When I actually get around to
updating this on a weekly basis it always feels like I don’t do much, simply
because of how quick a week goes by. 52 weeks in a year, last year I wrote 26
blog posts, in 2016 I wrote 38 and in 2015 I wrote 83. So far I’ve written 4,
this being my 5th of 2018. It’s a slow decline I guess, although I’m
not sure why. Anyway, this week, a finalised list of artists for the exhibition
next month and for the upcoming book, a nearly finalised PDF of the book, ahead
of schedule, a new didactic video work, the finalised AI work and some new
sculptural plans. Oh and another severe lack of shows seen, Saturday exhibition
days are slowly becoming a rarity I guess, but then so is everything else. Let
us begin at the late hour of ten o’clock at on a Sunday night, how fun, I am
hungry.
So, I managed to finish the AI piece
earlier in the week, ready for assessment and to be group critiqued. I think
the video has come together well, like a wave washing over you and there’s
nothing you can do about it. This bot foretelling your past failures as a
species with no real way of changing this. There was one very clever thing
brought up in the group crit, one remark that really intrigued me, the idea
that the piece is a piece of education for a future race. Obviously that was
the intention with regards to an AI reflecting, but less education and more
informing. The wooden benches however, seem to emulate a V&A style school
field trip, or something that you’d perhaps see in an old museum. It’s an
interesting perspective and may have potentially ruined the work for me, maybe,
although I like the idea of educating people and this does give a new dimension
to the work, I think I’d have liked to make the install ‘better’, more
educational I guess. Anyway, I am happy with the work, the cable tray works
very well and the overall aesthetic is solid. I think for my next ‘major’ piece
I want to make more of a thing of the installation, although that will
potentially be my ‘degree show’ piece, thus something that will potentially
ultimately end up skipped and too big to fit anywhere. Anyway, I’m yet to take
proper pictures, but here’s one, also here’s a link to the full film: https://vimeo.com/257068701
I also this week put together a new
video work for an online/downloadable project currently being put together by Wade,
a friend and fellow curator. It’s a simple video, wondering what happens when
we die, what happens to our data, questioning whether it was ever ours in the
first place with relation to the documents we aimlessly scroll through when we
accept terms and conditions. It utilises imagery and the music featured in Life
is Strange: Before the Storm alongside other pieces of found/video game
footage, driving in GTA5 and shooting an innocent bystander, the emotion
drained from the scenario. For me it’s quite an emotional piece simply because
of utilising footage and music from LIS, although no one else will understand
that, something I haven’t truly built into a work for quite some time, not
since I made sculptures. It’s odd, but nice I think. It’s here anyway, a very
short piece, under two minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YohYeOmbWJk
I’ve also been thinking about new
work, even though I’m currently studio-less. I’d like to utilise old elements,
mostly screen stands that have previously been used to show iPhones and tablets,
but will now potentially be used as sculptures, windows into the screen, into
the internet, into the future. That could be a nice series of works. But yes,
for now, no studio so no physical works, maybe it’s time to make more emotional
videos…
Other than my own work I’ve still
been working on the book, with only a few more artworks and essays to add in,
then I can start adding the page numbers and sorting the thing, then I can
order a draft copy and begin this process. Although, I’m still doing an
interview and haven’t even started one with Harm, so hopefully I can get on
with those. Anyway, here’s some more pages and an example page or two of how
the essays will look, giving space to the words to actually breath as opposed
to all the other issues.
I finally announced the exhibiting
artists too, it’s been an interesting journey of curating, but I do think it’s
going to be a thoroughly successful show, I have enough artists and artworks to
fill the space, now I just need to get it and do it. The show is titled ‘I'm
sorry, I didn't quite catch that’, quite an obvious title for a show focusing
on AI, but fun nonetheless. It’s the stereotypical response from Siri when she
doesn’t understand what questions you’re asking her. It encompasses everything
that the show is about in a very succinct way without being too wanky. The
final artist list includes !Mediengruppe Bitnik, Anne De Boer, Bora Akinciturk,
Dominic Dispirito, Emma Stern, Iain Ball, Jakob Kudsk Steensen, Marie Munk,
Olga Fedorova, Sarah Derat & Rachel McRae, Stephan Backes and Stine Deja.
