tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-88007863921541523832024-02-20T19:00:54.381+00:00confused guffI have time and too much is on my hands.C. James Faganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17901338536879514849noreply@blogger.comBlogger95125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8800786392154152383.post-61316453694225676392017-11-17T09:36:00.000+00:002017-11-17T09:36:09.259+00:00Under Cinema. Wu Tsang @ FACT, LiverpoolI’ve not been to FACT for a while. The last thing I remember enjoying seeing was Lucy Beech’s film which formed part of 2016 Liverpool Biennial. Having course to be in Liverpool for an afternoon, I check the FACT website to see what’s on. What I read there doesn’t really fill me with a great desire to see it.<br />
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There’s a little paragraph about how the current exhibition Under Cinema by Wu Tsang is based around a essay from a set of essays. It’s hardly inspiring stuff, it makes going to see the exhibition might be very hard work.<br />
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Anyway, despite any reservations, I’m in FACT watching, mesmerised even by Wu Tsang's film “We Hold Where Study”. Sat in front of the cinema sized screen, actual cinema sized like the screens they use for Marvel blockbusters.<br />
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Watching two overlapping locations (one exterior, one interior) two overlapping sets of dancers, fall and roll. Occupying there space, occupying the screen, occupying my space. We as audience are granted access to this space through the camera. The camera is performer, through its performance it allows us as viewer an unique level of intimacy and connection with our performers.<br />
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Often when I see performance presented as film, I feel that I’d rather experience that performance live. This is the exception, here the sense of the performers physicality is powerful. The camera also gives you access to this physicality where in the real world you’d be ejected from the performance.<br />
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If this where live and you approached the performers as the camera does. You be violating the rules of performer and viewer. It’s not the presence of the camera that allows this presence into the performers space. It is a result of a melding of action, locations, lighting (both real and artificial) and music. Which collide perfectly to create a heightened experience.<br />
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At the heart of this experience is the notion of motion as identity. That these two elements share the same fluid properties. That both are malleable, shifting and adjusting. Conforming and reaction to the environment and the individuals that occupy it.<br />
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Its how you hold yourself at a bus stop, how that apparently simple act can uncover you. Exposing a version of yourself to the world. Until you become aware of the perception of others.<br />
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Wherein you adjust yourself to the architecture of others. This space is sometimes comfortable and familiar, often it is not.<br />
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All these ideas seem to spring directly from watching the film. Who’s 19 minute run time flies past. Which is not always the case when watching film installations. I even consider staying to watch the whole thing again. But I have constraints on my time. Once I leave the gallery I’m slightly resentful of he outside world’s encroachment into this experience.<br />
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But as my identity merges with the dances of others, I know I have had this experience.<br />
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I’ll just add that this in one of two films by Wu Tsang presented at FACT. The second is “Under Cinema”. A kind of documentary following the pop star Kelela. Throughout she speaks thoughtfully and elegantly about her music, her identity as a singer and the use of black identity in the music industry. It’s an involving portrait of Kelela and the difficulties of expressing your identity as an artist while negotiating the needs of the music industry.<br />
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What stops this being just a promo film is that was as you watch the film. A film of Kelela watches you. Again asking questions about who identity is formed by the gaze of another.<br />
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C. James Faganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17901338536879514849noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8800786392154152383.post-44808911554176634672017-07-30T19:00:00.000+01:002017-07-30T19:00:07.221+01:00Some stuffThe New Observatory, FACT<br />
Trying to formulate what I thought about this exhibition. I can’t really. It felt too much going on, too many audio elements mixing together, too much to read. A head scratcher and not in a good way. More like reading a complex instruction manual while waiting for the penny to drop.<br />
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Which has me wondering “has contemporary art stopped being intuitive?”<br />
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Coming Out, The Walker<br />
This exhibition featuring art from the art councils collection which explores sex, gender and identity. Has familiarity working for it and against it. To a degree, being work taken from a single collection you’re bound to have seen some of the work, somewhere before. It never hurts to see it again.<br />
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For me the highlight was Steve McQueen’s film Bear. Projected in what appeared to be a infinite raven, two naked male figures grapple. There movements go from aggressive to tender in a mesmerising fashion. It is something to behold. If you don’t mind the giggling at willies.<br />
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Abacus, The Bluecoat<br />
Those sculptures look fun, but I’m too big for them. Same for the little barrister wigs.<br />
Though this is exhibition aimed for children it doesn’t mean it can’t be approached like any other exhibition. One thing that strikes me, especially when looking over a mini courtroom, is how many playsets are steeped in historical references.<br />
We probably overlook this, perhaps due a certain ubiquity or just to the idea that it’s all 'just for kids'.<br />
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Maybe we forget that play is a remix of the systems that control and are controlled by 'grown ups'. This naturally includes history. Whether directly or indirectly. Every child at some point creates a microcosm of historical events. How many times have I lived out the Second World War, with pillows become pillboxes or foxholes?<br />
The idea of building a gift or a den, or even inhabiting the space behind the sofa, is about the child creating a world in which they have control. To experiment with ways of navigating the wider world. Or to have a space apart from that other world where a different set of rules apply.<br />
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Do we actually abandon these ideas when we enter adulthood? Or do we merely encase them in ideas call architecture, home ownership, money. You can only speculate what the world would be like if left these concepts behind and began to play again.<br />
<br />C. James Faganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17901338536879514849noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8800786392154152383.post-48144427016737906642016-07-31T12:13:00.005+01:002016-07-31T12:13:56.258+01:00Franko B, Milk and Blood - The Bluecoat if I’m honest I’m not excited about this. Not as excited as you might think, seeing as one of the major figures of performance art has come to Liverpool. Franko B, is here to premier his Milk and Blood piece. So far everything around the event feels low key. Not necessarily a bad thing. Maybe this lack of hype is feeding into my sense of underwhelment, a suspicion that somehow where not getting the 'real deal’.<br />
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As they say the proof is in the pudding or the performance.<br />
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It feels subdued as we are let into the performance space, where we are greeted by a ring formed out of chairs. Within the centre of this arena hangs a punching bag. Golden it glistens in the dark of the performance space.<br />
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Once we are all seated, we wait, in tense silence. It’s a small space, dim but light enough to see the other members of the audience. We wait, as does the punching bag. Are we expecting violence to break the silence?<br />
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Soon Franko B appears, with his second who places a golden stool into the arena. Franko, dripping in gold, his vest his shirts, boxing gloves shine like the sky in a painting of a saint. He takes his place in front of the punching bag. That sense of expectation again.<br />
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A cold metallic bell rings out. Franko B stands and sets about the punching bag. As he does so the bag begins to swing, threatening to invade the audiences space. Drag them into the arena. Where close to Franko B, as he clobbers the bag and milk begins to leak from the bottom of the bag.<br />
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All along he gasps out sayings like “Artists, insignificant” or “love, significant”<br />
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the sound of the bell, means the first round is over. Franko returns to the stool. In this pause the bag swings. Which makes me think about that law of Newtonian physics.<br />
Every action has an equal and positive reaction.<br />
The bag swings because of the actions of Franko. I also consider Franko's words, throughout the the piece he chants, speaks, mumbles phrases. They cover everything fro war to love, family and art. They are massive subjects, insurmountable subjects. Yet passive, like the punching bag.<br />
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It would be impossible to pinpoint which punch had an effect on the bag. Like trying to quantify your effect on the whole of humanity. Leaving you to ponder how helpless you feel in the face of everything.<br />
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Yet you still keep punching, still you resist.<br />
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Like that Newtonian law, things can only happen if you act. Perhaps this is the ‘moral’ of the piece. To do, to act in the face of the immoveable, in the face of a huge and indifferent Universe. Maybe that’s why at the end Franko takes a lap around the audience. Taking stock, perhaps, as he looks into the faces of the people gathered here it would seem as he is offering a challenge.<br />
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“what about you? What will you do?”<br />
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Franko B leaves. A new tension builds broken by the first to leave the performance space.<br />
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What I’ve written here probably doesn’t reflect the actual intent of Franko B. But what he has given up, here tonight. Though the relatively simple action of punching a punch bag, has enabled me to consider ideas. Released me from, the day to day and pushed me to consider something beyond myself.<br />
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Which is the mark of great performance art and art in general. I leave with whatever gauge misgivings I had hours ago, quashed.<br />
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C. James Faganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17901338536879514849noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8800786392154152383.post-33706545556143771392016-05-18T16:56:00.005+01:002016-05-18T16:57:32.993+01:00Katie Paterson SYZYGY - The Lowry, Manchester Time is a factor.<br />
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That is time as a measurement, time as a way of arranging, time as a way of shaping meaning.<br />
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This that is also interwoven with space, the time it takes to walk from there to here. To travel from town to city. The time it takes to arrive from the impossible destinations of the Universe.<br />
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The time who’s functional ubiquity provides a unique paradox, that keeping it is simultaneously mundane and yet offers up a infinity of beautiful opportunities.<br />
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The essence of earth’s revolving around the Sun and of the moon’s encircling of us under the dictates of gravity. Despite this having been going on for eons upon eons, it still generates an amount of imagination. Whether that be poetic of a desperate need to measure, to calculate, to observe.<br />
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Is this need inherent within the human race? As products of nature we have existed in the rhythms of a turning world. Responded to the growth of the world. Was it a increase in satisfaction of the methods we used in response to natural patterns that prompted us to name and differentiate in indiferentiate?<br />
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To place import into ephemeral things, to give meaning to spontaneous events that occur around us. Then is this just in order to create a level of comfort or to convince ourselves we understand the world.<br />
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All these thoughts come from my experience of Katie Paterson’s Lowry show SYZYGY and in particular her Totality piece. This is a mirrored ball which has images of past eclipses. Watching these points of light run from my hand and then fly down the wall I think about spending more time here. Spending my time in this exhibition. Then it occurs to me the similarity of looking at the stars and looking at art.<br />
