Condo, Christmas, Life is Strange and SUPERHOT

So it’s been a while, many weeks and even more days. It is now 2018, Christmas happened and new work has and is in the process of being made. Lots of art, films and TV were consumed over the holiday period. It was nice to rest with family, walk along the beach and take a break, thinking about the year to come and how best to use my time. Work is long, what’s it all for? Let’s begin.

I’ve played a few video games over the past month, something I want to spend more time doing this year. Yes, I’m starting this post with a review rather than ending on one… I think I’d like to spend some time playing and relaxing a little more, rather than constantly thinking about work, even if work is enjoyable and furthering whatever I want to do when I begin real life. But yes, just taking the time to play this beautiful interactive medium, I think that’s important and something I’d lost for a while. This reaction is in response to a particularly beautiful game that I had the pleasure of playing over the past month; Life is Strange: Before the Storm, a prequel to the original Life is Strange, an equally beautiful game. In the original you play as Max, returning to your old town to go to university, uncovering a deeply disturbing plot tinged with sexual abuse and general distress. In this prequel you play as Chloe, Max’s best friend, 3 years before Max comes back to the small town. Chloe is lonely, you find solace in Rachel, someone who is missing in the original video game. You begin a wonderful, incredibly tentative romantic relationship with Rachel, deeply caring about these characters by harnessing heart-breaking discussions and scenes; two young teenagers against the world. I love both of these games and would urge everyone to play it, simply to relive a part of your childhood that’s full of soft lust, distress, care and general loveliness. I cried at multiple times throughout the experience, something I rarely do, and it was beautiful to experience the weightlessness, giving into the experience, becoming these characters. So yes, video games, an interactive experience I’ve been neglecting for quite some time and something I’d like to return to, more emotional video games please.

Enough of video games, let’s do art, primarily the art that I’m currently making. Over the holiday period I finally got around to producing the Bitcoin puzzle works, which were fun to do. Simply getting some stock bitcoin images, the same type you see prominently being used on news sites, and having them printed as puzzles and displayed between two slides of clear acrylic and screwed to the wall with metal pieces. The pictures are all photoshopped, although I have actually ordered one of the pieces just to have as a physical manifestation of the work. I called the body of work Royalty Free, playing off of how much these images are being utilised in the media at the moment, over sharing and over utilising the images because of how much Bitcoin has increased in price over the past few years. The puzzle aspect of the work partly plays on how the understanding of this technology seems complicated at first but is then revealed as you know more about the tech, learning and realising how it’s a community based, peer to peer experience, turning the very analog act of puzzle making into a digital one. Refreshing that idea. Also considering the black box nature of a lot of this tech and how Bitcoin is open, you can look at its code, you can duplicate it and make your own coin. The pieces are there you just have to put them all together. So yeah, it looks really crispy in pictures, now I’m just waiting for the puzzle to arrive.

I’ve also been photoshopping a series of painting works, kind of fantastical paintings that I’d like to do in the future if I could paint, or pay someone to paint for me. I’d quite like to try painting, medium sized canvas works, building up some sort of body of work. These mock paintings were mostly looking at AI, painting the AI dogs being produced by Boston Dynamics and the autonomous car being produced by Google. More work about how art is continuing to become automated, more driven by AI, how Photoshop can create a work of art. I had a chat with someone else and they said that the Photoshop images within themselves were quite interesting, something I had kind of considered but not really. Anyway, I’m still thinking about these, I’d quite like to use a projector and actually try and paint something perhaps, I think it would be nice to make something solid and real, something tangible. Anyway, for now they are digital images on my computer, resting and waiting.

This brings us to this week, coming back to uni and thinking about new work, in particular utilising the cable trays that I purchased last term for a piece/series of works. This will most probably be an assortment of works, having the cable trays as a base of sorts, foregrounding all the objects within a corporate space, attached to a connector, a bringer of power. For the moment I’ve started to play with Google Sketchup, considering making a new video to be placed on the tray alongside a clear container of bitcoins and a digital print hanging down, considering the tray as a timeline of sorts, potentially with each cable tray denoting a different time period or movement. I’m still working it out I guess, but that’ll be worked on over the next week.

This brings me to my dissertation, something I kind of stopped working on over the holidays, the aforementioned relaxing and refreshing unfortunately took precedence, so last week I rushed to finish and write it, pretty much how every essay I’ve written at uni has come down to. It’s now finished, an extended conversation with an AI that I’ve made up. I’m currently editing it to make it into a self-published book, large font and easily readable, to perhaps have as part of the show at Annka’s, situated on the big video installation for people to read if they’d like. Or maybe I could have them as buyable things displayed there? I’m not sure. Anyway, the show at Annka’s is officially open now, but my part doesn’t open until Wednesday the 31^st I think, so that’s exciting!

