Her Story, Star Wars and Cyborgs

This week has been calm and relaxing, filled with watching films and idly sitting around, enjoying the simplicity of everything. In terms of art, not a lot has been happening, small ideas are being thought of here and there that may eventually become fabricated thoughts, but nothing so substantial is yet to occur.

I have however watched a variety of films and played some really thought provoking video games that have made me ‘feel’ something, whatever that means. I decided to delve into a few Hitchcock films, alongside Lynch’s back catalogue of movies. I’d seen a few of their creations before, but some of the supposed ‘classics’ had for one reason or another never appeared before my eyes. I watched Vertigo and Psycho, which were both quite brilliant. The twist ending of Psycho was amazing, if a little obvious, having watched a lot of the films that came after Hitchcock’s time.

After watching Mulholland Drive and Lost Highway I’m no closer to understanding Lynch and his work, but I’m sure that would be the case if I had watched every one of his films. I also watched Enter the Void, which was a filmic masterpiece, and my first viewing of a Gaspar Noé film.

As well as this I had the pleasure of watching the new Star Wars film, which turned out to be everything that I wanted it to be. This may or may not be a good thing, I’m not totally sure yet. It did make me want to revisit more of the originals however, so the other day I watched The Empire Strikes Back again, which was as superb as ever.

On top of this I watched Sicario (brilliant and distressing), Spectre (dull and diluted for family viewing), Steve Jobs (a film that held me at the edge of my seat for the 122 minute running time), Snowpiercer (a movie with a nice concept that was executed badly), Brooklyn (a beautiful tale detailing the growth of a young woman moving to the ‘big city’), Joy (Jennifer Lawrence doing what she does best) and Serenity, which added a lot to the hilariously awesome Firefly TV show. My final two films of the week were A Life Less Ordinary, which was fun and enjoyable; as I am a fan of Ewan McGregor and the majority of Danny Boyle’s films and The Hateful Eight, which had some incredible acting from Jennifer Jason Leigh and quite an intriguing story which did keep me interested throughout. I do like pretty much all of Tarantino’s films, with my favourite being Jackie Brown, because of the excellent female lead.

Alongside these films, I watched a TV series titled Nathan for You, which I would highly recommend to anyone. It features a man called Nathan, who approaches small businesses in California to ‘help’ them improve their company. It is hilarious.

I’ve also been playing a few videogames, one was called The Beginner’s Guide. It’s a sort of interactive storytelling experience, where you wander through a variety of ‘levels’ being guided by the developer of the game. The whole experience is quite distressing and looks to dismantle the idea of a video game as well as your general ‘living’ experience. A particularly fascinating moment for me was when, whilst cleaning a house, a character within the game starts to have a dialogue with you about the act of cleaning, and the repetitive nature of it all. Instead of being unhappy about this, they were embracing it, enjoying the act of knowing what’s going to happen and how everything works. This made me think about the work that I’ve been creating, and allowed me to consider whether or not the idea of a monotonous life is in fact a positive thing. More than anything the game just made me think, which is in itself an accomplishment.

I also played Her Story, where the entire game involves you (the player) using a database of police video clips to solve a mystery. The quite dark and distressing story slowly unravels as you learn more about what happened, leading you on a confusing trail. I thoroughly enjoyed the journey that I was able to take myself on.

Another was a very short game called The Cat and the Coup, where you play as the cat of the first democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran. The aesthetics are quite beautiful, with intricate patterns and Monty Python esque figures inhabiting the environment.

Throughout the weeks and the days I’ve been attempting to create work, making a few short video pieces that don’t quite make sense yet, continuing on with my Zooks and the ideas that are associated with those. It’s a shame that the work has slowed down, but I feel that that was always going to happen. Over the weeks I’ve been collecting quotes from TV shows and films, noting down whenever I hear someone talk about how life is repetitive, dull or simple. These will, at some point, become part of a video.

I have however been reading a number of books and essays. One being ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’ by Donna Haraway, where she uses the idea of the cyborg to talk about gender and boundaries. Traditional feminism is heavily critiqued throughout the text and is supported by the idea that everyone has flaws, whether you’re a man, a woman or a ‘Z’.

