Sunday 26 February 2017

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.

Monday 20 February 2017

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, Toni Erdmann, 20th Century Women and I miss you, Blockbuster...

A lot of admin this week, with the open call for the magazine ending and the last day seeing a wave of around 50 people applying, why do people leave it until the last day? Alongside this The Sacred 419 show ended as well as Between at A217. I've basically finished the tower piece and embarked on a new project utilising the lights in the A217 space in preparation for the show I'm curating next month, which I also organised this week. Let’s get on with it then…

All that needs doing now with regard to the tower work is photographing everything and coming up with a name, maybe The Tower of Facebook or something like that, or maybe not. I’ll consider this a little more. Unfortunately, I had to buy another tripod this week, which rendered all the holes in the motherboard that I cut last week a little too small, so those had to be re-drilled. After that happened a few were able to fit in perfectly without glue but some had to be glued, which will be a fucker when I have to transport the piece around. I do seem to keep making objects, things that need to be encased with bubble wrap in order to be transported. It definitely signals something, caring more about my work or becoming more professional with how I view my work… I decided to place a few of the little blue men on the different levels of the installation as well as adding USB sticks and connecting some of the motherboards with different wires, ranging in length and type. The blue men could either be the employees of Facebook working at the different levels of the corporate tower or the users of Facebook, with the figures representing our data running through the different machines. The USB sticks are going to hark back to a previous project that I worked on last year, where I stole people’s data. This time each Facebook stick holds a different persons Facebook data which can be downloaded from Facebook and sent to your email address. I think there’s three in the structure, so three separate people’s account details. Maybe I can make it into a thing, asking people for their data, similar to how Facebook does with a signed terms and conditions, making my signed terms and conditions into a work within itself to accompany the piece to every outing. Very Constant Dullaart. The various wires connecting the platforms are there simply to connect them, similar to lifts in a building or the overall internet/electricity connecting everyone’s computers.
I'm pretty solidly going with the idea of having the phone live streaming to my own Facebook account, although this means wherever the work is shown there will always have to be WIFI, so maybe I should check that out for the upcoming show. Although usually everywhere has WIFI… So yeah, that’s basically finished, just need to document in a white space tomorrow…

I do need to spend some time on the Facebook emoji scroll thing, as I keep putting it off, not thinking of a good enough idea. I just need to do it and then the editing will begin and it will be fun. I keep coming back to Fantastic Planet, the film where aliens have humans as their play things and are considered rodents. I’ve been thinking about going through the entire film and adding the emoji scroll to it, but just need to do it… Or spend a solid hour thinking about what would work with the emoji scroll and what I’m actually trying to say by utilising it.

Another new piece that’s forming is two pieces of thin blue acrylic that will be slotted over the lights in A217 for the show that I’m curating. Although it feels a little like a carry on from my previous curated show, this time the blue light is actually going to be my work, rather than a curatorial decision. Yet again, blue used to represent capitalism overshadowing the entirety of the internet, all this work that’s been created post web 2.0. I’ve also bought some small emoji stickers to put on the acrylic, making Capitalism into this light hearted idea in a similar vein to how it’s very readily discussed now but not really ‘properly’ considered, similar to emoji’s that are usually used and disregarded. Although acrylic is being used because that’s the material that is the best for the situation, I enjoy how it’s commonly used in tinting windows, making viewers unable to see into cars or homes, or colouring the owners of said homes.
Speaking of my curated show, I came up with a name alongside a little writing to convey why all the different artists have been brought together. The title ‘I miss you, Blockbuster’ is both lamenting the past and looking towards the future whilst being click bait enough for people to randomly click ‘interested’.
This is from the event page:

Isthisit? X A217 present: I miss you, Blockbuster...

Private view: 2nd March, 6-8pm
3rd - 17th March - open by appointment only

'I miss you, Blockbuster' seeks to present a number of works that confront how the internet and the evolution of the screen has fundamentally changed society and how it functions, distorting viewing habits and re-aligning our bone structures. From voyeuristic narcissism to an internet detox, the artists involved explore ways to combat the acceleration of technological reproduction whilst commenting on the web 2.0 landscape of today and the multiverse of tomorrow.

