Sunday 29 October 2017

Reverend Billy, Hito Steyerl, clay and installation ideas

Moving forwards this week, towards some sort of end goal, whatever that may be. Probably getting a job? I’ve also nearly finished putting together the next issue of the magazine as well as made a few more sculptures. Oh I’m also moving forward with the video and haven’t done that much of my dissertation. What’s more important?

So far there’s about 120 pages in total for issue 3 of the isthisit? magazine, although I’m expecting there to be more once I finish putting together everything, add in the contents page with the websites to artists and credits to all the galleries for the use of their imagery. So yeah, probably around 130/140 or so which isn’t bad! Issue 2 was under 100 but had about half the amount of artists for this issue. I’m excited to see it in print, which should hopefully be sent off in the next few weeks!


I’ve been in talks with a number of galleries for the launch/exhibition, but I think I’m going to go with a new space called The Take Courage Gallery that’s being managed by two artists who just graduated from their BAs at Chelsea and CSM. It’s fairly small but I get it for free and they’re just in the process of putting in new lights and walls, which is exciting. Hopefully all the artists I have on board are good with the change! This process has also taught me to plan more next time, actually contact galleries before beginning to put the issue together. I think I have enough of a portfolio to ask for a space before getting artists involved. So yeah, issue 4 planning begins now I guess…

The next online resident on the site was announced, Claire Davies, who’ll be investigating ideas surrounding virtual reality among other things. I’ve seen her work in the past and it’s always been quite interesting, mostly digital video work. Take a further look here - www.clairedavies.info
Other than that pretty slow week for isthisit?, just getting on with everything. Oh I was contacted by a guy called Wade Wallerstein, a curator/writer from New York who’s now in London working as Annka Kultys intern. He wanted to interview me about the Life 2. pavilion as part of a review he was planning on writing. Last week he pitched it to a number of magazine spaces and Felt Zine got back to him, which is great. They have a big following and do great things. So yeah, that’ll be a bit of nice press for the pavilion at some point - www.instagram.com/feltzine

Doing isthisit? I do get contacted a lot for things, so if you do want to be aware of regular updates do follow me on my Instagram and isthisit?’s, that’s where everything is actually posted, and where I usually go to when I need to remember what happened this week - www.instagram.com/is_this_it_is_this_it & www.instagram.com/bob.bk1

In my own work I’ve been making these little figures from shop bought clay, the type that you would have played with as a kid. At least I did, although that’s what you get for being middle class I guess. These quickly became there own piece of work, rather than being a part of the tank work. That’s still being worked on, but loyalty cards take about ten days to arrive! Anyway, these figures are badly sculpted gender ambiguous beings, made from white clay with a SIM card embedded in their stomachs as a sort of heart/soul experience. Then they have various head pieces, one has a WIFI pole, another half a USB and a broken apple earphone. These function as hats or pieces that give each figure a unique trait. I guess these figures are supposed to be future ‘people’, casting away a lot of the parts of us that are perceived to be ‘human’. They become sad looking souls ‘activated’ by dead tech picked up along the road that they’re travelling down. These objects are badly made, maybe taking into account the idea of a ‘creator’ or overarching God-like figure who manipulates these figures, similar to Golem’s who are made from clay. Hmm, I guess they’re like mini ambiguous Golems, utopian ideals of the perfect ‘human’, similar to Greendale’s human being mascot in Community? Anyway, these are work-in-progress, and may be sanded down to look a little more ‘professional’. I dunno, I think they work?


