, groups and, in some cases, individuals recognize as part of their cultural heritage. This intangible cultural heritage, transmitted from generation to generation, is constantly recreated by communities and groups in response to their environment, their interaction with nature and their history, and provides them with a sense of identity and continuity, thus promoting respect for cultural diversity and human creativity. For the purposes of this Convention, consideration will be given solely to such intangible cultural heritage as is compatible with existing international human rights instruments, as well as with the requirements of mutual respect among communities, groups and individuals, and of sustainable development.
This Convention - like the World Heritage Convention - developed a listing system (Representative list and Endangered list). The Intergovernmental Committee is currently working on criteria and procedures, and first inscriptions will be made in 2008 or 2009.

what makes a great portrait

what makes a great portrait

marlene dumas | images and words

marlene dumas

marlene dumas | images and words

audio arts:online

audio arts:online

lucy gunning

lucy gunning

frieze article

Tangentially: The Archive and the Bathroom(tate papers)

Art Now: Lucy Gunning: Intermediate II

santiago sierra

the body as site for cultural representation.

the artist pays 200 (mainly black) men to get their hair dyed blonde

REMAKE OF "GROUP OF PERSONS FACING THE WALL AND PERSON FACING INTO A CORNER"Lisson Gallery. London, United Kingdom. October 2002 / Turbin Hall, Tate Modern, London, United Kingdom. January 2008

claude levi-strauss (structuralism)

claude levi-strauss(wikipedia)

toilet and ideology

('semiotic triangle that correlates exactly with levi-strauss'*' )

underlying ideologies

that ditsiguish cultures, (countries etc.)

children of men (slavoj zizek)

focus of film in the background-crucial- to look at thing(issue)(eg. social opression) directly you dont see it.

tension between fore & background. protagonist/plot microcosm for issue.

'fate of the indivual hero becomes a prism in which you see the background more clearly'

theme of infertility describes also spirtitual or social infertility?

*society without history (despair)

works of art deprived of meaning (decontextualised?)

england (britain)-relies on its substance of tradition,meanings (no constitution)- loss of history (context?)

boat-rootless, solution-renewal-cut roots

killing us softly 3, Jean Kilbourne

killing us softly 3, Jean Kilbourne

The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less Barry schwartz

(04:30) choice of identity, not inherited, change at will

'everyday when you wake up in the morning you have to choose what kind of person you want to be'

things to watch(to watch list):

The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less Barry schwartz

Killing Us Softly 3 Advertising's Image of Women


Lectures on Great Social Thinkers - Alan Macfarlane 2001 (search on youtube(start with lecture 1)(9 parts))

if your lonely, martin creed

If you're lonely...

by martin creed(to avoid confusion)

Work... this is work. This is hard work. Talking about work is work.
Thinking is work. Words are work. Words are things, shapes. It's hard
to compose them, to put them in any kind of order. Words don't add up.
Numbers add up! Things are everywhere. Everything is something,
everything has something, but not everyone has someone. It's hard to
distinguish between things, to separate things. I'm in a soup of
thoughts, feelings and things, and words. Actually, it's more like a
purée... or thick and stiff, like a paté. I'm in a paté and it's hard
to move. It needs a lot of work to get out of it — or to separate it
and find something in it. Thoughts, thoughts, sometimes I want to stop
them, but it's hard to stop them. It's work. Dealing with thoughts,
that's work.
Thoughts, thoughts, don't come! Stop! Please! When you're going to
sleep and you can't stop thinking, thoughts queueing up, that's when
you need drugs — or a notebook.

I want something to ease the pain. I want to get out of my head.

Smoking used to help. For a long time smoking made my life bearable. I
gave up smoking because I couldn't do it enough. I couldn't smoke
enough. It was never enough. I wanted to smoke all the time, to breathe
in all the time, but I couldn't, not in the shower, not when I was
talking, not when I was eating. I wanted something I could do all the
time. Not smoking, that was something I could do all the time.
I am an addict in search of drugs.

Maybe working is trying, and work — the result of work — is everything
that one tries to do. Trying... looking for excitement, or trying to
handle it and use it to get out of the paté. Trying to do things;
talking. Or maybe testing is a good way of putting it: testing things
out. Testing things out by putting things about, and all the time
trying, hoping to be excited, wanting. Wanting is what makes me work:
excitement, desire for something.

Sometimes people say: 'What the fuck do you think you're doing? That's
not art.'
I say: 'Fuck off, assholes!'

Assholes... they are something to get excited about, something to work
for.
Work is a fight against loneliness, against low self esteem, against
depression, and against staying in bed. Sometimes my self esteem is so
low that I cannot reach it even when I'm feeling down.

I want to be on my own, but I don't want to be alone.

Work is everything, I think. Everything is work. Everything that
involves energy, mental or physical. So... everything, apart from being
dead. Living...

I don't know how anyone can do it.
How can anyone get through it?
I can see why people hide.
I can see why people commit suicide.

If you're lonely,
If you're sad,
If you're lovely,
If you're mad,

Then this is for you.