'I miss you, Blockbuster' will feature work by:

Bob Bicknell-Knight
Pippa Eason
Juliet Fleming
Roxanne Gatt
Elliot Warren Gibbons
Bartosz Kolata
Laila Majid
Karl Sims

Curated by Bob Bicknell-Knight

So yeah, I think it will be good and have made it into a bigger thing by making it a collaboration between the two spaces, even though they’re both basically run by myself. I’ll be showing the acrylic, Pippa will be exhibiting a sculpture utilising selfie sticks, Juliet with a lightsabre like staff shaped like a penis on both ends, Roxanne with one of her video works, Elliot with a sculpture about post-god, Bartosz with a painting, Laila with a print that will be covering the entire floor and Karl with a video. I think it will be good, with all the sculptures being sent to me this week/last week, so I’ll have lots of time to try out how to physically present the work.

Also this week was the solo show from Roxanne, which went really well. We met up and spent a few hours putting the site together, which made the whole process a lot easier. It also gave her a chance to debut a new video work which gave the exhibition more heft. I’m a big fan of her work, check out the show by following this link and explore the various windows. The title ‘The Evolution of Roxman Gatt’ is made to be funny, mocking retrospective exhibitions. I’ll be writing the curatorial notes in a few days too: www.isthisitisthisit.com/the-evolution-of-roxman-gatt
As I mentioned earlier, the magazine open call ended. I’ve contacted all the successful artists and am just waiting to hear back from them all before releasing the full list. Everyone who got in has to pay a tenner, although I’m going to give them all a free copy of the magazine which will probably come to more than a tenner, so I’ll probably lose money. I’m not really sure what to do about that, other than simply losing money… Anyway, the majority of the work is digital, with a few exceptions. I’ve also got a number of essays being written for it, four in total, all about different areas of the internet, alongside four artist interviews. I’ve finished interviewing Pippa Eason and in the process of interviewing Thomas Tylor, Luke Narin and Roxanne. It’s a nice mixture of emerging artists I feel, with the interviews working more like a conversation than anything, lasting for about 1500 words. These have been exciting to do, learning about these people’s work more whilst learning about my own interviewing style too. Maybe I should make this a feature on isthisit?, artist interviews? I think this could be a thing…

I’m currently thinking about times, looking to publish mid-March, with hopefully a ‘launch event’, although who knows where that would be. It could be tied in with the exhibition happening there, but I’d quite like it to be distanced from uni as much as possible. It could happen in my own house again, but that may be annoying/weird, I definitely don’t want to have to rent anywhere to do this. This is going to be the back and front cover of the magazine, featuring work from Roxanne.
What else? I took down the work at The Square Gallery, which was a fairly successful exhibition. The goggles were fairly damaged, although fixable, and it was good to get feedback on how fragile these things are. The Between show was also taken down, with myself and Zoe (another person who runs the space) having to lug all 11 of the 8 x 4 wooden sheets that made up the huge sculptures down four flights of stairs last minute on Friday due to the artist asking us to on the day. Incredibly unprofessional and fucked my hands completely. It’s safe to say I will not be working with him again alongside vetoing any huge work like that being displayed in the gallery, as it’s just too much effort. The documentation from the show should be up soon.

I heard back from a few things this week too, a weird glitch art exhibition in Minneapolis: http://www.gamutgallerympls.com/2017/02/10/glitch-art-is-dead/ Alongside this I’m going to be a resident with I O U A E, a program put together by Stacey Davidson, a really nice artist who’s shown with isthisit? in the past. The website for that is here and my residency will occur in April: http://iouae.format.com/ I also found out that I got into Xhibit 20, an exhibition put on every year that’s made up of students from UAL, exhibited in the Art Bermondsey Project Space. The piece Let’s Be Friends was accepted, which I’m happy about but I’m also very tired of lugging the work around. Along with the work being exhibited, I also get a year’s membership to the V&A, which is kind of fun, although I literally never go there. Maybe I will now? Probably not…
Is there anything else to talk about? As you may have guessed, art was slow this week but it’ll hopefully speed up as we get closer and closer to the end of term. One month, how time fucking flies… I really want to make something new now, something good. I’ve only made two full pieces of work this term, four now with the addition of the motherboard sculpture and the acrylic… I need to be producing more stuff…