I’ve been thinking more about the samurai sword piece this week, and after the object arrived I began thinking about how it was probably wrong to use this kind of weaponry in this context, especially as I hadn’t really thought about it too much and just enjoyed the idea of making this piece of work. It’s probably not my place. I still want to make a piece of work like this, but with something closer to home, or more ‘current’ I guess. An idea that literally just came to me would be using the handle of one of the weapons used to over power the pilots in the 9/11 attacks; plastic knives and box cutters. I think this piece could simply be a replica of the weapons, not even having to embed the USB sticks. A yellow box cutter presented in a simple frame? Hmm…
Ah and I’ve been slowly adding to the video, although I haven’t even started writing the mini text to be spoken over it yet. I have decided that I’m going to pay someone to read it, probably through Fiverr, a great website where you can pay people to say/do various things. After going to an interesting panel discussion earlier in the week focusing on the Blockchain and various crypto currencies, I think It’ll be interesting to include ideas surrounding that within the piece of writing. I’ve also added a few things to the video, extending it to a full 3 minutes rather than only a minute and a half that I had last week. It now includes footage of a chameleon changing into different colours, a tsunami simulation in a swimming pool, an animation of a school shooter being taken down by a teacher, a snippet of footage from Donald Trump’s public gardens based within Trump Tower and an animated man jogging on the spot. The video then loops back to the drone looking through the screen at you. Now I just need a script and figure out how to install it. This will most probably be the piece I show for the upcoming show at uni, some time next month I think? I need to get back into Sketchup, maybe make something out of wood? I’m beginning to feel that to put it in a VR device would be slightly strangling the work. Anyway, maybe something like this? Thinking cyclical structures looping, public bench like space. Maybe I’ll actually use the workshop for once?
I think that’s everything I’ve been working on. Putting off the dissertation, which is stupid, but I just feel like this is more important I guess. I don’t know. Free time, or uni time feels like it’s slipping away from me at this point. Hmm…

In terms of art I haven’t seen a lot either. That’s two weeks with not a lot of art seen. It’s sometimes nice to have breaks, splitting up the mass art days, allowing exhibitions to open and things to occur in between. Yeah, I literally haven’t been to any exhibitions this week. Wow. I did however go to a talk or two. The main one being the aforementioned panel focusing on the Blockchain featuring some amazing people like Hito Steyerl and Julian Oliver, alongside Helen Kaplinsky, Ruth Catlow and Ben Vickers. All very cool people who know a lot about the internet. Oliver was by far my favourite, with his latest artwork involving a crypto currency mining rig that was powered by a small, pack up and go, wind turbine. The big issue with mining crypto currency is the electricity bills that these expensive computers rack up, so connecting one to a wind powered device is literally like earning free money. I was slightly astounded, and there were moments like that throughout the talk. Really quite incredible.
I think that might literally be it on the art front then? I actually tried to go to a few others, but got mislaid by late trains and other things along the way. A vaguely art influenced thing was seeing Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping at Toynbee Studios. It’s as mental as that sounds, and annoyingly a completely new thing for me, even though they’ve been preaching for so many years now. It’s basically an activist choir group. It was an intensely exciting few hours which definitely deserves a Google.
As for films and TV, I’ve become slightly obsessed with watching Gordon Ramsay shouting at inadequate restaurant owners. An incredibly stupid, destructive, addiction it seems. Not even watching the full program, just endless 5 minute YouTube clips. What am I doing with my life?
Other than that, continuing on with Keeping Up With The Kardashians. I’m now looking at it as research, for who knows what, but definitely something in the future. Especially after seeing reverend billy screaming into the mic. But yeah, very entertaining and just full of drama. As they become more famous the drama just gets better, or worse?
Season 2 of Stranger Things came out, which has been fun so far. Kind of more of the same I guess. It’s interesting to think about where I was this time last summer. It’s been quite a year…
I continue to watch The Good Place, a TV show about what happens when you die. I’m on season 2, it’s quite a funny, light TV show that continues to be an easy watch.
Star Trek Discovery is coming out too, which is a nice call back to the originals. It’s still quite early on to make any real judgements, but I’m enjoying it. Obviously it’s not quite the same as the originals, it’s very much like a long film rather than isolated episodes. It’s getting there.
It feels like there’s just way too much good TV coming out on a weekly basis. How do I keep up with Nathan For You, Electric Dreams, The Good Place, Star Trek, Mr Robot (new season is very good of course), Broad City, Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Walking Dead, all the cartoons and everything else? TV, it’s very overwhelming.
So, I’m going to say that’s it. A very short post this week, but it’s good to feel somewhat on track. I think this week will be focused on writing. Writing the dissertation and writing the script for the film, and maybe thinking a little more about how to install it. And doing more isthisit? stuff, emails. Just lots of writing. How exciting.

