#year2cs

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Who watches the Watchmen?

Different types of power to think about - State Power; Social Power; Economic Power.

What is power?  Control - key elements; manipulation; influence (a slightly less aggressive form of manipulation); - refers to a group of people’s values and beliefs (ideas, beliefs and values) 

Characteristics? Wealth; Religion (Ideology); Monarchy - symbolic value;

Art? Creates discussion - addresses some imbalances, shows itself when one is pushed down by others the haves and have nots etc; Activists representing new ideas through various formats of Arts; Protest - resistance - proposing new ideas; Historical Marker - through the history of time across borders etc. 

What is power?

Establishment; Business; Politics; State; Law; Banking; Police, Elite; Civil Service; Church; Media; Wealth; Monarchy and Education - various forms of institutions able to exercise power over people.

Forms of Power 

State Power

Authority 

Wealth

Education - under popular discussion re private schooling or shared resources

Influence

Race 

Gender Patriarchy (Male) / (Hedgimany) Feminists

Sexuality

Wealth has its own privileges and sexuality being a dominant party. How factors/theories relating to the individual affect own practice.

How does art address this? Provoking people - Satire - “Vice” film shows good examples of seeking challenge structures of power about people without account making decisions about others’ lives about Politics and Power relating to the Iraq war. Collodud poem influencing Trump’s campaign - advisor changed the meaning about who should and should not enter the country.

Do you have a media platform? This could show manifestations of power.

Theorists of Power

Michael Foucault - a writer 1960s - 1990s interested in histories of ideas and looked at language within the structure of power - history of sexuality - looking at the way dominant class people oppress others and identifying as a gay man he figured how the systems were created to silence him. Through understanding Hetrodominance and how the reproductive sex has come to infect the main as to what can constitute a loving relationship, you can see how a lot of people would be excluded from that by the choices people make in life.

Foucault looked at Early 20th Century theorists to base his work on.

“It’s my hypothesis that the individual is not a pre-given entity which is seized on by the exercise of power. The individual, with his identity and characteristics, is the product of a relation of power exercised over bodies, multiplicities, movements, desires, forces.” (Michael Foucault)

What does he mean by the exercise of power?

Essential personality - untouched by anyone else - he believes there are forces that shape our ideas such as factors - absorbing/resisting parents ideas - Foucault believes the idea of pure untainted self doesn’t exist is influenced by relations of power that are exercised over our bodies - by basically delegitimising himself as a gay man that demonstrates an exercise of power. Everything affects us as a person. Do you believe? Resist?

Foucault’s Panopticon (an old french style prison system where there is a tower in the centre of the room, all the prisoners are around the outside with a single-window facing inwards, the tower has windows all around facing outwards. The theory is that takes one person in the tower to control the entire prison, from a fear of being watched) - from a book called Discipline & Punish where he talks about the history of the prison system. Gives a way of thinking through the elements of the current media landscape.

*If you throw in the element of two-way glass - it demonstrates how power becomes the apprehension of authority - rules and conducts that govern our lives - social norms etc.

Discipline power is exercised through its invisibility and the apprehension of power. The acknowledge and follow certain social regulations because we may be watched. The arts have started to address this. Seen, Shoen and Manifested. Graffiti has been brought to life by Banksy; Fashion offers us space to express who we are as an act of defiance. We can challenge ideas of power. Ideas Cameras, Surveillance are all key to current ideas and thought about how this may work. What data may be shared.

Imagine the internet as the tower in the middle of the prison how that impacts everything we do. Show how invisible force conditions our behaviour. How today’s life revolves around the internet.

Visibility is key.

Love Island is a dating show - unfeasibly beautiful people constantly surveyed by a big brother type machinery which follows their every move - and becoming a couple with fame, glory and money. Panopticon!!

Power? Fun to watch (surveillance); psychological ruin; you can watch and control them- and think you have the upper hand, but often they may win the upper hand. Reality television - not real - fake and very commercial. Making money for the television company and they often determine exactly who you will and will not like from the off. Beauty standards are very antiquated ideas no queers; obese or plain people. Very synthetic set to create paradise! Shows how gender can play a role in power.

Michael Cunningham - “Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.” Again, brings back to Love Island! Mechanisms and how power manifests others.

