Nocolas Borriaud - Radicant Aesthetics

Thoughts, notes and questions...

a) On page 84 in the last paragraph Borriaud writes " A modern movement took place at the end of the nineteenth century: the brushstroke became visible, expressing the painting's autonomy and magnifying the human in reaction to the industrialization of images and objects."
Our parents grew up in a time when you saved up for things that you wanted. You worked, and put your money in the bank. Then came credit cards. You could have what you wanted now and pay later. I suppose with the idea of having what you wanted now comes the idea with making things now. With technology things can be mass produced, assembly lined, and on the shelves in a matter of days. We live in an "I want it now" society. Everything from movies to food. If we have to wait five minutes for our text messages to travel 22,000 miles to space and back, then it is too long.
With the reaction of brush strokes showing up and placing emphasis on manmade objects, it is only natural that in a society where almost nothing is manmade anymore, we would react with art that is made from mass produced items. Even our art supplies are mass produced.

Master pieces in Styrofoam at iamboey.com
With the creation of the internet, we can even see one of these tiny masterpeices created. I am Boey

Skin of Spaces by artist Daisuke Hiraiwa.

Hundreds of disposable knives and a shoal of fish for inspiration helped the artist create the installation Skin of Spaces for an exhibit in Milan in 2008.

b) I find it interesting that Bourriaud compares Koons to Hurst. Two people that I don't think I would have compared prior to this reading. He writes:
"Jeff Koons takes children's toys and endows them with and enormous Physical weight that contrasts with their frivolousness... For Koons, the density of matter becomes the quintessential code by which to organize the visible." He goes on, "As for Damien Hurst, the magnificent visual means he employs... only serve to underscore the morbidness of fragility of the subjects he pins or imprisons there."
Is it possible that Koons is also trying to immortalize a bit of history? I have often wondered why it is that if you take a shark, put it in a tank, and place it in an art museum, it becomes art. Why not put it in a natural history museum? However, the same could be said about Koons' work. Why not put them in a toy store? Each of these artists is, in their own way, immortalizing a piece of life. Whether by placing it in a museum, to be seen as an art object, or by emphasizing its size, so as not to get tossed out or lost with the other long-since-forgotten toys.

Damien Hirst, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, 1992

Jeff Koons, Rabbit, 1986

c) Pg. 95 "Seurat attempts to reproduce the movement of industry in painting... Seurat anticipated the pixel."Bourriaud began the chapter by writing about how the "lifespan of objects is becoming shorter." However, if Seurat anticipated that his paintings could be easily mass produced, and therefore created them in such a manner, could it be said that by embracing the mass production he also solidified his lifespan? Making him an ever popular, and easily reproducible, master of art?

d) As semionauts we "wander in search of connections to establish." I don't think Bourriaud means an internet connection but if you think of his sentence with that meaning it still makes plenty of sense. We wander in search of connections. We yearn for the information at the touch of a button. We want it now, we need it now. We are also searching for ways of connecting with others. Through facebook, e-mail, blogs, and even news. Just yesterday I was informed of world events that happened thousands of miles away, via text. I quickly set out searching for my "connection" and rapidly found the information I needed- only minutes after the actual events had taken place. Something that just a few decades ago would have taken weeks or months to learn about. We are in the same position as the hunters and gatherers of old, but we are not hunting animals or gathering sticks for our fires. We are now hunting information.

e) As a printmaker I cannot close the doors on the machine and its ability to aid me in my creative process. I think that as semionauts and wanderers in search of anything and everything it would be unwise to do so. On pg 103 Bourriaud writes about how the "photographic reproductions, the forms appear as so many transient incarnations. The visible appears here as essentially nomadic, as a collection of iconographic phantoms." I agree. I would even go so far as to say this has become its own sort of art movement. Those who embrace the machine, be it a printing press of old, or a simple Xerox machine can find that they are very powerful tools.

