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Deep Dive - Katrina Sluis

The practice of Katrina Sluis seems firmly grounded within online media culture, algorithmic processes, and the grey areas surrounding artificial intelligence. After following Sluis’ twitter, I came across an article about the ties between the alt-right and one of the most powerful facial recognition software available called Clearview. I mention this because there is a substantial amount of moral ambiguity surrounding the practice of working with complex and powerful computer processes that find applications in security and crime management. I worry that there is no solution to the questions surrounding deep fakes and that technology could reach a place beyond regulation and recognition There is the overused quote tagged to science that goes, “we often ask whether we could and not if we should”, but I feel the quote is becoming more and more relevant.

Artists like Trevor Paglen show the valuable combination of art and science in both a discovery sense and as a way to communicate the beauty of modern science. Under Paglen technology is not used to advance unnecessary gadgets but to look back at ourselves and experiment with these tools to create a beautiful idea. An idea presented amongst the 2019 set of speakers, was the need for regulation and attention towards the growing issues surrounding deep fake technology and general advances in AI. The speaker did not have a clear solution but was confident that restrictions could be made and that deep fake imagery would always be traceable and watermarked. This is the line about technology today that worries, me where reality is becoming less and less distinguished from forgery. There is always the argument that the photograph was never real, to begin with, but I think there is a threshold that technology should sit below. Photography is a relatively young medium and has much more life to give though art and experimentation.

Trevor Paglen 2018, The Planet is a Sensor, ICP, <https://www.icp.org/events/trevor-paglen-the-planet-is-a-sensor>

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The Indecisive Moment - Leyla Stevens

There is a tension offered in slow cinema that is all too frequently unexplored through traditional forms of editing and cutting. Letting the scene play out naturally can create a steadily rising sense of anxiety and tension, especially when dealing with the heavy subject matter of the Indonesian genocide. The work of Leyla Stevens is not loud or in your face but opts for a more quiet and slow presentation. A video work might hold on a piece of nature or a crossing for an extended period of time, at least more than we are accustomed to. The works exist in a state of being simultaneously relaxing and tense. Stevens talks about her work representing a rejection against the decisive moment framework for photography as defined by Henri Cartier-Bresson. I am reminded of other work that rejects the decisive moment such as Paul Graham’s ‘A Shimmer of Possibility’, which features a book that explores the multiple images taken from a single scene or subject. The images work on their own and importantly exercise the idea that there may not ever be a truly ‘decisive moment’ within photography. I also see traces of Salote Tawale in Stevens’ work through the exploration of past histories within the gallery. In the same way that Tawale uses video to create a tense scene, Stevens also masters the use of the continuous and unresolved sequence.

Even in feature films like Ida (2014) and Cache (2005) and recently The Invisible Man (2020), there are great examples of still and long scenes that work to create a dynamic and effective way of storytelling. What this leads me to is the time and attention that is often not asked enough from the audience. We are given our own time through stills but with video work, we are immersed and lost within the scene.

Paul Graham 2004, Pittsburg, MACK BOOKS, <https://pier24.org/lecture/paul-graham/>

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Voyeuristic Tendencies - Emma Phillips

In every photographer, to varying degrees, I think there is a desire to capture certain subjects in a timeless way. Black and white photography offers this in opposition to the dated nature of colour photography. Emma Phillips explores this concept through her images to varying degrees of success. For myself, at an early age, contemporary black and white photography represented a style of photography focused on the immediate texture and visual language of an image. I didn’t see the potential for the medium outside of shallow mimicking of past practices and styles. Black and white removes the context of an image, charging it with ambiguity and creating something seemingly outside ordinary images. Black and white lends itself to storytelling in the way a novel might, giving the audience tiny crumbs of information to piece the larger narrative together. There is more room for us to imagine what lies beyond the frame and more possibility to relate to the subjects within the frame. There is a point where black and white can take away from a subject more than it adds. The image by Phillips above of an albino represents a study of light textures found in an albino person. Black and white has a reductive quality for myself personally. In a way, it's almost reducing the person to a photographic opportunity, like a rare lookout or monument. In opposition, the images of Zanele Muholi deliver a more purposeful use of black and white in the way the photographer treats marginalised groups. Muholi’s images are less smash and grab and more focused on the respecful representation and empowerment of the subject. Black and white serves as a way to deliver the images in a universally understood manner rather than simply a study of the pigment of our skin.

