brooksadad2018

[brooksadad2018]

Assess 3 - Moving, time, performance, engagement.

In assessment 3, we think about and make with movement, time, performance, kinetic sculpture and time based collaboration. I will continue to post examples over coming weeks for you to absorb, reference and share:

Anne Imhof: Angst II

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjVGOLmWmRw

Anne Imhof: Faust

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCF3buPU670

Fischli and Weiss: The Way Things Go

https://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/video/fischli-and-weiss-way-things-go-excerpt

Liquid Architecture have a huge list of artists they have worked with in thei programs that work with sound literally and conceptually:

https://liquidarchitecture.org.au/

Tori Wranes: The Eccentrics Performance Program

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SKveGIUJWc

Clare Milledge: Strigiformes: Binocular, Binarual

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqFx6oF5DJc&t=36s

[brooksadad2018]

The Public Body at Artspace

Artspace is hosting an exclusive walkthrough of their upcoming exhibition THE PUBLIC BODY .03 with Executive Director Alexie Glass-Kantor!! The tour will be followed by a talk by artist Patricia Piccinini.

When:

1st September 2018, 1.30pm - 3.30pm

Where:

Artspace, Woolloomooloo

The event is specifically for UNSW students, so make the most of this great opportunity and check it out!

RSVP to the event below.

https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/the-public-body-03-unsw-student-walkthrough-with-artspace-executive-director-alexie-glass-kantor-tickets-49021737336

[brooksadad2018]

Thanks for compiling this great list of resources Bil!

Some research sources

Here are some web sources that I regularly use for reference material and just to check out what other people are thinking/ doing. 

http://www.ubu.com/ Gold mine of highly curated, experimental art. Spend all your procrastination time on here. 

https://www.e-flux.com/ Super influential online journal. They also have a range of creative web based projects that you can browse. 

https://www.dezeen.com/ Architecture and design magazine. 

https://www.designboom.com/ Another massive archive of creative projects. 

https://maas.museum/powerhouse-museum/ Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences is a super fun place to go visit for inspiration. They have a pretty incredible collection. They have a good digitised collection too that you can browse online. 

http://runway.org.au/ Local journal based around promoting and commissioning experimental art. They produce issues based on particular concepts. In the past they produced printed magazines but are now web based which allows them to publish content in a variety of media. They have also digitised all of their printed editions. It’s now an amazing archive of creative work and ideas. 

http://www.discipline.net.au/ Melbourne based contemporary art journal. Very meaty content. 

http://unprojects.org.au/ Excellent publication out of Melbourne. 

http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/ Cabinet Magazine publishes articles on all kinds of amazing things that you might find inspiring. 

Remember to visit the library. Go in and browse new books and journals. 

Follow every possible gallery, museum, artists you like, designers you like on Instagram. Turn your scrolling into research. This is a great way to keep up with what is going on. You never know where inspiration is going to come from. 

Some galleries and museums to keep up with: 

https://artdesign.unsw.edu.au/unsw-galleries (exhibitions that are currently on might be useful to you for references for your assessments)  

https://artdesign.unsw.edu.au/campus/student-galleries/kudos-gallery

http://firstdraft.org.au/

http://carriageworks.com.au/

http://art.uts.edu.au/

http://www.roslynoxley9.com.au/

https://thecommercialgallery.com/

http://www.sarahcottiergallery.com/

http://home.alaskaprojects.com/

https://www.nas.edu.au/place/gallery/

https://www.artspace.org.au/

http://www.knulps.org/past/ (tiny artist run space, best visual identity, check out their exhibition posters)

https://www.airspaceprojects.com.au/

http://c-a-c.com.au/

http://www.penrithregionalgallery.org/exhibitions/

http://www.casulapowerhouse.com/

http://www.whiterabbitcollection.org/

http://www.galeriepompom.com/

[brooksadad2018]

Assessment 1 Tips

Looking forward to seeing your posters this week. Here are a couple of things to keep in mind as you work toward finishing…

1. Remember that this Assessment builds towards Assessment 2: you’re working on a larger project and this is your first opportunity to produce work for further reflection as you develop your major work.