So, a lovely list of national and international artists, London, New York and
all the others. Here’s the Facebook event, please do come to the private view
on the 22nd March at Arebyte Gallery - https://www.facebook.com/events/150302102309286/
What else? Not much actually, I
continue to work about two days a week at Annka’s, I’m enjoying it and learning
a lot. I really need to start naming my files better, that seems like one of
the many keys to success…
Other than kind-of making art,
writing emails, putting the book together and interviewing people, I did go to
one or two shows this week. Everything is now opening up again after Condo
finished, so that’s positive. Let’s begin with Stine Deja and Marie Munk at
Annka Kultys. Obviously as I work there I’m now predisposed to like it, but I
did actually of course like it. I’ve been a fan of Stine’s for a while now, her
videos are consistently great and her installations aren’t as good as her
videos, but still fun. For the show she’d made two new videos, one long one
about AI assistant devices and one focusing on a newly born AI robot learning
to sing the popular 80s song ‘I wanna know what love is’. Now, this piece wasn’t
headphones, so after listening to the song all day yesterday I can happily say
that the song stands the test of listening to it for 6 hours on repeat. I preferred
this piece from Stine, it was simple and effective, seeing the learning process
first hand with a bunch of embedded ideas of learning to love as a human and a
bot. The other piece felt a little disconnected, a little overly complicated
perhaps? Marie’s work is fantastic, silicone veiny blobs that vibrate and
massage. You sit on this huge blob whilst watching the longer video. It’s very
fun and works well as a fleshy alternative to Stine’s technological mechanical
future. A very good show. They’re both in the upcoming show, very exciting.
On Wednesday I went to a talk at the
South London Gallery about digital death, where artists Rachel McRae and Sarah
Derat discussed with curator Samantha Lippett what it means to die online, who has
access to our social media accounts when we die offline, what happens to all
that information? They also have a fantastic piece that concerns this, an AR
artwork that’s activated by large stone slabs placed on the floor. It’s very
good. It was an interesting talk, more a discussion than a talk, with people
sharing their thoughts on loss and what it means to die both in the virtual and
in the real. What intrigued me was the segment of people who came to the event,
seemingly ‘real’ people, not just art people. One woman came who worked in a
hospital, another a middle-aged man who’s been asked to make a website for a
friends deceased son. A very interesting and diverse crowd. I really like their
work and they too are in the upcoming show.
The final exhibition that I went to
this week was from Erica Scourti, a solo show at Studio RCA Riverlight. It’s an
interesting, quite small, space, that’s located in a very fancy part of London.
Right by the river (as you may have guessed) and housed at the bottom of a very
tall skyscraper like building, akin to Arebyte’s new space. The show was fun,
walking in you encounter one room with custom wallpaper, made up of scans of
the artists emails and other ephemera. A seemingly very personal giving of ones
soul I guess, that of all the content from your email inbox. In the other room
was a video work that was incredibly hard to hear at the private view. That
showed Erica talking to the camera, at various talks and panel discussions,
thinking about her access and the automation of work. It was fun but I do need
to go back. Erica is also in the upcoming issue!
Let’s do films, although before that
I need to eat, and it’s only 11 o’clock, time for a break… Okay and we’re back
for quarter to 12. So, films, I’ve slightly gotten back into it with films this
week, it’s hard to not be sucked into a YouTube hole sometimes, but films and
TV is commonly considered more worthwhile I guess, even if in the future this
will not be the case. Anyway, The Death
of Stalin was very good, incredibly funny and just very on point. Once
Stalin (spoilers) dies, everyone begins fighting for the leadership, which
leads to serious consequences but they’re just so bumbly about the whole, akin
to Blackadder I guess, that it just becomes hysterical. Very well done and
highly recommended.
Mute was a major disappointment
for me, the new sci-fi film on Netflix directed by Duncan Jones. I loved Moon, of course, and very much enjoyed Source Code, but we won’t talk about the
World of Warcraft film. I hoped this would be a return to form for Jones, but
in reality it just felt like a bunch of sci-fi cliches thrown into an overly
complicated plot that just kept giving you too much information. It became
confusing and ultimately kind of dull and awkwardly acted. You could see the ‘twists’
coming from a mile off and ‘angry’ acting was just laughable from Paul Rudd.