Emma Phillips 2018, Untitled (Lucy at Sammy’s house), Photo Australia <https://www.photo.org.au/journal/in-conversation-with-emma-phillips>

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Directors Cut - Lucas Davidson

The immediate impact I found in Davidson’s work was his ability to take images of the human and convert them into abstract forms of photography. The images take shapes and spaces we understand and filter them into something unrecognisable. The consistency of mirrors throughout his work represents his playfulness with perspective and attempts to question how we perceive images and spaces. Davidson allows us with moments to be unsure and concentrated on our ways of seeing the world around us. Work like this takes us time to process and creates engagement between the viewer and the art. Davidson is rejecting the passive experience of the exhibition in favour of a kind that plays with our perspectives but also without delving into optical illusions.

In the eyes of Lucas Davidson, the artwork is never complete but rather open to future conversation and tampering. The idea of the unfinished work is relatively new to me within fine art. I can look to other mediums such as film where the final version of a project is not always set in stone. There can be major changes in the edit that result in a totally different film, leading to directors cuts, final cuts, and definitive editions. I initially assumed this was something that came with the inherent commercial nature of major film releases but I am starting to see it within more and more mediums. Similar to Samual Hodge, the work is open and available for later tinkering. Past works can be repurposed and even completely refurbished as a part of the artist's evolving vision. The lack of finality adds to the allure and mystery of a work. It also presents a sense of accessibility not only for casual viewers but artists looking to inform and improve their own practice. I was conflicted with the idea of leaving a project open like this. If I cannot finish something to perfection, how can I improve? I think the answer lies in the simple act of practicing and practicing and practicing.

Lucas Davidson 2017, I am a Strange Loop, Dominik Mersch Gallery <https://www.dominikmerschgallery.com/exhibition/7922-2/dominik_mersch_gallery_lucas_davidson_incompleteness_theorem/>

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Becoming Art - Gerwyn Davies

Gerwyn Davies’ practice is heavily involved in performance and directing the self. I relate to his difficulty in staging the performance of others through a major project from last year in which I took images that featured myself and a house as the subject. Davies directs himself within the image under costumes made from found objects and into strange configurations, employing techniques of the readymade process originating from the practice of Marcel Duchamp.

Visiting an exhibition at the Art Gallery of NSW last year and approaching Duchamp's work again now I see the level of the artist that can be put into a work whether it is simply through style or overtly through performance. In many ways Davies has created a form of iconography out of his own body and tattoos present within the work. His body becomes the canvas and the objects are his paint. The presentation is under a fair amount of control through the photographic medium and Davies seems to prefer this to live and uncontrolled performance. Davies’ process appears refined and the constant motif of his body makes the work uniquely his own while also creating links between each piece. Duchamp writes about how life itself can be transformed into art and everyday behaviours can become equivalent to the act of painting. Davies transforms this notion by splicing his body into his art and taking objects from the everyday use and repurposing them within his art. In relation to performance, Davies recalls that there is a disconnect between the performance and the purpose of the art when he is not at the helm of the camera. In a similar sense through my major project, I found a deeper connection to the subject through the self-portrait and a deeper appreciation for performance within photography.

Marcel Duchamp 1951, Bicycle Wheel, MoMA, viewed 6 April 2020, <https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/marcel-duchamp-bicycle-wheel-new-york-1951-third-version-after-lost-original-of-1913/>

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The Power of Stories - Salote Tawale

Revisiting, recontextualising and often correcting the notions of past stories and histories is foundational to the work of Salote Tawale. Her works seek to provide a voice to not only herself but for many marginalised artists within her field. The works incorporate images and symbols that will not be recognised by the average gallery-goer. Her practice is more interested in representing stories and voices recognised by Indigenous Fijians and Anglo-Australian audiences. Similar to artists like Arthur Jafa, Tawale is creating art for people from similar backgrounds and with similar experiences to herself. People outside of this cultural circle are invited into the space but they are far from the primary audience. Performing for the audience and putting herself into her art is also crucial to how she engages and challenges the viewer. She often faces the camera, video or photographic, with an intense glare and unsettling attention directed toward the audience. Tawale says that she wouldn’t be able to direct another person to perform in the manner to which she does, hence the frequent cameo’s within her practice.

