Trading Places, SNAP and David Blandy

Another week, another bunch of admin alongside a fuck load of work being put towards the magazine, which, at this point, is looking great. Very little of my own personal artwork was created, although I did begin to think of some new ideas, which I’ll hopefully be able to flesh out in the next few hours whilst writing this thing on the last grey Sunday in February.

For the last few days I’ve probably spent around 30 or so hours designing the layout and the general aesthetic of the magazine. All of my time and effort being put towards this thing, switching between Photoshop and InDesign, thus the lack of galleries being visited this weekend. A shame, but probably necessary. After looking through the pages I’d started to put together for the magazine I slowly realised that it wasn’t looking that great, having these various images encompassing whole pages with no real context, alongside having too many pages. More pages = more money, which is slowly becoming a thing, who wants to buy a magazine that costs £20? I decided on Friday to completely change the design of the thing, putting everything within computer screen windows, making the magazine like a computer interface within itself, with the classic isthisit? marble as the background. When I say everything, I mean literally everything, due to it being weird if there wasn’t serious consistency. Although I personally love how it looks, I hope all the artists involved aren’t too offended by how I’ve manipulated their work somewhat, although I guess I do hold all of the artistic license when putting this mag together, pushing concepts and meanings onto the work regardless of whether it’s putting the work in a computer screen box or if I simply place one image next to another. Here’s a few examples (don’t want to put them all here, you will all need to buy the magazine for that).

I’ve heard back from basically all the artists now, with the majority of people sending me the £10 over too. This entitles them to a free magazine, which may be even more than £10 anyway, so yet again (I think I mentioned this maybe last week) I may lose money on this, but I do just hate it when you’re a part of a magazine and you don’t get given a ‘free’ copy. For those that haven’t sent the money over, they won’t be getting a free copy, which is unfortunate but I can’t really afford to be giving out free ones. This is a list of all the contributors:

Featured Artists:

Amanda Karlsson

Bob Bicknell-Knight

Callum Harper

Col Self

Corie Denby McGowan

Ed Florance

Iona Bone

Jade Annaw

Jake Moore

Jiyoung Yoo

Joe Jefford

Lois Williams

Neale Willis

Owen Thackeray

Ror Brown

Sid and Jim

Artist Interviews:

Roxman Gatt

Thomas Tyler

Luke Nairn

Pippa Eason

Essays

​

Eva Tomopoulou

Gabriel S Moses

Helena Kate Whittingham

Karl Sims

I’m pretty happy with all the people involved, a great mixture of people I’ve worked with before and am new to, it’s just a shame I didn’t have the idea to put all the work in windows before, because a lot of the work I turned down could have definitely worked within a windowed setting. I guess that’s the learning process in all of this… Right now I’ve pretty much finalised all the artist pages, utilising the windows system in order to credit each artist individually, alongside having a contents page at the front. After having a few conversations, I realised that it’s fairly important to credit people in an obvious way, obviously. The artist interviews are also going well, nearly three down and only one to go, which is exciting, hopefully finishing that over the next few days. I’ve also fully received two of the four essays and inputted them into the layout, which is looking great. It’s definitely becoming a thing that I’m proud to be making all by myself.

I’ve been continuing to look for venues, and have emailed a few spaces, with the one I’m most looking forward to a reply from being the Health Mate Internet Café on Caledonian Road. It’s like an upper class internet café, with the servers for the PCs showing and this beautiful pink lighting. It would suite the launch perfectly, utilising the PCs for video works, making the experience a pop up exhibition. That would be the dream. Right now I’m pretty much set on the mid-March date, hopefully getting a space ASAP so I can plan my Easter holidays as well as letting all the contributors know so those who live outside of London can come too if they want to.

On Thursday this week is the A217 opening, which is hopefully going to go well. A few more artists were added to the line-up, most notably Ed Fornieles with a magazine and some High Definition tapes. I hope this work won’t feel too shoehorned in and works with the overriding theme… I’m going to start the install tomorrow, with the main piece to install being the floor, which is going to be covered in marble wallpaper, a piece of work by Laila Majid, ironically imitating the isthisit? marble on the website. Then there’s the painting, the ceramic sculpture, two films on tv screens, the PC chassis, selfie stick sculpture, blue lighting and now the magazine and tapes.

