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Meagan Streader, is a Melbourne based artist, I am interested in how her minimal light work changes the interaction with viewing and engaging with a space.

Installation views from W-INTER and Response IV.

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Maureen Paley, works on a large minimal scale I think both of these works are really strong pieces.

2008, London, Installation view.

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Kj Power- The dematerialisation of the Art Object

dematerialisation trend which had appeared in contemporary art from 1966-1972 artist did not have to create the object in order to create the art conceptual art still stands by the aesthetic but the concept is the weight of the piece artist is not intended for display thus it is dematerialised  does an objectless artwork exist Gregory Harman

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Steve Parrino is a contemporary artist who is expanding painting in a contemporary context. His work has challenged me to expand my work into video.

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This text by Australian philosopher Emma Wilson is an important part of technoscientific feminist discourse.

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Patrica Reed. Is a queer feminist artist and a prominent member of Laboria Cuboniks. Her aesthetic work alongside or research has influenced me this semester.

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Video Documentation.

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Jeremy Kane// nothing private nothing safe

“Come into my bedroom” they said, grabbing me, “it’s safe in there.”

 I trembled. The bedroom has always terrified me. Far from safe and private, it elicits a performance refracted one thousand times through publicly instituted and enforced gesturings, positionings and sayings. Why is it that as public spaces become increasingly privatised, the private feels more public. I am always on display. I love a parade.

The confusion of spaces traditionally demarcated as private with those considered public has as its source a myth; one women have long known about; one feminists have critiqued; one gays are wont to ignore.  That myth places woman, pleasure, family, and domesticity on the side of the private, and man, work, community and business on the side of the public.

Many question the current operability of that myth, but it subsists in mutated forms. In India, the idea of sex as a private event acts as a marker of economic privilege amongst queer populations – shared living spaces make sex in private impossible, and criminal sanctions make sex in public high risk. In bourgeois countries such as Australia, one may wonder whether we have become post-privacy – whether the confines of the bedroom provide safety or instead demand conformity, where the trust you place in an unknown lover is always already misplaced, when fear of failure pervades each pseudo-intimate moment.

 “Quick, in here,” they whisper, “put it in here. It’s fine. You are safe”

 What makes a space safe? I am beginning to think that no space is safe. I am beginning to wonder whether safety is an admirable goal at all. Why am I wondering this? What has led me to these thoughts?

The myth that equates privacy with safety has as its epistemic correlate another myth that has plagued philosophers who have made thinking about our thinking things their vocation. Traditionally, it has been held that, because one’s thoughts are private, and known immediately, they represent an inner sanctum, a sort of safety net and a secure starting point for one’s beliefs about the world. It might be unsafe to believe in the existence of other people or an external world, but it is safe to believe fully in one’s own thoughts, to luxuriate in them, to rest assured that one knows what one thinks. Of course, it seems absurd to think that we could be mistaken about the contents of our thoughts. We know them just by having them. As they are going on, we are transparently seeing them, hearing them via an inner monologue, or seeing them continuously projected on the walls of our mind.

But this is all around the wrong way.

  “Here, in here. Look. Can you see? Now how do you feel? Tell me what you see and feel.”

 What does it mean to sense and to feel? What does it mean to have an experience? We use these terms everyday to report on what seems to be happening inside of ourselves, but they are so ill-defined and overused as to be almost empty. Ought we think of these reports as infallible? Sensings and feelings appear exemplary of the private. But the medium of the report – language – isn’t. What we feel, sense and think all find expression in a language, and a language takes a village – it is a thoroughly social affair.  Sensing might not take learning, but knowing what you sense, being able to articulate the contents of your sensations, does. Thinking, feeling, sensing, loving – none are immediately known, and although private in one way, are ultimately publicly constituted. Learning to think, and to become a sexual citizen, is, as Foucault has admirably detailed, a matter of discipline, discourse and power.

And we are not merely social animals – our use of language isn’t superimposed on some more primordial animality which ultimately wins out in the end. Our alienness, the alienness fundamental to humanity, is marked by our fundamental need to trade in concepts. Everything, as it were, passes through the conceptual. No one can claim privileged access to the reality of their ownmost being or experience, no one can say they inhabit an imagined primitive realm of pure instinct, no one can defend oppression under the guise of nature, without helping themselves to a stock of concepts – concepts which are, by their very nature, debatable and updatable.