2. The research questions are designed to be suggestive, exciting, arousing: a place from which to begin and a site from which to build your work. Don’t get too bogged down by ‘answering’ the question in a literal, singular sense. Let the question guide your practice-led research but don’t let it determine or restrain your investigation!

3. A poster is a form with an interesting and diverse history. You have the freedom to push the constraints in whatever way(s) you want. Think about the material, graphic and textual components and how they interact with each other and your developing project.

4. Above all, remember that this is a studio course and this Assessment is an artwork/designed object. It’s not a report, or an ad. It’s a work that’s part of a larger in-progress project, and an opportunity to test out, map, play with and consider some ideas for your second assessment. Think like an artist/designer – what can you do with a poster? Think expansively and push the boundaries!

4. Almost anything is possible, so what matters is how you make the case in the work itself. This course is all about trying to shift the focus from the ‘what’ (what does it mean?) to the ‘how’ (how does it mean, how does its meaning change our understanding of contemporary practice?)

Have fun and good luck!

[brooksadad2018]

Thanks Bil!

If you are stuck for where to begin your research towards assessment 1, here is some inspiration:

1. Art and design often explore relationships between humans and non-humans, the environment and ecology. How can contemporary art and design propose new possibilities for imagining the ‘human’ and the environment?

> Exhibition ‘Human-Non-Human’ opening on the 9th of August at the Powerhouse Museum. It is curated by super smart curators Lizzie Muller and Katie Dyer and features the work of artists Lindsay Kelley, Liam Young, Maria Fernanda Cardoso and Ken Thaiday and Jason Christopher. The central questions for this exhibition are: What makes us human and how might humans adapt in the future? This exhibition is an potentially an excellent resource for starting to research this question. It doesn’t open until next week but you can research the work of the artists involved.

> ‘All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace’ is a brilliant documentary series by Adam Curtis about the concept of ecology. Here’s a link to the first episode: https://vimeo.com/groups/96331/videos/80799353

The title comes from this poem:

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace

Richard Brautigan

I like to think (and the sooner the better!) of a cybernetic meadow where mammals and computers live together in mutually programming harmony like pure water touching clear sky.

I like to think (right now, please!) of a cybernetic forest filled with pines and electronics where deer stroll peacefully past computers as if they were flowers with spinning blossoms.

I like to think (it has to be!) of a cybernetic ecology where we are free of our labors and joined back to nature, returned to our mammal brothers and sisters, and all watched over by machines of loving grace.

2. Can creative acts be rebellious when rebellion has become canonised in art, design and media histories? What would a contemporary creative rebellion look like?

> There is an excellent series of reference books surveying seminal concepts in contemporary art titled Whitechapel: Documents of Contemporary Art there is a very good one about ‘failure’ edited by Lisa Le Feuvre. You can also have a look at the list of artists discussed within and research their practices directly: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/failure

> There is also a great analysis of the psychology of failure in the book The Art of Failure: An Essay on the Pain of Playing Video Games by Jesper Juu. Here is a review: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/555702/pdf

3. How does collaboration create communities in art and design? What challenges do collaborative approaches face and what are some of the solutions?

> Current exhibition at Artspace by local artist Keg de Souza is a great place to start! There are lots of public programs associated with this exhibition that are really crucial in understanding how this exhibition activates ideas of collective and communal approaches to the construction and sharing of knowledge.  https://www.artspace.org.au/program/exhibitions/2018/common-knowledge-and-learning-curves-keg-de-souza/ (Images above are relating to this exhibition. They’re also more poster inspiration too.)

> You can also begin your research by searching for ‘socially engaged practice’, ‘community arts’, ‘activist art’ or ‘new genre public art’ which should yield lots of examples of creative projects through which practitioners have activated existing communities or attempted to generate new modes of collaboration. 

> Check out the archive of projects from the recent iteration of Sculpture Projects Münster 2017 (10th June - 1st October 2017). This is a very ambitious art festival that takes place every 10 years. The description for the last iteration was: 

‘The basis of the exhibition in 2017 was the conviction that art in urban space can activate historical, architectural, social, political and aesthetic contexts, creating spaces and not primarily occupying them. Many of the invited artists dealt with forms of collaborative production. Re-enactments, workshops and interviews expanded her artistic work and sculpture concept.’ 

https://www.skulptur-projekte-archiv.de/de-de/2017/

4. Contemporary art and design often looks at the idea of constructed binaries, such as man/woman, soft/hard, straight/gay, dirty/clean, organic/synthetic. Considering the history of these ‘pairs’, how can art and design interrogate these binaries and offers new insights?