Foucault says, “ Power manifests itself in lots of ways and conditions who we are as subjects.” He said “If one had to speak of sex, one had to speak publicly in a manner that was not determined by the division between licit and illicit even if the speaker maintained the distinction for himself. One had to speak of it as a thing to be not simply condemned or tolerated but managed in certain of the systems of fertility regulated for the greater good of all the made to function according to an optimum. Sex was not something one simply judged it was something one administered.” Foucault implies that sex is a discursive instrument and the development of dominant sexual examples or by social standards preferable sexual examples can have real-world impacts on peoples lives. What is the utility - reproductive sex - used to provide good sex?

He also acknowledges the foster the basis for reactions to the powers. “The appearance of 19th-century psychiatry ‘Dearest Prudence” and literature of a whole series of discourses on species and subspecies of homosexuality in version pederasty and psychic hermaphroditism made possible a strong advance of social controls into this area of perversity but it also made possible the formation of a reverse discourse. Homosexuality began to speak on its own behalf to demand that its legitimacy or naturality be acknowledged often in the same vocabulary using the same categories that it was medically disqualified. - Trying to state it should be considered normal and not a perversion. If you continue to say, someone, they do not exist they eventually will rebel, as they do exist. It can also affect their mental state. Especially as controllers may believe that others will “bounce back”. It can be about creating discourses of resistance. You can bring on awareness of some movement bringing on changes which would affect others.

Theorising Gender. - Simon De Bouvoir, a Feminist wrote The Second Sex, 1949 - you have a choice to agree or disagree. It was a game-changer - what does it mean to be a woman? It created lots of revisions and people pushing against her as her conception of people being binary, your talking about specific women, not all women. She helped to pave the way for the feminine discourse. This preceded a lot of civil rights movements in the 1960s - black folk in America being the most visible - but there are lots of other civil rights movements. She talks about the myth of the woman and how people determine who others are by the way they exert power. “few myths have been more advantageous to the ruling caste than the myth of women: It justifies all privileges and even authorizes their abuse.” The Myth of women shows that genders have biological characteristics in their personality. i.e. old men are irrational, and women are emotional - these kinds of statements will put people down and make them feel inferior or ashamed. The woman’s place is in the home. Men needn’t bother themselves with alleviating themselves with the pains and burdens of physiologically of woman’s lot since these are intended by nature, it’s the way it is described as women’s natural consequences. 3-400 years ago, all written documentation about women was written by men - ideas of the natural woman came from those that were not a woman! Men then used this further by refusing to grant women any sexual pleasure and making her work like a beast of burden! Bouvoir is trying to say give people the freedom of choice to be whatever they want.

Specific ideas of Myths of women as a social construct include Princesses; Love Island; Mothers; Hip Hop singers etc. All of them are determined by men about women.

Judith Butler wrote Gender Trouble 1990 - talks about the distinction between male and female - is there a problem with that? Ties in with Foucault. Are individuals who do not identify as male or female wrong and do we press our judgement on to them? Butler says to think more fluidly, and variance does exist. What is dominance? I.e. What is right? If it is the majority, it is not necessarily correct nor is it the only way of living. “Gender is not something that one is it something that one does. It is an act (Key Point), a doing rather than a being. There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender identity (What you choose to wear, physical image, what you do)” Gender is very flippant - i.e girls do this; boys do this etc.

Butler also relates to David Bowie; Prince is good examples of demonstrating arbitrariness they are masculine but very effeminate in their looks. Society constructs gender within clothes; biological factors; gender expression; generations allow for inheritance. Butler says people should be allowed to express themselves, individuals. Legal requirements also need to be adhered to.

Power and Race - Kwame Anthony Appiah, an Oxford philosopher, wrote Race. Current affairs and Political tendency’s - Race and ethnicity - white = race; British = ethnicity.

“Differences among people like differences among communities with a single society play a central role in our thinking about who we are - in structuring our values, (ideology) and in determining the identities in which we live. In the last century and a half, racialism and nationalism (think about how they both coincide with one another), so often bound together that one can hardly tell them apart, have played a central role about how we think about these differences and since one of the contributions of modern nationalism has been to see literature as central to national life, race has been central to literature and thought about literature throughout the period.” Literature is about Art - the whitewashing of any art scene you can see how these have cross applications as well. I.e. white actors play black characters. This demonstrates the particular powers of privileges operating within the film industry.

How do Race and Power intersect with the arts - procreation - while artists drawing from black culture and using it as an innovative idea? It has a different role to playing despite the fact that others have done this for years. Things like censorship and expose come out as well. Who are the artists? Who do you refer to for points of reference? What art movements? Who do they represent? Do they want to explore ideas of forms?

