The
past week has been slightly consumed by the exhibition; lots of group meetings
and many hours spent exploring the space with our work, figuring out what
worked best where alongside a few other factors. Overall it was a fun, incredibly
tiring and stressful experience, one that I’m definitely looking forward to taking
part in again in the future.
30/30
has officially ended; which feels very weird. You don’t quite realise how much
a daily routine impacts you until that routine is no longer occurring. I think
it was a really fun thing to have been a part of, allowing me to really
consider what my practice is centred around alongside the ‘work process’. I
look forward to the exhibition and next year if the 12ΓΈ collective decide to
put on the project again. It would be a really interesting thing to compare
work that I’ve made over the last month with the work I’d make in a years’ time
over the same 30-day period. The final piece that the artist duo Sid and Jim made for 30/30 sums up my reflective thoughts perfectly:
This
final week of work had some highs and lows, on Monday the brief was ‘remake
yesterday’s work. Is it better with practice, or lacking through repetition?’ I
simply took a video capture of my video from the day before playing on YouTube
and edited the view count so that over 2 million people had seemingly ‘watched’
my video, making it seem ‘better’ but in a fictitious way, similar to the
buying of followers on Twitter for example. It was titled The Ten Commandments of Gunny Revisited.
On
the 26th the brief was ‘translate your work into another sense’. I
took an image from the video game Proteus,
where you wander around an island as the seasons slowly change around you, and
added some vaguely evocative text; ‘it smells nice in here’. Juxtaposing the
two senses, the feeling of coldness that you get from the image with the text
informing the viewer that it smells nice in this mystical space was a fun
thing, with the text being made to look slightly Vaporwave-esque in manner. I
called it it’s cold here. This, surprisingly,
made it onto the thirty page which
was exciting.
The
27th was okay, if slightly a bored attempt to make something that I’d already
made in the past. The brief was ‘make a work from all the things on your
desktop.’ Something that I’ve done a lot in the past, so instead of just
submitting a piece from Internet
Surveillance, Inc. I decided to just make a new thing, which was just dull,
dripping of boredom. It was called the
toad abides.
On
Thursday the brief was one of those classic questions ‘what work do your
relatives think /wish /hope you make?’ Obviously my mind went straight to
painting. After rummaging around in my head for a few ideas I finally decided to
create an assemblage of all the ‘best paintings’ from Google. I layered them in
Photoshop and then added in the genius that is Neil Buchanan from Art Attack in
the centre; encompassing everything that people from ‘my generation’ in this
first world country associate with art, as well as our parents I assume. A
mixture of sticking with the brief whilst going against it. I like the idea of
using Buchanan in a piece of work, being so synonymous with the ‘art world’ but
in a very different way from how Duchamp is for example. Maybe for a later
project I’ll come back to this. I called the piece my grandma likes apples, which goes back to an old drawing of mine,
from when I was around eleven or twelve which I gave to my grandma, which
featured two apples on a plate. I believe that that drawing is still in their house
somewhere, it would be interesting to see it again.
On
the 29th the brief was ‘Can you make a work that’s a guilty
pleasure?’ Instead of making the watching/consuming of the work a guilty
pleasure in itself, I decided to centre the piece around myself, and about my
guilty pleasures. I decided to create a video piece featuring Casey Neistat
whose videos I watch every day but continually hate myself for doing so. At
this point I’ve watched too many to stop, wasting more and more of my daily
life consuming this annoying man’s life. I then inserted a variety of videos
featuring ‘biggest bong hits’ on top of Nesitat’s first vlog. This takes me
back to a time where I would probably have watched these videos in my spare
time. The contrast between the dull content that I watch now with the dull videos
that I used to watch is simply evocative of how much of the stuff on YouTube is
just boring. The guilty pleasures from now and old combined to create a weird
video. It was called Bong Mot,
another call-back to a phrase coined by my earlier self. It was also translated
by Facebook from Vietnamese to ‘Frozen too’. I don’t think I can fit that in
with the ‘meaning’, although it’s one of those weird things that Facebook does.