> Perhaps, you might begin with looking at the concept of deconstruction proposed by Jacques Derrida. If you are interested here is a super well distilled intro video to get you started: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0tnHr2dqTs

> Otherwise, you can begin your research by picking a binary and focus on starting experimentation with how the two terms might be related.

And now I’m going to have a cup of coffee. 

[brooksadad2018]

If you miss a class

Many people email their lecturers to say

“I missed the last class, what should I do to make up for it?”

Please do not ask your lecturer to tell you what happened in the class. It is impossible for them to reiterate everything that happened. Instead….

Here’s what to do:

Check Moodle to see what the slideshow pdf was for that week. Read through carefully and follow links etc. Think about how the course concept applies to your work. Conduct some of the suggested activities, document them and upload them to Tumblr.

Work on your assessment tasks.

Check your lecturer’s class Tumblr.

Check your fellow students Tumblrs (this can include other classes).

Ask your friends in the class what they did.

Search the hashtag ADAD1001 or ADAD1002 on Tumblr.

If you were sick. email your lecturer a Doctors certificate. If you have other reasons please let your lecturer know.

Prepare for the next week by checking Moodle for the pdf a week before the class.

Make some interesting things!

[brooksadad2018]

Thanks Izabela! Such a wonderful description of practice-led research and such an amazing practice!

Some thoughts/notes on my practice-led approach to research…

My method of working involves a cyclic process whereby the practice of making is followed by observation, further research, some resolution and then a subsequent return to experimenting, while reflecting on that which has already been produced. This method involves a constant consideration of my practice through research and the research through the practice in an enquiry that occurs within a conceptual framework. I use images that are objects, and objects that are collected or found, as well as images that I take, or make. The way that I collect, store and retrieve photographs that I have taken or found is a way of forming new connections and interpretations within the image and how that image comes into being and forms part of an art work. I often revisit my many folders and archive boxes where I store negatives, contact sheets, keepsake family photographs and found ephemera. It involves a process of shuffling, pondering and reading the pictures to try and ascertain their value in the present moment. The way that I read an image may change depending on when I view it, and what other parameters and influences are shaping the work at that moment. It is very much a process of discovery. My practice-led methodology explores the material functions and modalities of a set of strategies that are bound up with the physical, conceptual and metaphorical invocations of displacement and loss. Each of these strategies draw on a range of pictorial, aesthetic, material and communicative devices that operate out of broader fields of photography, the archive and practices of archeology. While the reoccurring element of each work is located within the practice of expanded photography the method by which the work comes together draws largely on finding, fragmenting, translating and reconfiguring material - that is both made (photographed) and found - each being of equal significance to my creative journey. Hence these practice-led strategies are not only bound to photographic reflexivity but engage with the explicit ways that material objects are encountered, experienced, collected, deciphered, presented or interpreted. I explore how a work of art might adopt a certain range of artistic strategies that describe and manifest what, in the present contemporary moment, it might mean to be from another place.

installation view from my recent exhibition Paper, stone and permutations at This is no fantasy, Melbourne. 

[brooksadad2018]

Poster as an instructional apparatus. 

[brooksadad2018]

Poster as a political medium. 

1,2,3. 

Paris May 1968: ‘The streets of the French capital saw workers and students protesting against the increasing levels of unemployment and poverty that were all too apparent under Charles de Gaulle’s conservative government. 

In Paris, on the 16 May, students and faculty staff took over the Ecole des Beaux Arts to establish the Atelier Populaire (the Popular Workshop). The organisation went on to produce hundreds of silkscreen posters in an unprecedented outpouring of political graphic art. In a statement, the Atelier Populaire declared the posters “weapons in the service of the struggle… an inseparable part of it. Their rightful place is in the centres of conflict, that is to say, in the streets and on the walls of the factories.”’ From 

4,5,6.