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You don’t have to spend hours gazing upon the night sky in order to gain to understanding of it. Your appreciation of it can flash across your mind, allowing you the sensation of understanding, setting of a cascade of associations.<br />
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A sensation of being at once separate and a part of a great whole. A sensation of the sublime, not the sublime that will overwhelm and consume you, rather a sublime that forms part of you. That your presence is adding to it.<br />
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The is evident through out Paterson’s work. Be it a recording of the space between stars, a direct line to a melting glacier. Or the letters written to mark the death of stars which have a beauty of their own and also disprove cLOUDDEAD there is a search party for stars gone dim.<br />
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I find something affirming in Paterson’s work, even if it’s a solipsistic idea, that this is your time to exist and your time to witness the Universe.<br />
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C. James Faganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17901338536879514849noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8800786392154152383.post-54795601667600199932015-10-25T12:37:00.003+00:002015-10-25T12:37:32.807+00:00Warrington Contemporary Arts Festival 2: The ReturnThis is my return to Warrington Contemporary Arts Festival using the excuse of the ‘Encounters’ live art/performance event. On arriving on or near the location of the event looking for a indication of what’s happening. I spot a figure laying leafs along the edge of the Golden Square covered market thing.<br />
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“Would you like to turn over a new leaf?”<br />
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Ask the chirpy invigilator, I do, is that it? Well kind of I ask the in invigilator who informs my that many of the artists have pulled out due to illness or in response to the weather. Hmmmm, at least it gives me the chance to look at the stuff that was unavailable to me on my first visit.<br />
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Starting with the Birmingham Pavilion and the Shaun Ryder Beer Mat Show. Which I don’t know what to make of, I try to enter the spirit of the thing. Which I think is fun, though as the majority of the beermats are locked on the other side of a cashier counter.<br />
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Next is the Middlesbrough/Newcastle Pavilion. Which maybe my favourite. After meeting another cheery invigilator I head up to the third floor. Where I’m greeted by a grid of White squares. In the centre of each square is the guts of a electronic clock, the hands of these clocks have been transformed into a different kind of measurement device.<br />
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This is Nick Kennedy’s Timecaster from each hand hangs pieces of graphite which make marks on the white squares, a record of the passage of the hands and graphite. There’s a strange hypnotic satisfaction in watching these clocks undertake their measurements. In seeing the process and the result in one go.<br />
On the floor below there is the work of three artists, though it took me a few moments to figure the out, the artist being Narbi Price, Michael Mulvihill and Alison Unsworth.<br />
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Price presents us with painted images of memorial flowers on barriers and empty spaces. Similar to the work of George Shaw. They touch on a certain sense of entropy the difference between the experience of the now and the knowledge of the passage of time. With these paintings there are also the drawings of Michael Mulvihill they are sketches of mushroom clouds, philosophers and cosmonauts. Thumbnail sketches of places all look like a attempt to come to terms with the 20th century in purely visual terms.<br />
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As if the act of physical, artist reproduction will render history a sense of tangibility.<br />
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The third artist on the floor is Alison Unsworth, who is showing drawings and ‘sculptures’. The sculptures are in fact those Pudding Lane ornaments, only they have appeared to have suffered some kind of cultural apocalypse. Developers have moved in a stripped and sheared everything away the only evidence of life are a skip or a cordoned off monument.<br />
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These are funny depictions of the English attitude to landscape and architecture. Somewhere in the remains of these signs of a unremembered England there is something about the fallacy of the idea that are culture is forever.<br />
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The mistaken belief that another generation won’t smash your buildings down or mark a monument with graffiti. The only real sense of eternity comes from the cycle of life as presented in her Pedestal drawing featuring a Seagull using a lamppost as stage and toilet. The biological winning over the cultural.<br />
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Then onto the second Leeds Pavilion, situated in Hatter’s Row a strange collection of shops and salons mostly empty now used by artists.<br />
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I lot of the stuff in there I find difficult to like. In the first room I find a disembodied head on the floor from which spews out what sounds like free jazz, this is surrounded by large banners featuring arrow heads.<br />
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On the second floor there are more artists whose work I find hard to decode or to different one artist from another. The artists use materials, images in a way that doesn’t quite solidify into something. I can speculate that it is something about the relationship between material, form and experience.<br />
I have to speculate as there’s no further imagination of how to navigate my way through these pieces.<br />
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While I was in the space of Hatter’s Row I wondered why it hadn’t been used as a alternative venue or main venue for the performance event. Or why the other spaces hadn’t been employed or fully exploited.<br />
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Which is how I feel about the WCAF in general. In this form it feels like its not truly taking advantage of the North West art scene or the locations it’s secured. The festival feels like it’s not aware of its potential. Or where it fits in, whether it is a extra to the Liverpool and Manchester or its equal. This will become clear as the festival grows in confidence and scale.<br />
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<br />C. James Faganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17901338536879514849noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8800786392154152383.post-77840566006590252162015-10-15T16:33:00.001+01:002015-10-15T16:33:12.718+01:00Warrington Contemporary Arts Festival Part 1?I would like to offer you a review of the Warrington Contemporary Arts Festival but I can't not really. As when I got there I discovered that most of the pavilions where shut.<br />
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Which is disappointing, having made a admittedly short journey to see it. Still.<br />
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Anyway I can tell you about what I did see. Which was some quite difficult work that left me feeling like a dog being shown the plans to CERN.<br />
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For example the Manchester Pavilion, where the work is presented without context. Nor with any information regarding which art is which or who is taking credit for it. Nothing about their process or why should I care at all.<br />
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Similar for the Leeds Pavilion, though I was able to see that is was some form of residency. Maybe I was in a bad mood but it felt like the research that should have been done before getting to Warrington.<br />
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Though I was attracted to the two model buildings by the window.<br />
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Then there is the 'blockbuster' exhibition of the festival at the Warrington Museum & Art Gallery. A group show based around the ubiquitous and sinister presence of IKEA. Basically a touring exhibition it is interesting, smart and funny.<br />
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To damn it with faint praise it has works by Ryan Gander I don't hate. Though within its location in the gallery to felt odd to be there. As if it was straining against its physical restrictions.<br />
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This might be an metaphor for the WCAF in general in its current form. That its ambitions are constricted by itself, by being able to take full advantage of its locations. Or knowing exactly what it is and who its for.<br />
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Given that this festival is still relatively young (5 years?) it still needs to develop a identy. Still I don't know if it's worth spending another £5.20 on another visit.C. James Faganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17901338536879514849noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8800786392154152383.post-30351143231226212892015-09-18T18:57:00.006+01:002015-09-18T18:57:44.452+01:00Ripe (With Decay)I used to have this friend who argued that we (in the UK) used the wrong name for autumn. Preferring the Americanism Fall, because that described the great falling of leaves. Fair enough but I’ll stick with Autumn which for me is the better, more poetic, more enigmatic name. I don’t know the exact meaning of the word, what I do know it’s a word that somehow covers the feelings that get stirred up as summer ends and winter comes.<br />
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That sense of change in the air and the shift of the Earth’s axis. It’s a season which throws up complex associations between life and death, given that this is the season which nature gives us a fruitful bounty before essentially dying. I have, maybe pretentiously and before this privately called this time of year as the glorious suicide of nature.<br />
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No surprise then this season of mellow fruitfulness attracts artistic interests with its unique mix of beauty and melancholia. Autumn is at the heart of this current Art Assembly’s Saisonscape tour which has stopped at the Kazimier. Subtitled DECAY it promises the exploration through sonic arts of the ideas of death and rebirth conjured by this time of year. Headlining this event is the prime exponent of these ethereal notions the composer William Basinski.<br />
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This is what I’m waiting for in the gold tinged blue of the dying light, a chill clinging to my skin. Myself and the handful of people hanging around are let in, where we suffer the curse of the punctual. That is being greeted by a empty place. Soon others will arrive the atmosphere will change, though I was hoping something more immersive.<br />
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Anyway I get a drink, get a table and subdue the urge to shout AMIBENT YEAH! While making a devil horn salute. Instead I turn my attention to the stage and the collection of equipment on it. You have laptops, things that have cables sprouting from them and reel to reel tape machines. There’s even magnetic tape stretched from the stage to the Kazimier's mezzanine.<br />
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That tape is soon to be set into motion by Howlround. Whose reel to reel machines are his instruments, from them he produces strangely familiar sounds. You have the sound of a locomotives whistle making a connection to musiqe concrete. Also you have noises that sound like the howl of the ID created by Louis and Bebe Barron for Forbidden Planet. There is a hint of Sci-Fi within the whole set, at times there are Radiophonic sweeps and wooshes. While the bass sounds make me think of the Ray Bradbury story The Foghorn.<br />
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After Howlround has finished he is swiftly replaced by Kepla. If Howlround is a direct connection to the history of contemporary music, then Kepla is a connection to its current forms. Whereas Howlround is manipulation of the physical Kepla is the manipulation of the digital. The difference or similarities between hard and software. His improvisational set produces sounds which are like the crunching and crashing of a hundred PlayStation games.<br />
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Comparing the two performances you could see in them something about the issues people have about transitioning from analogue to digital, the fear of working of loss. Interesting to note that Kepla is occasionally accompanied by textured videos, which made me recall artist Russell Mill's collaborations with Nine Inch Nails. Whether these films are there to provide a ‘bridge’ between two worlds or add a sense of unease and sense that technology itself is as equally open to decay as the organic. Soon Kepla finishes and disappears into the dark.<br />
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After a fifteen minute break, its headliner time. Basinski takes to the stage in a jovial manner, springing on the stage promising to start once he sets up his ‘girls’ (his tape machines). During this time there’s a problem with the mixer which sees Basinski break out into a rendition of If I Didn’t Care by The Ink Spots??<br />
This is not what I expect from a contemporary composer.<br />
Though it’s welcome.<br />
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The set begins proper and he begins to play The Deluge. It opens with a piano refine, one that is nearly familiar but soon it is lost in watery echoes like a dream on waking. Through subtle control of mixer and laptop the sound recycles, repeats, grows like organic matter.<br />