Anything else? As I say, I’ve been having a break, but now getting back into everything, slowly. There are a couple of upcoming things on the horizon, but I’ll wait to write those here. Let’s talk isthisit? things now, a little more exciting. I decided to redesign the homepage a little, making it a lot more user friendly and easily accessible for people wanting to see the current topics, etc. I think it’s a lot more professional now. The online show I curated, which is still on, was well received by a number of people, also being – kind of – reviewed on an online website here - http://www.neo2.es/blog/2018/01/caras-del-futuro-rachel-lamot/ which is great. I’m currently working towards issue 4, emailing artists and having an open call, as well as one for online residencies, preparing those better this year rather than springing it on people last minute. I continue to feel terrible about not being able to pay people, with two issues occurring because of this lack of funds. The first being where someone was annoyed about the PDF copy being sold on the site, rather than being given for free, due to the fact that no artists had been paid. I argued against this, as obviously it’s a lot of work putting these things together and I do lose money when doing this, and selling the PDF is one way of getting back a tiny amount. Obviously this didn’t go down well, and I understood how I as the curator/organiser am using the artists’ cultural capital in order to potentially gain funding later. This doesn’t help the people I’m working with now when I say these things. So yeah, the PDF versions are now free, which is a good thing, I just don’t know what I can do right now about the issue of paying artists. I want to find a way to do this, gaining financial backing, but have no real idea how. Another issue was being unable to give free copies to the artists I worked with for the last show, just another example of me not having enough money to give out free copies, not being able to print more copies, etc, etc. It’s just a lot of work I feel, for some pay back, but not that much. I’m thinking of scaling back the next copy slightly, less artists and a more considered issue, enabling me to hopefully give free copies and print more. But yeah, something I’ve been thinking about recently… Mostly money.

What else? I think that might be it for art related things… Let’s move onto exhibitions. Condo began this weekend, the exhibition occurring throughout London across 17 London spaces hosting 46 galleries. A little crazy. I made it to many of them this weekend, most of them were great, some were good and one was particularly boring.

Let’s begin with The Sunday Painter, who was hosting Arcadia Missa, Dawid Radziszewski and Stereo. So, DR was showing a series of tapestries created by Alicja Kowalska and Tomasz Kowalski, a mother and son combination, each of which were very well made, colourful and slightly odd pieces if I remember correctly.

Arcadia Missa had a series of small paintings by Cheyenne Julien concerning environmental racism and how black people are seen in society. A particularly favourite depicted a black person painting another black person white, very fragile childlike depictions of figures with incredibly large eyes. Really great.

Stereo were showing some very tender but quite brash and bold sculptures by Gizela Mickiewicz and Roman Stanczak, ranging from a cement sculpture with glass spheres embedded within alongside a chair made from offcuts of wood.

The actual gallery were showing Leo Fitzmaurice's series of works called Post Match, literally a ten year or so piece in the making whereby cigarette packets are folded into football shirts. So great.

Next up was Greengrassi and Corvi-Mora, two galleries that share the same building, hosting JTT, Lomex and Proyectos Ultravioleta, showing work from a number of artists, many delicate, very old drawings from Tatsuo Ikeda positioned alongside artworks from Kye Christensen-Knowles, Imran Qureshi, sculptures from John Lindell, prints from Naufus Ramirez-Figueroa and some films that didn’t really attract me from Sable E. Smith. It was a mixed experience, although mostly drawings and paintings that were intricate and lovely, definitely something I’d like to have on my own wall.

I then went to Rob Tufnell and Croy Nielson, a small show that didn’t grab me at all, some smashed up old computer keyboards that fetishized the medium alongside some (in my opinion) not very interesting paintings. Ruth Ewan’s feminist jukebox was interesting, although more style than anything, literally having an old jukebox.

After that I went into central to see Sadie Coles, with the main show there right now being a series of very big paintings by Kati Heck alongside a 80s esque sculpture and odd looking video work. They were very well-made paintings but overall I was kind of shrugging. I dunno, I think a lot of the work I saw on Saturday is probably ultimately fucked due to how busy I was, jumping from place to place.

They were hosting Koppe Astner and Madragoa. The first was showing works from Josh Faught and Kris Lemsalu, a series of woven sculptures with custom made badges and lots of found objects and memorabilia. Yeah, pretty nice.

Madragoa had a group show that I kind of breezed past in the worst way.

Pilar Corrias was next, upstairs a series of paintings and sculptures, a duo show from Gerasimos Floratos and Christina Quarles, lots of erratically made paintings consisting of ‘slumping’ figures, leaking and undone. Yeah, I can see the appeal.