Hans Haacke, ‘Wir (alle) sind das Volk—We (all) are the people’ (2003/2017)

Ten thousand posters

‘Documenta participant Hans Haacke produced “We (All) Are The People” which did not go over well with residents of Athens. The poster translates the title phrase into a number of languages. It was printed 10,000 times to be plastered all over Athens in poster-sized editions. The gesture seems to play exactly into the obvious interventions that Documenta seems to encourage, with a rainbow gradient, a single phrase of unity translated in a democratic way and without making a single political demand. This begs the question: who has the right to proclaim themselves “the people?” Haacke, known for his critique of the corporate-institutional partnership while remaining a staple artist of the biennial, uses the advertising structure to make claims in a similar way that Documenta appears as a brand imposed on the city of Athens to legitimate its artistic relevance.

On the second day of the Documenta opening, a series of posters began to appear surrounding the two campuses of the Athens School of Fine Arts. Covering up the Hans Haacke intervention, new papers were instead printed with slogans such as “currently based in Athens” in Helvetica font, or “Emerging Economies” in front of an image of refugees in a raft. This anonymous intervention responds to the disconnect between the art world and people’s lived realities as well as referencing the initial suspicion with which the art students interacted with the curatorial team. One poster reads “South is the new North” with a Northern European landscape behind the letters. The landscape is a printed wallpaper with an air conditioner attached on top and an office desk in front of it. In small letters the poster says “make yourselves at home” in an ironic gesture that references the isolation of the curatorial team from Athens and the difficulty of learning from a city without interacting with it fully. What a full interaction would have been is still up for interpretation – but Athenians needing to pay full price for a ticket while accredited visitors got in for free is not the most inviting gesture. The campaign against the Haacke posters effectively made them disappear after only 2 days up in the city, which is probably the political fate of the event as a whole.’

[brooksadad2018]

Mark Lombardi was an artist who mapped intricate relations between individuals, corporations, governments and other institutions. Lombardi called his drawings ‘Narrative Structures’. He was interested in how networks of power inevitably operated on relationships of secrecy, fraud, conspiracy and collusion.

Lombardi is an interesting artist to consider for your poster assessment. And he’s also great for thinking about practice-led research. He shows how seemingly-unrelated aspects of contemporary life are in fact, often, thoroughly convergent. He’s also a great example of an artist whose work is the result of intense research. Lombardi’s maps are the result of painstaking study and archival uncoverings.

Remember that when we talk about practice-led research and research-led practice in this course, we’re not talking about a defined or conventional way of doing research. Research in art and design can mean literally anything; it’s different for each person, and project, and work.

[brooksadad2018]

http://www.dronesurvivalguide.org/

Amsterdam-based designer Ruben Pater has created the Drone Survival Guide, a poster featuring to-scale silhouettes of common drones and tips for spotting them in the style of traditional bird or airplane spotting guides. The guide indicates each drone’s nationality and separates them into two categories: those used for surveillance only and those designed to kill. On the back of the poster, the guide imparts survival tips for spotting, hiding from, and interfering with the sensors of drones.

Our ancestors could spot natural predators from far by their silhouettes. Are we equally aware of the predators in the present-day? Drones are remote-controlled planes that can be used for anything from surveillance and deadly force, to rescue operations and scientific research. Most drones are used today by military powers for remote-controlled surveillance and attack, and their numbers are growing. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) predicted in 2012 that within 20 years there could be as many as 30.000 drones flying over U.S. Soil alone.

You can download the Drone Survival Guide poster as a PDF in a selection of different languages, or order a physical copy on reflective aluminium paper from the Drone Survival Guide website.

via 

[brooksadad2018]

Posters

Task 1

A poster is this and what else? Graphic design, art and politics have defined and wrestled the message-medium into a historical and culturally identifiable form. What do you want to say with your poster?

Untitled, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, 1991, ideal stack dimension 7 x 38.5 x 45.25", offset print on paper, endless copies

The Advantage of Being a Woman Artist, Guerilla Girls, 1989

Artist note: “This is one of our all-time favourites, which we did to encourage female artist to look on the sunny side. Women all over the world, not just artists, identify with it. One sent us $1000 to run it as an ad in Artforum, a top US art magazine.”

