Aliyah Haneke

Make a Kilometre

For this assignment I decided to walk a kilometre around campus and film the sky throughout my journey. I thought filming the sky would be a bit more fun than just my feet since the route I took wasn’t directly through campus and was more quiet. Before I left I planned my journey on google maps on my phone and measured out where I’d have to walk to reach a kilometre. There’s not too much meaning behind this idea, but I thought it would be nice to take a walk around the school since the only time I really see the campus is when I’m rushing to my classes. I tried to walk under trees to make the video more visually appealing. I also like the way it looks when I pass buildings and the corners and different angles can be seen. Hearing my footsteps crunching under me, the wind and the occasional by passer’s conversation all adds to the rawness of the video in my opinion. I can even appreciate the shakiness and mediocre camera quality. I find since being at university I am constantly on the go, and if I’m not doing work or in my classes, I’m taking a nap or at the gym. when I was at home I used to go on walks with my family, or by myself. There was a forest near my house, now thinking, probably about a kilometre away, that I would walk to if I ever needed to just breathe, think or be by myself for a bit. The walk I took for this project was kind of reminiscent of that. It was nice to just walk with no specific destination and to take in the scenery.

The Case for Conceptual Art


Edward Ruscha
Twenty-six gasoline stations (1963) 
– Considered one of the first modern artist’s book 
– 26 photographs of gas stations with their brand and where they are located on each page.
– Originally 60 photos, 34 were eliminated from final edit because they were too interesting.
– Followed a journey from Los Angeles (where he lived) where he photographed ‘bobs service’ in Los Angeles, to Oklahoma (where he grew up).
Joseph Kosuth  
One and Three Chairs (1965) 
– He did not make the chair, take the photo, or create the definition but he put it all together and made a piece of art.
– What representation of the chair is the most “accurate”? 
– What makes art, art? 
– Readymade  

My Colour Walk

Christian Marclay

  • Audio Artist Research

Life & Early Work 

Christian Marclay is a 68-year-old visual artist and composer. He was born in 1955 in California but was raised in Geneva Switzerland and currently lives in London.  

His career as an artist has spanned over 30 years and during this time he has studied and investigated the relationship between visual art and audio through various media including sculpture, music, video and more. He also does works with performance, paintings, and photography. He is heavily influenced by artists like Yoko Ono, John Cage, Marcel Duchamp and Vito Acconci.  

He first dived into the world of audio, sound, and music while he was a student through performances with record players. He would strategically break apart vinyl records and then piece them back together, so they were still playable but full of abrupt sounds and changes of tone.  

Another work he did with vinyl was titled “Record Without a Cover”. He created a record and instructed it be sold without any packaging or protection. The damage that occurred as a result gave each record that was sold a whole new distinct sound.  

He often uses musical objects and instruments to create new sounds, different from the ones they are intended to sound like. He also does so in very visually interesting ways. For example, another piece of work he did is called Video Guitar Drag. In this video a fender guitar can be seen being dragged behind a truck on rocky roads.  

Guitar Drag – Christian Marclay (1999) video 

Images of his other works: https://www.artnet.com/artists/christian-marclay/

Audio Art Assignment

I read through Richard Serra’s Verb List, and choose a verb/prompt to turn into a piece of audio art. I decided to go with the verb “to tear”. My idea was to find as many things as I could in my dorm room that I could tear to make different sounds. I found things like cardboard, paper bags, printer paper, wrappers and plastic and filmed myself ripping them in half. I think it turned out interesting as there is a variety of sounds, some that are satisfying, some that are hard to listen to.

Fieldtrip

I had a lot of fun exploring different artist run centres on our field trip as I don’t believe I’d ever done so before. I didn’t take as many photos as I should have but I really enjoyed all of the places we visited and art work we saw. Our first stop was Mercer Union to see Lydia Ourahmane’s Tassili. This was a video piece she shot of time in the desert featuring sandstone terrain that over many years, had been shaped into natural but abstract shapes. This was very relaxing to watch as it was a nice even pace and flowed nicely. I was mesmerized by all the beautiful scenery she captured. We then went to Gallery TPW which featured a number of audio works. The room where we sat and listened was very calming and had a very inviting energy. All the pieces were so unique and interesting to listen to. Following that, we went to Xpace which was my favourite spot we visited. I liked the variety of work and being able to walk around a view everything. I really enjoyed looking at the zines they had as at the time I was creating my own zine for an assignment in my other art class. There were so many different styles and it was really cool to flip through them. One in particular that stood out to me was a spin off of Goosebumps, the book series by R.L. Stine. I used to read those books daily when I was younger so seeing different artists recreate the illustrations was awesome. I wish I had taken a picture of the cover but I only got the picture below of two pages in the book. Finally, our last stop was Trinity Square Video. One artist has a piece where she put strands of hair in plastic bags, allowing people to take them and provided a jar for people to leave their hair. I thought this was intriguing and I wish I knew more about the inspiration behind that piece. Cloud Painter was another really cool piece. I enjoyed the interactiveness and ability to walk in and examine objects, it was really unique and fun.

Video Art – Adjusting

Video 1: Adjusting

Our feat is the act of adjusting so for our sequence video we combined a number of gestures together that show one adjusting something. Adjusting is moving or fixing something slightly to achieve comfort or a desired appearance. Sometimes one adjusts without noticing or the adjusting of another goes unnoticed so we wanted to highlight these minuscule actions in our video. In this video specifically, we captured acts like fixing a necklace or adjusting our clothing, re-braiding hair so it appears more neat, and many more.

Video 2: Tie and Untie

For our loop video we chose the act of retying a shoelace over and over again. When I wear certain shoes I find myself needing to retie them because they get loose as I wear them throughout the day or because something causes them to come undone so this video represents that in a way.