I’ve also been reading a book about the artist collaborators Joanna Hadjithomas and Khali Joreige called The Rumors of the World centred on the work that they create using ‘spam’ emails. It’s been an interesting book to dip in and out of, and learning about some new artists that I haven’t come into contact before is always exciting. It also made me start to think about the small collection of text messages that I always receive on my phone, advertising ‘the best slot games’ and ‘cash now’ and how to create work from that. Or the feeling that one gets when they receive a text, but to their dismay it’s from a bot advertising worthless ‘junk’.

On top of this I’m looking at ‘Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous’ which is all about the Anonymous movement and what it’s about. It’s an interesting read and ties in well with one of my favourite TV shows from this year which was Mr Robot.

A few other books that I’m slowly wading through are ‘The Value of Art’ by Michael Findlay, ‘Fictions’ by Jorge Luis Borges and ‘Think Like an Artist’ by Will Gompertz. These are all interesting pieces of text that I really want to pursue and read into further.

During the next week I need to write my essay and will be continuing to read a variety of books and essays, as well as hopefully making some new work if I can motivate myself to do so. It would also be great to play a few more thought provoking video games, as I see it as an incredibly involving art form that (if used properly) allows the player to actually ‘involve’ themselves within the work.

Daily Snapchat:

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Ai Weiwei, Molly Soda and Crash

The final week of term was enjoyable, if a little relaxed, aimlessly wandering around, attempting to create work and occasionally being successful in that endeavour. The past few days, being out of London, have been a little weird. The lack of things to do is highly demotivating, which is saddening, but relaxing in a comfortable environment is quite enjoyable. I’ve been mostly watching films and trying to do a little work, now and then.

On Monday (last week) I went into uni for a discussion with John about the essay questions, which was incredibly helpful, picking apart what all the questions mean and recommending different books to read and things to see.

On Tuesday I had my feedback tutorial, which was thought provoking in a number of ways. The main criticism of my work was that it had too much finish, which is not necessarily a bad thing, I think it’s more to do with having an idea that doesn’t have to be sanded down to the bone, with everything so precise and well thought out. I don’t know, I still need to think about it more, and whether or not I want to fully take on what was said, as it would completely change the way I work and my practice in general.

The last artist talk of the term was by Anne Hardy, whose work I admire greatly. I enjoyed seeing the progression of the work, and the way in which she’s currently working, making artwork about making artwork. The work feeding the work from the process of making previous work. This in itself is very interesting to me, along with the enclosed spaces that she creates, as well as the soundscapes which accompany them. I’m quite annoyed that I won’t be travelling to Oxford to see her current exhibition; FIELD at Modern Art Oxford, which looks amazing.

The rest of the week was spent going to galleries and completing a range of my projects, getting everything done that could only be accomplished in London. Wednesday was a full day of art, where I saw an incredible amount of work.

I began by going to the Serpentine Galleries, the Michael Craig-Martin was first up, which was so dull. This was obviously expected, but it was annoying for this expectation to become a reality. I much prefer his old work, where he experimented with conceptualism, playing around with the idea that because the artist says an object is one thing, it must be that thing. Obviously he moved on from this work a long time ago, but I can always hope. His now work does remind me of Patrick Caulfield’s paintings, just in terms of aesthetics, rather than on a conceptual basis. Caulfield’s classic work ‘After Lunch’ is, in my opinion, far superior to a lot of Martin’s current works.

However in the other space, Simon Denny’s exhibition ‘Products for Organising’ was on show. It was primarily centred on hacking, showcasing a number of fictitious machines intended for hacking into people’s computers and their lives. At times I was consumed by humour, whilst at other points I was deeply horrified, which made for an intense experience. I remember seeing his piece for the Venice Biennale this year, as I was walking through the main airport, looking down and finding out that I was in fact, walking on ‘Secret Power’.  At the time this was incredibly surreal, not five minutes of the plane and already encountering artwork. Time is a very weird thing.

