Bookstacks after Katchadourian
Going through my mother’s multiple-decade old collection of novels proved to be an insightful experience. Going through the spine of each book felt like reading one long free-verse poem about her. Aside from the two more “humourous” stacks, I’m most interested in the fact that I was able to find so many books that feature the word ‘daughter’ in their titles. I felt personally addressed while I was looking for the next title featuring the word daughter and after the following books echoing it.
Straying from Katchadourian’s method of capturing her books against a stark background, I wanted to include elements of the setting where I found the novels. I believe they are very much a part of the home, specifically the living room where my mum always sits reading. The stacks inherit a portrait-like quality when they are placed in a familiar setting such as this, with warm wooden flooring and a worn rug.
Environmental Art Research
Out of the artists presented, Wolfgang Laib’s artistic process stood out to me mainly due to how human it is. It seems to be a natural inclination of ours as a species to take account of the world around us, to collect and categorise, then communicate our findings to one another. The meditative aspect of collecting from the natural world over time, and reflecting the findings in such a way as to mimic the stillness felt while gathering said materials is a fascinating feat. This process is carried out in Laib’s decade-spanning pollen collections, such as in his 2013 work, Pollen from Hazelnut (2013) pictured in its inception below.
Not only does Laib create a still field of colour from the pollen of the natural world for viewers to contemplate, but to his point, the very medium is the “potential for life”. In a sense then, Laib instills the spaces he constructs these pieces in with the very stuff of creation, the essence of life all in one giant golden plane for viewers to take in.
In other cases, Laib works with beeswax to create or enhance structures of varying size such as in the piece There is No Beginning and No End (1999-2001). When I view the work he has created through this specific medium, I think of the cyclical work of the bees that have provided Laib with this medium, and how the creation of the structure is a continuation of the material itself, from nectar, to honey, to wax, to a stair-like structure which in its pyramidal shape represents an endless procession.
Wolfgang Laib meditatively accumulates natural perishable mediums, carrying on their existence by means of converting them into objects that illustrate notions of eternal life.
As mentioned before, the process of creating the pictured pieces feels scientific in nature. However, the conclusions that can be made about them are purely philosophical and spiritual. Laib’s educational background in medicine has informed this process, with his taoist background additionally laying the foundation for his works’ intent. Laib attributes the influence of his parents and their simplistic lifestyle inspired by the teachings of Laozi. By far, the most essential tenet of Taoism is the concept of spiritual immortality. Pairing this tenet with Laib’s near-humanitarian artistic intent, his body of work throughout his career speaks to the cyclical nature of life on earth and the ease we may be able to feel as humans upon becoming aware of this possible truth.
Video in the Arboretum (Research and Idea)
Following conversations and viewings of several video artworks in class on the 21st of September, Zoe, Bella and I began conversing amongst ourselves and had several revelations about what we would do for our assignment.
Personally, I was inspired in part by the use of comedy in our guest lecturer Megan Arnold’s work in informing the direction we would take the project. Megan often uses comedy within her practice as a means of conveying more introspective topics such as climate anxiety, perseverance, and generally what it means to be a human being in the digital age. Particularly in the work A Deal with Dog, I found that not only was the video humorous, but after the humour, questions regarding our relationship with nature after the advent of the internet arise. A viral song creates the backbone of the project, Megan takes the lyrics in a literal and personal direction through going outside with her pet dog to run up a hill. The sensibilities of late aughts and early 2010s internet culture seems to permeate her practice in this way. I couldn’t help but want to conjure up the same visual language with my group in our video project.
In another work of Megan’s, improvisation during production with a few specific constraints develops into an intriguing and once again internet-informed piece concerning our place in the world. Group of non-skaters are wrangled into the Zavitz gallery, wherein they are instructed to “dance” with their skateboarding implements, resulting in an array of results all occurring at once.
Again, this work combined with the former helped to steer me and my group toward a comedic direction that speaks through the unique lens of early 2010s internet comedy as well as an altered interaction with the environment we had not previously though of before. Improvisation would provide a key role in maintaining a fluid project with varying pieces of footage to arrange in post-production.
Megan Arnold helped facilitate a meaningful discussion with regards to my groups vision and the conceptual directions it could be taken in from an outsider’s perspective. After conferring, we came to the conclusion that we would shoot improvised footage of male volunteers in the arboretum close to the apiary where there is lots of grass. We will instruct them to be the best cows they can be and assimilate into the larger herd of male volunteers. No costumes will be used, nor will any group members directly attempt to interact with the “cows”, as that would make the production far too theatrical in my eyes, which is not the direction we wish to take the project in.
Audio will play a crucial role in this video project, as it will heavily influence the general atmosphere of the piece. This is still something we have to determine, whether an atmospheric field recording and the distant moos of our cows will suffice, or yet perhaps instead, multiple select cows will be connected to microphones to create an awkwardly intimate audio experience (similar to Megan’s audio choice in A Deal With Dog). While comedic in nature, I am sure there are conceptual meanings that will reveal themselves as we shoot and edit the footage and finally get it in front of many more eyes in the final critique.