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If there is some kind of truth in Basinski's music it is that it reflects the part of nature which is about the transformation of one form to another. To become part of a ongoing cycle, and our place within it. From our human perspective the ongoing natural changes the world goes through are embedded with our ideas of beauty.<br />
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It’s a way of describing our relationship with the sublime, in a very human way. Like knowing that the green leaves will turn yellow, fall then rot, in a beautiful process.<br />
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<br />C. James Faganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17901338536879514849noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8800786392154152383.post-12775606992474588432015-07-21T18:19:00.004+01:002015-07-21T18:19:27.032+01:00Oculist Witnesses: According to Duchamp, The Harris, PrestonOften when writing I attempt to frame my interpretation of the event or exhibition within a context. Whether that is the journey to or the actual venue itself, sometimes it can be an element of the conceptual underpinnings. In this case I wonder if any of that is relevant as I’m purposely heading to the Harris Museum and Art Gallery to review Oculist Witnesses: According to Duchamp.<br />
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Already I’m mentally there, it is my focus today. To the point there is a strange sense of surprise to see that the larger of the spaces used to display contemporary art is given over to Lucy Beech’s video installations. I quickly pass the large white box after spotting a liquid black surface jutting out from behind an open doorway.<br />
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One standing on the threshold, picking up an info sheet which feels like card, I see that the exhibition is scarce. That despite the presence of Sovay Berriman’s sculpture ‘Entertainment Suite’ there feels like there’s a lot of space, even in this relatively small gallery space.<br />
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This space might be a result to the conceptual aspects of the exhibition. Given the subtitle is According to Duchamp that indicates that there is more to what meets the eye. I’m assuming you are aware of Duchamp (I know we weren’t all taught art by a Duchamp obsessive like I was) and that you know that he wanted to rearrange not only the language of art, but the perception of it.<br />
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Becoming the Year Zero of all what people love and hate about contemporary art. Though he isn’t technically represented by one of his own works. At least not directly. He is here in the form of a piece of work by Richard Hamilton, which provides the exhibition with its title and serves as a reference point, a point of focus.<br />
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Physically the piece is a screenprint on glass of a number of graphically pleasing circular and radiating lines. It sits there fetishisticly displayed like a relic within a plastic box. It does resonate a certain mystic power or at least a knowingness about its own place within art history. For this is detail created during Hamilton’s recreation of Duchamp’s The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelor’s, Even (also known as The Large Glass).<br />
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The Large Glass is full of religious and sexual symbols came with body of notes intended to be read in conjunction with its viewing. Though Duchamp and his interest in perception knew that due to the transparent nature of the piece it would ‘resist interpretation’. That the conditions in which it were viewed would effect that interpretation and the interpretation of the works that surrounded it.<br />
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Something which was exploited by artists like Hannah Wilke<br />
It feels like I’ve moved away from the actually exhibition itself, there is a weight of art history contained in that sparse gallery space. Despite the presence of Berriman and the Hamilton piece it does feel strangely empty. There are other works in the exhibition but the main dialogue appears to be between Berriman and Hamilton/Duchamp.<br />
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These pieces appear to be conversation, this maybe be a simplistic connection between geometric shapes. Spending some time in that space it does occur to me that the sculpture is reacting in some way to the Oculist Witnesses in a sense trying to mimic them. Entertainment Suite appears to be in state of flux, angles and surfaces stick out at different angles. The whole thing feels like a scale model, perhaps of a broken stealth bomber, though whether it is being scaled up or down is unclear.<br />
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Both screenprint and sculpture suggest movement, The Oculist Witnesses spin while Entertainment Suite grows like a crystal.<br />
In comparison the other works seem static almost not part of the exhibition. Flanking the Oculist Witnesses are two gloppy paintings of forlorn, jaded people. These are paintings by Lindsey Bull one Statues (2015) sees two figures stare mournfully into the middle distance. While in Bow Tie (2015) the single figure has its eyes closed refusing to bear witness. They radiate a sense of misplacement almost to the point of being embarrassed in being here.<br />
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Nearby are a number of postcards which have been manipulated by Ruth Caxton. The postcards that appear to depict religious(ish) imagery seem to have been affected by some form of mediumship. Lines etched within the cards flow to and fro into the eyes of an identical image, or form a cage of psychic energy around the heads of two piano playing ladies. It might be that these images are more connected to Oculist Witnesses did I first think.<br />
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Within them perhaps we can see the idea of artist as medium held by Duchamp. Of channelling the pre-existing elements of the world into the production of art.<br />
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As a whole what do I make of this exhibition? This room of art. Underpinned by not one but two curatorial concepts, the first being the relationship between the works, the second being the broader and overarching ideas of the Dance First, Think Later programme, delivers exhibitions and programmes which are ambitious in their curatorial scope.<br />
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That might lead to you questioning whether such exhibitions with such heavy conceptually underpinnings run the risk of a more casual art audience. Well possibly, but there is still a pleasure to be had in Berriman’s sculpture, Caxton’s curious postcards and even Bull’s painting has a certain seedy charisma. Along with the chance to see work by a ‘name’. <br />
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There is also the sense of these being a test, of pushing the boundaries of what is expected from our ‘provisional’ museums and galleries and in turn what is expected from the visitors to places like the Harris. That sounds a little patronising, but Oculist Witnesses, is part of a drive which seems to offer a challenge not only to the viewer but to other galleries.<br />
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http://www.harrismuseum.org.uk/exhibitions<br />
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<br />C. James Faganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17901338536879514849noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8800786392154152383.post-11593885615567144522015-06-04T10:41:00.004+01:002015-06-07T15:56:51.096+01:00Mad Max: Story TimeAs you may of noticed Mad Max: Fury Road has been released. Ending thirty years of toil and expectation. Released is a apt term as since the film hit the screens, it seems to have gain a momentum of its own.<br />
<br />
Fury Road smashed into people's imaginations with many people going to repeat viewings. Its also generated many articles about the production and the nature of the film. Many of them concentrated on Fury Road's feminist subtext.<br />
<br />
A lot of articles focus on the creativity gone into the film and we've been treated to great images from nearly thirty years of <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/danieldalton/shiny-and-chrome#.ohly6qwOOR" target="_blank">conceptual art</a>. Including work from the films co-writier<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-30781744" target="_blank"> Brendan McCarthy</a> a stalwart of 2000 AD.<br />
<br />
This comic book element may of fuelled the creation of drawings from contemporary <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/hayleycampbell/cant-stop-wont-stop-drawing-furiosa#.flb36LR77K" target="_blank">comic artists</a>. Often of the films central character Furiosa. Add to this reproductions of the cast as cats and the recreation of the insane vehicles in <a href="http://uk.ign.com/articles/2015/05/26/fan-creates-custom-mad-max-fury-road-lego-sets" target="_blank">Lego</a>, it would appear we have a car welded into another car sized phenomena here.<br />
<br />
Why? Is there anything within the film that could explain way Fury Road have supercharged creative juices.<br />
<br />
If it has done or is it another case of the ehco chamber of social media. Many of the people I follow are creative types. Most of them can nearly remember a world before The Road Warrior and probably saw it at an age were it would of lodged in there forming mind.<br />
<br />
There is a element of child like fascination in the imagination which has gone into the overall look of the film. Often the film feels like drawings animated. Not surprising given the involvement of McCarthy who like other 2000 AD artists (Kevin O'Neil, Brett Ewins,) brings a certain frantic senseability. These artists were adapt at creating a detailed world full of energy, something you wanted to examine and recreate.<br />
<br />
Still how does this relate to Fury Road? Well there is the appeal of the visual, the stories that can be spun from the forms of the vehicles and characters that inhabit the stark and dusty land of Fury Road.<br />
<br />
Again this may be stateing the obvious given that with the Mad Max series George Milliar uses to a choreography of stunts and editing to tell the story in purely visual terms. Giving a direct link to the early days of cinema. Its a pretty simple story of "Run Away!"<br />
<br />
Well that's the bare bones of it, the skeleton that can be fleshed out. Does a simple story allow the viewer to read multiple meanings into that story? Is the villian of the piece, Immortan Joe, a representation of the 1% the super rich male in control living high above the plebs.<br />
<br />
Are his 'War Boys' a critic on the nature of fanaticism, after all they are presented as a group of youths looking for a father figure, hopped up on the promise of Valhalla and a glance from Joe himself.<br />
<br />
The 'War Boys' reminded me of a Armies need to recruit under 21's who are the most reckless and fearless. This then lead me to think about the images of soilders captured by Tim <a href="http://www.thedoublenegative.co.uk/2013/09/tim-hetherington-you-never-see-them-like-this/" target="_blank">Herthetington</a>.<br />
<br />
Of course an element which has generated much attention is the character of Furiosa. The feminist heart of the film who assists The Wives to free themselves of the objectivity and captivity of Joe. The idea that the presence of Furiosa emasculates Max is nonsense, as it is plain that they enable Max. They help him change from feral survivor to human being. In fact it is the other men who emasculates Max, as they're the ones who want him only for his body.<br />
<br />
Note also that this is the first Mad Max film were Max isn't left a broken shell.<br />
<br />
Anyway this is Furiosa's story which is the universal story of the hero leaving the village gaining experience then SPOILER ALERT! returning to the village to impart that experience. This could be the reason why Fury Road has lodged in peoples imaginations, storytelling.<br />
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This is the generation of myths or mythopoeia, the creation of a world that parallels our own. A good story will organically allow the listener, viewer to become part of the story. To want to pass on that story in any form.<br />
<br />
This is why Fury Road has gotten into many a persons head, as they want retell the story. It's a modern version of a ancient human activity.C. James Faganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17901338536879514849noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8800786392154152383.post-63294747148553513092015-05-30T13:07:00.000+01:002015-05-30T13:07:53.854+01:00Surreal Landscapes - Carrington & Wilkes
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There is a word, Mythopoeia</div>
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<br /></div>
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It’s a word that relates to the idea of myth making, of
creating alternative worlds. Ones that often echo pre-existing myths, or myths
that echo the world that they are generated in. </div>
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<br /></div>
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It naturally prevails in the worlds of fantasy and sci-fi,
think the Mad Max movie. The word itself was invented by the ultimate in
fantasy writers Tolkien and despite depicting a world of fantastical creatures
it can be argued that Middle Earth is a description of the changes that befell
England during and after the Second World War.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Within this word we see are natural desire to make things
up, to tell stories in order to explain our world. It happens on many scales
for example the simple telling of a personal event becoming imbued with great
import.</div>