Jean Daviot, Silences, 2001, Musée Chosum, Kwangju (Corée)

SUPERFLEX
If value, then copy, 2008
Photographer: Sam Hartnett

(Copy Light consists of a workshop where a series of famous and popular lamp designs are fabricated and hung in the main gallery. Images representing iconic lamps such as the Billberry A338, the VP globe, the Bubble and Opera suspension, are photocopied onto transparencies and attached to a basic cubic lighting structure. These new lights are constructed and hung in ARTSPACE's main gallery gradually filling and illuminating the space over the span of the exhibition. Copy Light is seeking the borders between a copy and its original. Through this manufacturing process a copy of a copy turns into something new: an original lamp that communicates the problems of the current copyright system.)

artspace@artspace.org.nz
http://www.artspace.org.nz

Nicolas Borriaud - The Radicant

Altermodernity
Thoughts, views, and questions...

a) Bourriaud makes an interesting point on pg 17 when he writes "Today's artists, whatever latitude they live in, have the taste of envisaging what would be the first truly worldwide culture." He continues, "In order for this emergent culture, born of differences and singularities, to come into being, instead of conforming to the ongoing standardization it will have to develop a specific imagination..."

Your Negotiable Panorama, 2006
Olafur Eliasson

b) On pg. 18, Borriaud writes about Claude Levi-Strauss, and a "disastrous monoculture." Is this monoculture indeed disastrous? Has nothing good come of globalization? He goes on to write about Levi-Strauss and a story of a poorly-made, mass-produced alcohol. Is he implying that modern art, or even mass produced art, is "rough and unrefined" like Levi-Strauss' Puerto Rican rum? Hasn't it opened the doors for more experimentation, which he refers to as a "principle on the basis of which modernity could be reconstituted"?

Very Round Chair
Lousie Campbell


c) Pg 29, Bourriaud states, "Why should Patagonian, Chinese, or Iranian artists be required to produce their cultural difference in their works, while American or German artists find themselves judged on their critiques of patterns or thought, or on their resistance to authority and the dictates of convention?"
In response to his question, I ask, who says they have to produce cultural art? Is it written somewhere? If it is, aren't rules - especially those in the "art world" - meant to be broken? I would also ask, are Americans not also, producing cultural art?

American Gothic, 1930
Grant Wood

American culture is very prominent in art, especially music,
past
and present.


d) One of the most interesting points that I think Bourriaud makes in this article is that about the cultural differences there are in a globalized country. He asks "What does it meant today to be American, French, Chilean, Thai? Already these words do not have the same meaning for those who live in their native country and those who have emigrated."
Nowhere is this more prevalent in the public education system. As a previous employee, and being that I am bilingual, I was often the one who dealt with many minorities and emigrants. In a parent teacher conference one night am emigrant mother explained to me how her daughter was caught in a kind of sub-cultural nightmare. Mother, father, and daughter were all born in Mexico, however, the daughter had lived the majority of her life in the United States. In the United States, she was considered Mexican, but in Mexico, she was not. The mother continued to explain to me that upon returning to Mexico, the Mexican children had said she was not "Mexican enough" and that she didn't have the same accent, or learn the same things in school. In America, she watched Univision, and other Spanish language channels where she learned almost nothing about American pop-culture, and again spoke differently. She didn't seem to completely "fit-in" in either country.

In the 1998 movie Gran Torino, the character Sue Lor says "The girls go to college and the boys go to jail." The movie clearly defines the culture shock caused by the "transplantation" which could be an underlying cause of why many gangs are formed, that "up-side down society." Where they "grow like wildflowers, sometimes provoking violent rejection."


e) "The altermodernity today is fueled by the flow of bodies, by our cultural wandering. It presents itself as a venture beyond the conceptual frames assigned to thought and art, a mental expedition outside identitarian norms. Ultimately, then, radicant thought amounts to the organization of an exodus. "
His conclusion to the chapter seems to open up a whole new barrel of questions for me, but also gets me wondering. As this global economy emerges and becomes more prevalent, then is it our responsibility to learn and accept every new culture that emerges, or moves in next door, even if it threatens and often interrupts our way of life? Will this "mental expedition" be enough for those who are not the actual "flowing bodies" but those who sprout roots instead of wings?
Gran Torino Clip

Nicolas Borriaud - Postproduction

Assignment #3
Questions, responses, and insights.

Question #1

If the present builds on the past, is it possible that no work of art is actually complete, but that it is simply waiting for the next artist to make their mark?

