Make notes on two things Kalman says that strike you, and one image from her ouevre – that feed your own thinking about art and the everyday – note/paraphrase the quote (see transcript) and elaborate. Include one image to discuss.
Images from the cover of Women Holding Things, Maira Kalman, 2023.
My book is a parody of the images from The Body: Photographs of the Human Form (1994). The images were dominantly white people, specifically sexualized photos of white women, perpetuating them as soft, sensual, and angelic, and upholding the ideal, the innocent, and the vulnerable perception of women through racist, colonial, patriarchal values. Additionally, this book was exceedingly ableist and presented many colonial values, dehumanizing people through their photographs, and capturing people and cultures as if they were test subjects, animals, or monsters. All and all, this book is really messed up. The Body successfully captures the white man’s view of what “the body” is, its potential, worth, ‘differences,’ sexuality, formation, mutilation, and decaying. Exploring a single narrative of what a body is functions to silence any other view or experience of “the body” outside of the perception of a white man. The Body universalizes our bodies to the point where few can relate to the images contained within the book.
As a queer, transmasc person, I couldn’t relate to hardly any of the images that were intended to be universal. My relation to my body didn’t fit within the narratives portrayed, leaving my experience silenced and disregarded. In return, I acted to reconstruct the images to authentically relate to my experience and relationship with my body, how I perceive my body’s worth, sensations, sexuality, formation, reformation, dysmorphia, and origin. Ripping pages, cutting, stapling, and drawing on top of the images, I worked to disrespect the book and honor my lived experiences with my relationship to my body.
I recommend everybody do this, it was very cathartic. To physically take the single narrative and dominant view of “the body” and critique and remix it to represent you and your experience allows you to reflect and feel seen. Feels good. (from Anna’s/Andi’s blog post, 2023)
Lecture: Artist Books – Collection and reading together in class
Discuss book design/concepts
ARTIST BOOK ASSIGNMENT: A BOOK ABOUT A BOOK
Pop Quiz By Dave Dyment About the project: A near comprehensive collection of all of the questions posed in pop songs from the artist’s music collection. 360-page softcover artist’s book 5″ x 8″ Edition of 500, numbered and signed by the artist (each with unique handwritten question) $50
Experimental 2/3
ARTIST BOOK PROJECT: A BOOK ABOUT A BOOK
Note on Schedule: 1. Book design workshop with Nathan
2. WORK IN PROGRESS due for discussion
3. ***Final works uploaded and submitted for printing deadline****
4. Works will also be discussed in progress during class.
Consider a book. Use any book you are interested in – a novel, a textbook, a book of essays, a field guide, a book of maps, a self-help book, an instruction manual, a cookbook, a memoir, a monograph… the possibilities are endless.
Choose one book as the point of departure for a print-on-demand artist book that you will develop and design in class. Like examples of artist publications discussed in class, your artist book will emphasize image over text and be an artwork in its own right. It can be any length or size available on Blurb.com under a budget of (total) $28 including taxes.
Your work can be about the book, use the book’s images, respond to or engage the book in any way. Consider content, text, meaning, and image in your work. The original book may or may not be visible or obvious in your finished work – but the artist book will represent your own version of the ideas in the book, and your own responses. The work may be discursive and legible, or it may be austere, formalized or abstract.
Strategies and motifs you may consider:
Scanning and photocopying from books
Using found photographs from the internet
Taking photographs
Working with appropriated text
Using text as image
Making a book from the past into the present
Focusing/repeating one detail in a book
Exploring visual references in the book
Responding to cover art, diagrams or illustrations in a book
No class meeting in lieu ofFIELD TRIPFriday Sept. 27th – 9:30am – 6pm
Due: FIELD TRIP BLOG POST
Note: You may work with your partner in the arboretum and use equipment to shoot videos on site.
WEDNESDAY
Discuss field trip:
Rave Chacon – Three Songs (2021) is a three-channel video installation that explores a history of Native resistance and questions the myth of an uninhabited American West. In the video, Indigenous women appear singing in their languages and playing instruments while they occupy historical sites of massacres, violence, and the forced displacement of tribal peoples. The work features Sage Bond (Diné), Jehnean Washington (Yuchi) and Mary Ann Emarthle (Seminole) who sung in their native tongue a history of resistance on the Trail of Tears, the Navajo Long Walk, and the forced expulsion of the Seminole. (From TBA website)
In Sonnet of Vermin, a legion of unwanted creatures related to the Mesoamerican underworld attempt to syntonize with one another and with the dead in the midst of a planetary cataclysm. The vermin are unspecific animals who are asociated with negative aspects, damage or destruction. A bat broadcasts frequencies from a tomb with the help of a funerary bundle/radio. A group of frogs/children are paranormal cyborgian amphibians who have adapted to toxicity and they demand another fix of cyanide. A twisted scorpion is a bad omen who claims for the right of infection. A snake sheds her skin while she announces the transformation of the cycles. A telluric alligator devours all what she finds on her way. A brigade of arms insists on raising from the earth. All of them seek for a subaltern solidarity and queer relationality as a form of re-existance within the ruins. (from the artist’s website)
Leila Zelli (@leila.zelli) is a Montreal-based artist born in Tehran whose work explores the relationship that we have with the ideas of “others” and “elsewhere” and, more specifically, within the geopolitical space often referred to by the questionable term “Middle East.” She creates in situ digital installations using existing images, videos, and texts often found on the Internet. With the resulting visual and sound experiences, she creates an opportunity for viewers to reflect on the state of the world, their relationship with the Other, and the actual effect of our actions on humanity. Leila will be presenting Pourquoi devrais-je m’arrêter ?(Why should I stop?) (2020-21), a video installation shown on two screens. The work pays tribute to the resilience of Iranian women who defy the ban on practicing Varzesh-e Bâstâni in public, a traditional form of athletics. (from the Toronto Biennial of Art)
Discuss field trip
Video editing refresher demo
Editing and consultations in class
Show footage/work in progress
Video shooting in Arboretum if needed.
REMINDER:
VIDEOS DUE OCTOBER 9th/16th – sign up for critiques