I then went to many other galleries that I shall briefly list. The Austrian Cultural Forum, which had some film and sculptural work, one involving body parts being shown in front of Greek (I think) statues. I then went to – in no actual order – Vilma Gold, which had some projected film work going on of female bodies, Sadie Coles with some large scale ‘real life’ paintings, David Zwirner showing of some early Mondrian (who actually wants to see early Mondrian!?) and a variety of abstract paintings. I also went to the Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, which had paintings which were uninteresting and drawings which were also not too exciting. Near that was the Alan Cristea Gallery showing prints made by sculptors, Herald Street Gallery exploring a satirical (are there any other types?) comic strip, Elisabetta Cipriani with a range of works by Jimmie Durham and Ai Weiwei, also the Stephen Friedman Gallery with some bad paintings alongside some quite beautifully elegant sculptures.

I also went to the Frith Street Gallery, which had some interesting baths being displayed, and the Marian Goodman Gallery whose entire ground floor had been re-shaped to allow for multiple water installations by Cristina Iglesias, as well as some Jeff Wall photographs which were upstairs. The water pieces were quite intoxicating.

Venturing over to Raven Row was worth it, as a range of experimental film work was playing throughout the gallery, one of the films was 480 minutes. That’s (if you aren’t aware) a lot of minutes. The Hales Gallery was also great, with a playful installation accompanied by a film. The work was by Rachael Champion, Agnes Denes and Rachel Pimm. Before moving into the gallery space you were given wireless headphones, so you were able to explore the physical work whilst listening to the video work which was being displayed on a large monitor in one corner of the room. Although this experience is not a new one, due to the nature of the films soundscape (the day to day life inside a factory) all of the work was heightened within the space, and made me incredibly aware of everything around me. I intend to consider this for my own work in the future in some way or another.

I believe the final gallery of the day was Annka Kultys Gallery, with work by Molly Soda. The use of the multiple screens was interesting, as was the curation of the show. The actual work (in terms of the content of the videos) for me is very weak. I understand what’s going on, but I don’t really feel a true connection with the work, which I feel is needed for the video pieces. One of the aspects of the show that did interest me though, was the price of the video work. You were able to purchase the individual videos, but the price was dependant on how many views the video had gotten, for example, on YouTube. This really did interest me, and made me think about my own work, and the idea of selling a video piece that can be viewed online for anyone to see, and how they can be achieved.

On the Thursday I went to a few more galleries and spaces. Pace London had some vaguely good work being shown, Liu Jianhua’s porcelain installation was very cool, black drips falling down the walls. Anthony Caro and a few other people were being shown downstairs, enjoyable work that we’ve all seen before. Pi Artworks had some new work on too, but it was less interesting than the last show that was there, which had been overflowing with gold and beauty.

My favourite experience of the day was going to Carrol // Fletcher and seeing Christine Sun Kim’s work with sound. The interactive installation was amazing, and I would thoroughly recommend going. Her video work was also fantastic, exploring classic films whilst using her deafness to her advantage, rather than it becoming a hindrance.

On Friday I went into the studio, surveying the work that I had created during the term, reflecting upon it and wondering whether it was time well spent or not. I also got around to filming someone (myself) playing my ‘game’ (which may turn into its own thing as a performance piece) as well as photographing all of my sculptures from this term. These can all be viewed on my main website. I also hopped over to the Tate to see ‘Artists & Empire’ which was dull, and War Damaged Musical Instruments by Susan Philipsz, which was not so dull. It was an immersive sound installation going on throughout the main hall area, which was quite incredible.

In the evening I went to the opening of Random Darknet Shopper, which is an exhibition by !Mediengruppe Bitnik. This consisted of a computer and a few cabinets, which will slowly fill up with items in the next few weeks, as the ‘bot’ buys more goods from the Darknet. This in itself is a very fun idea, I’ll definitely be heading back when there are more products on show.