Question #2

On pg. 24, Borriaud writes about how we "never read a book the way its author would like us to." What about the increasingly popular audio book? Many are being read by actors who interject their own feelings into the story. Assuming these versions are approved by the author, is it possible to assume that this new form of "reading books" more accurately portrays the authors feelings and sentiments? If so, is it also possible that we lose our ability to interpret things for ourselves? Or, does it enhance the experience?

Question #3

In reference to Pierre Joseph's work Borriaud wrote "Joseph offers experimental objects, active products, and artworks that suggest new ways of apprehending the real and new types of investment in the art world." Could it be said that as artists it is our job not to simply create but to create new realities, perceptions, and give glimpses into other worlds?

Question #4

Is it possible the pictures of construction workers and movies shot in the projects, that Borriaud writes about, intrigue us because we don't make the time to know of other people’s lives, and realms, therefore, intriguing us because of our own ignorance? Or, is it not ignorance at all, but that there is more than one reality?

Question # 5

Last but not least Borriaud writes about how "these days we reside within an enormous image zone rather than in front of images." Many artists, myself included, rely on memories and images mentally gathered to generate their artwork. Where is the line crossed when you are simply ripping off someone else work? Is there a middle ground that could prevent copyright infringement, without draining an artist’s bank account? We can purchase stock photos and images online, is there a way to open music and art in this same way? Something that gives everyone access at a reasonable price?

Burger King's version of Rene Magritte


Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty, Photographed by David Maisel retitled, Terminal Mirage


Mondrian Madness.
Everything from Yves St Lauren to Nike.




Marcel Duchamp, L.H.O.O.Q. (1919)


Asborn Lonvig, Mona VIII (2003)

Walter Benjamin's AWork of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reprodutcion

a) What is the "Aura" of a work of art.

Quite simply the "aura" is the uniqueness and personality that a piece carries with it. Benjamin says, "Aura is tied to (his) presence."

b) In Benjamin's mind, what effects did mechanical reproduction, such as film, and the camera/photography, have on the viewers perception of art?

It had many effects, one of which was that it took away the unique experience. When you go to a play, for example, the actor can modify his performance to the audience and their reactions, thus creating an individual and unique experience at each performance. However, with the creation of film, the performance is a series of performances spliced together, and then mass produced for everyone. In turn everyone becomes a critic, because everyone sees the exact same show, removing the uniqueness that the theatre provides. The same goes with the purchasing of a CD or MP3 file versus seeing an actual concert performance. No special guitar rifts, or little anecdotes from the performers, just a simple generic studio version of a piece.
The entertainment industry is trying to spur the masses, while the performers in a performance are trying to spur their audience in the moment.

c)What is meant by the passage: "For the first time in world history, mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual."

The artwork is set free from the rituals of the past, Benjamin wrote, "With the emancipation of the various art practices from ritual go increasing opportunities for the exhibition of their products." Meaning, that it is now not enough that the artwork simply exists. What good is a piece that is never shared? With the possibilities of mass production available, the artwork is more readily available to the masses, therefore it becomes made for the masses, and not just for the upper or more privileged classes. The art can now be produced with the intention of mass production.

d) What mechanically or otherwise reproductive processes are changing the face of art today?

With the advances in technology there are even more production processes changing the face of art today. Suddenly, Anyone who can type can be a writer by starting their own blog, or blogs, or by simply commenting on others blog's. Anyone can be a news reporter and/or camera man. Most of us carry in our pockets miniature cameras that could, and do, record what is happening around us. Which brings me to YouTube. It used to be to have a movie made and seen was quite an ordeal involving investor with deep pockets. Now with a good tag line, and decent internet connection, you can upload whatever silly thing you want to, available to anyone and everyone. Actors and actresses are popping up all over the globe.
With these advances in technology a lot of the power has been given back to the people. If there is something we don't understand, we simply "Google" it, and learn more about it. If we don't agree with the news media or how we are treated by a company or person, we blog about them until something either gets done about it or we find others who share our annoyances.
Let's not forget to mention the advancement of laser cutting technology. Again, with the internet and a computer, you can design something tangible without ever actually touching it. You can then find someone who can produce it for you, and again it is ready for the masses. The list goes on and on. We have power tools that can sense when flesh is too near to the blade and instantly shut off, we have computer aided software and CNC milling machines, even 3-d printers. Anything you can dream up, and up-load, you can create.

