Welcome back to school everyone, I’m very happy to have a way to come together to learn about contemporary experimental art practices. During the pandemic, we will engage in weekly exercises, demos, readings and videos to learn some of the historic, theoretical, and technical aspects of working in experimental media forms.

Our virtual course will emphasize ideas, research, regular exercises and practices, as opposed to more developed and resolved artworks.

Students will perform and create studio exercises at home and in the world – within strict adherence to public health guidelines at all times – using materials and situations at hand. Together we will practice being resourceful and creative within the limits of any given situation. We will explore how to be an artist now – using aspects of performance, snapshot photography, video, audio, and artist multiples – in this unique and challenging historical moment.

Every week we will have Tuesday class meetings – and then you will do the week’s homework (things to read, write and create) posted under Weekly Assignments.

All work is due for the following Tuesday class. If you are finished your work many of you will have an opportunity to share and get feedback. You will need approximately 4-6 hours to complete your work for this course every week in addition to class meeting time.

Schedule your work and you will be able to keep up with your assignments!

All your notes, images and videos must be on the class BLOG – under your name. ONLY edit your own page – do not edit anything else on the blog. I will periodically read and evaluate your work on the BLOG and we will occasionally look at examples of works by students together in our class HUDDLE.

See course information, and evaluation for details.

WEEK 1 ASSIGNMENTS:

Summary of Week 1 work:

1. Watch lecture materials
2. Notes on Katchadourian and other artists’ works
3. Do Book Stacks exercise and post all work to blog under your name

LOOK AT: Nina Katchadourian’s Book Stacks projects

“The Sorted Books project began in 1993, and it has has taken place on many different sites over the years, ranging form private homes to specialized book collections. The process is the same in every case: I sort through a collection of books, pull particular titles, and eventually group the books into clusters so that the titles can be read in sequence. The final results are shown either as photographs of the book clusters or as the actual stacks themselves, often shown on the shelves of the library they came from. Taken as a whole, the clusters are a cross-section of that library’s holdings that reflect that particular library’s focus, idiosyncrasies, and inconsistencies. They sometimes also function as a portrait of the particular book owner. The Sorted Books project is an ongoing project which I add to almost each year, and there there are hundreds of images in the ongoing archive to date.”

Read Katchadourian’s descriptions of the unique libraries she worked in to make the series Sorted Books.

Dave Dyment:

Ryan Park:

WATCH:

WRITE: What are some of the strategies Katchadourin, Dyment and Park used to select and order books in their final works? What were their decisions based on, and how do the final compositions expand the meaning of each individual book, or come together to have a new and surprising meaning about the library, the family, about language and books, or about anything else? Select two pieces to discuss.

MAKE: Make 3 of your own Sorted Books stack. Choose a personal library (or some other special library) you have access to now – it could be the books you have in your bedroom, the books at your parents house, the books at work, all the books of all your roommates etc. Create a composition, with as many books you need, and photograph it. It doesn’t have to be a “portrait” of the person whose library it is – look for concise messages, play with words and concepts, experiment with different titles in relation to one another in different ways. Include the images, a short description of your library, and your process of creating the compositions on your blog page.

Hello Experimental Students,

I hope you are all safe and well, and I am looking forward to welcoming you back to school at our first official virtual class which will be TUESDAY Sept.  next week. Every week we will have synchronous – real time class HUDDLEs, on Tuesdays from 2:30 – 3:30, mark your calendars! See Course Link for links and details. 

But before that – I would like to you tune in to a very special program this week Wed Sept. 9 and Thurs. Sept. 10th called Scholar Strike. 

From the website:

Scholar Strike is a labour action/teach-in/social justice advocacy happening. Scholar Strike originated in the U.S from a tweet by Dr. Anthea Butler who, inspired by the striking WNBA and NBA players, put out a call for a similar labour action from academics.   The Canadian action is aligned with the one in the U.S., in its call for racial justice, an end to anti-Black police violence and it adds a specific focus on anti-Indigenous, colonial violence. 

Here is the full program of live discussions and lectures: https://scholarstrikecanada.ca/quick-program-overview/

I strongly encourage you to tune in, to learn more about the Black Lives Matter movement, and think about ways we can personally, and collectively acknowledge and eliminate racism, inequality and injustice in our society.  

Listening to activists, artists, and other racialized authours like Ibram X. Kendi – have given me a lot to think about, especially about how we all have work to do to address our own racist biases, and to challenge racist ideas, and to actively work against racist policies and inequality in all aspects of public and personal life. 

I strongly recommend you take the time to listen to this incredible podcast from CBC radio’s Out in the Open – Ibram X. Kendi’s conversation with Pia Chattopadhyay: 

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/outintheopen/ibram-x-kendi-says-we-are-either-being-racist-or-antiracist-there-is-no-middle-ground-1.5350278

Have a listen to this and other crucial teach-ins this week – and see you all on Tuesday, Diane

More info coming soon, see you Tuesday!

Week 12

My cake by the fire!