Downstairs was Société showing work from Trisha Baga, made prominently up of an incredible video work, utilising her laptop screen and a combination of celebrity iconography and pop ephemera to create a un-digestible wave after wave of stuff coming at you. It’s the very epitome of over-saturation, complete with a disco ball reflecting the projectors light. I liked it.

Southard Reid was after, hosting Bureau and Park View in a tiny gallery. Edward Thomasson had a very interesting video work from 2012 called Inside, made in response to working in a women’s prison, considering mental health and physical therapy, lots of needles and acupuncture. There was also a very lovely piece by Mark A. Rodriguez, a very subtle bronze work sitting on top of a wooden bench atop a pile of napkins. Quite a beautiful, subtle work titled Slave (Purpose).

After that was Rodeo, hosting Andrew Kreps Galley. One of my favourites from the show was a series of prints in some beautiful frames by Ian Law. They were plastic and complicated, reminding me of cassettes and old obscure board games, not totally sure why. As for the content, I don’t know.

I then journeyed onto Hollybush Gardens, somewhere I’ve never actually been before, which was a shock. It’s a beautiful gallery. Well, a white cube, hosting Ian Mot. The solo show by Sven Augustijnen seemed super interesting, but I didn’t get to spend as much time there as I would have liked. It consisted of a series of false (I think) letters addressed to a prominent curator from 2012, discussing all the issues you’d think would be discussed; war, trump, capitalism, everything and nothing. I liked it, I think.

Upstairs was a terrible show by Andrea Buttner, literally a bunch of black and white photos of painted stones. Quite boring and nothing to dig into.

Then Mother’s Tankstation, another great show hosting Edouard Malingue Gallery, mostly loving a series of small sculptures from Sam Anderson, some donkeys and small figures, placed around the derelict office space. They felt incredibly sad and engulfed in solitude, having trekked across a landscape or something, I’m not sure, just very quiet and oddly calm.

Next up was Project Native Informant hosting KOW and MadeIN Gallery, with my favourite piece being a three channel video by Shen Xin concerning the idea of DNA as data, with more companies building a network of data from people wanting to see their genetic data, building from it and it becoming religion like. It’s a great piece, and interestingly she hired voice actors to play her part (the video works as a conversation between two people) to reduce her own voice, taking away the context that she is a Chinese artist. Obviously by doing that you draw more attention to it, which is also very interesting to me. I will have to go back to watch the whole thing in a quiet environment, way too loud when I went.

Oh yeah, the great thing about this weekend was that it was an opening weekend. So effectively all of these spaces were opening during the day, so instead of no one being in these spaces, they all had about 20 people in them at any given time. It was very odd and really great.

After that was Emalin hosting Weiss Falk, with my favourite works from the show being a series of old drawings from David Weiss, drawings made before Fischli and Weiss were a thing. Incredibly sexual, odd drawings that were very funny.

Maureen Paley was next up, hosting Josegarcia, Dependance and maybe somewhere else. Downstairs there were a series of works, paintings and ceramic works on wooden custom made crates by Eduardo Sarabia. They were slightly sexual although overtly traditional works that I kind of liked. Apologies how the blog slowly degrades the more it goes on. It’s getting late.

After that was Carlos Ishikawa. Being the founders of Condo you always expect the best from the gallery, and they didn’t disappoint, organising a group show accessible by walking down an incredibly tight corridor made from very thrown together painted carboard. You then enter a small space with the ceiling lowered and a number of works hanging from the make shift ceiling, probably some very expensive paintings. It was fun, I liked it, but yet again I must revisit at some point. I’m still a big fan of Issy Wood’s paintings, oddly enough.

The last, and least interesting, show was from Union Pacific, hosting Chert Lüdde, Misako & Rosen and Gregor Staiger Galerie. The whole thing was kind of tinged by two incredibly brash, very big and messy steel works seemingly thrown together. They were very ugly and untitled! Unfortunately I have misplaced the press release, so who knows who it was, but if you go you’ll recognise it immediately.

So that’s all I saw from Condo, I am yet to go to Konig London, The Approach or Modern Art, so that will be next weekend. I was happy to see most of them in a day though, now I have a whole month to return to my favourites.

Other than that I went to the opening of my show at Annka Kultys, which was fun. It was fun to see my name and a folder of my works in the gallery, having been looking through those same folders last year when the first CACOTOPIA exhibition was happening. I’m very happy and excited for it, even if it’s only going to be 4 days.

