Walead Beshty Video Response

12,000 items catalogued through Cyanotype. Only 7,000 fit on the walls so the books contain all of the objects.

This feat alone is impressive.


There is one particular quote I liked and identified with the most.

     >      "How do you consider that side effect in aesthetic terms?"

This is something I'm thinking about with my upcoming thesis research. I'm hoping to have as little side effects and the most natural, "green", or ecologically responsible work possible.

I really like the way the cyanotype went through the clear plastic objects. Maybe something I'll play with sometime. 

Here is a great Q&A video with him.

What is Conceptual Photography? (Part 3)

VIDEO – What is Conceptual Photography (Part 3)

This video mainly covers the The Day Nobody Died by Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin. 

Exposed photo paper roll instead of taking photographs of events. Began as an exploration of how many photos of the same thing can we see? As well as what do you expect to see (from a war photojournalist)?

It's a strong work that talks about censorship and arts role in war. The context is far more powerful than the imagery. 

I also get why the critic thinks it's arrogant. Unless the soldiers they were traveling with understood what they were doing and supported them, then it was inappropriate. They were there dealing with it everyday for months and these guys were there for a few weeks. If the soldiers were on board then it makes the project even stronger. 

"There's more space within the fine art world to create something as subversive as this." - Adam Broomberg

RIP: A Remix Manifesto

Girl Talk is a well known mashup artist. Here is a link to one my favorite albums of his.

The Remixer's Manifesto is as follows:

WALT DISNEY BEST MASH-UP ARTIST

I really enjoyed the section about how one of worlds best mashup artists is now a corporation that limits that appropriation.

Two key videos I watched as a spin off from this are Lawrence Lessig's 2010 TEDx talk about re-examining the remix and Johanna Blakley's 2010 talk about Fashion's Free Culture.

I really liked two diagrams that she created to represent her findings about things that are copyrighted and things that aren't.

The Fashion Video also talks about how because there is few copyrights about clothing because it is to "utilitarian" this yields lots of copying and improving which made clothes art.

I think lots of creative and culturally relevant works could be created by allowing people to use sections of them and it would also prompt people to view the original.

I created a video for 590 New Media Culture and put it on Youtube and they removed it in less than five minutes. But the same video has been up on Vimeo for over three months. You can watch the video here.

The video also touched on the pharmaceutical pattens which seem like some of the craziest things to me. If a prescription would save tons of people's lives why should it cost 100's of dollars and not be covered by most insurances. Here is a classic example from NPR about Hep C treatment plans.

Brian Bess - "Status Report"

His videos just seem chaotic and nonsensical. Especially this one. I looked at some of his current work and just saw stills through the gallery that represents him and it seems to serve more of a purpose.

This video in particular references coal miners and famous quilts. I just don't understand how he has any context to appropriate and make fun of those.

Here is a photo from documentary photographer Arthur Rothstein of a girl in Gee's Bend.

Here is a map of the location. The current residents are descendants from a single plantation that has specialized in this quilt making since before the Great Depression.

Here are images of the two quilts that he appropriated. 

Loretta Pettway, born 1942. Four-block strips, ca. 1960, cotton twill and synthetic matierial (men's clothing), 78 x 73 inches.

Mary L. Bennett, born 1942. "Housetop" variation, ca. 1965, cotton and cotton/polyester blend, 77 x 82 inches

Here are his appropriated painted versions.

I just don't understand in what context we are supposed to view the quilts in now. It seems nonsensical. I'm not a huge fan of his work. It seems erratic and unplanned. 

Manufactured Landscapes Response - Edward Burtynsky

Manufactured Landscapes Response - Edward Burtynsky

I watched his TED talk because the video was not available on-line when I went to watch it.

I find it extremely interesting that he began by photographing nature but he wasn't satisfied with the results. He's a naturalist/enviromentalist so he photographs the complete opposite to showcase the juxtaposition. It's great work. We've all seen a national or skatepark overlook with scenic views and vast expanses with no people, but very few people see what he photographs. He's presenting us with a vast amount of visual information that directly relates to our consumer driven culture. I remember being a small kid and taking a field trip to the city dump. Our teacher told us that when we throw things away, they don't go away, they end up here in the ground. I will never forget it, and it's a part of what's made me who I am today.

Andreas Gursky Response and Questions from class

I enjoyed his earlier landscapes with the tiny dots of people (or a person) the most. There is something about how vast the landscape is while the human remains so small. I think it speaks to our state currently in the Earth, the human race being such a small part of, as well as to the existence of man in terms of time to the planet. 


1. Is the deapan’s detached, distant, analytical, banal approach somehow distill our cultural mood? 
2. Does it represent the way people feel disconnected from one another, even if technology makes them more interconnected than ever? 
3. And is deadpan photography a refuge or reflection of emotion when we are overwhelmed with terrorism, war, ecological and natural disaster? 
4. Does its uniformity of the style reflect our mass-produced, chain-store world? 
5. Has our ability to document just about anything made us do just that...


