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.
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