Where did ideas come from? The story of O.J. - Jay z 2017 - Street rap music became the push back at establishments 1970-1980 white America was leaving young black men as though they were criminals, and no one would employ them - what did they do?

Jay Z used cuts of overtly racialised animations caricatures to add to the message. In 1940s animations the similar imagery came up. Artists, illustrators and animators who draw others have the power to impress on others how one sees the individual. Although Jay Z is a black artist in 1930s it was not a black artist, therefore, it was how the white artist wanted to portray the black individual.

What De Bouvoir really talks about is an opportunity and how you could bring something innovative from your field similar to Virginia Wolfe’s - Room of One’s Own - what women need to create great literature is the opportunity to do so. Space and financial freedom to make one’s art. Historically women have not had this. She relates to “Daddy’s Office” - the father gets a workspace whereas the mother does not have this luxury.

De Bouvoir talks about Freedom - the freedom to produce “Indeed for one to become a creator, it is not enough to be cultivated that is to make going to shows and meeting people part of one’s life. Culture must be apprehended and taken through the free movement of the transcendents. The spirits with all its riches must project itself in an empty sky that is its to fill. But if a thousand fine bonds are tied to the earth its surge is broken. Etc.”

Take the sentiment that people should be allowed the freedom to explore who they are and produce art. Apply it is everyone, class, wealth and ability, gender, race, age, etc. Literariness a series of letters written from a boy to his mother who cannot read. Explores the strength they have through literariness. Thinking about the role that Art plays. There are ways of resisting these structures and they do not have to be adhered to without question should you wish to do so.

Resistant Art- Childish Gambino - viral sensation and what that does to the role you play in history. Do viral things remain?

The Weather Project - photograph - the people are the audience observing the simulated sun in a locked room - questions of the environment and the sun being the ultimate source of power. Climate change. 

The Blindfolded Man - brings to mind political situations. Police brutality in America. 

Does it have to be political or resistant? It can be realistic and show the persons’ ideal image. Realistic - what is visible around the world. Art & realism are difficult to think through together. Subject to a lot of forces that will affect it. Documentaries are believed to be factual but can still be very political. Personal can still be political. Great art perseveres i.e. Shakespeare plays. Although people still wish to adapt and alter to modern-day, elements and themes will persist.

What is Art? Why is it of interest? Personal, Subjective and allow for criticism and political scrutinise.

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Ever Tried, Ever Failed

“Ever Tried, Ever Failed” Samuel Beckett, Worstward Hoe, 1983 it is a motif that recurs.  Much like who watches the watchmen? Although about different types of power

Most of these are fanatically structured around the quotes.

Can you relate to them?  Ie if you fail - you try harder to succeed.

Go through the process do things change?

Try to reject the term failure in yourself - integrate words such as interpretation and experimentation and attempts.  Part of the creative process.

Do not make a final judgement on your work always experiment and adjust never fail.

Practice-led - reflect on the process of making art regardless of subject - the process may change drastically between different subjects.  TALK ABOUT THEM NEXT WEEK.

Making adjustments, looking at the stepping stones to get to end result rather than the end result

Discuss Anti-Art - the art of failure resisting expectations.

The art that fails - being objective about it.

Lisa Le Feuvre - ideas about what she means - time wasted. Money wasted.  Failed works - taken out of context.  Entire exhibitions of sketches buried previously in piles of papers now given new lease.  Shows the process not necessarily a failure.

Van Gogh’s Sunflowers - think about the process - artist pre-occupied with Sunflowers - painted why? (It is believed he painted them to decorate Paul Gauguin’s bedroom for when he moved in - to make it sunny). Is any particular one “the” sunflower? Are the others part of the process?

What do the pictures say?  Was it an ongoing project that he was never happy with?  Maybe he never got them right in his mind.

Contemporary storyboard Toy Story 2 a nice way to demonstrate how the artist gets to the end result. Concept work again as stepping stones towards the final piece.

Reclaim the process of getting to the end result.  To be able to show the process to the examiner.

What does it mean to Fail?

Mikes Poppe Profundis 2017 shows a courtroom, he is chained to an iron ball in the centre of a concrete block, which ties in with power from last week leading to justice - showing someone chipping away to free himself.