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<br /></div>
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A certain type of mythopoeia appears to be central to the
work of Lenora Carrington exhibition at Tate Liverpool. Here paintings and
drawings are filled with images drawn from a collective mythological world. The
figures that inhabit her work seem familiar but in the way that déjà vu is
familiar.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Her paintings present a kind of parallel myth, one born of a
parallel history.</div>
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<br /></div>
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This is more pronounced in her large tapestries with their
strange symbols and animals definitely give the impression of belonging to
another history. While her sketches and statues would seem to belong to some forgotten
book of lore or book of monsters. </div>
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<br /></div>
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There is a sense of magic in these paintings and I associate
then with the ‘rule of name’ a tenet of magic wherein if you have the real name
of a thing or person you can have real control over them. That there is a
fundamental reality under the one we can see.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Like the wizards in Ursula K leGuin’s Earthsea saga.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Perhaps within this idea of a true name of a fundamental
truth we can see or read Carrington’s work as an attempt to find that name. That
the adaptation of myths will somehow create a way to discover something new
about the world or some basic truth.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Myth making doesn’t solely apply to an otherworld it can
also be applied to the world of the mundane. To the objects we gather around us
and brush with a light fetish.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Heirlooms can sit on shelves and produce of soft mythology,
a contemporary and active archology. This is present in the work of Cathy
Wilkes who has a parallel exhibition with Carrington.</div>
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<br /></div>
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The moving between exhibitions provides an unusual sensation
as if you are stepping into some kind of mirror world. Of stepping into a
landscape like Carrington’s and yet not being wholly present within that world.</div>
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<br /></div>
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This is a landscape inhabited by figures that refuse to
acknowledge your presence. As if we, the visitors, were sprits gliding through
this world. Things aren’t concrete here some figures melt into the floor
filling the space with a sinister dream like quality. </div>
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<br /></div>
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The people that inhabit Wilkes landscape stare blankly or
intensely (its difficult to tell) at recognisable objects. They stare in a way
that is alien they stare at comics; ceramics wallpaper as if looking at an
unknowable past. Pieces of furniture wrecked and broken broadcast a strange
worth.</div>
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<br /></div>
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This is a surreal landscape.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Though everything is recognisable it becomes alien. Like
walking in a familiar place in thick fog. It disconcerting.</div>
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<br /></div>
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If there is myth here it is one that stems from the present,
a present whose flitting nature nudges us into attempt to create meaning from
the places and object, which we inhabit and use. The production of experience
into memory calls for the need for mythology. </div>
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<br /></div>
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To sure up fragile memories and to keep us telling stories.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-liverpool/exhibition/leonora-carrington</div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment-->C. James Faganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17901338536879514849noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8800786392154152383.post-85938441928671546652015-05-03T12:56:00.001+01:002015-05-03T20:40:02.110+01:00Social Behaviors <div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When the video camera become available and fell into the
hands of artists. Some of the first things they did was to record relatively
simple actions. Snapping tree branches, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDhuZ2Ya2wM">mooching around their
studios and so on</a>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">These actions carried on and the camera became smaller and
cheaper and the camcorder became the means for artists to record things like
trekking through their bedroom (<a href="http://museum.cornell.edu/collections/view/climbing-around-my-room.html">Lucy
Gunning</a>) dancing in the street (<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/video/2012/mar/26/gillian-wearing-dancing-peckham-video">Gillian
Wearing</a>) or autobiographies (<a href="https://vimeo.com/79687251">Tracey
Emin</a>.) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What the camcorder seemed to offer was a certain type of
freedom, allowing artists to catch phenomena or actions. A new spontaneity was
offered, have camera will art.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Didn’t it?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Trying to think of recent video works which didn’t show
either documentation of actions or wasn’t plonked down and let run. Maybe I need
to see better video work.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This thinking was trigged by seeing the work of Li Binyuan
at the CFCCA Manchester. His exhibition <i>Social
Behaviours</i> features a number of performative actions captured by
smartphone. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Simple actions simply captured. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">While I understand everything is more complex then it
appears. Some of the actions presented, cartwheeling across a bridge, jumping
in time to the rhythm of a passing train, flicking a lighter, remind me of
those early video works. Press record and go.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s probably a falsehood but I can’t help but imagine
Binyuan reaching into his pocket. Pulling out his phone putting it on a steady
surface and getting on with it. I guess it appeals to the sense that art is a spontaneous
reaction to the world.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Also it’s not just the videos, it is also how the videos
have been curated. The videos are displayed in ways which complement the actions
within them. For example <i>Signal</i> where
the artist attempts to light a lighter in time with the flashing lights of a
tower block is projected across two screens. Thereby creating a sense of
distance. Similarly in <i>Exercise 47mins</i>
featuring the artist apparently making trees sway by blowing on them, this is
partly projected on a cloth which itself sways in sympathetic motion.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s a sympathetic curation which allows the themes and
playfulness of the videos to come through.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s what the videos show and the way that they have been
curated that prompted these thoughts on video art. That a certain expectation of
what video art is and how it could be shown has been set. That for the last
thirty of more years a convention of video work being shown on monitor or wall.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Echoing the tradition modes of cinema and television. Which was
often used by artists to promote a sense of familiarity and pulling the viewer
in.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The biggest change in galleries seems to be the move from monitors
to flat screens.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Theirs is also the question of why there hasn’t been a ‘second
wave’ of video artists. Given the availability of the technology and the
changes of that technology it’s a wonder we haven’t seen artists embrace it to
make and show art in new ways. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOkQE7m31Pw">Janet Cardiff</a> has
employed this tech in this piece.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Maybe it just hasn't gotten into the gallery space, maybe it’s
up on YouTube. Maybe it’s a technology that artist are just understanding the possibilities
in their hands.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://www.cfcca.org.uk/exhibition/li-binyuan/"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">http://www.cfcca.org.uk/exhibition/li-binyuan/</span></a><o:p></o:p></div>
C. James Faganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17901338536879514849noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8800786392154152383.post-16185768864042537892015-04-25T16:49:00.001+01:002015-04-25T16:49:19.204+01:00150/50<div dir="ltr" id="docs-internal-guid-5e9d86c8-f13d-7ad4-e477-941fe85e2c86" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 26px; line-height: 35.8800010681152px;"><b>150</b></span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" id="docs-internal-guid-5e9d86c8-f13d-7ad4-e477-941fe85e2c86" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 26px; vertical-align: baseline;">What would possess someone to own something they could never use. Even if it cost 50p. In this case a possibly Japanese 7 inch found in a charity shop in Newport, Wales. Perhaps I was attracted to it because it came with a prehistory, with a multitude of narratives leading to me.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 26px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 26px; vertical-align: baseline;">Those narratives best describes the reasons for owning this object. For example the cover, which appears to be a film still. A snapshot of a narrative. Where a woman lays on the floor, clutching a parcel (a child?) Her face twisted in anguish, while under the stoney uncaring gaze of a man.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 26px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 26px; vertical-align: baseline;">It's a provocative, evocative image, which drags you into its enigma. Allowing you to spawn multiple narratives, making it a totem for my imagination. The narratives opened by this object, coalesce to form a irresistible mystery. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 26px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 26px; vertical-align: baseline;">One I wish not not to solve.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 26px;"><b>50</b></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 26px; vertical-align: baseline;">When a apparently useless yet cheap item appears in a Welsh charity shop. Its multiple narratives leading to you. Yet this isn't where the narrative ends. The item is foreign tounged and imaged provocatively. Giving me open narratives. For my imagination to continually roam.</span>C. James Faganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17901338536879514849noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8800786392154152383.post-71865360220555234822015-04-03T12:07:00.001+01:002015-04-03T12:07:03.852+01:00Only In England, Walker Art Gallery Liverpool<div class="MsoNormal">
I am not looking at photographs, I’m looking at people
looking at photographs of people (and writing this). I’m at <a href="http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/about/mediacentre/2014/only-in-england.aspx">Only
in England</a> a collection of the works of photographers Tony Ray-Jones and Martin
Parr at the Walker Gallery. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Which is considering it’s a damp Tuesday is quite busy. People
gather around images of other people, people caught in a moment. Can’t put my
finger on it but there’s a strange voyeuristic feeling about the process. As if
each photo is a window onto a private section of a life.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I quickly notice that many people are approaching the
photographs and pointing calling attention to a certain detail or aspect of the
image. Often this action is connected with a memory or nostalgia, responses to
the images include “Do you remember?” or “..on Thrusdays you could get tea and
cake..”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It begs the question, what are people seeing when they look
at these photographs? Is it more than the deadpan recording of light on
chemically treated paper. Or a number of moments, deemed important by the photographers’
eye. A selected fraction of a second of a life caught for ongoing examination. Again
where back to voyeurism.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Due the photographs themselves act as a mirror in which the
viewer can see a reflection of themselves. Not the whole self but fractions
which allow aspects of memory and expectation to be released.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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As the viewer’s more from image to image, there reflections
form some can of judgement or conclusion on the figures which inhabit that two
dimensional plain. Look at their faces, their dresses, their behaviour. Perhaps
a strange disconnect occurs between the present and the past, or in this case a
captured past.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Regarding the photographs as a captured past, brings me to
consider that these photographs somehow provide us with an eternal present. The
places, people within the photographs are free from time and have no past,
present or future.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Of course this offers the viewer the opportunity to look, to
stare, to gawp, to really lean in. In ways that is usually socially unacceptable.