Earlier in the week the blue acrylic arrived that I had ordered, which looked great, but unfortunately they were the wrong size for the lights in the space due to me being incredibly ignorant and assuming all the lights at uni were the same size. Unfortunately, this wouldn’t have even mattered due to the need to have both the bottom and the top of the lights covered with the blue, rather than just the bottom. This resulted in me buying a set of coloured lights for the space, spending a fuck load on lights that will only fit that space. A shame, but hopefully they’ll be able to be shown as objects within themselves at some point, maybe… I’m currently thinking about what to do to these lights, drawing on them with permanent marker, maybe signing them or something, or putting vinyl stickers on them. The whole idea is once again coming back to this idea that everything on the internet is tainted with capitalism, due to the servers that a website is being facilitated by or how a company’s stock market price goes up the more you click refresh. It’s all tainted. So I was thinking of maybe copying signatures from famous ‘players’ in the forming of web 2.0, people like Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Jobs. I’m not sure whether this is any good though and will need some more time to think about this, due to the cost of the lights and wanting an actually good idea to take forwards.

Oh and I finally wrote up the curatorial notes for last weeks online exhibition:


This week’s exhibition saw the first solo show on isthisit? featuring various bodies of work from Roxman Gatt, an artist who goes against the very idea of medium specificity, with her work fluidly translating from painting to poetry, film to photography, and culminating in high quality 3D rendered images inspired by the gluttony and reflective nature of the internet. When you first encounter ‘The Evolution of Roxman Gatt’ you’re presented with a computer generated bedroom resembling a teenagers’, with a stack of Dazed and Confused magazines tossed to the floor and a suspiciously clean plate on the bedside table. This is where your journey into Gatt’s personal space begins, voyeuristically reading her sexualised post-internet poetry whilst nodding your head to a sombre sounding song about lost love. In many of the works Gatt is responding to the intimate connections we have with our devices, from the poem ‘Mayonnaise’ that sees her ‘sleep(ing) tight’ with the ‘peaceful light’ emanating from her computer screen to ‘hey can u c me’, a music video that feels like it’s been specially made for the fundamentally broken relationship that she has with the screen, creating this ‘spurned lover’ persona that’s obsessed with the physical embodiment of the net and wants them back in their life, ‘liking’ their status’ and ‘hearting’ their Instagram’s, proclaiming ‘cuddle me’ until someone acknowledges her existence. Whilst navigating the various pages dedicated to the different areas of Gatt’s practice, I feel like I’m beginning to reflect on my own intimate relationship with my phone or computer, objects in my life that are rarely turned off and are always with me, could I switch off if I wanted to, or would these inanimate objects creep back into my life like an unwanted friend or an ex-partner? I don’t know, and don’t think I will for some time, due to the ongoing and never-ending relationship I have with the phone in my pocket and the laptop in my backpack...

This week was an exhibition from M I L K collective, getting people to contribute to the website via Dropbox and a Google Doc - you are heavily encouraged to contribute by going here - www.isthisitisthisit.com

Also coming up fairly soon is the offsite shows with uni, something that has been kind of below my radar really. We had a group tutorial this week, talking about our individual work alongside the concept, which made the thing a lot more exciting than I originally thought. I’ve probably talked about this before here, but we’re planning on putting on a night of events which began by thinking about community hall spaces, evoking the ‘after school club’ vibe which all middle class people know and reminisce about. Due to these spaces being incredibly expensive and rented by the hour, we intend to install the show and everything during the private view, so as we walk into the space we’re performing whilst setting up. This will be recorded from many angles, utilising various cameras on tripods around the room alongside having some of the artworks (mine will be one of these) live streaming to the internet via Facebook Live. During the tutorial we were encouraged to put together a physical program of events, detailing everything that’s happening within the space. This could be minor things, from my artwork live streaming the whole event, to a participatory performance that a member of the group is planning on doing half through the evening. We also were encouraged to consider why we’re actually choosing to do this alongside what we want to get out of the event, alongside bringing up the idea to practice putting together the work and noting down the actual times of how long things are going to take. We’ve also bought custom shirts to set us apart from the crowd, turning the entire evening into a performance itself, which in turn makes everything we do into a performative thing.