Clearly a political statement, justice etc., he failed as he couldn’t get out of the block.

If he didn’t do what he set out to do - was that a failure or did the end result change?

This is a performance piece and maybe unintentional.  Can change with communication and he did that.

Failed Art - incomplete pieces - are they the same?  Some may appear very different are unfinished the same as incomplete?  Art is never finished it is retired. Communication alongside images can tell the story ie if the portrait is being done on an individual that then dies. As in the art in the slide.

Some works that are not finished are only retired, some works have fewer elements.

Quite often even Rafael had students to help support his work which opens up questions about architecture.  Opens up lots of questions.  Some works are done to look half-completed whereas others are actually only half completed.

Making art of failures - materials being used.  Street art where they take discarded goods (wood/furniture) and create areas for homeless people to congregate and even live in.  Reusing/repurposing and salvaging waste.  As we are increasingly conscious of the impact of the amount of waste.

Use of coffee beans also to create art.

Eco-criticism ties in with this kind of art of trash.

Next Stop Atlantic - what do New York City do with their disused abandoned subway carriages - they dumped them in the Atlantic Ocean.  A photographer was very keen about photographing the process of breaking the carriages down before dumping them into the ocean. Leads to thinking about sustainability and long term environmental impact. Approximately 15000 have been dumped. What is the object of this work?  Helps to encourage outrage.  A lot of up to date artwork relates to waste.

People are becoming more aware of it, in early 90s people thought the metal was reused.  Nowadays people are turning them into artificial ecosystems, people have gone in to create environments for life to congregate.

The failure is not necessarily the artist but institutional failures - the authorities of power - ie what do we do with our waste?  Throw it in the ocean!!

Art has now drawn attention to that.

Observist Animator Don Hertzfeldt consisted of four segments introduced as a collection of unaired/rejected promo materials for the family learning channel.  The fact that these are failed commercials for a family learning channel is possibly a fictional setup.  What does it expose? What is the point of the satire?  Instead of drawing attention to appropriateness - going against expectations.  It is classically a children style image and drawing attention for it being done for the children’s attention.  

Familiar works? Anti-Art - an act of resistance - pushing back against what is acceptable forms of art.  What you deem appropriate - pushing the boundaries. Duchamp was caught out by the process.  It is as if Duchamp tried in disbelief to use simple objects as art and succeeded.  By presenting things as art anything could be put on to a podium and displayed in an exhibition.

This may be considered a failure of artistic merits. Anti-Art.  It's about resistance, obstruction and disruption - an art gallery is a sacred place where people really determine what does/does not belong.  Whose art are we looking at?

The art is often representative of a quiet select of people.  

The purchasers and critics will be governing this structure.  The artists themselves may contribute to the conversation.  Things may start out as experiments and end up initiating unexpected things - including fashion.

Take conversations to seminars - what is art? Who approves of it?  What is my opinion worth?

Anti-Art extends to performance art - “dropping a Han dynasty urn” 1995 and “a Han dynasty urn with a Coca Cola”. The idea of breaking something or undoing art was quite controversial.  Is it breaking it as it is a precious object?   “General Mao used to tell us that we can only build a new world if we destroy the old one!”  Therefore to Ai Weiwei in his mind, this is what he was doing. Yet in other peoples minds, he was destroying an object of value.  Again goes back to power.

His form is breaking up the Art form.  

Tracey Emin has said that “my bed was inspired by a sexual yet depressive phase in my life, in which I remained in bed for four days without eating or drinking anything but alcohol.  When I looked at the vile, repulsive mess that had accumulated in my room I suddenly realised what I had created.”  Others argued this was not art.  Tracey Emin was quite big by late 90s and therefore was it her that was the art?  There is a feminist element of this.  Following the theme and breaking apart what can and cannot be art.  It is lifted as it is essential to her at this time.

Desire paths is a path created by usage, not a pre-determined path.  Normally these paths are created by people taking shortcuts across fields to get from point A to point B more quickly.”   Gaston Bachelart, The Poetics of Space 1958.  What are the well-trodden paths how might you do it differently does it make the original path a failed design or does it just mean there are two ways from A to B?

Artists can be very asymmetrical whereas architects are very symmetrical.  Think about creative routes you can take?  Make use of “failed” attempts to improve.  People can express things in their own way.  You can take things in your own way - it does not have to be what the artist was trying to say.

Think about failure?  Reflect on how and why work failed?