Sunday 22 October 2017

Isthisit? annoyances, new work, The Wrong, exhibitions, other things…

Another little two week gap, a few things have happened, some developments regarding isthisit? as well as making a one or two new pieces of work for my own practice. I’ve also been to a couple exhibitions and have kept thinking about monetary gains. How frustratingly stressful…

So, where to begin. After announcing the other week that Gossamer Fog had offered to host the launch event/exhibition of the next issue of the magazine, unfortunately after sending over a work list of the artists involved in the show the director, Samuel Capps, was quite rude about my choice of artists, saying that I’d have to change some of the works in order to show there. Unfortunately as he had been quite delayed at responding to my emails I’d already contacted the majority of these artists, asking them to be a part of the show and the majority saying yes. Apparently he’d expected me to send over a mini proposal for the show, rather than just giving over the space, which he’d kind of made it out to be doing in the original email. Anyway, due to having talked to a bunch of these artists already I had to pull out of the exhibition, all very annoying and frustrating really. Right now I’m attempting to find another gallery to host the launch/exhibition, hopefully without paying any money, but we shall see. Gossamer Fog was pretty perfect, but I guess I just have to put that space out of my mind now. It’s happened before, admiring a person/exhibition/art piece from afar, and when you actually get to know them/see the innards of the process you find out it’s not that great a thing. Hmm… If you have a gallery/event space in London and you’re reading this, email me at bbk12345678910@gmail.com or isthisit96@gmail.com !
Anyway, in other news private visits for Life 2.0, isthisit?’s online pavilion for the Wrong Biennale, are now open. If you want to check out the site for yourself go to life20.co.uk and type in SecondLife. Then you’ll have access to the site, which opens officially on the 1st November and ends on the 31st January 2018. The other day a young curator/artist/writer emailed me asking to interview me about isthisit? and the pavilion, which he’d then propose to magazines to host the chat, hopefully bringing some more press to isthisit? and the Life 2.0 pavilion too. This will be a continuous process for a little while.
In other isthisit? news the next monthly show is curated by the collaborative duo Beta Babes, a new curatorial collaboration between Francesca Altamura​ and Tamar Clarke-Brownwill. They’ll be debuting their new collective by producing an online exhibition titled Crossing Wires. The exhibition will feature a number of artworks specifically produced for the show, with artists being looped in to a digital game of Telephone, where each artist records a voice call in response to the previous call, which is then sent to another participant of the artists choosing. That’s actually going live today, 22nd October, how exciting - www.isthisitisthisit.com/crossing-wires
I’m still working away on the magazine, had a little annoyance a while ago as there was a distinct lack of female artists involved in the issue, so I opened up submissions again specifically from female artists. Basically I have a fuck load of artists involved now which is going to be costly and very exciting. Pre-orders have been opened, so go to http://www.isthisitisthisit.com/issue-03 if you want a physical copy. Last time they sold out before the actual launch event, although that was only 20 copies, now it’s 50. What will it be next time? So yeah, that’s a thing that’s continuously happening, just making pages, here’s a few examples, slowly coming together I think:




Ah I was also asked by a seemingly new online space, called dateagleart, to curate 6 months worth of artists from March 2018. Basically getting them to make a new piece of ‘digital’ art to be displayed and featured on their website. It sounds like a fun concept, although unfunded which I’m always sceptical about. Yep, and I just remember I wrote about this two weeks ago. Fuck. I need to start emailing people!