Later on I went to the Ai Weiwei show at the RA. I’ve been wanting to go for a while, and as it was the last few days, I thought that I should. As it was the last two days of the work being on show, the gallery was open for a full 48 hour period. It was a truly awesome experience to be walking around the space at about 2 o’clock in the morning, being vaguely drunk and looking at the artwork. The actual work was all fairly interesting, the type of work that I would have loved this time last year, but right now I’m unsure.

The next day I came home, and have been watching films and doing vague amounts of work ever since, slowly updating my website with the work that I’ve been doing. I made a new film, created entirely using footage from Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception (a video game). The movie explores the same ideas of monotony, and wanting to reach a utopian space that you’ll never actually get to (the oasis within the film represents this) as well as the slow loss of control as you continue on with life. This aspect of the work is portrayed through the relationship between the music and the different screens. At first the screens are simple, with the music corresponding to every little movement, as you go on however the music begins to move to its own rhythm, as the screens become more complicated and the movement more jagged. There are – obviously – some blatant sexual connotations within the work, as you will get when using the mirroring tool. This does come into the concept and meaning within the piece, but only partly, as a side-meaning.

On top of this I’ve been working more with Zooks, and have started to put together a film, where the beings are ‘performing’ on the live streaming website Twitch. The video shows multiple screens, all showing different creatures being unable to move, as they are held down by a huge blue cube. The screens are then slowly disregarded and removed from the screen. This is only the beginning of something, I still have a lot to do with this work.

I also made a range of internet collages that I’ve been making in my free time into a piece of work within itself, which can be viewed on my main website. These are a series of pieces that I’ve been working on for a while now, taking in mind figureheads of popular culture as well as my own influences within my life. I enjoy how grossly kitsch they are, as well as the overwhelmingly bright colours.

Last week I also scrapped the ‘shooting’ video, as I thought that it had too many connotations which I wasn’t entirely interested in. I am also yet to re-visit the piece involving the avatars, I do plan to at some point soon though, minus the Zooks, as they have now become their own thing. Or I may scrap it too, as the new series of videos titled ‘Dark Content’ by Eva and Franco Mattes uses these avatars extensively throughout the films. I’ll continue to think about this.

 I did mention films earlier, and I’ve been watching a steady amount in the past few weeks. These include, Apocalypse Now, Room 237, Full Metal Jacket, Eyes Wide Shut, Dr. Strangelove, Crash, (both of them,  I watched the non-Cronenberg one accidently) Naked Lunch, Adaptation, The Holy Mountain, The Martian, A History of Violence and Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope (refreshing my memory before going to see the new one). All these films were pretty incredible, The Holy Mountain was so very weird and crazy, and Room 237 shed some light on how amazingly clever Kubrick was.

It’s very weird to be back in a space that I know but don’t know at the same time. It’s an incredibly obvious thing to think about, and everyone probably considers it in one way or another, but it’s still a thing that’s happening within my head at the moment.

Over the next few weeks I want to get on with my essay, so that that’s out of the way, and I can solely concentrate on my work. I’m also going to continue to watch films, and actually get some reading done too over this holiday period. It’s been good to relax though, its peaceful here.

Daily Snapchat:

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Big Bang Data, Mobiles and The Book of Mormon

This has been an enjoyable, but incredibly slow, week. It now feels like everything is slowing down to a crawl, making me feel demotivated and tired sometimes, which isn’t helpful. This time next week I’ll be in a comfortable space, relaxing and spending a lot of my time sitting down, reading or watching, reverting back to a past self who spent a lot of time indoors not doing a lot at all. It will be a very weird and interesting experience.

Monday consisted solely of ‘hanging’ the exhibition. In the morning we all convened in our assigned spaces and discussed where each person should be placed, in relation to the work that they’d produced. This went well, and by the end of the day our groups’ part of the exhibition was pretty much done. 

In the afternoon there was a lecture on the Black Arts Movement. Although it was a well put together lecture, with lots of thought provoking details about cultural change and new ideologies that were created, I was so enthralled by the process of putting up the exhibition that I found it incredibly hard to concentrate afterwards. I did write down a variety of notes and learn some things, but I feel that the hour was slightly wasted because of my distorted mind at the time, thinking about deadlines and work to be shown, etc.