Yeah, I’m not angry just disappointed. Maybe I’ll re-watch Moon to see an
original storyline with a proper twist!
Atomic Blonde was fine, MI6
agent in Berlin during the cold war. Fun but ultimately I will have forgotten I’ve
seen it within the week. Not dull, just very much ‘seen’ before.
Brigsby Bear on the other hand
was a beautiful film about a man called James whose obsessed with this children’s
TV show about a bear. It feels like, at first, the film is set in the 90s, but
within the first five minutes it’s revealed that in actuality James had been
kidnapped at a young age and told that the outside world was a sort of
apocalyptic environment deprived of oxygen. The rest of the film sees him sort
of assimilating to the outside world, being with his real parents and hanging
out with his sister who’s a teenager. It’s quite a beautiful film actually,
seeing his naivety play out accompanied by a heartfelt story of semi-abuse, but
nice abuse, wanting to keep James safe rather than keeping him in a box. Yeah,
just great.
Mayhem was fun but dull,
a virus spreads through an office block, causing everyone want to kill each
other. The main character had just been fired and now is fighting to get to the
top to eventually kill the boss. It’s fun and dumb, nothing to shout about.
Suburbicon was highly disappointing
and seemed like the literal epitome of a white person seeing a situation and
making the film about white people rather than black people. The first scene
sees a black family move into a sprawling idyllic 50s suburb, everyone is
white, cheery and happy. They move in, everyone starts looking at them and it’s
of course super weird. Then after five minutes of this the camera pans back and
focuses on their neighbour, one of the white families who are in the process of
being robbed. The film then continues to focus on the white family whilst the
black family have a weird and interesting sub plot occurring in the background.
Throughout the film I was thinking, you have literally put the black people to
the back of the film and focused on the white people, it may work within the
context of the film but in reality the trials and tribulations that the black
family are going through would be a lot more interesting to delve into, a lot
more than a small sub plot allows for! The main plot was just kind of dull, I
dunno, I like Matt Damon as Bourne but lots of the other things he’s in it’s
just sort of meh. When’s the next Bourne film coming out?
The final film was Last Flag Flying, the new Richard
Linklater film out on Amazon Prime Video. First off, who knew there was going
to be a new Linklater film? Surely this should have been advertised a lot more?
It came out about a month ago and literally went over everyone’s heads, was it
even out in the cinema? It also features Bryan Cranston, Laurence Fishburne and
Steve Carell, all men, but famous men, surely more people should know about
this? Just very odd. Anyway, focuses on the transporting of a son’s body across
the US killed during the Iraq War in 2003. Very sad and some solid acting, not
fantastic but still. Everybody Wants Some!! Was misogynistic as fuck and it got more
ads/press.
Oh and I also watched Back, the – vaguely – new TV show
starring David Mitchell and Robert Webb. It’s fun, focusing on a sleepy village
where David runs a failing pub, his father dies and Robert returns to the
village after having been one of many foster children that the father had
adopted for a short time during his youth. It’s tight and funny, not as tight
as Peep Show (of course I’m going to compare it to that), but definitely worth
sticking with. Like a dreary, sleepy enjoyment…
Ah plus, I managed to play a quick
video game called Genital Jousting. It’s quite hilarious, as you may learn from
the title, featuring a story and a party mode. I played the story mode, which
puts you in the shoes of John, a character who needs to find a date for his
high school reunion. Obviously, a simple story, however, John is a penis, and
so is everyone else in the world of GJ. Everyone is a penis and it doesn’t get
old, you bumble about your apartment, go shopping, type on your keyboard at
work. It’s very fun and dumb, in a good way, and I’d highly recommend playing
or watching a let’s play. I want to play more games, as a treat I’ve bought
myself Horizon Zero Dawn, a game which will assumedly take me many weeks to
complete, especially as I play about 1 hour or so a week, and that’s being
ambitious…
Anyway, I think that’s it for this
week, ultimately a slow one with not too much progress. In the coming week I’d
like to begin making some new work, potentially some small sculptures from
various metal/tech implements, finalise all of the parts of the magazine that I
can finalise right now, continue to promote the issue and get more pre-orders,
maybe think about new video work and begin planning April’s online show, which
I’ll be curating I think. Oh and press release text for next month, plus more
work at Annka’s. *Sigh*
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