I think we’ve pretty much got a space in Camberwell now, which is exciting, as well as fairly close to home. Now all we need to do is practice, create the event on Facebook and make a program. The event, and the group, will be called SNAP, very after school club/basic disco night.

Oh and I did photograph the Facebook piece this week, documentation of which can be seen here, calling it Viewpoints and Data Distortion - http://www.bobbicknell-knight.com/viewpoints-and-data-distortion Is it too wanky? Probably.

This will be being shown at SNAP, but I feel like I should produce some more work for it, even though I’ve been finding it fairly difficult to produce amongst all this admin lately. Like last term, it’s incredibly hard to get out of that head space once you’re immersed within it. A basic work that I’m thinking of putting together is a variety of badges showing the most popular web browser icons. These badges would be free to take, so hopefully people would be wearing them around the exhibition, consciously or unconsciously voting for the best browser. Badges have been used a lot in the past to proudly show what your political beliefs are alongside adding individuality to yourself as someone who has exactly the same jacket on that a few thousand other people do at that same moment. It’s also kind of interesting that a badge can be easily taken off, although if you look closely enough you can see the little holes where you pierced the fabric of your t-shirt. For me, this perfectly captures people’s (or maybe just my own) relationship with their web browsers, going from one to the other, sticking with one for a year and then moving on, never really bothering to delete the data from their hard drive. So yeah, badges would be fun and play into this performance night, or any exhibition really. Who doesn’t want free badges?

  

 

 

Another piece I was thinking about was utilising MacBook screens, or more specifically the lid of the MacBook. Remember when people would cover their entire laptop lid with stickers, putting their own unique tastes and interests onto their corporately created device? People do still do that, but I definitely feel like that’s going out of fashion, with most people surrendering to the laptop’s original aesthetics. An idea for a simple, wall based work would be to have two of these screens, side by side, one customised to shit and the other left alone, showing the contrast of ideas and how the tech industry is slowly eating up smaller companies, picking and choosing the best people from start-ups and immersing them into their huge corporate structures. I think this would be fun and relatively simple, I just need to buy some old fronts of laptops and do some research into the general aesthetic of these custom screens…

I think that might be all the art stuff I was involved in this week. I only went to three art focused things this week, the main one being a great in conversation at the Zabludowicz Collection featuring David Blandy and Harold Offeh (the artist from last week’s uni artist talk). It was really interesting actually, with the main focus of the discussion being various personas and personalities we create for ourselves, or for others, with that being reflected in a lot of their work. It was great to see a bunch of old work from Blandy too, lots of work that I hadn’t seen before, using very old equipment to create these very simple and quick ideas that turned out really well. It’s always great to see Blandy talking…

Another thing was the private view at Carlos Ishikawa for a solo show of paintings from Tom Worsfold. It was okay, but really nothing to shout about at all, big paintings of illustrator type things… I don’t know, definitely not worth my time, especially as they had run out of beer by the time I’d gotten there. Also, a really funny/weird thing about that space is the glass office which you walk past as you enter the gallery. It was very amusing as during the private view three or four (I assume) esteemed people were just chatting and drinking in this office space, which felt to me like the higher echelon of people, able to look out of their glass box to the peasants who were outside, disconnected from their chat. Obviously this is the case in most galleries, the important people in the office, I just really enjoyed that very obvious display of hierarchy…

Final art focused thing was an artist talk from Roberto Visani, an artist whose sole practice is based around guns, very weird and maybe slightly problematic. Here’s my very bad/basic notes:

Saying the same thing in different ways – translation becoming an important part of the work – growing u in different places – 13,000 people in hometown – south dekota – hunting – father hunting – making guns with the father – weird gun cutlutre – south dekota revolving around that – food/sport related

Circumstance – different to everyone else, having a ciultural ethnice background – travel – military museums – enjoy watching historical movies

Interested in how the weapons become a character within itself in the film – THE GUN – ceramics – Ghana grant – various guns that were all interesting – based in a city – seeing firearms that Africans had made themselves, all different guns, all made themselves – like a portatiot, similar to the fim reference, with the gun becoming their own thing – also trading gun for people – people worth a gun

Started carving a gun out of wood, collecting stuff and bringing it back to the studio, assembling the guns of colonialism – historical research alongside these things – firearms that resemble a cross, referenceing historical records whilst using materials from the now

Utilising found materials from the street, mixing the now and the before, etc – song lslave ship – throwing sick captives over board – insurance – I THINK THIS IS A FILM ??? – gun embedded in resin, revolution, change, layering meaning on top of meaning on top of meaning – improvised weapons – source material to create the work in shifting contexts to the now

Contemporary ideas like this

Recording history through these various objects, humouring them and diffusing these things, making the work more approachable for the viewer

Diferent guns working with different ideas – lots of different guns

Art history – language working into these works

PLEXIGLASS IS A NEAUTRAL MATERIAL – SIMILAR TO A SCALPEL – no history, clean – embuing these sculptures – clarity of the plastic as a metaphor

Us police departments have an archive that keeps growing as more crime is committed – archiving these works, thinking about architecture as a form of shelter, americans wanting guns for shelter – this being reflected in these created spaces – guns becoming so phallic – a ‘house of cards’

Questions

The relationship between acts of destruction and acts of creativity – that relationship is interesintg – ‘flight or fight’ type thing

Iron = dirty, cheap metal – always rust – this ideas of sourcing things out, using what’s around you – having the material fit with the work.

Interested in ergonomics of these things – maybe there is a romantic thing/oidea about this? Maybe? Not interestd in taking a side – more interested in the object/firearm being a mirror or referring to all the things that are around it, etc

That’s that for art, as I say, fuck loads to do this week. I could have taken Saturday off to go out and look around galleries, but I just kind of needed to get this magazine stuff done and finalised. Next week most of the galleries will have new shows up and running for me to wander through, something I’m thoroughly looking forward to.

I’ve been indulging in watching a lot of films this week. Beginning with Night Moves, a very slow and considered film about a very small group of environmentalists blowing up a dam. It’s interesting, due to how slow and methodical the story is, the whole escapade begins to feel very PG until something incredibly dramatic happens that kind of destroys this lovely little film. I’d say watch it, simply for its slightly darker moments, the paranoid parts.

Hidden Figures was pretty beautiful, a film showcasing a group of African-American women who were involved in the early years of the NASA space program. Even though, obviously, there are some very depressing points featuring racism to these women, it’s mostly positive and uplifting, making you even more connected to these women who continuously tell themselves they are privileged to be working there, even if they’re encountering terrible things day to day. This is obviously pretty terrible within itself, feeling happy about this, but I think it’s a film that has an interesting dynamic which allows for moments of humility and humour beside the racism of the 60s.

A weird one was Girlfriend’s Day, a Netflix original film starring and written partially by Bob Odenkirk, someone who I do greatly admire. The story focuses on greeting card writers, love and the occasional bit of violence… It was a bit of fun but ultimately forgettable, kind of a shame.

Ethel and Ernest, an animation by Raymond Briggs, was crushingly beautiful. Focusing on the couple’s life, alongside their son’s life, which runs from the late 20s up until the eventual occurs… Yeah, heart-breaking, something only Briggs and a small selection of writers are able to achieve with animation. Go and watch it, a true recommendation.

An indie sci-fi, Advantageous, was kind of weird actually… The film focuses on a woman and mother who works in a vast company, eventually being pushed to transfer her consciousness into a new body to be able to work. A very weird and sad experience.