The people in the photographs aren’t here, like were here in the gallery space
and therefore the social rules do not apply.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
All part of the cameras ability to create a distance between
subject and viewer. The distance is
compounded by the fact the photographs are in black and white and seem to be
produced by analogue means. This plus the subject matter cement these images
into a collective idea of the past, they mark an undefinable difference between
then and now.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This idea of the difference between a then and a now leads
me to what maybe an obvious question. How do these images relate to the current
proliferation of photographs throughout the likes of the internet? <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What are we attempting when we snap and post that image of
something strange, funny, a cat? Are we somehow attempting a freeze a moment? To
disconnect and remove ourselves from that moment in order that we can look
externally upon that moment and spark the sensations and motivations which created
the image in the first place.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Within the act of snapping a photo is this idea of
spontaneity of capturing a moment, though that is often<a href="http://www.thedoublenegative.co.uk/2013/05/my-problem-with-photography/">
untrue</a>. Even though that idea has attached itself indelibly to photography
no matter who is controlling the lens.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Equally the photograph is shorthand for the past. As I said
they become a collective memory of the past. Yet the physically photograph
becomes no more immune to the passing of time, no more than we are. For once the photographs in this exhibition whereas
achingly modern as any selfie.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Only the people and places that once reflected light that
shone on treated film remain untouched by time.<o:p></o:p></div>
C. James Faganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17901338536879514849noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8800786392154152383.post-54222251198874256322015-03-17T10:18:00.000+00:002015-03-17T10:18:37.797+00:00Cornerhousehttp://confusedguff.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/opposite-ends.html<br />
<br />
http://confusedguff.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/jamie-shovlin-hiker-meat-cornerhouse.html<br />
<br />
http://confusedguff.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/rainy-day-in-manchester.html<br />
<br />
http://confusedguff.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/samantha-donnelly-contour-states.html<br />
<br />
http://confusedguff.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/constellations-cornerhouse-manchester.html<br />
<br />
<br />C. James Faganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17901338536879514849noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8800786392154152383.post-27684577773280728182015-03-16T12:07:00.000+00:002015-03-16T12:07:17.510+00:00Group Therapy/Labyrinth Psychotica FACT LIverpool<div class="MsoNormal">
How do you write about a show like <a href="http://fact.co.uk/projects/group-therapy-mental-distress-in-a-digital-age.aspx">Group
Therapy</a>, how do you convert the experienced of this multi-layered, complex
collection of works. Without controlling or predetermining the virgin viewers perceptions.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Also as the exhibition (or expedition) is the exploration of
the juncture between mental health and contemporary technologies. Can I make it
through without a hackneyed and redundant statements like: ‘people be crazy’ or
‘who’s the truly insane?’<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What is my experience of this subject? It mostly comes from
my favourite authors, Philip K Dick. Who famously went through a major
psychotic transformation or breakdown, which gave us the book VALIS. I think
the point I’m trying to make is that within my nominal mind is the idea of
mental breakdown as a transforming experience, one of potential and change.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This feels like a fantasy. Often mental distress is
accompanied by fear and isolation. My small experience of this came through the
experience of anxiety attacks. Perhaps a very common form of mental distress. Though
many people have similar experience, as far as you’re aware you’re the only one
to feel this way.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
How can you express any experience of mental activity? If you
could then at least you could begin to understand what’s happening to you and therefore
others can understand. Which seems to be the mission of Jennifer Kanary
Nikolov(a)’s Labyrinth Psychotica. An attempt to recreate the conditions of psychosis
in a psychical experience. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Once in that maze, grabbing and reaching for the curtains
which define the maze. Textures change, alter I keep my hand up feeling the
materials as they pass my hand. This becomes at once worrying and yet
comforting. As you field of vision becomes a grey palette what you’re walking
into become less defined. The fabric walls increasingly become your world, they
ground you.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The sensation is that you might be falling but your falling
in the right direction. They might be huge gaps that are going to swallow you,
but they’re your gaps, your path.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Though at first that path seems short as I get stuck going
back and forth from the start to the first hallucination post. This posts of
bright LED lights throw up images when you quickly dart your eyes back and
forth. In do so an image of Marilyn Monroe floats in front of me. I think of
Ballard I think of The Atrocity Exhibition.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Eventually I find a path through bleeping LED lights, number
displays flashing its importance. The numbers are relevant somehow. Voices are
heard and compete with the knowledge that the only person nearby is the
friendly invigilator. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Is this then the essence of mental distress, of psychosis? The
ghost experience, of things that are there but not. It’s like the solidification
of imagination, these things; feelings exist for me they are part of my world. When
these experiences don’t manifest themselves within the world or culture around you
that seems to be a problem.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
After an encounter with a demanding set of headphones. I find
myself stumbling out of the maze, pretty sure of what’s happened but not. Dressed
in a lab coat (did I mention you get to wear a lab coat? You do!) The
impression of being involved in an experiment is great. The sensations felt
while in the Labyrinth Psychotica do leave you with the imprint of the conditions
of psychosis and having that can act as a started point to better explain, to
lay persons like me, what that term actual means. Therefore you can better
understand the person.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Initially I thought I would write more widely about the
Group Therapy exhibition. Rather than
focus one piece, for me the Labyrinth Psychotica distils some of the themes of
this exhibition. From the use of technology to deepen the understanding the
individual experience, to how the whole exhibition serves as a ‘maze’ which requires
exploration and investigation.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
On leaving and after foundling the pillows in the MadLove
Asylum I feel the need to return and carry on exploring. Also, somehow, the
outside feels different now…<o:p></o:p></div>
C. James Faganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17901338536879514849noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8800786392154152383.post-91824511910080993572015-02-19T12:13:00.002+00:002015-02-19T12:13:20.861+00:00The Quiet FACT LiverpoolIt's hectic, its half term, in an effort to fill the time people are taking to the streets of Liverpool. Swelling the population, swelling the noise.<br />
<br />
The hubbub is up.<br />
<br />
To avoid this I'm travelling up Wood St, which is quieter in comparison. Just other people avoided the mainstream or having of fag break.<br />
<br />
I'm on my way to FACT to see the Quiet, which promises to be a immersive installation which will recreate the still before the storm.<br />
<br />
Or I hope it will as attempts to find more information just leads to a silent 404 page. I hope it is.<br />
<br />
There it is in the foyer of FACT a strange combination of plywood and soft baby blue, erm stuff.<br />
<br />
On the entrance there's a hefty bolt, it makes me hesitate. Is there someone locked inside a unknown stillness inside? Anyway the gallery assistant assures me I'm free to enter.<br />
<br />
So I do, and like a deep breath, the silence is there, the stillness, the expectation that something will happen. Like a breath its gone and there I am in a room filled with that twilight that comes with a heavily overcasted day.<br />
<br />
One where you can't tell were the light is coming from.hh<br />
<br />
With a collection of tropical plants, lights and the sighing of a air conditioner. The muffled songs of the outside leak through from a distant world.<br />
<br />
Though I feel I could stay I feel that my time here is fleeting. On exiting the installation I feel oddly upbeat. As if the installation has acted like a mental reset.<br />
<br />
It's a slight experience but a affective one. Later I capture myself thinking about that space. Almost like a secret. I also think about that episode of the Avengers where a eccentric Army Major recreates a tropical jungle in his mansion.<br />
<br />
Maybe because the both create hermetically sealed individual worlds.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />C. James Faganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17901338536879514849noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8800786392154152383.post-90818713927024499272014-11-02T09:22:00.003+00:002014-11-02T09:22:42.593+00:00For the Mowdery's!<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX60404342" style="font-family: 'Segoe UI', Tahoma, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 8px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">
<div class="Paragraph SCX60404342" paraeid="{db6a24d7-f46f-4379-b463-0721440bcc2c}{134}" paraid="1712116099" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: normal !important; color: windowtext; font-size: 6pt; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;">
<span class="TextRun SCX60404342" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: normal !important; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" xml:lang="EN-GB">So, Lauren, do you think it might be serious with this Karl fella?</span><span class="EOP SCX60404342" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: normal !important; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"> </span></div>
<div class="Paragraph SCX60404342" paraeid="{db6a24d7-f46f-4379-b463-0721440bcc2c}{134}" paraid="1712116099" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: normal !important; color: windowtext; font-size: 6pt; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;">
<span class="EOP SCX60404342" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: normal !important; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX60404342" style="font-family: 'Segoe UI', Tahoma, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 8px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">
<div class="Paragraph SCX60404342" paraeid="{db6a24d7-f46f-4379-b463-0721440bcc2c}{137}" paraid="2105478452" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: normal !important; color: windowtext; font-size: 6pt; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;">
<span class="TextRun SCX60404342" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: normal !important; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" xml:lang="EN-GB">Yeah, Ok then I’ll say I few words about this wedding thing, about love, relationships and Lauren and Karl.</span><span class="EOP SCX60404342" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: normal !important; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"> </span></div>
<div class="Paragraph SCX60404342" paraeid="{db6a24d7-f46f-4379-b463-0721440bcc2c}{137}" paraid="2105478452" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: normal !important; color: windowtext; font-size: 6pt; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;">
<span class="EOP SCX60404342" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: normal !important; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX60404342" style="font-family: 'Segoe UI', Tahoma, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 8px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">
<div class="Paragraph SCX60404342" paraeid="{db6a24d7-f46f-4379-b463-0721440bcc2c}{144}" paraid="1138021985" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: normal !important; color: windowtext; font-size: 6pt; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;">