I think that’s everything isthisit? related. In my own practice I’ve been slowly getting back into it, the work. After Frieze I always find myself slightly fucked in the head, thinking about materialistic work and wanting to make something real. It really skews your ideas up, imagine what it must be like to represented by a gallery who you have to make buyable work for. God… So I quickly made a new piece, taking the idea of using SIM cards for a sculptural work, making it into a real form. I thought about what SIM cards represented, or what many SIM cards represented. To me, to others, obviously communication, the excessive use of the phone in todays society, the click bait ideas that we all have phones but no one really ‘talks’ anymore, loosing that utopian vision of what a phone represents, and in turn what the internet represents. I then thought about how this interest in the SIM cards as the loss of a utopian vision could manifest in a sculpture, what form could the piece take. After running few some options I centred on a fairly obvious theme, that of communism, and what be represents the communist ideology? The Hammer and Sickle. Much like peer to peer networks like Bitcoin or Napster, where no one user holds ownership of the whole site or has a hierarchical position, communism works on the principal that if everything was owned by the users, or the population, everything would be equal and great. In reality, when Communism is adopted by countries or groups, for example North Korea, it usually ends up with a sole dictator orchestrating everything, causing poverty and violence throughout. It rarely if ever works as it was originally intended to by the main philosophers of the movement like Marx or Lenin. It also usually turns out that the people who promote this movement only really want to become dictators themselves, like Stalin or Trotsky. I probably need to read more into these ideas to fully promote this piece of work, but the main idea is there and the work has been produced. Carving the Hammer and Sickle out of MDF board, then gluing the SIM cards to it and elevating it slightly off of the wall. Turns out I can make something physical after a few months of not doing it. It’s called Progress for now, but I think a better name will be adopted at some point:

The other simple piece of work that I’m currently developing involves a samurai sword handle and a USB infected with a deadly virus. Basically, once the Samurai sword arrives, I’ll attach the USB to the handle, turning it into a contemporary deadly weapon. The samurai sword has, throughout history, been seen as the deadliest weapon, cutting through skin and bone easily. Now that computers are prevalent and hackers are the new hierarchy, computer virus’ have become the new deadly weapon. So yeah, that’s going to be a fun piece, I just need to figure out which virus to use. Hopefully the handle will arrive soon, being shipped from China.
Another piece, to do with SIM cards and cards in general, is using toys, specifically a toy tank. In this work I’m going to build a sort-of future, post-capitalist, society on top of a tank, made from my own cut up debit cards and former club cards from places like Tesco, Waitrose and Sainsburys. The tank will be the base, then a piece of MDF board will be stuck to the top, with chopped up cards stuck to it, creating this new landscape/home for a number of anonymous figures made out of clay. These figures, akin to the alien species that you see in films/TV shows, the ones that have become entities that have no gender, no face, no distinguishing mass, will be future humans lounging around this space, sitting on top of this ikon of war and on top of a heap of dead trophies of capitalism, basically. I’ve ordered a bunch of club cards, as I don’t actually possess any myself, as well as cutting up my old debit card of like 8 years or something, that I just had renewed, making it oddly personal to me I guess. Over the next few weeks this will be added to and made into a thing.
The final piece I’m currently working on is a video, hopefully being a part of an installation once it’s made involving a VR device, although not intended for VR. So it may slowly turn into a makeshift headset with a phone attached to the inside. Basically attempting to immerse you in the video more than a projector or a TV screen would. For the moment the video consists of a number of clips from YouTube, cut together to create a sense of ambiguity and dread, beginning with an animated drone flying up to the camera, fading out into an earth revolving in one days life cycle, then the earth slowly exploding from one point, then a man hooked up to a VR shooting game with server music occurring in the background, then moving to a drone race, then animated bitcoins falling onto a grey floor, then a figure in GTA5 falling from a great height right into a swimming pool. This is as far as I’ve got so far, I want to create a voice over of my own voice, or have text come over the screen, talking about our love of capital, binge watching YouTube, buying objects with no meaning, escaping into the abyss, being watched all the time, new economies of wealth, classic click bait type of ideas that are very interesting to me. I’m going to start writing a text of some sort for this to become, and want it to be displayed in a VR headset, similar to the goggles you wear when you do drone racing, which is an incredibly interesting sport to do. This will be embedded within a simple installation of some sort, unsure what of but it’ll be a thing whatever it will be. Anyway, that’s only been worked on for the past few days, so we’ll see where it goes in the next week - www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ic5vH7px92I&feature=youtu.be
I think that’s everything I’m working on at the moment, I’ve not been concentrating that much on my dissertation, which is fucking dumb, so now I’m going to start working more on that I think, getting it done and written so I can concentrate on art making and isthisit?, actually getting something from this educational system rather than wasting time on an essay which won’t reaallly get me anywhere in the real art world. I dunno, slightly disillusioned by the whole thing a little bit…

