April 18, 2013
The final set of carving tools arrived by UPS this morning and I promptly opened the package when I got to the studio at Governor's Island. Suddenly my work became a breeze and I was able to create the primary masses for two sculptures. It really helps a lot when I have the right tools and the right materials coming together. If only I had more production time at LMCC. Its distance from midtown Manhattan is not that far, commute-wise. Its just the effort to go to and from the studio puts a strain on my mind. Just today when I finished with the body of the sculpture I had to cut myself from wandering too far in my efforts as I have to give myself some half an hour to clean up. Then theres a quarter of an hour to wait for the ferry to leave. Between that and the walk to Bowling Green my mind is still in the creative mode but barely. Again, some of the challenges of working with wood carving in the city. I can now understand why this sort of stuff is difficult to pursue in this kind of setting. But I love this knowledge gained this way. Inasmuch as I love the way I discover small things: hotdogs sandwiches, falafels, subway wrestling, hunting for used books and on and on. That is New York coming to me in small shapes and bits - because I cannot swallow the whole city experience in one overwhelming intake, which is quite daunting no matter how you look at it.
April 19, 2013
The carving tools from Flexcut proved to be the answer to my work concerns. Starting yesterday I was able to make two 24" high torsos. Wasn't just able to continue working after 2pm when the guys at the Studio started the first round of presentations of the projects and the works they are undertaking for the spring season of LMCC. It was organized mainly by Elisabeth Smolarz although I know not everyone signed up. My presentation is next week. Hopefully I have some works by then.
The projects presented by Elisabeth, Maria and Karl were interesting. Elisabeth's video work is a social sculpture of sorts where she goes around communities around the world and uses a 100$ in "exchange" for the participant's time to be filmed in white spaces, filled up only with chairs. Her objective is to examine how different economies affect participation (in India, there was a crowd, in Japan there were only three). Yet if I have to be critical about this I am quite disturbed by the fact that here we have a project whose authorship rests on the artist while the "activity" is done by others. The fact that currency is involved means that the work is indeed capitalist in its construction, and imperialist in its treatment of "various subjects" from different countries using a "global" perspective as a veneer, while allowing the work to present people from India, China, Japan, Brazil as cultural specimens in a controlled white-space environment. Yet Elisabeth seems concerned about the imbalance of economies between G8 and non G8 countries.
I am critical of these socially-involved art projects because they all seem to take on the structure of an ant farm. The art project is the glass box and people are the few ants that are introduced into the environment and their interaction - which becomes spectacle - is happily observed by us from the other side of the glass box. What is construed as a position of the artist-investigator-activist is a cultural construct of an economically and technologically empowered society that sees the different lives of "Others" as "cultural diversity". In my view this isn't cultural or artistic dialogue: its cultural diplomacy and all its underpinnings of unequal power relations.
Maria's project involves a sense of personal danger when she uses covert means of photographing and documenting secret American bases and their activities in Italy. Now this I respect: the artist who goes into the territory of the subject and becomes part of the population excluded by a security fence. I love the way her curiosity guides her to document on film and video crashed drones, relay stations, covert military missions.
Karl's project involves his fascination for the rave culture of the 90's and the sense of utopianism that has long since died with the music. I love the way he approaches the idea of this feel-good utopian vision, pursued by uncommitted urbanites and yuppies of the last century, bolstered no less the hopes of the coming millennium, only to disappear overnight with resounding financial crashes in Thailand, Malaysia, Japan, Europe and the US. He seems to be an archeologist of the urban past, and discovering the MTV generation as a species, decides to come up with posters, and an animatronic monkey-alien. What I like about this project is its sense of authenticity. Karl seems to live it, and was born into it.
Gleaning from these projects I get a sense that my reactions betray the kind of aesthetics that resonates with me. I am interested in (and value) art projects that are "invested" by the artist's own life and convictions. I love the kind of art that makes the artist gets his "hands dirty" and even his life equally soiled. And I delight in those works and projects that "reveal" the lifeworld within. These do not need a central theoretical framework: the work suffices. So I don't really understand why some theorists need to come up with ideas that emerge from collecting artistic specimens and then proclaiming a new aesthetic. All cerebral, textual overarching ideas about art destroys the encounter. All texts should be footnotes to the work, not its herald, nor its promoter. Only imperialists think of art that way...
