This
was arguably the ‘last week of term’, with assessments occurring and cleaning
everything out of the studios, it’s a weird feeling that first year has nearly
finished. When I think back to this time last year, I was a very different
person, with different artwork being created and different wants/needs to be
fulfilled. I’ve only got a few feedback tutorials/crits to go and then I’m free
from uni work, enabling me to concentrate on the continuous video game creating
with John alongside my own work for the show in a few weeks’ time.
In
terms of my own work’s progression, the only serious thing that I managed to do
was successfully collate together a series of tweets that had gotten various
people fired, 12 in total; representing the 12 members of a jury. This focuses
on how social media platforms, and the internet in general, has become a space
for judging one’s peers, making the collective body of the internet ‘judge,
jury and executioner’. I successfully printed all these various tweets onto caps,
which I plan to show next month for the show at Safehouse 1; working onto my
previous piece looking at Justine Sacco. The current idea is to have them
placed all over the space, hanging on hooks, encouraging the viewer to wear
them and take pictures with them, sharing the images on any and all social
media platforms. I would then collate these photographs and create a piece of
work from them, with Hito Steyerl’s Red
Alert 2 being a direct reference. In this work she gathered all of the
images that people had taken of the original piece Red Alert and created a new film responding to people’s reactions
of the work. This new piece that may or may not be generated by people taking photographs
with the work would probably end up manifesting as huge blown up images of
their photographs on the various social media platforms, directly referencing Richard
Prince and his New Portraits series
and Cory Arcangel’s blown up images currently being shown at the Lisson. The
caps are currently being printed and should be with me by the end of this week.
To
go alongside this, I’ve been considering displaying a few ‘selfie sticks’ on
gun racks, yet again considering the power of the image which is usually posted
to social media when one uses a selfie stick. The sticks would be allowed to be
used in the exhibition space, for photographing people wearing the hats or just
for pictures in general. It would be interesting to make up a contract for the
users of the sticks to sign, maybe making it so that each image that was taken
using the stick belonged to me, considering the idea of ‘terms and conditions’
that are prevalent when you sign up to various websites. This could be
an interesting aspect, or may just be too much. The selfie stick idea may work
better if all the caps were in one space, with the selfie sticks accompanying them,
making it more obvious that the caps ‘should’ be photographed using the sticks;
but maybe that’s controlling the work too much. I think I need to think about
it some more and mock up some installation ideas.
I’m
hoping to display another work too, a video piece or an interactive video
experience, something that’s not just sitting there like the caps. I’m at a bit
of a loss currently as to what to create, rather than simply displaying a
previous piece that’s yet to be exhibited like Consumerist Dissonance or Rules
of Engagement. As I was saying last week, I really want to make something
out of my Facebook data, but I’m just finding it very hard to actually think of
anything that isn’t simply displaying the data. Having the messages engraved
onto a grave would be really great, but that costs a little too much, although
engraved plaques are around £20-£30 each, but that doesn’t have the same
connotations as a grave; slowly being forgotten over time. At this point I’m
thinking about getting all this stuff to the venue, as well as taking it all
back to Suffolk in less than a months’ time. It’s a hard decision. I just need
to think about what I want to show, something new and interesting, whatever that
may be. I’ll just wait and see what happens
Other
ideas for work not for the exhibition are occurring, with a side project
looking at how a Kindle tracks your reading speeds, continually informing you
of how long it’s going to take you to read your book. In this work I’m planning
to have a Kindle displayed beside a classic ‘reading chair’ positioned in a carpeted
space, possibly the banqueting hall at Chelsea; simulating a space synonymous with
advertising culture. On the Kindle a copy of Infinite Jest would be set up, a
book infamous for its high word count and obsession with addictions associated
with advertising cultures. In an exhibition setting the book would be readable,
with the timer continuously increasing or decreasing, depending on however many
people decide to flick through the pages of the virtual book. This work would
consider the surveillance and digitalisation of book reading, arguably one of
the few things yet to be taken over by technology. It may or may not become a
thing. I’ll see if I have time.
Another
idea this week came from my continued reading of Delete, considering memory and the loss of it. Within the book, ‘lost’
memory is talked about a lot, that memories aren’t actually forgotten, they
just no longer link to one another, so the ones without any links are lost in
the ether of our brains, still taking up ‘space’ but not actually being used.