Additional Research
In mooving forward with our original concept, we set out to research similar works and scholarship on the subject of becoming-animal and its larger purpose in the larger circle of discourse concerning eco-feminism and poststructuralist thought. As of my writing this (October 2nd), I can present only multiple hypotheses as to the conceptual extrapolations to be garnered from our shooting and editing of the footage given the improvisational and instinctual nature of the main concept. These anticipated conclusions will be back with the following research below and then reflected upon the final piece’s posting.
Gathered from the master’s thesis written by Florence Fitzgerald-Allsopp entitled Becoming-with-Animal: Cultivating a Feminist Understanding of Human-Animal Transformation in Contemporary Performance Art (2019), becoming-animal as a feminist practice within the scope of performance art may present us with the possibility of undoing the dualistic and heavily gendered reality we find ourselves in. We wish to create a space of play, where our male volunteers may embody the unfamiliar yet internally present representation of the cow and all it symbolises. Fitzgerald-Allsopp recognises and discusses the gendered manner in which domesticated animals and wild animals are historically gendered within philosophy. We acknowledge the historically “feminine” domestic animal and the “masculine” feral animal archetypes and seek to dissolve this notion through a transformative performance.
We aim to represent the cow through the bodies of male volunteers as a means of not only getting acquainted with the home we all fundamentally share as animals through the physical act, but to additionally coax out the genuine representation contained inside. The vulnerable state of becoming more than the constraints of the body will most likely generate a multitude of responses from viewer, all of which are welcome.
The most helpful piece mentioned in the paper in informing our process is that of Lucy Gunning’s The Horse Impressionists (1994). Here Gunning instructs several female volunteers to do an impression of a horse, some embarrassed, some serious and some startlingly accurate, the video is an excellent example of the meaning emerging out of the experiment. Of course, the guiding motivation was to tease apart the memory of the horse within each subject, yet the varying responses reflect a greater conversation on the collectively conceived representation of the horse and the uniquely female experience of playing horse as a child. Gunning creates a safe place of exploration of the self in relation to the animals carried with us in memory.
The representation of the cow in the collective memory of the volunteer group of male students will be made physical in their performance until performance may cease and a becoming occurs. These mental representations will interact in one space, as the volunteers learn from one-another. Fitzgerald-Allsopp notes that the collective women in the piece bring to mind “the notion of women as “pack” [which] lends to something more fearsome, more threatening and more political” (Fitzgerald-Allsopp, 2019). I believe a group of exclusively men attempting to embody the mental representation of a cow can be just as politically meaningful. A “herd” of men embodying cows can be construed as a radical act of embracing a communal space of rest and exploration.
Humour in this case is unavoidable. Humour and play are important in maintaining a space where above all, our volunteers in a vulnerable state can feel safe to carry out this process. This attempt of course is futile, as we have been socialised to see and label accordingly (perhaps another extrapolation that might present itself once we begin to edit our footage).
Source : Fitzgerald-Allsopp, Florence. (2019). Becoming-with-Animal: Cultivating a Feminist Understanding of Human-Animal Transformation in Contemporary Performance Art. 10.13140/RG.2.2.31102.43840. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/334165173_Becoming-with-Animal_Cultivating_a_Feminist_Understanding_of_Human-Animal_Transformation_in_Contemporary_Performance_Art
Final Video and Reflections
The shooting of the video shaped up to be an experience quite similar to Gunning’s work, in that our instruction to “be a cow” resulted in a collective physical embodiment of each participant’s mental representation of a cow. Small differences occurred; some would moo at one another, others laid in the grass alone. Cumulatively however, each male became a cow, a female, not a horned bull. In a sense we have allowed for the male participants to use their bodies in a transformative manner. In this state, they seemed to convene in a deeply honest manner that veers away from the hyper-masculine social codes young men seem to adhere to.
We emphasise these honest moments in rudimentary close-ups that reveal an innate softness we seemed to have brought out in this piece. I would like to believe that in some way, we revealed to ourselves and our participants that there exists an innate softness we have the ability to share with each other. In these states free from acting out tiring gender-specific behaviours, perhaps a regenerative power exists for us to explore.
Research and Inspiration for Book
The topic I desired to cover for this coming project came quite fast for me. I knew that I wanted to share with viewers a part of my practice that plays such an integral role in informing my “finished” works. Margin doodles and drawings offer a more intimate experience rather than “gallery ready” works. Giving my small drawings a platform to be viewed feels like a step in a refreshing direction, as it is often something I keep to myself.