The final set of carving tools arrived by UPS this morning and I promptly opened the package when I got to the studio at Governor's Island. Suddenly my work became a breeze and I was able to create the primary masses for two sculptures. It really helps a lot when I have the right tools and the right materials coming together. If only I had more production time at LMCC. Its distance from midtown Manhattan is not that far, commute-wise. Its just the effort to go to and from the studio puts a strain on my mind. Just today when I finished with the body of the sculpture I had to cut myself from wandering too far in my efforts as I have to give myself some half an hour to clean up. Then theres a quarter of an hour to wait for the ferry to leave. Between that and the walk to Bowling Green my mind is still in the creative mode but barely. Again, some of the challenges of working with wood carving in the city. I can now understand why this sort of stuff is difficult to pursue in this kind of setting. But I love this knowledge gained this way. Inasmuch as I love the way I discover small things: hotdogs sandwiches, falafels, subway wrestling, hunting for used books and on and on. That is New York coming to me in small shapes and bits - because I cannot swallow the whole city experience in one overwhelming intake, which is quite daunting no matter how you look at it.
April 19, 2013
The carving tools from Flexcut proved to be the answer to my work concerns. Starting yesterday I was able to make two 24" high torsos. Wasn't just able to continue working after 2pm when the guys at the Studio started the first round of presentations of the projects and the works they are undertaking for the spring season of LMCC. It was organized mainly by Elisabeth Smolarz although I know not everyone signed up. My presentation is next week. Hopefully I have some works by then.
The projects presented by Elisabeth, Maria and Karl were interesting. Elisabeth's video work is a social sculpture of sorts where she goes around communities around the world and uses a 100$ in "exchange" for the participant's time to be filmed in white spaces, filled up only with chairs. Her objective is to examine how different economies affect participation (in India, there was a crowd, in Japan there were only three). Yet if I have to be critical about this I am quite disturbed by the fact that here we have a project whose authorship rests on the artist while the "activity" is done by others. The fact that currency is involved means that the work is indeed capitalist in its construction, and imperialist in its treatment of "various subjects" from different countries using a "global" perspective as a veneer, while allowing the work to present people from India, China, Japan, Brazil as cultural specimens in a controlled white-space environment. Yet Elisabeth seems concerned about the imbalance of economies between G8 and non G8 countries.
I am critical of these socially-involved art projects because they all seem to take on the structure of an ant farm. The art project is the glass box and people are the few ants that are introduced into the environment and their interaction - which becomes spectacle - is happily observed by us from the other side of the glass box. What is construed as a position of the artist-investigator-activist is a cultural construct of an economically and technologically empowered society that sees the different lives of "Others" as "cultural diversity". In my view this isn't cultural or artistic dialogue: its cultural diplomacy and all its underpinnings of unequal power relations.
Maria's project involves a sense of personal danger when she uses covert means of photographing and documenting secret American bases and their activities in Italy. Now this I respect: the artist who goes into the territory of the subject and becomes part of the population excluded by a security fence. I love the way her curiosity guides her to document on film and video crashed drones, relay stations, covert military missions.
Karl's project involves his fascination for the rave culture of the 90's and the sense of utopianism that has long since died with the music. I love the way he approaches the idea of this feel-good utopian vision, pursued by uncommitted urbanites and yuppies of the last century, bolstered no less the hopes of the coming millennium, only to disappear overnight with resounding financial crashes in Thailand, Malaysia, Japan, Europe and the US. He seems to be an archeologist of the urban past, and discovering the MTV generation as a species, decides to come up with posters, and an animatronic monkey-alien. What I like about this project is its sense of authenticity. Karl seems to live it, and was born into it.
Gleaning from these projects I get a sense that my reactions betray the kind of aesthetics that resonates with me. I am interested in (and value) art projects that are "invested" by the artist's own life and convictions. I love the kind of art that makes the artist gets his "hands dirty" and even his life equally soiled. And I delight in those works and projects that "reveal" the lifeworld within. These do not need a central theoretical framework: the work suffices. So I don't really understand why some theorists need to come up with ideas that emerge from collecting artistic specimens and then proclaiming a new aesthetic. All cerebral, textual overarching ideas about art destroys the encounter. All texts should be footnotes to the work, not its herald, nor its promoter. Only imperialists think of art that way...
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