I also went to the PV of Alfie Strong’s solo show at Vitrine, which was solid. Lots of sown quilts hanging off some very nicely made hangers. Quilt art seems to be big at the moment.

And that is it for art, a stressful amount that has been blazed through. Now, let’s do films, tv and video games. It’s been a long few weeks, so expect quick reviews. Let’s begin with Speed, a film that I think I’d seen before but I couldn’t remember. Obviously it’s brilliant and a must see; having to keep a bus over 50mph to stop it from blowing up. Very fun.

The Foreigner, Jackie Chan being great at killing people, bad film but fun to see Jackie Chan again. I used to love Rush Hour, didn’t everyone?

Flatliners, the new version, very dull and some crappy acting. Come on Ellen Page, you can do better.

Battle of the Sexes was quite distressing, lots of men being bullish and arrogant. A fun sports film.

Christmas Inheritance, which loosely translates to, crap you watch at Christmas to get you in the mood for Christmas. I gave it a 4/10 on IMDB.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi was very good, a great plotline with some amazing characters and scenes, although the humour really didn’t do it for me, very childish and just odd, taking me out of the whole thing sometimes, which is a shame. Apart from that though, very intelligent and well put together film, I’m excited to see his (Rian Johnson) trilogy of star wars films. I did prefer Rogue One though.

Bright, a world where fantasy fairies and orcs live alongside humans. I love the world that was built but the actual story was a little hit and miss, especially the wooden acting from some of the human cops, being racist to the orcs but in a very ‘I’m being racist’ sort of overt way that just didn’t feel real.

The Levelling, a story of a young woman returning to her family farm after her brother killed himself, was incredibly distressing and slow and just sad. It might have been more interesting if I had been brought up in a city but as I’ve been in the countryside the majority of my life, being shown country landscapes doesn’t really do it for me.

Sad to say I watched Geostorm. Of course it was total trash.

Smashed was okay, drunk people getting sober.

The Beguiled (the new version) was an intriguing watch, women welcoming a wounded soldier from the other side into their school during the American Civil War. All the women then fall for him and things get strange and distorted. It’s a good film.

All These Sleepless Nights, basically following a young man through all his evenings out over the course of a year, we see him grow and change and move through relationships, chatting bullshit and living like a young self. It was beautiful in a way, akin to playing Life is Strange I guess, reliving a moment, moving back in time and seeing what it is to be a young person. But yeah, really good and positive.

Swiss Army Man, who knows what this film is. It’s weird and absurd, slowly turning into a film about mental illness. Just very odd and weirdly endearing.

The Disaster Artist was great and funny and made me feel sorry for Tommy.

Dave Chappelle had two new episodes of his stand up released, talking about very on the nose subjects, from sexual assaults to abuse and transgender people. Very topical. I am a big fan of his, it’s all very interesting to watch him manoeuvre through the cultural landscape of today as an older man, away from his Chappelle show days.

First They Killed My Father, a very misleading title. I assumed it was a revenge film. It isn’t and just ends up being incredibly sad.

The Damian Hirst false documentary, Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable, was hilarious. Full of drama and unnecessary pats on the back. I loved it, serving as an incredible accompaniment to the Venice show and it’s on Netflix.

City of Tiny Lights, kind of okay, a private detective story that tries to be grimy but doesn’t quite succeed.

The end of the Fucking World, a new Netflix tv show about two teenagers who run away from home. It’s funny and smart and very knowing. Definitely worth a watch.

Thank You for Playing, a documentary about the creators of That Dragon, Cancer, a video game that sees you navigate through the minds of the creators after their son, Joel, develops cancer. Both the doc and the video game are heart-breaking. Highly recommended.

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri was very good, now that’s an incredibly well done portrayal of a racist police officer. Funny, distressing and just keeps pushing. Definitely go and watch this.

Brad’s Status was literal trash. Do not watch.

I’m currently watching Halt and Catch Fire, a tv show about the personal computing explosion. I watched the first season many years ago now, like back in 2014, and then just didn’t watch the following seasons. Now that it’s ended though, I thought I’d run through them all and I’m thoroughly enjoying it.

The final piece of entertainment that I can remember is playing through a game called SUPERHOT. A first person shooter whereby every time you move in game time moves, when you stop time stops. It’s an incredibly fun mechanic that resides in an incredibly meta game that sees you (the payer playing the game) seemingly trapped within the game inside the game. It’s very fun and a great idea that I’d recommend, simply for the fun of dodging bullets.

So, I think it might be time to leave it there, maybe. Hopefully we are now back to the regularly scheduled programming, with this week being based around printing my dissertation, going to a meeting or two, starting to develop new work, attempting to find a job and just preparing for the future in general.

I already feel drained.