Now let’s talk about art exhibitions I’ve been to, beginning with 180 the Strand, as it was fairly big and I had to go twice, the first time being too busy to see two pieces, arguably the best works in the show. You first encountered a work by Ryoji Ikeda, an artist known for incredible installations of projections, full of light and sound. Quite incredible really, kind of need to go to experience to actually feel it, the weight of the data in a sense.
The next incredible piece, which you encounter last in the exhibition, was Arthur Jafa and his video Love is the Message, The Message is Death, basically a YouTube mashup focusing on black people, their abuse by police, rioting, the adoption of African-American cultures into white society, all presented in conjunction with Kanye West’s incredible song Ultralight Beam. Just typing the words makes me want to see the video again. Incredibly powerful and very intense, maybe my favourite piece from the entire show.
Then there was the Lisson Gallery showcase, basically 25 artists and their works spread over three floors of 180. Quite extortionate really. For me, highlights were seeing an overwhelming 1998 sculpture by Anish Kapoor, very much all encompassing.
Then there was Cory Arcangel and his MIG 29 Soviet Fighter Plane and Clouds, basically hacked game consoles to play this once sequence over and over, that of a soviet fighter jet, ready to fire. I emailed him for the issue of the magazine, of course, no response haha.
Laure Prouvost’s video Lick in the Past was very good, focusing on a bunch of young people driving in the desert, talking about those classic discussions of life and hate. The kind of things you think about when you close your eyes at night. Very nice.
Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg had a great piece, multiple projection screens of hand drawn blobs and fluid like animations, projected onto the wall of a cube, able to see into from inside or outside of the object. Quite lovely really.
Ryan Gander had a couple of solid sculptures on show, life size sentinels, resembling armatures, positioned in dramatic poses, one holding another in its arms. Pushing our emotions/feelings onto these nameless figures I guess. Then there was his mirror/curtain sculpture, those are always nice. What’s more real? Then a stairway to heaven, less fun than the others but still amusing work.
Haroon Mirza, sticking to sound basically, which was fun.
Julian Opie was showing some lovely new video work, a very crispy animation of a motorway, just a continuous loop of excitement. Lovely work and a nice end point of talking about this excessive exhibition. Definitely go for a visit, but never on the weekend.
Block 336 currently has a solo show by Jane Hayes Greenwood happening, made up of mostly stickily sweet paintings, very well done, accompanied by a sculpture garden of sorts. This manifested as a fish bowl, with a one way mirror and glass walls, trapping those looking at the work in this weird false environment, akin to the garden of Eden, mimicked in one work that I loved called I Heart You. Yeah, very nice basically, with some of the sculptures not being as technically crafted as the paintings. Go take a look.
I also went to Tenderpixel, a fun show with the only work that I liked being by Omer Fast titled CNN concatenated, basically one of the great compilation video works of our time. Lots of artists have made this type of work since, I am one of those too, but none have been as good as this artwork. Here’s a little excerpt if you haven’t seen before - www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCD3IxCZpsM
Enclave has a very painful show on at the moment called Pressing Inertia. It definitely succeeds in its attempt to piss anyone off who enters the gallery space with a continuously annoying piece of sound art by Sorbus, an art collective/artist run space. Just, a very annoying, kind of boring show if I remember correctly.
Castor Projects had a nice show of paintings by Derek Mainella, paintings that are chopped into with precision at first, but when viewed closely you see the signs of a singular artist’s production. Yeah, it was a solid show pretty much. Nice paintings, although, I can’t really deal with only painting shows, it’s so hard to concentrate or spend time with a painting, for me anyway.
Auto Italia had a bit of a weird solo show featuring work from Terre Thaemlitz, someone who’s apparently fairly big in music, with a kind of interesting video/sound work, glitchy and didn’t feel very ‘full’, no real content to chew on properly.