This made me think of all the websites out there that are unlinked to other
websites and that can’t be found via search engines, one’s that still run and
use up memory in data farms but are inaccessible without the URL. In this case,
in contrast to Constant Dullaart’s piece The
Death of the URL, the websites URL is incredibly important. Taking a leaf
out of Eva and Franco Mattes’ book, I want to look into creating a website on
the dark web, only accessible through the TOR browser with a specific link.
What’s contained on that website I’m unsure of at this moment, it could link
well with the old Facebook messages, with each new web address having a new
virtual conversation, forgotten about over the years, but as of now I’m unsure.
Other
than these generated ideas, it was actually a very slow week, setting up for
the assessment on Monday, printing off all the relevant information alongside
making sure all my work since Christmas was either displayed or available on
USB sticks. All very boring. Then returning on Friday to take everything back
to my place was incredibly painful, carrying huge bags full of crap on the tube
is never fun.
I
did manage to document my work surrounding PC culture and public shaming, which
was a positive. The images are okay, but not brilliant, I think I may need to
re-photograph them at some point in the future. For now, they are fine and you
get a sense of what they actually are at least. You can see all the images on
my main website here:
Other
than this I’ve been working with John on the video games some more, with a few
of them officially completed, with final touches being added over the next week.
This week I built a level revolving around an old woman’s dream, where she gets
run over in the street and makes rice for six identical looking children. The
levels are very weird to all of these games, but it does make sense as they’re
all inspired by people’s ‘crazy’ dreams.
Another
meeting for the group exhibition next month was held, catching up with what
people are making as well as ideas for names among other things. I’m enjoying
the continuous meetings, actual time that’s been put aside to discuss and talk
about what’s occurring in our practice and hearing about peoples work that I don’t
usually get to hear about. A few of the different works seems to be individual
objects, for example my caps, so one of the many curatorial ideas that was
brought up was to have these various objects displayed around the house,
finding a relationship between one another, rather than just having set spaces
between ourselves. A possible name for the exhibition also came up; xXx, obviously this has underlying
sexual interpretations, which some of the work within the show will focus upon.
It also has a sense of ambiguity to it, or ‘riskay-ness’. It’s also a lot more
interesting than coming up with a ‘wanky’ name that’s taken from an influential
book. Who knows what the actual name will be, only time will tell. I look
forward to this week’s meeting as well as the actual event in question.
Other
things of merit this week include hearing back from a few open calls, one based
in Sheffield and one based here in London. I was accepted to be a part of God’s Own County in Sheffield, where two
of my video works (Utopian Realism and Endless Confinement) will be shown on
huge projection screens being projected onto the side of Weston Park Museum. Here’s
a short video clip of how big the projection will actually be, I’m kind of
excited for when it happens next month: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2x4grgvC7Sc
I
was also accepted into PHOTOPLAY #2 at
the Brewdog Clerkenwell, a pub in London, where another video work of mine will
be shown on Tuesday this week, here’s the Facebook event if anyone is
interested: https://www.facebook.com/events/1721272604814346/
I
continue to sign up for things every week, which is definitely a good thing.
Doing everything and anything at this stage is the best thing to do I feel, especially
as I have a vague amount of work that I’m proud of.
Aside
from working, I went to a few things this week, not as many as I’d hoped to go
to unfortunately, as most of my time is being devoted towards John’s project at
this point. One was going to the Zabludowicz for an exciting panel discussion
titled Private Lives and Networked
Culture. The majority of it was good, with lots of back tracking to pre-existing
ideas and thoughts, but it was still really interesting to hear from insightful
people on the different subjects in a ‘real life’ setting. David Raymond
Conroy, the only artist on the panel, was especially impressive, with
thoughtful and insightful ideas about the network and how we use social media
to our advantage. I look forward to seeing more of him and his work in the
future.
