One
more week has passed, I can’t tell whether the weeks are speeding up or slowing
down, they will soon turn into months and then into years, blending into one
another, until there is no more education to be had. Lots of progression within
my work has occurred this week, as well going to a few galleries, performances
and talks.
On
Monday I had my third Science-Fiction seminar, which looked at the apparent ‘new
wave’ of sci-fi, which spanned between the 60s and the 80s. It began with the
usual format of starting with context and ending with a discussion. At about
that time Kennedy’s famous “We choose to go to the moon” speech occurred, which
launched inspiration for many writers at the time, imagining new worlds rather
than a distorted version of the old one. So much was discussed, and so many interesting
writers, like J. G. Ballard, William Burroughs (completely crazy but fascinating),
Philip K. Dick, Ursula K. Le Guin and many more were brought up. Eventually we
got onto the short story which we’d all read titled ‘When It Changed’ by Joanna
Russ, which looked at how women are treated by men in the society that we live
in, just on another planet.
Whilst
on the subject of science fiction, throughout this week I’ve also been watching
the new Amazon series (originally a book by Dick), The Man in the High Castle.
I haven’t quite watched all the episodes yet, but at the moment it’s an overall
enjoyable experience, although very loosely adapted from the book, which is a
shame, as I’m a big fan of the book. It reminds me of the show ‘Danger 5’ but
only in terms of costumes, rather than content.
In
the afternoon on Monday there was a lecture on Feminism titled ‘Subjecting Conceptualism:
Feminist Approaches to Art’ which was kind of thought provoking. For me it was
re-hashing a lot of artists and ideas that I was already aware of, like Judy
Chicago, Mary Kelly and Barbara Kruger, and the idea of essentialism vs non-essentialism.
I did enjoy hearing about the background of the work, rather than just
scrolling through the ether of the internet though, and it was definitely worthwhile
going and listening to someone talk about these artists’ and their practices.
During
the day I continued to work on my video piece, undertaking the laborious
process of photo-shopping each individual still image and adding colour to the grey
worlds. During this time I was still using primary colours that messed with
your eyes when you looked at them for too long, but after thinking about it I decided
that each frame would include the colour blue, as well as another colour. This
would hint at the illusion of free expression within our society, when in
actuality everything is controlled and thoroughly thought out in advance,
referencing capitalism once again.
I
was also thinking more about my other video piece where I was opening up the
images on Photoshop and screen recording that, and was thinking about how the Photoshop
piece and the original video were now two separate works, slightly linked, but
still separate. I started to distort the screen recorded work slightly, taking
away the aspect of recognition which used to occur.
On
Tuesday I had a tutorial in the morning with Andrew, who’s my main tutor. I
showed him my video, along with the game space that I’ve been making, alongside
other things. We also talked about my ideas for showing the work and it slowly became
clear that it would be incredibly difficult to chop into the wall, to display
the video, and that a fake wall could be fabricated. Unfortunately I don’t
think that really works, as the meaning is then partly lost, as it would be a
fake wall rather than a real one, with all of its innards being shown. It was
also suggested that I look at Patrick Caulfield and the work that he used to
create, real worlds within fabricated ones, which I promptly did following the
tutorial.
After
the tutorial I began to think of other ways to show the work, whether to create
a space for the T.V to be placed inside, so that you either had to poke your
head into something or crawl into a confined space. I also considered creating
an object out of objects that centred on capitalism, like piling up copies of
the book ‘The Epic of America’ (one of the first books to create the idea of
the ‘American Dream’) and have the television leaning up against it,
consumerism being propped up by capitalism. Another idea was to fabricate a
square box, painted blue, and have the monitor leaning up against that. I’m
still having general thoughts about this, and how much of the work I actually
want to display, be it multiple videos alongside sculptural work, or only one
video by itself, stacked against the wall. I do not know. I also had a few
other ideas, which changed the work from being an installation to being an
object within its own right, these are all shown here:
The
visiting artist for the ‘Tuesday talk’ was Helen Cammock, who showed a range of
video works, all relating to her relationship with her father in one way or
another. A few points of interest for me were when she talked about how work is
different, depending on where it’s being displayed, as well as that idea of spontaneity
and how it’s sometimes the thing that’s needed to make a piece of work amazing,
rather than the hours of thought that had gone into it beforehand.