<span class="TextRun SCX60404342" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: normal !important; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" xml:lang="EN-GB">Where to start, really, where to start</span><span class="TextRun SCX60404342" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: normal !important; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX60404342" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: normal !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">? I could give out quote after quote about love; I mean I can find some </span><span class="SpellingError SCX60404342" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: normal !important; background-image: url(data:image/gif; background-position: 0% 100%; background-repeat: repeat no-repeat; border-bottom-color: transparent; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">good’uns</span><span class="NormalTextRun SCX60404342" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: normal !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">. All that stuff, all that heart and flowers, Hallmark view of the power of liking someone a lot.</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX60404342" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: normal !important; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX60404342" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: normal !important; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" xml:lang="EN-GB">Somehow doesn’t reflect the feelings the Lauren and Karl share</span><span class="TextRun SCX60404342" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: normal !important; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" xml:lang="EN-GB">.</span><span class="EOP SCX60404342" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: normal !important; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"> </span></div>
</div>
<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX60404342" style="font-family: 'Segoe UI', Tahoma, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 8px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">
<div class="Paragraph SCX60404342" paraeid="{db6a24d7-f46f-4379-b463-0721440bcc2c}{147}" paraid="1445378231" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: normal !important; color: windowtext; font-size: 6pt; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;">
<span class="TextRun SCX60404342" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: normal !important; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" xml:lang="EN-GB">For what we have before us is more complex, deeper then something that could be summed up in a few well-chosen lines, or a speech. </span></div>
<div class="Paragraph SCX60404342" paraeid="{db6a24d7-f46f-4379-b463-0721440bcc2c}{147}" paraid="1445378231" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: normal !important; color: windowtext; font-size: 6pt; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;">
<span class="TextRun SCX60404342" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: normal !important; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<div class="Paragraph SCX60404342" paraeid="{db6a24d7-f46f-4379-b463-0721440bcc2c}{147}" paraid="1445378231" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: normal !important; color: windowtext; font-size: 6pt; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;">
<span class="TextRun SCX60404342" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: normal !important; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" xml:lang="EN-GB">This marriage is another episode, another step in the on-going public display of affection that is your relationship.</span><span class="EOP SCX60404342" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: normal !important; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"> </span></div>
<div class="Paragraph SCX60404342" paraeid="{db6a24d7-f46f-4379-b463-0721440bcc2c}{147}" paraid="1445378231" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: normal !important; color: windowtext; font-size: 6pt; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;">
<span class="EOP SCX60404342" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: normal !important; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX60404342" style="font-family: 'Segoe UI', Tahoma, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 8px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">
<div class="Paragraph SCX60404342" paraeid="{db6a24d7-f46f-4379-b463-0721440bcc2c}{151}" paraid="665788817" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: normal !important; color: windowtext; font-size: 6pt; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;">
<span class="TextRun SCX60404342" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: normal !important; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" xml:lang="EN-GB">I was ‘nearby’ at the beginning and remember I conversation in TJ’s Newport about a boy Lauren met during a trip to Huddersfield. When she spoke about this boy there was a something in her tone that was a clear indication of attraction, a spark. Though when I asked Lauren if is liked this boy she was all </span><span class="TextRun SCX60404342" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: normal !important; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" xml:lang="EN-GB">‘yeah he’s ok’. Anyway this attraction grew; with the occasional nudge from Jack Daniels a relationship was formed.</span></div>
<div class="Paragraph SCX60404342" paraeid="{db6a24d7-f46f-4379-b463-0721440bcc2c}{151}" paraid="665788817" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: normal !important; color: windowtext; font-size: 6pt; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX60404342" style="font-family: 'Segoe UI', Tahoma, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 8px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">
<div class="Paragraph SCX60404342" paraeid="{db6a24d7-f46f-4379-b463-0721440bcc2c}{154}" paraid="38240631" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: normal !important; color: windowtext; font-size: 6pt; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;">
<span class="TextRun SCX60404342" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: normal !important; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" xml:lang="EN-GB">Since then I’ve been witness to the small acts of tenderness between these two. The carefully constructed mixtapes, the gifts bought with an ease which belies the thoughtful affection which goes with it. I’ve even seen the smile on Laurens face as she typed away sending messages to Karl over the internet.</span><span class="EOP SCX60404342" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: normal !important; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"> </span></div>
<div class="Paragraph SCX60404342" paraeid="{db6a24d7-f46f-4379-b463-0721440bcc2c}{154}" paraid="38240631" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: normal !important; color: windowtext; font-size: 6pt; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;">
<span class="EOP SCX60404342" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: normal !important; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX60404342" style="font-family: 'Segoe UI', Tahoma, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 8px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">
<div class="Paragraph SCX60404342" paraeid="{db6a24d7-f46f-4379-b463-0721440bcc2c}{159}" paraid="2009369937" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: normal !important; color: windowtext; font-size: 6pt; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;">
<span class="TextRun SCX60404342" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: normal !important; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" xml:lang="EN-GB">So what’s my point? Well all these moments are the evidence of why these two belong together. All these little acts of affection, all the quiet un-witnessed moments of love had led Lauren and Karl to this point. To this act of love, this marriage, t</span><span class="TextRun SCX60404342" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: normal !important; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" xml:lang="EN-GB">his symbol of commitment, this statement of the obvious, </span><span class="TextRun SCX60404342" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: normal !important; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" xml:lang="EN-GB">and marvel at the fact that within a universe of billions of stars, on a planet with billions of people. </span></div>
<div class="Paragraph SCX60404342" paraeid="{db6a24d7-f46f-4379-b463-0721440bcc2c}{159}" paraid="2009369937" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: normal !important; color: windowtext; font-size: 6pt; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;">
<span class="TextRun SCX60404342" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: normal !important; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX60404342" style="font-family: 'Segoe UI', Tahoma, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 8px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">
<div class="Paragraph SCX60404342" paraeid="{db6a24d7-f46f-4379-b463-0721440bcc2c}{162}" paraid="989958263" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: normal !important; color: windowtext; font-size: 6pt; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;">
<span class="TextRun SCX60404342" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: normal !important; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" xml:lang="EN-GB">Two people who are right for each other and are willing to share a life together can find each other.</span></div>
<div class="Paragraph SCX60404342" paraeid="{db6a24d7-f46f-4379-b463-0721440bcc2c}{162}" paraid="989958263" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: normal !important; color: windowtext; font-size: 6pt; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX60404342" style="font-family: 'Segoe UI', Tahoma, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 8px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">
<div class="Paragraph SCX60404342" paraeid="{db6a24d7-f46f-4379-b463-0721440bcc2c}{167}" paraid="1690761046" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: normal !important; color: windowtext; font-size: 6pt; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;">
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C. James Faganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17901338536879514849noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8800786392154152383.post-16243313448787676542014-10-24T11:22:00.001+01:002014-10-24T11:22:34.930+01:00The Passing of The Biennial 2014<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s been a funny Biennial, gaining mixed reviews. Some of
them proclaiming doom and gloom or criticising the lack of political engagement.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Myself I wrote this for <a href="http://www.thedoublenegative.co.uk/2014/07/biennial-2014-the-space-in-between/">The
Double Negative</a> focusing on how I saw it as a Biennial which presented work
that played with the conventions of the gallery space and the role of the
visitor within that gallery space.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Three months on and how does this still stand up? Well Claude
Parent at Tate Liverpool is still a playful, exciting change to the normal
modes of gallery viewing. While the exhibition upstairs is interesting if a
little hit and miss.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Though it’s always great to see work by Susan Hiller.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Whistler at The Bluecoat, I feel pretty much the same as I first
saw it.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As for Sharon Lockhart’s exhibition at FACT I still find
Lockhart’s use of the gallery space more engaging then the actual concepts that
inform the work.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What of the main exhibition at The Old Blind School? On my
final visit though I enjoyed the many sci-fi tinged works I felt that a lot of
it had lost it shine. Now I see the edges of the projection screen of William
Leavitt’s Artic Earth and Michael Stevenson’s remote controlled doors where far
to accommodating for you notice that anything was awry.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p>Ultimately how do I feel about the Biennial? Well I’m not
sure after the initial excitement of its arrive I never found myself possessed
by a urge to revisit many exhibitions. On the whole I have had a more positive
reaction to the 2014 Biennial then others. Looking back on it I wonder if this
has been a Biennial that didn’t really have its mind on the here and now, but
rather it was looking towards its possible future expanding outside the city
centre.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p>Maybe this is true of most Biennials I guess we’ll see in
two years’ time.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
C. James Faganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17901338536879514849noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8800786392154152383.post-21674830306832110392014-10-05T18:32:00.002+01:002014-10-05T18:32:39.920+01:00Thinking City: Adam Chodzko, Liverpool Biennial
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Funny, when things seem to come together.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The way life can connect seemingly disparate things. Giving the
impression of a greater meaning, I think that this is sometime referred to as synchronicity.