Maybe I should make a work about that at some point…
As
yesterday was the last day I wanted to make something all encompassing,
something that looked back on my previous work whilst responding to the brief ‘try
making that work you’ve been wanting to make over the past month, and never got
round to making.’ Unfortunately, I was very busy yesterday at the gallery
space, where there’s also no wifi, so I cobbled together a few things and came
up with a very nonsensical image featuring the sun shining on my laptop keys, a
disembodied hand as well as a few mouse arrows. The evocative title where is this? is in response to a
question that came up during my crit in the exhibition space the previous day.
Mixing together these forms for the last day of 30/30 allowed me to create
something of the ‘now’, with 3D modelling on the rise which will lead to cybernetic
beings (which has arguably already happened according to many philosophers)
accompanied by the obsessions with technology mixing with outside properties,
in this case the sun. The mice pointers also come into play here. Overall it
was an okay outcome, but I would’ve loved to have some time to create something
all encompassing, summing up my feelings towards the project rather than another
random thing; although making the last work in bed simulates all the other
times that I’ve made the day’s work in bed before I’ve gotten up, be it when I
was on holiday or back in London, so that’s kind of nice.
Back
to my week, full of stress and anxiety. During the lead up to the private view
on Friday we as a group had a few days beforehand to get used to the huge
space, considering how best it should be used among other things. We eventually
came to various decisions, all finding our own spaces whilst interacting with each
other’s work in different ways. There are lots of things which could have
worked a lot better which we discussed last night whilst walking around the
gallery space, critiquing each of our different works as a reflective experience,
considering what everyone had done, whether or not we’d like to exhibit with
the same people again and so on. As the groups work was predominantly technology
based, be it a simple video work or a set of huge speakers, the amount of
thought that went into the wiring as well as general thoughts was substantial.
Having such a big space for the first offsite exhibition was probably a
mistake, but looking back it was definitely a huge learning experience. I also learned
a lot about how people interacted with my work, subtly watching various groups looking
at the different pieces throughout the night of the private view.
In
terms of what I actually exhibited, it did slightly change as the week went on.
I decided to incorporate my Snapchat video piece into the work as well as
draping my fabric onto a bean bag to be sat on, rather than hanging from
tripods. All of these last minute decisions added to the installation, but made
it slightly over-complicated. For the private view I had attached one of the
tripods with a surveillance camera to the wall, situated beside another
tripod/surveillance camera. On reflection I didn’t need it at all and that I
probably used them as I felt like I had spent too much money on these material
things to not use them, when in actuality I should have just accepted my
losses, keeping it simple. These are a few images/videos of the exhibition space
as a whole, as well as specifically my own work:
After
the private view I decided to destroy the bricks, partly because I didn’t want
to go through the hassle of transporting them back to uni as well as the fact
that through the act of destroying them I could make a new piece of work from
it; a performance piece where I destroy the data that’s embedded within the
blocks, eliminating the stolen files whist freeing them in a way. After destroying
them however I decided to create a new piece from them again; building the
blocks up into plinth like structures where the recovered USB sticks can be
displayed. The performance and the block towers have now formed a new piece of
work which is viewable on my website here:
http://www.bobbicknell-knight.com/#/dismantled-data/
In
other news, the lecture on Tuesday was on Walter Benjamin and his book The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.
Although the lecture was interesting, I’ve already read the book, so it didn’t
really expand upon anything that I already knew.
The
artist talk on Tuesday was by Benji Jeffrey, who also happened to be one of the
two people in charge of our crit on Friday, which went vaguely well. The one
question that was asked of me during the crit which really intrigued me was ‘what
time period do you see your work in?’ This is something that I’ve never really
thought of before, but it definitely makes sense to consider; the fact that
Sketchup is an old technology, as well as the Vaporwave soundtrack created for
my film alongside the use of the Snapchat videos that never have any filters.
It made sense and made me think about Jon Rafman’s video piece Neon Parallel 1996 where he is said to
have been ‘attempting to create a Vaporwave video from the 90s’. He was definitely
successful in his endeavour. It’s a question that I’m definitely still
reflecting on. Back to the talk; I enjoyed some of his work, especially a
recent piece where he used the controversial interview of Robert Downey Jr by Krishnan
Guru-Murthy, mocking Downey’s hand and facial movements. Apart from that
though, he mostly talked about art school and what to ‘get’ from it. I never
really like it when artists do this as it isn’t really why I’m there; to hear about
the work of the artist. The same thing has happened multiple times, and each
time I don’t like it, surely they know we’re being told this all the time?