On
Wednesday I spent a lot of time experimenting in real life how to display my
films, which Andrew had suggested doing the previous day. This involved
borrowing a screen and placing it in different positions around the room,
making people distort their bodies, becoming uncomfortable, so that they could
view the video. Allowing me to see how it would actually work, as opposed to
through Sketchup, was enormously helpful, and inspired many new ideas. I
eventually settled on the concept of having the screen in the corner, placed in
such a way so that the light would reflect onto the wall, and then the viewer
when they’re watching the movie, encompassing that idea that every one of us is
living this monotonous life that the film is showing, and that the screen is
like a mirror into your mind.
In
the evening I took some time to think about the use of text within the long,
simple video, and whether I should or shouldn’t implement it into the work. My
plan was to inject certain phrases or words like ‘Monotony’ or ‘Life is
Pointless’ into key time points within the film. For example, when the film
gets to 18 years old, or reaches the ‘half way’ point in life when a mid-life
crisis would usually occur, a short piece of writing would start flashing up on
the screen for however long this sense occurred for within your life, the sense
that everything is shit, etc.
I
experimented with multiple ways of showing this, from having the text flashing
up in random areas of the screen, to enabling the message to roll onto the
screen, like something you’d see on a power point in the early 2000s. By the
end of the day I decided that the text wasn’t needed to understand the meaning,
and that it was simply hammering a point home which was already obvious. It
would have been cool if it would have worked, but ultimately it was unnecessary.
These are the pieces that I began to put together:
I
also watched a few films on Wednesday, one was called Tangerine, which looked
at a day in the life of two transgender prostitutes; it was both hilariously
funny and terribly depressing at the same time. I thoroughly enjoyed it. As
well as Tangerine I watched another film titled We Are Your Friends. Whilst the
first film was enthralling and weird, the second one was dull and tedious. You
win some, you lose some I guess.
Thursday
was a really good day, where I created a whole new film, centred on the images
that I’ve been creating being opened up in Photoshop, and kind of blossoming
from there. There’s a slight narrative to it, with multiple voices speaking
throughout the movie, having a sort of dialogue, as well as the three different
‘stages’ slowly developing and changing. It’s meant to be a companion piece to
the incredibly long film, with the same kind of ideas embedded within it, but
conveyed in a different form. I created the music by stretching and
manipulating words like ‘monotonous’ and ‘repetition’ until they were no longer
words anymore, and overlapped a range of moving images to create the sense of
moving/not moving forwards in time. I really like how it turned out.
In
the evening I went to the Zabludowicz Collection for a performance evening
event of sorts, the Rafman exhibition was also open, so I spent some more time
within the space. I think I’ve been to this exhibition more times than any
other temporary show that I’ve ever been to, which is a weird thought. The
evening featured a range of performances, one of my favourites consisted of an
artist duo called ‘Sisters From Another Mister’ who undertook a performance that
involved carrying around large flat screen televisions and having them
interacting with one another, whilst they themselves were constantly chewing
gum. I really liked how the relationship between the two screens developed as
the performance continued, and the chewing gum motif was excellent.
Friday
began with a trip to the ICA in the morning for an artist talk featuring Peter
Shelton. He spoke about how a lot of his early work was heavily influenced by
his severely disabled father, and how even now you can see that within his
current work. The idea that something like that can influence a large part of
your life intrigues me, and makes me wonder about what thing will influence my
practice in years to come. It was interesting to hear about his general career,
and how you may come back to things, ten years down the line, that you had
previously forgotten about. The aspects of work that you don’t think about was
also brought up, how the work may change somewhat in a gallery setting, this
was in reference to one of his pieces titled ‘pipegut’ where you pulled yourself
through a tunnel of sorts on a trolley. The sound that was created whilst you
pulled yourself through was apparently un-thought of, but it was a somewhat
happy coincidence. This is something that I’m beginning to be interested by,
things occurring within your work that you weren’t aware of before but become a
major feature of them.