I
also went to Show One at CSM. It was definitely an interesting experience,
looking to the future and thinking about John and I’s work for the Chelsea show
as well as my own in a few years from now. One of my favourites was a video
piece from Max Hollands, showing him calling up various people and asking them
what they think he should make for his degree show. It was delightfully humorous
and one of those things you immediately understand but wanted to stay for
longer; something that I strive to do in a lot of my own time based video
works. To be honest I was slightly disappointed by the exhibition overall, as
there was no real work that I would have truly wanted to make myself. I’m sure that
when I get to that point in my own ‘career’ I’ll understand it all, but as of
now I wasn’t fully invested.
\There
was also the end of year second year show at Chelsea, which was even more
disappointing. I didn’t really like any of the work, which was incredibly
surprising. I wanted more, whatever ‘more’ means. I don’t know whether to be
excited for when I’m in that same position next year, or whether I should be
anxious about the quality of second years’ work, and maybe my work is of even a
lower quality than that. Basically it was an annoying exhibition; lots of painting
that I wasn’t invested in.
Lucy
Beech was the artist on Tuesday, speaking about her incredible practice. I’m
really impressed by the quality of artists this term compared to last term; it’s
kind of a shame really that it’s not always this good; but I guess that’s the
way it goes. Her films come from excessive research into various ideas, such as
internet communities or funeral award ceremonies. She manages to use this
research to then talk about her own interests, rather than simply focusing on
the original idea. I thoroughly recommend going and looking at her previous
work, especially Cannibals, a video
piece showing a group of women who slowly break down to tearing their own flesh
from their bones.
Oh
and week 5 on isthisit? is up, with a
video piece from collaborative duo Bea Vorster and Zachary Dietrich titled Cyclopian Trilogy Part II Confrontation
alongside a work from Emile Burgoyne Northern
State. You can find it here:
Although
I didn’t go to many exhibitions, I did see a few films. The first being Angry Birds, which, for being inspired
by a terrible video game, was actually quite funny and heart-warming at times.
Futureworld,
the successor to Westworld, was also surprisingly
good. I imagined it to be a simple copy of the first film in the series, but
fortunately it had a vaguely interesting new storyline, centralised around the
idea of a group of robots taking over the world, rather than a sole robot gone ‘haywire’.
It was classic 70s sci-fi which we all love.
The Secret World of Arrietty was quite beautiful, not Studio Ghibli’s best, but
it still contained incredible animations accompanied by a thoughtful storyline.
After my mass watching of all of the Miyazaki films earlier in the year, I
think I’m ready to return to the world of Studio Ghibli, and may attempt to
watch all of them at some point soon.
Timer,
a film built around the concept of a timer on your wrist counting down until
you meet your ‘one true love’, was less interesting than I thought it was going
to be. With no real sci-fi elements to speak of, it was kind of dull, with the
general concept of time counting down having been executed a lot better in
Andrew Niccol’s In Time. I wanted
more from it, less rom com and more seriousness.
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. was another one that I wasn’t completely convinced
by. Even though it was a fair film, it didn’t really feel like it knew what it
was, seeming to sway from action comedy to pure action. A lot of the movie
seemed to be a big joke, making me never worried for the main characters’ livelihoods
or the plot altogether. A shame.
Hardcore Henry
was the last film on the list. The concept of filming a whole film on various
GoPro’s is interesting, but ultimately it made the movie feel incredibly low
budget and less real than ‘normal’ filming does, whatever that means. Lots of
incredible action with a plot that didn’t really make sense.
Apart
from film watching, I did watch the first episode of a new tv series titled Preacher. Originally a comic book, the
pilot episode is full of brutal violence and solid character development. I
look forward to seeing more and would highly recommend the first episode.
I
think that might be everything, unless I’ve missed some key detail that has
otherwise escaped my thoughts. I think it’s just a waiting game now, waiting
for the term to be over, waiting to go home and relax for a bit, waiting for
time to stand still again. I think I’ll be at a bit of a loss next week with no
studio to go to, feeling a lot less like uni and a lot more like real life.
Over
the course of the week I’m going to be thinking about a new video, whatever
that might be, alongside finalising the video games with John and painting his
space, ‘making it good’. I’ll continue to apply to exhibitions, hopefully
getting more replies soon enough and also going to a few myself finally. I just
need to plan a day again like I used to, now that I have more time with the
deadlines being nearly over. I think the next three weeks are just going to be
quite free, enjoying London for what it is before I return to Suffolk.
Enjoi.
Instagram:
bob.bk1
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