© Martin Creed 2005

Work #470

"As in all his subsequent actions, the artist himself was the protagonist, yet surrendered his active artistic self to the decisions of others"(frieze issue 113, on jiri kovanda)

Carey Young/Richard Long

A Line Made by Walking 1967

Photograph and pencil on board
image: 375 x 324 mm
on paper, print

Purchased 1976

P07149
This formative piece was made on one of Long’s journeys to St Martin’s from his home in Bristol. Between hitchhiking lifts, he stopped in a field in Wiltshire where he walked backwards and forwards until the flattened turf caught the sunlight and became visible as a line. He photographed this work, and recorded his physical interventions within the landscape.
Although this artwork underplays the artist’s corporeal presence, it anticipates a widespread interest in performative art practice. This piece demonstrates how Long had already found a visual language for his lifelong concerns with impermanence, motion and relativity.


CAREY YOUNG's

Lines Made by Walking
Louise Menzies

First published in Scape Biennial catalogue , 2006

Experienced as a series of projected 35mm slides unfolding at automated one-second intervals, Lines Made By Walking (2003) reveals the certain actions of an individual amidst a crowd. More specifically, these are the actions of the artist herself walking back and forth as she attempts to crave a line within the space of a crowded strip of commuters in central London. Intentionally recalling Richard Long’s 1967 piece A Line Made By Walking, Young inserts in our memories the politicised acts of the neo avant-garde, while suggesting how such actions of an individual can still offer a negotiation of space within our late capitalist situation.

Performed in public space, Young’s work sharply sketches the globalised daily reality of the worker and suggests an attempt at updating contemporary relationships between corporate and cultural politics. Dressed in a suit like those around her, in many ways Young is a nameless face in the crowd; collapsing the distances of artist, worker and audience. Over time however, her self-directed and purposeful walking offers us a form of resistance drawn from the very structures it seeks to resist. In place of Long’s flattened grass, we are left with negative urban space.



© Copyright Louise Menzies and Scape Biennial Trust, 2006

richard wilson '20:50'

richard wilson

'20:50'

guardian interview

fluxus

The Fluxus artistic philosophy can be expressed as a synthesis of four key factors that define the majority of Fluxus work:

Fluxus is an attitude. It is not a movement or a style.[4]

Fluxus is intermedia.[5] Fluxus creators like to see what happens when different media intersect. They use found and everyday
objects, sounds, images, and texts to create new combinations of objects, sounds, images, and texts.

Fluxus works are simple. The art is small, the texts are short, and the performances are brief.

Fluxus is fun. Humour has always been an important element in Fluxus.

Carey Young

carey young

A small stall was set up in a marketplace, close to other market stalls and in sight of the facades of multinational businesses. At the stall, the services of a local professional ‘arbitrator’ was made available, without charge, to the public for the period of one day. Arbitration is the process in which disputes are settled by the use of a professional mediator. Arbitrators are primarily used in commercial situations in which conventional discussion processes have broken down, but in which peace must be created. The process may be familiar to anyone who recalls the clashes between trade unions and their often-corporate employers in the days before the globalised erosion of union power.

The arbitration service was on offer for the period of one day for two (or more) people who had a dispute – any dispute - to resolve. The arbitrator was situated at an office-style table, with two office-style chairs for members of the public to sit down. Prior to launch, the service was advertised in the local media and signs were also placed next to the stall.

The piece also made reference to larger questions of conflict. Arbitration is inherently concerned with the attempt to create peace. Thus this tiny site, almost as small as a picnic table, alluded to notions of a peaceful Utopia, whilst it nevertheless seemed vulnerable, dwarfed by the size and architecture of the surrounding environment. The site offered a tiny and temporary peace zone that was gone all too soon.

jiri kovanda

jiri kovanda

kissing through the glass
www.flashartonline.com/

extract from frieze interview

JM I’m very interested in the transition that occurred between the performance of your actions and their translation into documentary photographs. There are no audiences present at some of your actions. The only people who know they’re art are you and the photographer. But the resulting photograph isn’t the art work, it’s the action, isn’t it?
JK  The question is when communication takes place. I think it’s at the moment when the thing is referred to as art. That means that if an action has an audience, it happens straight away. If no spectators have been invited, however, I think it doesn’t take place until afterwards, in the artistic space – in other words, either at an exhibition, or in print, it doesn’t matter. In short, when it’s presented as art.
JM In retrospect, then?
JK  Yes in retrospect, although you can’t draw a clear dividing line. Without the action, it wouldn’t exist. The action has to take place.
JM In this respect time has quite a particular status. In the act of documentation, you’re calling attention to something that happened earlier: the action without an audience.
JK  But the action has to be there. An idea isn’t enough, it has to really take place.(*) I’ve had many ideas and scripts for different actions that I haven’t carried out, but I’ve never published the ones that didn’t happen.

*why does it have to take place, can art exist in an iddea only?

but if you tell your idea the tellig of it is the art and not the idea? so you couldnt present an idea only as art?