A recent experience of this phenomenon involves my current (paid) job, a novel,
the current social-economic situation and a performance lecture.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">That lecture by Adam Chodzko took place in an abandoned
above ground reservoir in Toxteth. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now Liverpool
gets its water from elsewhere it stands as an monument to Victorian engineering
and bravado.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">So where once were tonnes of water stands Chodzko and his
seemingly modest presentation. Though the reverberation of his voice throughout
the space lends his voice a certain booming gravitas<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Fitting as Adam is talking about some huge subjects,
literary. One of the things under discussion are super container ships. Modern leviathans
that cross oceans and seas, making sure that you and I have things like iPods,
Lego and training shoes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">This is where the first ‘connection’ comes into play. I have
recently read Simon Ings novel </span><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/sep/06/dead-water-simon-ings-review"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">‘Dead
Water’</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> a multi-layered narrative, which features a character Eric Moyes who
creates these shipping lines and uses them to hide a terrible secret. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Both Ings and Chodzko touch on the strangeness of these sea
born giants which despite their size are as invisible as air. How these thing
follow a unique idea of fluid dynamics, operating to the imagined pressures of commerce.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The creation of a constant flow of things and stuff which threatens
to overwhelm us and fill the spaces we inhabit. Which brings me to the third ‘connection’
recently I have found myself employed (by a company known for tiny pens, that’s
not IKEA) this puts me rather neatly at the end point of this epic voyage of stuff.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">One of many who facilitate the ‘last mile’ of that journey. Helping
everyone fill their homes with stuff, in the lecture Chodzko speculates that
this collection of stuff will lead to the instigation of people creating and
dealing with smaller and smaller spaces. He provides this by showing us his
prototype living space created from a IKEA wardrobe.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">All this may just be preparation for a future, a future that
will take place on the giant super-boats. These will become the cities of a
flooded world, a world flooded with water and stuff. Once aboard this floated
cities we will be surrounded by all of our stuff that we would arrive at some
kind of nirvana.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">A capitalistic equilibrium, a utopia on the ocean waves.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">When where on our never-ending cruise, what will happen to
the mega-docks that where once home to these behemoths? Well Chodzko suggests
that the ultimate role for these docks, such as the proposed Liverpool 2
superdock is as massive earth-works, as land art. Their destiny is to become
supersized monuments to entropy like Robert Smithson’s ‘Spiral Jetty’ or even
oversized versions of J.G Ballard’s empty swimming pools.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The archaeology of this future is to be built through
commerce, we are building it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
C. James Faganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17901338536879514849noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8800786392154152383.post-26936399666744439222014-08-24T11:48:00.000+01:002014-08-24T11:49:04.212+01:00We Buy the Cosmos <div class="MsoNormal">
On Wood St, unsupposing Wood St for a brief moment there
exists a conjunction of two experiences of time, history and our place within
it.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Both revolve around dumb objects. Objects in themselves arguably
nothing more than the material which composes them. Nothing more than the
whatever banding of atoms determines them to be.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Starting with a very earthly object, an LP, in particular The
Beatles ‘The White Album’. Under the title ‘<a href="http://fact.co.uk/projects/we-buy-white-albums.aspx">We Buy White Albums’
</a> artist Rutherford Chang has been endeavouring
to collect all numbered copies of The White Album. For Chang the famous white
sleeve is a void which the concerns and personal history of whoever possessed
it can expand into.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So you get exotic drawings, forgotten names neatly sitting
in corners patiently waiting for identification and reunion. You also get a
series of objects in various states of decay. Flick through the copies and each
one is corrupted by its own existence. Each is its own maker within an individual
journey in entropy. <o:p></o:p><br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Drifting through sleeve after sleeve, which can get
repetitive, you do begin to think about the need for collecting. Is this need
to collect some kind of attempt to keep entropy at bay? To halt or slow down
the passage of time, by gathering object which hold residual histories. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Or is it simply something to do? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Objects with residual history also exist a little further
down Wood St. Three meteorites’ sit patience on three brown modular plastic
chairs. They can afford to be patient they’ve been around for a long time. <o:p></o:p><br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This is Beginnings by AKRA group part of Axolotl at <a href="http://www.modelliverpool.com/">Model.</a> The aforementioned trio of
space rocks and earth chairs sits in a group around a humming amp. Partly shielded
by an old cinema screen, again objects imparted with historical residue.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The main focus is the meteorites; to experience Beginnings
you select a meteorite don headphone and sinister black hood. Already under way
is the narrative of the lump you hold in your hand. As the soft LIverpudlian
accent intones this narrative, which for me starts somewhere out in space,
heading towards, away from a familiar blue planet.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I begin to spin off connections, one of them being Charles
and Ray Eames treatise on our place in the universe <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0" target="_blank">Powers of Ten.</a> Of course
all of this doesn’t matter to the space rock, it just is. All the poetry and
astonishment comes from us, the humans. Due to our placement, out temporary
placement, in the universe we create a sense of wonder; we attempt to come to
terms with the incredible odds of our existence.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We do that do projecting some immense ideas onto the things
that make up the world. Whether those object be record sleeves or things that
fall from the sky. In pursuit to comprehend our place here and now.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
C. James Faganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17901338536879514849noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8800786392154152383.post-63452110128701494062014-08-18T17:32:00.000+01:002014-08-18T17:33:32.722+01:00Opposite Ends<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Some while ago I went to see a few exhibitions in Manchester
and this is, according to my notebook, what I thought.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">First was the Clifford Owens exhibition at Cornerhouse ‘Better
the Rebel You Know’ which to my knowledge is probably the first exhibition
dedicated to a performance artist in the North-West. As I like that sort of
thing I’m quite interested.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">It doesn’t disappoint. It begins with a selection of
photographs of an audience at one of Owen’s performances. Instantly I begin to
see these images as evidence of the idea Barthes had about how when confronted
with a camera, we perform. Follow this train of thought and you arrive at the
question what is the difference between performer and audience.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">As in this case the audience is asked to categorise itself,
by race, by sexuality even personal experience. Here the boundaries about who
the performer is get smeared. Within a system which Owen presents in this work
is he uncovering some desire held within everyone to perform, to display some
kind of characteristic that we can say is us?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">There is a thread of this going upstairs. The other two
floor of the gallery space features work which was created by Owens based on
instructions from many members of the art world. The results are varied and
interesting. Videos and photographs provide evidence of this undertaking. One piece
features Owens randomly French kissing members of a gathered audience. Again
making the audience a performative element. In turns the video is funny,
exciting and uncomfortable definitely a boundary breaker.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I think my favourite piece is on the top floor. Here a white
cube takes up the majority of the space, though it appears that part of this
cube has been removed to allow access. Once inside you see a brown powder
(coffee) gathering around the edges of the space. Something has happened here,
and within me there sparks a myriad of imaginary motions and actions. It’s
almost contradictory the absence of the performer allows the idea of the performer
of his physicality. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">To be aware of my body and the performers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Better the Rebel you Know has been a totally satisfactory and
completely engaging exhibition. I hope to get the chance to see Owens work
again.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I also managed to see Ryan Gander’s exhibition ‘Make ever
show as your last’. Which in short I didn’t like. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">From the looking at empty boxes etched on Perspex the empty
cartoon strips, the cloth shapes rendered in marble. I look at them and think it’s
a whole lot of nothing, as if all this art has been reproduced, photocopied by
a bored and inattentive intern. The whole thing feels as if someone has copied
a Matthew Collings book on the YBA’s and hasn’t bothered to put in the feeling.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">As I progress through the show I begin feel like I’m being
teased and not in a playful way, just in an annoying way. For example when I
move a curtain to relieve a wall, I’m not please that my expectations have been
played with I’m just angry. It’s art I don’t trust, it feels insincere on the receiving
end of a poor joke.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Though there are small points which might offer relief,
which include sculptures based on descriptions of engine parts made by Ryan’s
father and a mock sci-fi supercomputer. Unfortunately by that point I don’t
really care.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I compare it to the Clifford Owens exhibition, which works
in a very conceptual way but still invests his work with emotion along with a
social and personal history, which makes his work human. While Gander’s work
feels like an exercise in making something that looks like art. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
C. James Faganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17901338536879514849noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8800786392154152383.post-67922894338127654892014-08-08T10:35:00.001+01:002014-08-08T10:35:08.147+01:00Artist Statement generated via 500letters.org<h1 style="background-color: #fbfbef; border: 0px; color: #4a4a40; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 14px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 30px 0px 20px 35px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
C James Fagan</h1>
<div style="background-color: #fbfbef; border: 0px; color: #4a4a40; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px; margin: 6px 6px 3px 35px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline; width: 400px;">
C James Fagan (°1975, Liverpool, United Kingdom) creates performances, drawings, performances and media art. By using popular themes such as sexuality, family structure and violence, Fagan tries to approach a wide scale of subjects in a multi-layered way, likes to involve the viewer in a way that is sometimes physical and believes in the idea of function following form in a work.</div>
<div style="background-color: #fbfbef; border: 0px; color: #4a4a40; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px; margin: 6px 6px 3px 35px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline; width: 400px;">
His performances directly respond to the surrounding environment and uses everyday experiences from the artist as a starting point. Often these are framed instances that would go unnoticed in their original context. By merging several seemingly incompatible worlds into a new universe, he uses a visual vocabulary that addresses many different social and political issues. The work incorporates time as well as space – a fictional and experiential universe that only emerges bit by bit.</div>
<div style="background-color: #fbfbef; border: 0px; color: #4a4a40; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px; margin: 6px 6px 3px 35px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline; width: 400px;">
His works often refers to pop and mass culture. Using written and drawn symbols, a world where light-heartedness rules and where rules are undermined is created. With a conceptual approach, he touches various overlapping themes and strategies. Several reoccurring subject matter can be recognised, such as the relation with popular culture and media, working with repetition, provocation and the investigation of the process of expectations.</div>
<div style="background-color: #fbfbef; border: 0px; color: #4a4a40; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px; margin: 6px 6px 3px 35px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline; width: 400px;">
His works bear strong political references. The possibility or the dream of the annulment of a (historically or socially) fixed identity is a constant focal point.</div>
C. James Faganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17901338536879514849noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8800786392154152383.post-28922259007757880722014-07-13T12:21:00.002+01:002014-07-13T12:21:34.975+01:00Hazard 2014 Manchester<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s warm and sticky; it must be time for Hazard. The
biennial day out for performance artist in Manchester.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Through the mugginess, through the crowds to the area (ST Anne’s
Sq) defined by A Boards and yellow Tees. My companions and I gravities towards
one of the black marquees in the middle in the hopes of orientation and free
badges! While we do this we bump into Top Joe a cheerful man in a hi-viz jacket
who is here today to make contact we as many people as possible.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As Top Joe goes about his business it’s unclear whether he
is very friendly or very lonely. No time to think as we fall into Le Bistroquet
a chance for a bite to eat, but also a chance share. We each give a recipe and
therefore a little about ourselves, in an oblique way.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p>We wonder around passing the spinning hammock boat of ICD
and have a chat with Bingo Meg and Disco Jazz who are readying their spangly
car boot disco. Somehow we get on board with Stephen Donnelly’s Driftmob, a
socialist game of follow the leader.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p>Every member of the group gets to be leader and with very
little inhibition everybody is soon crawling, jumping, rolling around on the
floor (not me, not in my good trousers) and generally annoying shop staff. I guess there is something about group dynamics
and the removing of responsibilities; mostly it’s silly and fun.<o:p></o:p></div>
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We drift off to find Antje Hildebrant and are caught by a
fox (Savages, Hidden Track) the fox gives us a brief story and enrols us in his
struggle against the badgers by making the territory with balloons. A little
bit of whimsy there.<o:p></o:p></div>
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We manage to find Antje Hildebrant’s You Make Me Want to
Lose You, which consist of two boiler suited dancers both have box covered in
black and yellow hazard tape. Blindly and gracefully they move through this
public space as if from an overlapping universe at a pace that is meditative. Even
the lady sat next to me on the bench on her lunch break agrees remarking on how
relaxing it is.</div>
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<o:p></o:p>When the two are taken away, I make my way to Nicola Canavan’s
Milk set within the window of an empty shop. After a few moments of preparation
Nicola appears glamourous in a red evening dress and with a bouquet for a head.