During
the day I returned to thinking about my world building within Unity,
considering what it all means and attempting to fix a few bugs that I had found
within the tiny world. Whilst thinking about the creation of the thing, I came
to the conclusion that I didn’t want to add in the timer, or the ‘game over’
sign that appeared when you eventually killed yourself. I now envision that, in
a gallery setting, the world will already be loaded up, ready for the viewer to
explore, with the abyss still able to jump into, but once someone jumps into
that abyss, you can no longer play the game on that particular day, so for the
rest of the day the screen will simply show a blank, grey space, which will be
the player falling for eternity. People within the gallery would be encouraged
to not let others jump off the edge, persuading them not to so they could have
a go at exploring this world. I think this would be really interesting to see,
and obviously thinks a lot about the ideas of community and suicide, as well as
the ‘is there an afterlife?’ question that is continually asked and never answered.
This
week I intend to film people playing the game, but I’m yet to decide on how to
display it. My first thought was to have it shown on a sofa, with the monitor
facing upwards, making the player peer into it whilst being sat next to it, like
looking over the edge of a huge expanse, as well as thinking about how people
neglect their real world friends whilst playing video games, so it would force
the player to turn towards the other side of the sofa, as if they’re facing
another human being. Another idea would be to place the monitor up high, so you
were staring up at the screen, this would simulate a departure board type
monitor, continuing that idea of travelling to another world/universe when we
all eventually die. I’ll see how I feel in the next few days when I eventually
finish creating the thing and have it ready to be installed in a space.
That
evening I went to the 2D/4D open studio event at CSM. It featured work from
both 2nd and 3rd year students, and was very well done,
with a few interesting pieces of work being shown. One that was particularly exciting
was an installation that involved a mock-up of a young child’s room, full of
emoji’s and abrasive colours, where you were invited to lie down on a blow up
mattress and listen to a recording of thoughts that people have when they’re in
bed, awaiting sleep. It was an enjoyable evening, and just makes me think how
exciting it would be if Chelsea stayed open until ten o’clock and had its own
functioning student bar.
I
also watched the film ‘Logan’s Run’ which hasn’t aged that well, but was still
enjoyable, although it does have a terrible ending. It’s definitely one of
those films that you need to see though, so I’m happy that I did. I’m sure many
people already know the basic plot, so I won’t outline it here.
On
Saturday morning I finally got around to updating my main website, with some
new work as well as refreshing the general aesthetic of the thing, as it didn’t
really represent who I was as an artist anymore. The new work includes the new
film from this week, my Snapchat video (that is an ongoing project anyway) and
a work that I made last week which is very simple, but I thought I would upload
it anyway, as I thought it was mildly thought provoking. You can look at my updated website via the link to my main website at the top of the page.
In
the afternoon I visited a few galleries, I first went to the Flowers gallery,
which had some paintings by Bernard Cohen being shown. They were vaguely
interesting, but incredibly repetitive and I became bored of them after staring
at a range of them for over ten minutes. The quote from him within the press
release also annoyed me “I will not begin the painting until something I have
never seen or considered before comes into my mind’s eye, and then I will focus
on it and the means I shall use to bring it to life on the canvas.”
After
that I went to the Seventeen Gallery, which had some work by Hannah Perry being
displayed. This featured a range of video works, as well as corrupted and torn
metal pieces from various cars. I was a definite fan ‘from the get go’, and the
use of latex (I think) was really enticingly abstract. It conjured up ideas of
loss and things going on in the background, being slightly out of sight but not
out of mind.
Walking
from there I then went to the Limencello gallery, which had a group show going
on, with some simple minimalist sculptures, alongside a range of paintings, as
well as a few bronze casts of a tortoise. I’m unaware whether it started off as
a real animal or not, which is slightly beguiling.