I
did manage to go to a few exhibitions this week, one ‘actual’ one at the
Seventeen gallery featuring Jimmy Merris. The high point of the show was encountering
a pile of plastic skull heads attached to deformed bodies in the middle of the
room. They were ‘activated’ by clapping your hands in their general direction,
making them squirm and scream in agony on the floor. Alongside this were a
range of the artists’ clothes covered with lacquer, making them rigid, like
sculptural structures rather than clothes. I really liked the exhibition, as
well as Seventeen gallery in general; it has such a range of great artists who exhibit
there. The artists that they represent always seem to gain incredible
popularity a few years after having an exhibition at their gallery space. Now
they are ahead of the curve.
The
other exhibitions that I went to were all student shows. The first one I went
to was at the Safehouse space in Peckham. Surprisingly some people had actually
used the space appropriately, working with it rather than secretly wanting it
to be a white cube affair. The other show was at the Crypt gallery. This was a
prime example of how not to use a space. It was huge for one thing, and had hardly
been filled. The artworks were mostly paintings too, which didn’t really
interest me.
Other
than that I’ve watched a few films and started some new tv shows. One of my favourites
from the week was The Ninth Configuration.
A film centralised around an insane asylum and the new psychiatrist in charge
of the establishment. It was really obscure and really great, slightly mind-fucked
in places but in a good way. Another film I watched was the rebooted version of
The Jungle Book. Compared to the original
it wasn’t that great, but in its own right it was a solid film with some
incredible CGI effects. I wasn’t a big fan of how they shoe horned in the original
songs, as none of them were really sung, so there was no real need to have them
there. Some great voice acting though. The final film – Louder than Bombs – was a very quiet experience, a considered
experience, a nice experience. I think I liked it in a way.
In
terms of tv, I started to watch Orphan
Black, which is okay. It feels like a ‘soft-drama’, not gritty enough in
terms of acting (rather than content) to be an actual drama, but not funny
enough to be a comedy. It’s in an in between space. I’m not fully convinced but
as light relief it’s been okay. Freaks
and Geeks is another television venture of mine, full of bad acting and
very childlike plot lines, but in a good way. I like it for what it is and see
how it’s created a cult following around it.
For
the week ahead I’m having more meetings with John, hopefully getting started on
the actual making of the video games as time is slowly going to get the better
of us. I also want to start on a few of my own projects, one being the musical
video game that I mentioned last week, which I’ve been thinking more about this
week. At the moment the plan is to take an incredibly ‘ugly’ song, for example Giovinezza (the official hymn of the
Italian National Fascist Party) and break it up into its individual notes,
allowing the viewer to create something beautiful from a terrible thing. I feel
that it needs to have some connection to me as a person though, so maybe if I
took apart a song from my childhood the piece would have more weight behind it?
I think I need to dig into the ‘songs from my past’ or particular songs that I
used to like but reflecting back are incredibly fascist or racist in some way.
We shall see.
Another
work that I’m currently considering uses the YouTube copyright system to
discuss issues surrounding fair use and copyright laws, as well as how much
power corporations have. The piece will be centred around a video work that is
a compilation of music that is copyrighted by YouTube, allowing them to put
adverts on your video or even take it down entirely. This assortment of music
will be accompanied by a relevant film that either takes on these issues or is
a blatant advertisement for the certain company. At the moment I’m considering The Internship alongside creating a
compilation of videos of moments in films where a character is watching
YouTube. In the film scenario, the video piece would go on for the entire
length of The Internship, with a
continuous soundtrack of copyrighted music. Alongside the video would be a
screengrab of all the content ID claims that would pop up from said video.
Other
than that I need to finally finish my essay, during this week I managed to get
around 200-300 words written down, but now I need to finish it entirely by the
9h. Once again leaving it until now has obviously been a mistake, but a mistake
that I can’t seem not to repeat every now and again…
Enjoi.
Instagram:
bob.bk1
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