Annka Kultys had a great show on featuring work from the amazing artist collective !Mediengruppe Bitnik. It was basically one work made up of five flat screen TVs, with each TV featuring a virtual avatars face, basically fake bots of an online dating site. It’s just a very good show that you should definitely visit.
IMT gallery was fun with a solo show from Suzanne Treister, lots of paintings about the internet, or ‘surviving’ the internet, surviving an apocalyptic event or something similar. I’d love to feature one or two of these in a future show, really nice painting like works about the apocalypse.
Hannah Barry has a beautiful show on by Marie Jacotey, lots of drawings and a wonderful large scale fabric piece. Very subtle, touching works thinking about contemporary violence, intimacy, tenderness and all of those great themes that are evoked in the press release. But yeah, very good.
I think the final show of my two weeks was Disturbed, Hacked, Reassembled at Lewisham Arthouse. Curated by Drive-Thru, a curatorial collective I’ve worked with in the past, I was impressed by the variety of works all coming under the banner of the avatar, feminist critiques of sex and gender whilst using forms of the internet and digital to interrogate new experiences. Lots of video work, lots of installation. These kind of shows that are ‘well done’ makes me slightly reconsider my general rule of putting on offline shows; having only one or two video works in a show, or balancing out the amount of video work I guess. I don’t know.
I think there may be one or two places I visited, but right now I can’t totally remember and It’s slowly getting later. I’ve also been watching a bunch of TV and films, slowly becoming more into Keeping Up With The Kardashians. It’s a terribly destructive and addictive program, full of drama and unnecessary hate, and I love it. I’m currently on season 4, apparently it gets more ‘serious’ as time goes on and less fun, but surely then the drama is ramped up and becomes more serious and exciting? I guess there’s only one way to find out…
I’ve also been watching Electric Dreams, a new TV show from Channel 4 influenced by the writing of Philip K Dick, who I of course love. It’s lots of little mysteries, all very knowing with little hints of sci-fi, all different short stories making up each episode, some involving classic sci-fi landscapes, others taking the world as it is now and tweaking it slightly. Highly recommended.
The new season of Nathan For You is coming out which continuous to be incredibly hilarious and a must watch.
Then the new season of Broad City too, talking about women’s issues without the bullshit, very good comedy viewing.
American Made was a terrible film, terribly acted by Tom Cruise and just not very fulfilling.
The Dark Tower was also bullshit and didn’t really go anywhere. Just disappointing, when these amazing books get translated into film form and are terrible. Of course it’s a thing that happens all the time, but still, just very saddening.
The Lego Ninjago movie was kind of fun, not as good as the original Lego movie or The Lego Batman movie, but still fun to see animated lego I guess? Nothing really more to say I guess.
I think that might be it? Although I can definitely tell I’ve missed something out, whatever that might be. I always try to rate everything I watch on IMDB, although a lot of the time that system fucks up, due to laziness or just seeing it when I’m out on someone else’s computer, far away from the comforts of my own PC. Anyway…
That’s it for the last two weeks, for the next week I’m going to continue making the sculptural/video work, keeping on thinking, as well as really cracking into my dissertation, actually spending time working on it, as well as keeping making the magazine and building process with that. I also need to keep emailing galleries to see who will host the show, finding ones that aren’t that big but have lovely spaces, ones who would like to collaborate with isthisit?, hosting a show that will hopefully bring a lot of people to their space I guess… Yeah, yet again, not re-reading this whole thing. I think it’s nice to write something and not read back, sometimes, kind of like my version of leaving a hateful YouTube comment in the spur of the moment. Who is this even for? Me, I guess, and what do I care about my own grammar when looking back years in the future? If, in the future, I have money and some sort of fame, how fun would it be to display all of these posts, seeing the progression. Would it be fun for anyone else, or just for me?