In the video installation, SuperSuper, Tawale deconstructs the ideas of heroes, villains, and victims within pop culture. The video is silly and emits the same visual tone as an Adam West Batman episode. By the end of the video, the conflict that Tawale introduces is left unresolved. The work leaves viewers considering the characters and stereotypes portrayed and acted out within the old and new media we consume. The work leaves us with a question to take from the exhibition rather than providing the solution within the gallery space. With her work, we are questioning the roots and history within the media and the wider cultural spectrum. Tawale’s practice is often abstract and confronting but looking deeper reveals the important deconstruction of past colonial histories and personal stories. In order to break down the barriers of past stories, we need to start by telling our own and telling it to the people it matters most.

Salote Tawale 2003, SuperSuper, Video Installation, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology

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Embracing the Archive - Samual Hodge

In interviews, Samual Hodge has spoken about how he prefers to take photographs of people he is connected to rather than strangers. There is a longing for personal connection that reveals itself through the varying mediums employed by Hodge. Through video shot on his phone, he captures the closeness of hands holding onto the handrail of a train. The hands become characters through their detachment to human faces and bodies. The longingness for shared experience also takes the form of beaded silks through a parasocial relationship to the writer David Wojnarowicz. A parasocial relationship is a relationship often identified between fans and celebrities where one person is putting effort into the relationship while the other has no idea that the first person exists. Hodge embraces the work and writings of another artist through his own practice creating a relationship only possible through art. After exposure to how Hodge treats images, I am curious about how much of the reflection and revisiting process is related to nostalgia. I initially doubted nostalgia was much of an influence for a practice as fluid and evolving as Hodges’. Personal experiences become a kind of media for Hodge to respond to. Like a film or song, our relationship with it changes over time. When art and reality blend seamlessly as in Hodges' process it raises the question of how much of yourself as an artist can and should be put into the work. Within a commercial setting, nostalgia is treated as a product to be reproduced and repeated until a new trend arrives. Within art, and specifically the work of Sam Hodge, nostalgia is allowed to be changed, remixed and recontextualised, breathing new life into old memories. Music projects like The Avalanches create albums made from thousands of samples of old records, turning out songs suitable for a contemporary audience. These two artists establish what can come out of a fascination for the past and how to effectively reappropriate the past.

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Non-Human Photography -Yvette Hamilton

It becomes very clear when looking at Yvette's body of work that her practice is focused around light, the absence of light and the absence of humanity. Her work seeks to expand the field of portraiture to include subjects without people but rather spaces. She argues that people cannot be rendered appropriately within photography, that the image of a person isn’t true. Physical spaces offer a truth that people cannot. Her works are constantly combining practices of both the old and the new and rever residing with exclusively one over the other. One of her inspirations, Henry Fox Talbot, was a scientist in his time and the practice of photography was closer to a scientific endeavor than anything creative or artistic. Talbot demonstrates the deep connection of photography to both emerging technologies and the importance of experimentation within the medium. In approaching my assignments within the realm of Post Photography I am finding that experimentation and embracing new software has allowed me the freedom to explore the creation of new forms of images. The idea of Non-Human photography prompted a search for artists who make images that are not strictly for people's viewing. 

The artist David Claerbout is a practitioner who incorporated the use of 3D simulations to create ‘Olympia’, an artificial architecture that slowly erodes in real-time over the course of 1000 years. What makes this Non-Human is the fact that no human will live to experience the changes within simulation in a meaningful way. This simulation cannot be truly viewed to its full potential by anyone living today but only exists as a whole after humanity. Much of Hamilton’s can be classified under Non-human photography as there is often little presence of the artist within her work and the piece is not always intended for the gallery viewer. The practice presents a new way forward for photography to exist in a technologically dense society. Like all art, the practice takes notes from core foundations of the medium and reworking the material for contemporary audiences. There are vital lessons in photography that can only emerge through abandoning control and embracing accidents and possibly abandoning the human subject altogether.

David Claerbout 2016, Olympia, viewed 2 Oct,<https://davidclaerbout.com/Olympia-The-real-time-disintegration-into-ruins-of-the-Berlin-Olympic>