I went to an artist talk, which was quite fun, an artist called Harold Offeh. Creating his own album covers from famous African American artists and setting up week long residencies in Tate Britain, pretty solid actually.
These are my very basic notes:

Entry muic – series of references – informing ongoing works and projects – reference text – BUTCH QUEEN FIRST TIME IN DRAG
Sun ra – big reference for you – narrative around identiyy, etc, etc – space is the place – from Saturn, etc, etc, etc – he’s interested in presenting himself as a reality – centralised around the idea of myth/;legend – myth narrative – political strategy – heightened race relations, post 60s cicvia right,s, identities conflict – man on the moon reference – space = white space – no black people who go up to the moon =- appropriating sci fi as a metaphor – possibility of change – idea of possiblioty to create a narrate ve – challenging stereotypes, etc, etc – mythopososis – reality and myth – tackling pre-given stereotypes – forcing you into certain posititions, etc – prefce to his own work
Early 20th century – underground = utopian project – an emnacipatroy thing used to travel through time and s[pace – language of the underground = like sci-fi language, etc – introducing sun ra as a model, informing a project, attempting o re-imagine the underground as a matter transporter, star trek, etc
Announcements to commmuters, interesting – each voiving the sci fi utopian things – echoed on the escalator panels – moving escallators – like in the work within itself was transporting people – young people and space – benlignly about the young people talking about the lack of access in north west – climing these areas – 18 months – interesting
Covers: attempts at embodying histories – album covers – strategy of appropriation and re-enacting an original – re-taking/making album covers
Black and white minstrel show – black people doing black face – early days – performing a given sterotype of themselves – confronting an image that isn’t your own whilst your perfoming to that image?
Grace jones – image of her – represented and photoshopped, an unreal image – mythology that occurred/has gone into grace and herself – objectified notion – an ablum cover is about branding/marketing – projecting an image of the musician/singer – cultural artefact of a given momemtn
Covers – recreating the image in relation to the original image to go alongside the music – structure of the perfroamnce is based on the cover flow – constructed around a playlist – track playlist = album cover, seeing his version – perfroamnce is made up of the length of the track – lyrical content with the performative act- directing the audience to the original image – the performance is always a failure – impossibility of the thing
Mythipiosis – proximity – interrogation between grace, sexuality – surfused through poitical culture
Working with instittuions – given a lot of license – challenge/interrogation of artists practice – different relationship between artists practice and audeiences – continue to do and really enjoy working within – working with tate, etc, etc – encourtering artists working in the tate – micro residencies, etc