Next
up was the Canal Projects gallery, which had a range of paintings that
displayed the final clip of a series of films. These were all quite funny and
enjoyable, but nothing more than that really, with no actual depth to the work,
just paintings of ‘the end’ over and over again, with different backdrops.
Then
I travelled the long and tiresome journey to the Lisson Gallery to see the
Susan Hiller exhibition, which was the definite highlight of the day. It
contained a range of her works, from the sculptural to some installation film work.
One piece was a compilation of clips from films which featured children with
supernatural abilities, which sought to make the point that our world is boring
and dull, and that nothing interesting ever happens, so we have to watch films
in order to keep ourselves interested.
I
then went to a few more exhibitions, including the Christine Park Gallery, which
had some work by Dan Hays being shown. He had taken a range of landscape images
and distorted them, so that they looked like incredibly fuzzy jpg images, after
reading a range of texts by Hito Steyerl I could definitely see the references.
The
Josh Lilley gallery was close by, which consistently fascinates me. The
curators there obviously know what they’re doing, as they show interesting work
in the window, which encourages people to come inside, but on the bottom floor –
where the majority of the work is shown – they always have really bad landscape
and figurative work. It’s incredibly weird and off putting, so I don’t know
whether I want to go there ever again or not.
Pilar
Corrias was the last space, which had some paintings of people in fields on the
walls. I think we all know where I stand on work like that.
Today
I’ve been exporting the long video of the spaces and the flashing lights, which
is over ten hours in length with a soundscape to accompany it, which will soon
be posted to my main website. This is kind of exciting for me.
Over
past few days and over the course of today I’ve been considering new work, as
this current project seems to be slowly winding down, in relation to the ending
of the term as well as in my own head. Who knows why, but it just seems to be
going like that. So I have been eagerly scrambling around in my head, wading
through my thoughts in search of a new idea. A few that I intend to look into
centre around sanding down cans and piling them up, imitating how youths today
might pile up the drink that they intend to pour into their bodies, not really
caring about what the product actually is. I intend to do this over the course
of the week. Whilst typing this, it make me think of that scene in Layer Cake,
when Daniel Craig is walking through a pharmacy, and all of the products no
longer have any advertising on any of the boxes. Layer Cake is an awesome film.
Another
idea would be to continue the thought from last week about FPS games’
characters having no legs The other night I started to take images of people
wearing suits and chopping their legs off, considering who is usually
associated with playing these games, escaping their lives ‘in the office’ to
simply inhabit another one. This then turned into the thought of gathering
together a bunch of FPS games and then making a compilation film where you
might attempt to play the various games whilst staring down at your feet (or
lack thereof). I do intend to think about this over the holidays, as it seems
like an interesting starting point for something.
These
are simply ideas which will turn into something, hopefully, at some point. This
week I also want to print off the list of jokes that don’t work when they’re
written down, in order to photograph it and post it to my website. This will be
a light hearted and humorous piece of work, which I’m yet to fully think about.
I probably should consider the meaning further before I actually add it to my
portfolio of works.
I’ve
also been attempting to write this today, but have been incredibly cold and slightly
ill, so I’ve been having some slight issues with writing the usual amount,
which is a shame. I think as it comes closer and closer towards deadlines and
the Christmas break, I’m going to feel less inclined to spend a large amount of
my time writing this thing. Hopefully next week it will be different and I will
feel slightly better
I
look forward to the coming week, the final science fiction seminar (which will
be slightly distressing, as it’s been very enjoyable), submitting a plan for
the exhibition type thing next week and the usual artist talks, gallery
openings and exhibition visits that occur within any given week.
Oh
and I think I’m going to continue to post my Snapchats, as , even though I have
a finished piece of work now, it is an ongoing process which will only end when
I stop using this piece of technology which will soon become obsolete in this
ever-changing society.
Daily Snapchat:
bob.bk