She takes her place on a gilded seat and
takes out a breast pump and begins to milk herself.<o:p></o:p></div>
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At this point I become nervous, apprehensive about the reaction
to this, will there be a extreme reaction. Reactions to similar acts have been,
well <a href="http://www.itv.com/news/central/story/2014-03-19/mother-banned-from-breastfeeding-in-hospital-waiting-room/">mystifying</a>.
The reactions are varied some are surprised, some are offended. What they take
offence at is unclear, is it the slight exposure of breast, a reaction to the vaguely
mechanical nature of the breast pump. A few question whether if it’s a real
person under the flowers connected to the pump.<o:p></o:p></div>
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One little girl gets very close,
looking into the window with great curiosity. Curiosity (both negative and
positive) seems to be the main reaction. What is it? Why would anyone do that? While
not giving any answers MILK does ask those questions around the collective squeamishness
regarding breastfeeding.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Is it a violation of a joint privacy?
Is it the suggestion of society’s Oedipal issues? Its is an complex issues and
Nicola Canavan has begun an elegant dialogue.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I leave Canavan, to join my
friends who have been earning prizes with fanct footwork at the Car Boot Disco.
This marks the end of my engagement with Hazard 2014, its felt brief but not unfulfilling,
showing work that ranged from flippant to thoughtful.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I just hope our annoyance of shop
and bank staff doesn’t affect Hazard 2016.<o:p></o:p></div>
C. James Faganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17901338536879514849noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8800786392154152383.post-27719793973899419972014-06-27T12:28:00.002+01:002014-06-27T12:31:00.158+01:00Mondrian and his Studios - Nasreen Mohamedi, Tate Liverpool<div class="MsoNormal">
Within the recreation of Piet Mondrian’s studio there is an
object from which can be expanded the concepts behind Tate Liverpool’s latest
blockbuster exhibition as well as holding a key to the work of Mondrian. Within
the set Mondrian’ studio is the model of a set, a version of a world drawn from
the one that surrounds it, filtered through Mondrian’s experiences of the world
into those famous, lines, grids and block colours.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Rather than being redundant reproduction both simulations
point to the how Mondrian was world building. Recreating the movement and
rhythm of the world he lived in, refining them, reforming them into a representation
of what he called ‘dynamic equilibrium’. Through the use of those lines and
block colours Mondrian painting create a sense that life is modular, a series
of interchangeable pieces that can be fit together like Lego.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Like those colourful blocks the painting present a malleable
world, his plastic world which is constantly rearranging, changing. Evidence of
the near infinite possibilities that exist within this continuum. Sometimes the
paintings appear to be like a series of architects drawings being constantly
reworked and redrawn to match the ever changing whims of unknown inhabitants. I
can also see a connection between Mondrian and Sol Le Witt’s <a href="http://johnmcdonald.net.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/sol_le_witt_j.jpg">Variations
of Incomplete Cubes</a>.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Mostly the paintings create a rhythm, a musicality Mondrian
was influence by the modern sounds of Jazz and Boogie-Woogie. Though passing
through the exhibition I have the sensation that they are pounding out the
looser form of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNbD1JIH344">Free Jazz</a>.
A piece like Composition in Colour B (1917)
can also be read as a diagram about the movement of sound through a given
space.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Being in this exhibition, being within the imaginative space
of Mondrian’s work reminds us that there is still a relevance to his work,
despite its near Mona Lisa like reproduction, especially within this increasing
plastic world.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Moving from the familiar to the unknown (well at least to
me) running in parallel to Mondrian and his Studio is an exhibition of work by
Narseen Mohamedi. An artist who, like Mondrian was attempting to transcribe the
world. This was conducted through a series of linear ink drawings that hover
between abstraction and conceptualism. <o:p></o:p></div>
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These beautiful and often delicate drawings produce a sense
of the rhythms of life. Of the movement of tides, patterns that seem chaotic
and yet ordered. Though they are composed by simple lines they are hard to
describe, they are of a nature observed and transcribed. It’s no wonder that
she recorded through photography the natural action of the ripples marked in
the sand after the sea has shrunk from the land.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s as if these drawings are her attempt to document the ephemeral
nature of our passage through time and space. Though use of lines and pressure Mohamedi
creates image that apprear diagrammatic and yet give of a sense of energy and
for this viewer a synaesthesia like feeling. Each drawing fizzes, buzzes, no
surprise when I read in the booklet ‘<i>Extensions
of vibrations and sensitive cross vibrations’</i>. <o:p></o:p></div>
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These almost musical sensations giving off by both artists’
works also strengthens the connections between Mohamedi and Mondrian and makes
the exhibition feel dynamic. You may of guessed that I have enjoyed this
exhibition, even been excited by it, it is an exhibition that you can experience
and discover and rediscover a duo of artists whose work is alive and relevant.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-liverpool/exhibition/nasreen-mohamedi-0">http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-liverpool/exhibition/nasreen-mohamedi-0</a><o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-liverpool/exhibition/mondrian-and-his-studios">http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-liverpool/exhibition/mondrian-and-his-studios</a><o:p></o:p></div>
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C. James Faganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17901338536879514849noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8800786392154152383.post-76373881350290156612014-03-06T15:53:00.001+00:002014-03-06T15:53:21.020+00:00Jamie Shovlin Hiker Meat, Cornerhouse Manchester
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">If you are of a certain age, you’ll probably remember the
terrorising thrill of discovering the lurid covers of many a VHS in a local
video shop. These covers in turns horrifying and exciting, they often presented
a ménage of screaming faces and shining weapons. Or the hero grimacing as
things explode around them and as this was the early 80’s a quasi-medieval
figure on a motorbike smashing through some recognisable (American) landmark in
a post-nuclear landscape.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Or that’s how I remember it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Of course the imagery that adorned the packets these films
came in often bared no, or little, relation to anything in the film. Though those
airbrushed images influenced a generation of film makers, as much as the films
themselves. The imagery, the tropes of these films (young girls, backwaters, weird
locals etc.) all filtered into the popular imagination. They were even parodied
by one of instigators of the genre, Wes Craven and his Scream series.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">All this sort of filters through my mind as I look around
Jamie Shovlin’s Hiker Meat at the Cornerhouse, an exhibition about the
recreation of a film that didn’t or doesn’t exist. On entering the gallery we
enter a false history, an alternative time line detailing the production
history of this thing called ‘Hiker Meat’. It’s very complex featuring as it
does an imaginary band producing a soundtrack for an imaginary film, this level
of fiction is supported by a collection of memorabilia. A kind of meta mythology
of special created props, costumes, posters, video covers and lobby cards, a
very good detail.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">It’s all great fun. I lot of attention has gone into this it
reflects that fanboy interest in things like the difference between
international cuts. As a follower of cult films, and having seen the various
cuts of Blade Runner, I see the strange magic where in these pragmatic
alterations become mythologised and fetishized. Where the myth of what wasn’t
made becomes bigger then what existed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">An example of that could be Jodorowsky’s Dune.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">This is where the power of this exhibition lies, as I progress
through the exhibition I become less enamoured with the material. The stuff
about the making of the film makes it feel more solid, pricks the mythology
makes it real. I want to have more, or should of stopped at the point where
that spoke more about the production of the myth surrounding a film, how the
fans create a fiction around another fiction.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Throughout my time in Hiker Meat I’ve been thinking about
Boards of Canada last album ‘Tomorrow’s Harvest’. I think about this because
the music was influenced by the electronic soundtracks of the era that Hike
Meat is supposed to come from. In essence Tomorrow’s Harvest offered a
narrative and soundtrack for a non-existent film. What Tomorrow’s Harvest
offers that I feel that Hiker Meat doesn’t is an I guess a space to be filled
by the viewer’s imagination.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">That may be unfair I’ve spent more time with Tomorrow’s
Harvest then I have with Hiker Meat.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The fictional film at the Hiker Meat is most successful when
it is fictional. When its promise lies within the salacious (and quite
beautiful posters) and within the details the goes into creating the ephemera
that supports the myth. Maybe like the exploitation films that inspired it the
film that is Hiker Meat can’t live up to its promise. Which, maybe
paradoxically, makes its absolutely right. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
C. James Faganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17901338536879514849noreply@blogger.com0