I spent Tuesday finalising my installation, as well as sending off the necessary documents concerning the unit and displaying all of my supporting work on a desk in the studio. It was very weird that, for the first time, the majority of my work was on a USB stick, rather than sculptural or book work. It definitely marks a change in the work that I’ve been creating for the last few months, as opposed to the artwork that I was making during my Foundation and over the summer holidays.

Unfortunately I was so caught up with deadlines and other aspects of the course that I didn’t go to the Tuesday artist talk, which was incredibly frustrating. In reality I should have really gone, but you can’t change what has already happened. I’m definitely going to make sure that I go this week however.

Wednesday was spent sitting in the exhibition spaces, invigilating and making sure that my videos were playing, as my work was being marked during the day. It was ultimately an incredibly dull 24 hours, where nothing was accomplished and everything was lost. I think that after a term of being incredibly busy, this week I simply stopped, which is unfortunate, but I feel that it had to happen at some point.

Thursday was a day full of crits, which was exciting. Although mine didn’t go too great, as I didn’t feel that I communicated my ideas to the visiting artists as well as I’d hoped, going to other peoples was both thought provoking and truly awesome. Seeing peoples work being taken apart is fun and you do learn a lot from the experiences, what not to do, etc. With some people, I did found myself thinking, what have they been doing for the past two months, to make something this bad/un-thought out? When someone is repeatedly saying ‘I don’t know’ over and over again in response to questions about their work, I think that something is definitely wrong. It was one of those days of pure enjoyment, listening about art and critiquing the work that you dislike. One piece of work that I especially disliked was a painting (obviously) which was ‘Untitled’. Who puts the effort into printing out a label and then leaves the work untitled!? This is something that consistently annoys me.

That evening was the private view, which I feel went well. I saw people looking at and – hopefully – enjoying my work. There were a number of performances during the event, some good but some incredibly bait. One such piece involved writing ‘human’ in your native language on a large canvas with a piece of charcoal, which you then proceeded to smudge with your hands, after which you touched the face of the artist with your now charcoal infused hands. It was like going back in time to before I was born, where that would have been considered ‘edgy’ and ‘new’.

After the event I was linked by various friends to a number of images on different social media websites of people lying down and looking at my work, which was fun to see. This sparked the idea of saving all of the photographs and using them in a future piece of work. This has obviously been done many times before, but I think that it’s still worthwhile to save them, even if they’re simply used to document people interacting with my work. 

On Friday morning I woke up incredibly early, and just lay in bed, listening to the sounds of traffic and police sirens, and whatever other sounds that you hear at four o’clock in the morning. The contrast between ‘home’ and here will be incredibly noticeable next week, when it will be completely silent for the majority of the day. It also made me think about how, as a seven or eight year old child, travelling to London was always amazing. Sitting in the backseat of a car and looking up at the lights of the city in awe. Just thinking about that for many hours was an experience. I’m rarely doing nothing, always watching or listening, writing or talking. The endless influx of information sometimes becoming unbearable. I don’t know what to do with these thoughts, but I’m sure they’ll come into my work in some shape of form, or already have in one way or another.

Friday was spent taking down my work, which was relatively easy to do. Yet again, a wasted day where nothing was really achieved. I had tickets for the ‘Shadow Without Object’ symposium at Chelsea during the day, but I felt that I would be too tired and worn out to actually concentrate. This was proved when I went to the Chelsea Space and couldn’t really take in any of the material from the Women’s Art Library Magazine Archive, which is a shame. Maybe next week I will re-visit the works on offer.

In the evening I went to see The Book of Mormon, which was surprisingly dull. The sheer number of racist jokes was incredible. Obviously it’s all very knowing and that’s the point, but at some stage it’s too much, and the jokes became dull and overused, and this is where the ‘it’s a musical’ part comes into play. Although I hate musicals, I thought that this one might be the exception, but unfortunately it wasn’t. The things that were being said would have worked as a joke within a TV program, but not so much when they were repeated around 300 times during the course of a ten minute song. By the end I was bored by the whole thing, and my eyes had repeatedly attempted to close, which is a real shame.