Another weird/unique indie film was Creative Control, showcasing the idea of augmented reality glasses which enable the main character to create a fictional version of his best friend’s girlfriend, building up a relationship with this virtual woman that he kind of misconstrues as a real one with the offline woman. It was kind of okay?

Circle was yet another sci-fi, with the majority of the film being based in a dark room with an illuminated floor, where a group of people are stood in a circle. Every few minutes someone dies in the circle, which we slowly discover is voted and decided upon by the members in the circle. It’s kind of interesting, a lot more about the chat than why they’re there, ‘the human condition’…

I found myself watching Fursonas at one point, a documentary about Furries and the community that surrounds it. To be honest it was actually really interesting, the mixture of different types of people involved in this fandom as well as the different parts, from the supposed ‘leader’ to someone who just likes dressing up as a squirrel. Yeah, it was actually educating, which is always good.

Why have I never seen Trading Places? It’s pretty funny and a great critic of capitalist culture.

I enjoyed Eddie Murphy so much that I then went onto watch Coming to America, another comedy featuring Murphy. This time, rather than switching places with a successful investment banker, he’s an African prince who journeys to America to ‘slum it’ in Queens in order to find a woman who truly loves him. Obviously this is going to be enjoyable and create some great scenes, so a fairly positive experience actually.

I also watched True Lies, Arnold Schwarzenegger being incredible. I know you’ve all probably seen this film before, but at one point he steals a horse to chase someone down who’s riding a motorbike, this continues through a restaurant, into a hotel, then into an office building and the lift, eventually ending up on the roof with the biker roof jumping on the motorbike into a rooftop pool on top of another skyscraper. Arnie attempts to follow (on his fucking horse!) but the horse doesn’t make the jump. Like, that alone makes the film great.

After this I just had to watch Commando, not quite as funny, but still fairly enjoyable. Guns, some driving, more guns.

Another film I was sad to not have seen before, Lilo and Stitch. The little monster always looked so annoying, so I never watched it, not knowing that it’s a sci-fi of sorts. It’s definitely recommended, funny, sad at times whilst blending fantasy with reality.

The final film of the week was Sleepless in Seattle, Tom Hanks doing his thing… Quite lovely really, I’m sure pretty much everyone has seen it by now, so anything I have to say about it is pretty much void…

Alongside all this I watched the entirety of China, IL, an animation focused on two brothers who teach history in the worst university in America. A set of great characters who you slowly warm to, alongside some interesting plot points and rich storylines. Definitely worth a watch.

I think that’s the last 7 days basically… Oh and I keep forgetting to talk about the books that I’ve been reading. First I read Stories of Your Life and Others, a set of short stories, one of which was the main inspiration for Arrival, pretty much my favourite film from last year… It was ‘nice’, a lot of interesting ideas, one story concerned a very tall tower that was being made to reach heaven, taking many months to journey to the top, another was focused on an academic slowly going mental because she’s discovered that all of math is basically fucked… Not quite Philip K Dick standard, but still pretty good.

Another was Diary of an Oxygen Thief, a depressing story about a terrible man recounting tales of women he’d emotionally abused, eventually getting fucked himself. It was an okay book, fun to read, but not actually very interesting. I didn’t know whether I should feel bad for this person or not, especially when the book is a non-fiction story, published under the name Anonymous. Kind of a dick move really…

I also read a short book about Vaporwave called Babbling Corpse: Vaporwave and the Commodification of Ghosts. It was pretty interesting, advocating that Vaporwave was the genre of ghosts, a genre that capitalises on old music, slowed down and arguably revamped tunes. Definitely worth a read if you’re into the genre, especially as it’s easily digested.

I’m about to start reading Four Futures: Life After Capitalism, a book that I believe considers four different future societies… It looks like a good book…

I think that’s about it… Tomorrow I’ll begin installing the A217 show, alongside hopefully getting all the content for the magazine during the week and maybe even ordering a copy by the end of the week to see if it’s ready to publish or not? That would be great… I’m now going to order some buttons, think about new work, and continue the final interview.