Video 3: Make Yourself Comfortable


For our one shot we took inspiration from the slightly uncomfortable, spinning chairs that we sit on in class. Personally, I find these chairs to be hard to sit in for long periods of time and often adjust my position/posture to maximize comfort. This video is a continuous shot of me sitting in a chair and moving around every couple of seconds to represent our feat of adjusting.

Ideas for Button Project

There are my two ideas I came up with for the artist button project. My first idea is inspired from the lessons that can be found in childhood stories. I originally came up with this idea because I saw a girl on social media with a tattoo of an illustration from The Giving Tree. It reminded me how much I used to love that book and brought a nostalgic feeling to the surface. I was at home this past weekend and decided to find my old books and read my favourites. This made me realize that there are so many lessons and meanings behind these cute and fun stories made for children. In a way this idea draws from the prompt on our rubric, “a button that hides things usually hidden.” Although as an adult it is not hard to decipher, as a kid or even by reading the book carelessly, it is easy to brush past the deeper meanings embedded in the stories. Overall, I thought it would be fun to draw inspiration from something from my childhood and recreate them in my own way. I am still unsure if I’d like to only focus on The Giving Tree, and present the buttons as a single story, or if I want to use multiple stories with different quotes. I am leaning towards the second idea.

My second Idea is very different and highlights some of the things women have to deal with. Talking from personal experience, and even through things I’ve read on social media, I find that woman are constantly being judged and over-sexualized, specifically by men. I think, in a way, this idea draws on two prompts from the rubric, “a button that invites social interaction or presents provocation” and “a button that revels things usually hidden”. I think some people who read the texts on these buttons may react with provocation, especially seeing the words like “whore” and “nudes”. I think it also reveals, like I mentioned, things women have to deal with on the daily, and may bring these struggles to light. I am still brainstorming other sentences and statements to use for this button series.

My final idea is to put a different face on each button. Since I was little my grandpa would draw one of these faces on every single one of my birthday or Christmas cards. I absolutely love them and look forward to a new one in my cards each year. I think the black, line work against a white background looks really cool and I love the cartoon look of them. I don’t know if I’d want to put any text yet so I am going to figure that out if this is the idea I want to proceed with.

Button Project – Final

Title: Just a Girl

For my final project I went with my second idea which was to take a feminist approach on the buttons. As mentioned in my brainstorming, I wanted to highlight some phrases and words that are often said to women by men, as well as what women say in response to those words. They fall under the topic of sexual harassment and sexism. My vision was for them to simply be worn by women to make a statement. I think they may invoke provocation which was the goal for some of them. I originally wanted to just keep it simple and go with black text on a white background but I am glad I decided to go with different colours. I think the colourfulness makes them stand out and also makes them more fun to wear.

Thank You Piece

by: Peter Frank

Thank You Piece 

Thank you

Thank you

Thank you

Thank you

Thank you

Thank you

Thank you

Thank you

Thank you

Thank you

Thank you

Thank you

Thank you

Thank you

Thank you

Your politeness is no crime

I chose a piece from the Fluxus Workbook by Peter Frank, titled Thank you piece. While going through all the different pieces this one stood out to me because I immediately thought it would be cool to recreate on buttons. I had a lot of fun with the last button assignment so I was interested in creating more. In this piece the word thank you is repeated 15 times so I made 15 buttons. I chose red text on a white background because I wanted the text to pop and I thought red was the best colour for that. I feel it is a colour that expresses urgency and anger, and while reading and making these buttons I felt they had a passive aggressive feel to them. I imagined them in the context of holding the door for someone and them not saying thank you. Removing the “your” from the “politeness is no crime” was to make the sentence more general. Overall, I really enjoyed this mini assignment and the freedom we had to recreate what we wanted.

MFA Open Studios

My Experience ~

While I didn’t take photos during Open Studios, I really enjoyed all the art work and found Maureen Paley’s lecture to be compelling. I loved all the artists’ work and to say which was my favourite is tough, but I did find myself returning to Sophia Lapres’ studio multiple times. all her pieces were paintings and personally, paint is my preferred medium to work with so I suppose seeing her work was inspiring in some ways. I asked her about the poem she had tapped to the wall next to her paintings titled Love Stories and she explained that it was created using the title of her pieces which I thought was very creative. I also had fun exploring Danan Lake’s studio. For some reason I really enjoyed his piece with the mechanical moth attached to tree branches. I liked how he had a wide ranges of pieces in wide ranges of mediums. It was really cool to see Evgenia Mikhaylova’s work after seeing it on our field trip too. Unfortunately I didn’t get the chance to visit the studios in Alex other than when I was doing a tour for volunteering and they weren’t fully set up yet, but from what I did see, all the works were incredible.

Conceptual Portrait

Brainstorm

Final

For my conceptual portrait I decided to use my dad as my subject, represented through photos of times we have spent together. The materials I used for this piece include a wood canvas, printed photographs and modpodge to stick them down. I simply gathered the photos I think represented him best as my dad, cut them in thin strips so that no one besides him and I could discern them, and rearranged them on the canvas in random order. The photos range from as recently as this past summer to photos from over 7 years ago. It is more so about the memory and/or location associated with the photos rather than the fact that my dad and I are in them. My parents were never married and broke up a year after I was born, because of this, I spent little time with my dad when I was younger. I saw him once a week and sometimes every other weekend. Due to the fact that we had so little time together my dad would always find ways to make our time together fun and special. So to me, these photos represent not only the memories we have made together but how I perceive him as a person; fun, adventurous, caring, loving and someone who always tries to make the best out of every situation.


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