I’m a big fan of South Park (which is – I’m aware – a very obvious thing to say/compare the musical too) as it’s so satirical, clever and up to the point. So I think maybe the downfall is that I’ve seen this thing four years too late? This also leads onto the thought that continually moves through my mind when I go and see anything theatre based that has been running for a while, that the cast must be so bored of it all. Of course the members of the cast are changed regularly but it’s still something that I consider every time I see something like this. I remember listening to an episode of The Moth where a member of the Blue Man Group was talking about how he’d spent many years within the group, getting steadily more and more tired of the performance. It’s kind of ruined any long running performance theatre for me, which is a shame.

I also watched a film, Danny Collins, a light hearted drama centred on an ageing rock star who has a ‘mid-life crisis’ of sorts. It was fun, and Al Pacino played the character well, but ultimately I will have forgotten all about the movie in a few weeks’ time, as with many films of meagre quality.

On Saturday I went to the Tate Modern and looked around the Alexander Calder show, which was okay, but not great. A lot of the work was very samey, beautiful but samey. I think everyone knows Calder’s work, and enjoys it in different ways. For me, a lot of the ideas are very obvious and the outcomes are quite elegant and aesthetically pleasing. Work that is suited for the Tate but not entirely for me.

During the day I did watch the new Netflix show featuring Bill Murray titled ‘A Very Murray Christmas’. Ultimately it was a depressing 56 minutes of my life, full of old songs and sad stories that made me miss the past and my childhood for some reason.

As well as this I started to make some new work, which was slightly surprising. I created two work – in - progress films, still thinking about the monotony of life and all of the ideas which accompany that.

One film features clips from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 – a video game involving the American military and the shooting of many people, murdering on a large scale. Obviously using this footage has so many connotations embedded within it, so at this point I need to think about that, and how it relates. Obviously it does relate to the concept behind it, otherwise I wouldn’t have spent time and effort creating the movie, but I just need to spend some time thinking about it. At the moment both of the videos are simply a group of short clips meshed together, with no real narrative, but I hope to change that this week. This is the work in progress piece:

The other beginning piece that I made was created using avatars on a website, avatars that are meant to be purchased so that you can add them to your own website, as ‘pop up people’ who inquire whether you need any assistance or not. This video is incredibly far from being done, but it was fun to play around with certain things as I get more used to the software. I was thinking a lot about the idea of pop ups and advertising within the internet, and the rise of ‘click bait’ articles from websites like BuzzFeed. This relates to the original ideas surrounding life and boredom, as the ‘viewer’ clicks away from the ‘helpful’ avatars. The background video shows a ‘Zook’, a computer generated creature, with one huge leg and one tiny one, endlessly attempting to reach its objective that it will never get to, a red dot on the floor. Throughout the clip it’s in the background, and is slowly revealed as the pop ups are closed. This video needs a lot of work, and the Zook may be turned into a video on its own, but I’m not completely sure of that. I think some of the main parts are there, I just need to spend a lot of time re-configuring them and adding/subtracting some key elements. This is the video:

Today I went to an exhibition at Somerset House titled ‘Big Bang Data’ which was awesome. It consisted of a range of artists’ work being presented alongside scientific ideas and documentaries featuring the internet and technology. So many great artists had work being shown, including Philip Adrian, Julian Oliver, Thomson & Craighead, Owen Mundy, Erica Scourti and many more. It contained an amazing mixture of artists who work with the technology that surrounds our everyday lives, and I’m now going to have to read up on and peruse their work, which will be fun.

There’s only a few things on this week, a group discussion tomorrow where we’ll talk about the different essay questions and a feedback tutorial on Tuesday. I think the rest of the week is free, so I intend to go to many galleries, as well as making use of the studio space for the final week, before I go back to the countryside. I intend to work on my new videos further, as well as finally filming my video world, if I can get it to work.

Daily Snapchat:

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