All of those prompts just seem to overthought and far reaching. This style started before cellphones and digital images, so it's origin isn't from "to much photos or data" existing. Maybe current trends are leaning that way, but it's original intent is far from that. Bernd and Hilla Becher used deadpan to help us make connections between things. They wanted people and Germans in particular to see these buildings as a collective series even though they were all so different. They were trying to spur people to preserve these older and very individual/unique styles of architecture. 

Deadpan was popular, and is popular still because it is both distant and connected at the same time. The photographs are with-out emotion and are not highly stylized. The people seem normal, and in most cases are normal people, not actors or models. The images of landscapes or locations are nothing particularly photograph worthy. Both of these things make the pictures seem like they could have been taken by anyone. Some of them seem like old family snapshots or photos I took of places I liked as a child. Their distance and simple nature make them approachable. 

Contacts Vol. 2 - Jeff Wall Response

The Death of Sardanapalus by Eugène Delacroix

The Destroyed Room by Jeff Wall

I've always appreciated artists who mimic or recreate famous works of art with their own spin. Jeff Wall is among that group.

He used advertisement technology to create art. I love this. It's like he reclaimed this technology for himself, and now something that was purely for commercial use becomes for art.

His work is very much like movie stills. You feel like you are only getting a small snippet of the story, but there is so much that happened before and will continue to happen. Since he collaborates with his models, who are mostly actors, this makes complete sense.

"I think all photos exists in this tension, that it's either only a fragment or its microcosmos." - Jeff Wall

"All pictures are a dialectic between depth and flatness." - Jeff Wall

"What is Conceptual Photography?" (Part 1 & 2) Response

"The subject was also the object of the picture"- John Hilliard

I like his idea that exposure can change the significance of the photograph. This is something I've recently been experiencing with the tin-type photography.



"I find that the dialogue around photography can be very obsessed with what is representation" - Suzanne Mooney

About Conceptual Art...
"They (museum/gallery visitors) can recognize the content but they don't necessarily have any access to the ideas, motivations, the historical references." - Lucy Soutter

"I'm quite interested in Photography's way to hone in on just one way of seeing." - Suzanne Mooney

The conversation that  Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin have at the beginning is really good, but to long to transcribe.  So WATCH IT.

Video Response to Cindy Sherman - Nobody's Here But Me

Cindy Sherman - Nobody's Here But Me (1994)

"Figure out a way to tell lies through the camera" - Cindy Sherman

I enjoyed most of the documentary. I especially liked hearing her talk about her earlier work. How when she moved to New York she created a street persona for herself. As well as hearing her talk about dressing up as a child, really helps me as the viewer have perspective about her "untitled film stills" series.

I also enjoyed seeing some work that I was less familiar with. In particular her response to the censorship of certain art, was really clever. Using the mannequins and prosthetics to get around the limits was a unique way to make a stand.

She does position herself to always take a clear post-modern approach to her art making. She always responds to her situation by doing the opposite and quite often the most drastic move. This is a distinct response from the Post-Modernists who wanted to rebel from their idilic 50s upbringing.


Critiques:
The soundtrack is very distracting and also seems very dated now.
The random interviews with other people are not contextualized at all.
The doll and mask photos are just very creepy. Especially the masks. I'm not sure if she melts them to make them so distorted, but they made me very unsettled. (Which was probably her goal.)


On a side note I found it interesting that whoever filmed the documentary chose to place her in certain shots that mimic her film stills. The one that seemed the most intentional to me was this:

Response to 5 Obstructions

In the film Jorgen Leth is challenged by Lars von Trier to make 5 new versions of his iconic film, "The Perfect Human". With each new version Leth must follow a set of obstructions from von Trier. The film is interesting, but there were some key things I noticed. Like I said during our discussion its clear that this film is from the male perspective. The female is nude many times in the film, and is even sexually suggestive when she has on her clothing, while the male isn't nude until there is an animated version. The main thing that bothered me during the film is just how out of touch both of these men seem to be. Von Trier is just on another level of rich out of touch artists, so much that he seems like a jerk. I sort of liked Leth until they went to the red light district and filmed the scene in the car, where he didn’t have any money to give the woman. It’s not that he didn’t have money to give her it’s just that he seemed so out of touch with what their real situation is. I’ve been to Thailand and during our trip we went to the golden triangle, where Burma, Thailand, China, and Laos meet. It has one of the highest drug and sex trafficking rates in the whole world. I know what it feels like to see people in that situation. I had 5-year-old girls carrying their baby siblings asking me for money. I know what it feels like to have your heart broken by those sights. He seemed barely affected by what he saw. It made me judge the rest of his work, with a different view of him. Any type of documentary work always makes me view the artist and their work in a different light.