Thomas Hirschhorn, 2004, Covers and exhibition views of “Swiss-Swiss Democracy Journal”, Courtesy Centre Culturel Suisse, Paris

Felix Gonzalez-Torres, “Untitled,”, 1991. Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, NJ, Photo: James Ewing

[brooksadad2018]

Every Artist Remembered, 2009 | Firstdraft Gallery, Sydney

Every Artist Remembered is a project I began in 2008, which feels like eons ago. I have returned to the project here for Power to the People. Although it is very much a procedural work, I am always confronted by the variables that give each appointment, conversation and resulting drawing or constellation its very specific qualities. Each appointment is open to the public, although their presence is quite incidental for each collaborating artist and myself. The intimacy and connection established between us is at times strong, and at other times tenuous. The audience can, if they choose, bear witness to how this relationship, and the resulting image unfolds. I give each collaborating artist very similar verbal instructions before each appointment commences. It goes something like this: The task is, as the name of the work suggests, to remember every artist. This is of course impossible but in this 2 hours we will attempt to do so. The definition of ‘an artist’ is yours. I put no limitations on this and will not censor any name you say. We will alternately recall artists name for exactly two hours. You will name the first and last artist. I will note the artists on this piece of paper as we go, although where I place each name is intuitive and bears no relation to the linear formation of our conversation. I ask that each name be said in relation to the name before. This specific nature of the relation is up to you – it could be linguistic, social, historical, lateral, geographic, sexual, intuitive etc. I ask this so the exercise does not enter the realm of a display of virtuosity or demonstration of encyclopaedic knowledge. It also limits the extent to which this names are a document of taste, although of course taste, virtuosity and knowledge all come in to it. I am not a good speller, and you can correct me if you choose. You may choose to use this a as chance to memorialise certain artists. We can converse about any of the artists either of us don’t know. It’s fine to sit in silence. Ultimately, there will be no evidence of who recalled what name.

Agatha Gothe-Snape

more

[brooksadad2018]

Felix Gonzalez-Torres

“Untitled” (Death by Gun)

1990

Printed art by Félix González-Torres stands in bold contrast to the etchings, woodcuts, lithographs, and screenprints that make up the traditional history of modern print-making. González-Torres did not pursue this medium for the expressive possibilities inherent in its various techniques but, instead, chose it for its ability to function within his broader conceptual practice. The commercial offset process (photolithography) offered him a vehicle that was easy and inexpensive to produce, and also endlessly replicable. The fact that its surfaces maintained the detached, second-generation appearance of his often grainy photographic sources was a feature that suited his message of ephemerality rather than permanence.

Stacks of printed paper, in the form of sculptural objects with Minimalist overtones, constitute a major component of González-Torres’s work, which also encompasses such projects as installations of wrapped candy, hanging cords of lightbulbs, and beaded curtains. His printed art extended as well to billboards, give-away booklets, and newspaper inserts, often incorporating his own or found photographs. A gentle, poetic mood emanates from much of this art, suggesting poignant memories or provoking thoughtful consideration of social issues.

While González-Torres dealt with gay rights, AIDS, and a variety of governmental abuses in his own work and as a member of the collective Group Material, the subject of “Untitled” (Death by Gun), and its treatment, is unusually specific for him. Appropriating imagery from Time magazine, it presents 460 individuals killed by gunshot in one week in the United States, and includes the name, age, and circumstances of death for each person depicted. No opinion about gun control is added by the artist. Here an issue of public debate engages anyone who follows the artist’s intention and takes away one of his sheets. Dissemination, an age-old function of printed art, is ongoing since “Untitled” (Death by Gun) is reprinted as the stack is depleted.

http://www.moma.org/collection/works/61825

[brooksadad2018]

The wonderful Fred Moten on collaboration: “It’s not about being in the same place at the same time but it is about a kind of presence shared in and as displacement. Shared presence in displacement cuts the way we attach certain kinds of events and certain kinds of advancements to the individual subject, to his name, to his worldly occupation.” 

[brooksadad2018]

Member of Pussy Riot:

“Masks are our visual style and a core principle of the group. We don’t want people to focus on us as individuals or biographies. We want people to look at us as an idea. It’s a principal [sic] of universality. We want people to think that anyone you see walking down the street can be a member of Pussy Riot”

[brooksadad2018]

Claire Bishop on the history of collective and participatory art.