I think that’s everything? I only went to a few exhibitions, mostly dull ones too. The show at Tenderpixel right now is okay, ‘nothing to write home about’. It’s called Tropical Hangover, with all the works being presented in an attempt to create this tropical environment I guess? The whole floor has been painted blue which has been used for a film that is accessed by going to Tenderpixel’s website, showing the camera exploring the two floors of the gallery space, with the floor turned into a green screen showing an abundancy of leaves. It’s not very exciting. The one standout piece was a video from Laura Prouvost called Swallow which had an overlaid soundtrack of someone breathing, with the editing of the video revolving around that experience. It reminded me of her work from British Art Show 8 back in the summer (God, those were the days), where an entire room was breathing, becoming a body to inhabit. The video captures nature in its various forms, from naked women bathing in a secluded rock pool to flowers and butterflies on a country road. Everything else was a bit dull, with the downstairs being particularly bad, ceramic sculpture dotted around the room with seemingly no real thought to how they’d been curated... Yeah, I expected more from this show.
The other exhibition I went to was at Kingsgate Project Space, quite far West, a little too far West… It had a solo show from Harry Lawson, a curator of objects, displaying various stones and artefacts in purpose built cabinets alongside a simulated log fire and a video of oil being projected onto oil. It was good, very small, but in a good way and incredibly thought out. Yeah, it was good, and his website is really considered which I fully appreciate: http://harrylawson.co.uk/
Other than galleries, a few films were seen. A few really lovely ones actually, ones that I really enjoyed and appreciated. The first was 20th Century Women, a film about a teenage boy in a house, surrounded by women, who all attempt to educate him about women. It’s very lovely and incredibly crushing, lots of very ‘real’ events occur, doors slamming and the mother feeling like she’s lost her son. Yeah, really crushing and slightly stunned me when the credits rolled…
Another beautiful film was Toni Erdmann, a film about a father who’s lost touch with his daughter who’s in her thirties. When the daughter comes back to her home town, the father sees her and obviously feels out of the loop, disconnected to what’s going on in her life. We also see how witty he is, terrible ‘dad’ jokes and making a fool out of himself for both his and other people’s benefit. He then travels to where she’s working in a different county, surprising her with awkwardness ensuing. The entire film is incredibly awkward and just, just so crushing, yet again. To compare the film to The Office would be wrong, as this is a lot more awkward and a lot more depressing when devastating things happen. It is a truly wonderful film, with beautiful points of humour and relief but packed with depression.
I finally got to see Cube, a film where a group of people are trapped within this huge system of cubes that they must attempt to escape from. In each cube there may or may not be a trap that will instantly kill you. It’s quite brutal and contains some interesting discussions about the government and people working towards an unnecessary end goal. It’s a solid film, but not a beautiful one.
Tulpan was a bit weird, a man is living in a yurt in Kazakhstan with his parents trying to set him up with the very few women that are around whilst he lives a very absent life herding goats in the desert. It was funny but slightly brutal at times.
I’m annoyed that I watched Chappie, I knew it was going to be crap but I watched it anyway. The acting from the gangsters was terrible alongside the weak plot and really annoying robot. Compared to Neill Blomkamp’s earlier work with District 9 and Elysium, this was pretty shit and basic.
Another basic one was The Invasion with Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig, with the classic story of aliens slowly turning every human being into an alien, networking everyone so they’re all the same, unity. Basically a rip off of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It was okay, but when a film has done the exact concept ten times better it’s not that interesting, maybe it was going to be a remake but changed the title a little bit? Most probably. Either way, Body Snatchers didn’t need a remake, it’s already had many.
I got around to watching Louis Theroux in My Scientology Movie, which was okay, but hardly that interesting. Going Clear is obviously the better, more informed film, this one just has Louis in it, being weirdly confrontational. His whole thing is being as non-confrontational as possible in his earlier films and TV shows, but in this it feels like he wants something to happen; be it someone filming him from across the road or being confronted by one of the Church’s top ranking officials. It just really weird and not very good. It was like watching a drunk person attempting to start a fight with someone else who obviously isn’t going to.
Focus was average, Will Smith being himself, joking around and being a con man. I did enjoy the various twists in the plot, some of which I wasn’t expecting, although it’s incredibly hard to beat The Prestige for unexpected twists. It was fun and light, nothing really to shout or scream about.
Another lovely/sad film was The Edge of Seventeen, the classic story of a teenager who feels friendless and awkward at parties, with one good friend who then starts dating her brother. Although it was definitely a story that’s done to death, the acting from Haillee Steinfeld was solid and believable alongside Woody Harrelson as her ‘tough’ teacher, who she is surprised to see has a real life when she visits his house. The classic ‘I didn’t know teachers had lives’ moment which we all know and love. A nice companion to 20th Century Women, although no way as good.
The final film of the week was Certain Women, a film that sees three different stories featuring three different women connecting and intervening with each other. It was really very good, very real and very surprising. I won’t say any more, just watch and see.
I think that’s everything in terms of film, with no real TV happening. I want to find a new show to watch, a sci-fi that I haven’t seen before and one that’s good, although it’s good to have just films to watch, encouraging me to watch more and more…

I did play a little of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, a game that put you in the shoes of Adam Jensen, a mechanically augmented man from the near future. The Deus Ex series is an interesting one, looking at the politics of body/mind augmentation which will start to develop in the following years, using that as a way in to talk about race and gender, similar to science fictions’ roots with TV shows like Star Trek. This is mixed in with a heavy ‘the Illuminati is controlling everything’ vibe which is kind of fun. I’m looking forward to playing more basically, when I have the time.
Umm yeah, I think that may be my very basic, admin heavy week. Things are slowly moving forwards, with the magazine being heavily developed right now. I didn’t really realise how difficult it was to put together a magazine by yourself… Alongside stuff with isthisit? going well and my own practice slowly going places. Yeah, I think I’m happy about how things are progressing, I think…