Assignment # 1 Charting Modernism

Modern Art Movement

My definition of the Modern Art Movement:
Simplification through rational planning.

When did it begin?
The actual beginning of the modern art movement is still under debate today because of so many conflicting ideas and opinions. It has been said that it started with the renaissance, with the industrial revolution, or even at the turn of the twentieth century - just before the first world war.
I agree it is hard to put a specific date stamp on a movement since it is influenced and springs forth from many other movements. I would, however, agree with the idea that the Modern Art Movement started sometime around the turn of the century as designers and artist became more aware of the industrialized society around them. It was in and of it's self a sort of renaissance. I believe it sprang up from the arts and crafts movement. People were tired of the ornate non-functional styles and wanted things to be simplified and usable.

When did it end?
Simply put, I think it could be argued that it ended with the second
world war. The world around us was changing and so were its people.

What are the main principles associated with the Modern Art Movement?
Simplification. Many work of art in the previous movements were considered lavish and ornate. Modern art brought a breath of fresh air with thoughtful simplification and careful modification. Objects were broken down to bare essentials.

Who are the main Artists/Critics associated with it and what is the aesthetic character of modern art?
There are a number of artists and critics responsible for bringing about the modern art movement. Matisse, Mondrian, Jackson Pollock, Clement Greenberg.
The aesthetic characters of modern art are simple, and often very refined.

Examples of Modern art


Lazlo Maholy-Nagy
Untitled Construction
1922


Piet Mondrian
Composition II in Red Blue and Yellow
1930


Paul Klee
The Twittering Machine
1922


Josef Albers
Glass Color and Light
1921


Henri Matisse
The Green Line a.k.a Madame Matisse
1905


Wassily Kandinsky
Murnau Street with women
1908

Define the Post Modern Art Movement
As a movement with no specific characterstics it seems fitting to define it as a rebellion, resulting in diversity and sometimes lacking in historical or cultural styles. It's purpose seems to be about creating new sets of rules by breaking all of the old ones.

When did it begin?
Again, I find it hard to put a specific date on any movement. I think as soon as Modernism began, the rebellion thereof also began- leading us to Post Moderninsm. However, I think that with the end of the second world war we were definitely thrust forward into the new Movement.

When did it end?
Did it end or has it ended is a good question. I think there is an overlapping in Post Modernism and the yet unofficially named present movement.
With the invention and mass adoption of the internet. The internet changed the world as we know it now. Foreign lands and products that were previously unknown became readily available. With the simple click of a button you could become the proud owner of a priceless work of art. Just like ordering a pizza - which can also be done online - the priceless work of art can also a rrive on your doorstep in a relatively short amount or time.

What are the main principles of the Post Modern Art Movement?
The main principle of Post modernism is anything that is contradictory to Modernism.

Who are the main artists/critics associated with it and what is the aesthetic character of Post- Modern Art?
Damien Hirst, Chuck Close, Robert Pincus-Witten, to name a few. The Postmodern era was a sort of what ever goes. It became an all encompassing time to allow women and minorities to join in and get noticed. It was/is a time that breaks cross cultural barriers. It is the rebellion of modern art and being tied down to any thing specific.

Define the Art of this Time?

Globalism
What exactly is globalism? It is the idea that with information about any, and just about every culture available, art and artists can be influenced by other cultures without ever leaving their homes. It is the idea that you can visit a virtual museum, while still in your pajamas. Everything is at our fingertips. There is no great divide between nations. With the technological advances that have been made in the last century, if you choose to travel and possibly see the actual works of art, it is easier than ever. No more mapping the ocean by the stars, we watch virtual maps built into the seat backs as we enjoy movies and peanuts aboard our jumbo jets.

When did it begin?
The middle half of the 1990's and exploded around the turn of the new century.

What are the main principles associated with this movement?
I don't think there are a specific set of principles with this movement but I would say it has and is becoming an age of mixed media. Not just a simple combining of found objects or a crossbreeding of traditional mediums. This movement is much more advanced. It encompasses and welcomes the use of computers and the ever changing world around us.

Who are the main artists/critics associated with it and what is the aesthetic character of the Art of today?
I don't think there are any specific regulations today on what exactly is art. It has become so subjective that anything could argue its way in.