The artist that comes to mind for me in informing my direction for this assignment is John Porcellino. He has served as a main inspiration in my drawing in how direct yet evocative his comix are. Reading his King Kat Compilation book in 2021 during the tail-end of lockdowns and isolation, John’s work really helped me stay connected to my feelings and reduced how alienated I felt at the time. He is common ground between me and my partner as well, informing both our tastes in self-expression and remaining emotionally aware. I was gifted Perfect example last Christmas and reading it solidified the direction I wanted to go in terms of reaching out to my audience.
In class while sharing our favourite books, I gravitated toward Witness My Shame by Shary Boyle for similar reasons as Perfect Example. Boyle is able to connect deeply with her viewers through these seemingly crude illustrations. Drawing in this way is a fast tool to record fleeting memory in a format that doesn’t take itself as seriously as painting sometimes can. I wish to connect with my viewers through depicting the feelings I have undergone in class during lectures prior to the assigning of this project.
Through creating a collection of scanned drawings from my lecture notebook this semester, my main goal is to capture personal interactions I have with myself and these being reflected in the margins and seeping or impressed through my written notes.
Book pages in progress (woo!)
Final Book pdf (cover and pages) (wee!)
Artist Multiple Research and Reflections
The two stand-outs from the playlist for me were Mary Reid Kelley and John Akomfrah’s respective work. The subversion of narrative plays a significant role in each artist’s practice which I find to be quite powerful considering the destructive role art has played in generating prevailing false notions of the oppressed. Kelley and Akomfrah actively place their unique standpoints within specific moments in history in order to reveal the forgotten populations in history.
The short film You Make Me Iliad features a clever mesh of poetic dialogue which masks the brutal nature of women sex workers during World War Two. A male German soldier tasked with overseeing a brothel believes his next source of inspiration for his written work lies in sex. A discussion ensues between him and a female sex worker regarding power and the using of women both physically and intellectually for personal gains. The referentially-dense dialogue diversifies meanings that can be gleaned from the piece, additionally speaking to the nature of making sense of senseless events so brutal as war (that may I add is an unabashedly male creation). Kelley discusses in her Art 21 interview the fact that all the trauma groups such as this were made to bear was never captured in first-hand accounts, meaning that just as the dialogue is abstracted, so too is the trauma as it is regurgitated through the passing mentions within soldier’s written notes and letters. Kelley reveals to us how trauma in these cases is disappeared by those history prefers to remember.
John Akomfrah creates impactful video art, often spanning entire walls as to create an enveloping and emotionally overwhelming display. In Vertigo Sea specifically, Akomfrah touches on the innately political and racial dimensions of the sea and its connections to human movement, both voluntary and involuntary, and the lives lost from one destination to the next. Reimaginings of historical paintings depicting the ocean portray black individuals as overseers of vast lands, subverting the intent of the original works as celebrations of whiteness and colonial culture. These scenes are interspersed among footage of immigrants on makeshift vessels, the Vietnam boat crisis, whale hunting, and marine life. The piece as a whole is a reflection on the ocean as a site of unimaginable cruelty just as it is historically rendered as a site of tremendous natural beauty.
Artists have the power to generate tangible thoughts/ideas with respect to activism. This allows us to define what it is that we are exactly trying to advocate for through critically engaging with associated work. This is very important when taking political action, as constant sharing of ideas and concepts is oftentimes the main driver. When I think about Kelley and Akomfrah’s practices, I get a good grasp of what artists can do to “undo” the damaging historical components of visual culture. Stereotypes or conventions can be reclaimed or reworked and put back into the world to transmit messages that better represent the communities they were originally aimed at attacking.
I think about how important it is to understand the history of art and who has been given the privilege to tell this history. This feels like a natural “jumping off point” with regards to my multiples. I intend to create a project that calls this subject into question while also fostering a community of people linked by the wrong that they have undeservedly faced.
Clothing as multiples interests me deeply. Objects that refer to their owners in their nature can be imbued with a decorative property depending on what is placed on them. With the same desire to shed light on untold histories as Mary Read Kelley and a similarly bold visual language as Barbara Kruger. In the same multiples assignment in experimental studio 1, I came up with the slogan “I am a male genius” on a whim. This time around I will be collaborating with my friend Ray in screen printing the slogan paired with a design of their making.
The design will be an amalgamation of various institutional figureheads, done through AI (which additionally contains destructive masculine undertones just as genius does) in order to create a symbol that compliments the notion of the slogan.
Multiple Process and Reflection
I could not be more happy with how a project has come out in this course than in the multiple project! Being able to continually learn new things and create something so cathartic with another artist (RAY FLEMING) that shares similar views with respect to the art world was a joy.
Now that I am able to spread this image and message among friends in the format of t shirts, I feel as if this can foster more of a community of people who have felt shadowed or outcast from the boys’ club. There is a male genius in all of our lives, who smiles proudly as he dehumanises us. Through averaging out a small portion of the male faculty in SOFAM and pairing it with my slogan, I express a very real anger through humour.