 “Let us burst through. Let us burn it down. Transgress the transgression! We are both here and not here. We are both queer and not queer.”

What has happened to queer in recent years? The categorical refusal to accept a brutal heteronormative order has been regrettably replaced by the dogged rejection of normativity simpliciter.  But normativity is a matter of responsibility, and norms are what make us into the mouldable, updateable sapient creatures we are. In eschewing norms and responsibilities in favour of negative freedom – a freedom from constraint, a freedom to transgress to absolute zero, a freedom to radically destratify – queer unwittingly stomps on its own enabling condition – the normative bindingness of concepts.

Concepts encode norms and bind us via the propositions we make about how the world is and ought to be. Thus bound, we open ourselves to rational critique and signal both our individual and collective will with regards to which norms we accept, and which we decry. Kant has revealed to us the intricate link between freedom and responsibility. Freedom is simply the free ability to commit oneself to a position and to be subjected to scrutiny by one’s peers. It is not a negative freedom, but rather a positive freedom – a freedom to bind oneself. In thus binding ourselves, we make active pronouncements on the beliefs and actions of others, and we affirm the possibility of transforming ourselves and our world.

Being unapologetically queer is an act of pure rationality.

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Five progress photographs of the 2 day installation period.

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materials for the final project

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Unloading the materials to get into the river studio.

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The truck used to get my materials to uni.

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Nicholas Hodge “Open beat” proposal

 1.0 Statement  

2.0 Concept statement  

3.0 Achievability and outcome

4.0 Concept Visualization

 1.0 Statement

The privilege to engage in sexual activity in ones own bedroom or in a private location is often dismissed as a common amenity, however for members of the LGBTWQI community where sexual interactions do not involve the dogmatic image of intercourse, the individual often turns to a public space out of fear and insecurity. Drug use, crime and disease rates significantly increase when an individual is forced to engage in sexual activities in public spaces often referred to as beats or cruising spots. The commodification of this issue has brought the introduction of legal venues for same sex male couples such as sex clubs and saunas, if the individual can afford the often-significant entrance fee. All non-male identifying members of the community without the luxury of privacy are forced to use public spaces for sexual intercourse. In “open beat” I aim to deploy public space with the agency to allow all genders, sexualities and identities the basic right of safe, clean and private intercourse. This piece will allow all individuals the opportunity to use the space without cost, this will be the first secure public controlled sex place in Australia that is not restricted to the use of male identifying members of the community. ”Open beat” being the first regulated sex location allows all genders and sexualities to use the space, this piece will directly highlight the gender and sexuality inequality within the commodification of the sex lives of Queer individuals. This pieces also aims to dissect the dichotomy between public and private spaces and how vastly different the circumstances can be for Queer identifying individuals.

2.0 Concept Statement

 The proposal for “open beat” is to be apart of the Institute of Modern Art’s “First Thursdays” series exhibiting Australian artists in the gallery’s outdoor courtyard space.  “Open beat” will consist of a three by three meter ply wooden box structure, with simple door and wooden handle. The simple room design will deploy the highly public fortitude valley courtyard space with the agency of private space.

 3.0 Achievability and Outcome

 Due to the simple four by three meter design that will be constructed entirely out of plywood, the achievability of the piece to be made financially effective in a short period of time is guaranteed. The structure will facilitate a four by three meter private space for viewers to engage with, resembling a simple rectangular room. As this piece is constructed using only one cost effective material, finically this piece will present a strong visualization of the concept utilizing only the necessary materials. As the ply wood of the four walls, floor, ceiling and door will be cut off sight to seize the installation time will be three hours. The wooden reinforcements which will be located around the floor and ceiling of the piece (Image 5) will be glued and constructed offsite, which means the only onsite materials needed a screws to secure the walls, floor and ceiling of the structure into place. As the on sight manual installation is minimal the installation team required for the piece is only two people.

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(Image 6. Construction design)

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(Image 5. Visualization of the constructed piece)

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(Image 4. Further perspectives of the piece constructed in the space)

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(Image 3. Visualization of the piece constructed wihtin the space)