My experience during this pandemic has been far from normal or even close to convenient. From not having proper functioning wifi, to a broken computer, to having an extremely loud household, to being close to people that don’t respect public health guidelines. I have travelled far and wide from Guelph to St. Thomas ON, to Toronto, to Kitchener, all with the intention of finding a better living situation and being able to properly focus on a full school course load. Unfortunately for some projects, I have not been able to fully participate which makes me incredibly sad. From living in unfinished basements, to couch-surfing, while continuing to travel back to Guelph for work, the pandemic has definitely been one of the hardest and most frustrating times of my university life. I hope these photos express my tireless efforts but also my gratitude to such an understanding and accepting class. Thanks for everything!

Week 6 Notes

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Zoom Video Project Week 7

Class Notes

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Bread Week 8

Class Notes

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My bread!! It turned out denser than I would have liked, but I though it resembled a baguette texture, only fatter! I am not a baker at all but I found this exercise of not having to bake for anybody but myself very liberating. I was so happy and surprised with my result that I shared a few pieces with my housemates. We all had a piece with some herb and garlic cream cheese spread on it! Yum! Next time I will try incorporating different spices or maybe chocolate chips inside the dough to give it some extra flavour. Overall, I loved this week and felt so connected with everyone in class with this super simple idea of making bread all together!

Week 9 Notes

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Week 10/11 Video Project

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Sorted Books Stack Project Week 1

By Sydney Rowles

Katchadourin, Dyment and Park, the 3 artists studied in preparation for this assignment, all used interesting techniques when selecting books for their final works. One strategy I believe was commonly used was choosing books by interpreting them as sculptural objects; looking at their weight, size, mass, their wear and tear, even the font sizes since all of these factors have major impacts on the overall finished look and message of the work. Another technique that was mentioned that I, personally, tried to include in my sorted book stacks was to align all of the titles on top of one another or ‘flush left’ in order to increase legibility and have the message of the work come through quickly and easily to the viewer.

I specifically enjoy the book stack A Day at the Beach from the Sorted Books project, not only because I am drawn to the stacks that tell a story through a series of words, but the repetition of the sharks (Shark 1, Shark 2, Shark 3) is so simple yet helpfully adds to the suspense of the short story and creates an image in the mind. Above all, the Sudden Violence book is what stands out the most among the other books by not only being the climax of the story, but with the added colour and scary font. I believe the effect would not have been as great if the book were the same font and colour as the other books.

The second book stack that inspired me was (I believe it is called) Cult of the Cat, again from the Sorted Books project. Not only am I a personal lover of felines but I also loved how this funny stack was created simply by a group of books all with a similar subject. The fact that they are all different colours and fonts adds to the individuality of the cats themselves and helps create images of real cats with these names in the mind.

The three book stacks I have created are all comprised of books that came from my mother’s book collection. She is one of the biggest, widely-spread genre book readers I know and I thought it would be interesting to look through her collection for the first time. To my delight, she was happy to share her collection without any fears of judgement and by the end she became equally interested in the project and was finding and adding books to what became my final stacks!

For my first sorted book stack, I first found the book The Heart is a Lonely Hunter and thought to myself “and what would it do?”, so just like the A Day at the Beach short story stack, I created a story about the heart. My favourite part has to be the irony of the small and almost missable Mostly Harmless as we all know what the heart is capable of.

For this sorted book stack, I looked for books in my mother’s collection that had a unifying theme of eating and food. To my surprise, the final menu cam out pretty interesting… Bon Appetit!

For my third and final sorted book stack, I randomly discovered a trend in some of my mother’s book titles that surprised the both of us! Books with numbers in their name! I wanted to continue the theme but the only other numbers I had to deal with were 7, 10, 50, and 101! Sadly the pattern had to end here but if I get the chance, I would love to add on and repost a larger and longer stack someday soon!

Text as Art Week 2

By Sydney Rowles

Nadia Myre’s Indian Act is a large group-effort piece that contains all 56 pages of the Federal Government’s Indian Act, each mounted on individual pieces of cloth and sewn over with red and white beads.  The white beads stand in for each and every letter while the red beads fill the background. This was a very clever medium as not only are beads close to the same size as the documents and words they cover, but also, beads are a well-recognized material used in many First Nations art and this well represents their culture.  This work is an extreme statement on opinions of colonialism and the realities of government effects on the Indigenous population.  The fact that the artist gathered many people of her background who share the same story to help finish this work feels like a valuable group contribution to the Indigenous rights movement.  This is a great example of how an artist belonging to a marginalized population re-appropriates a document that is used to oppress them and turn it into a powerful art statement.

Barbara Kruger’s Belief + Doubt installation is extremely immersive, dramatic and makes many powerful statements.  The artist has chosen the inside of a Museum bookstore to completely cover with her photomontages.  She has covered the entire space in black, white and red vinyl, and has chosen to display her words in a confrontational high-contrast manner.  The way she has chosen to display her art is extremely effective since her messages all highlight the problems of consumerism and themes of desire.  It is interesting that she has chosen to place these words in a place of consumption, ie. the bookstore, in order to target the customers and make them think twice about their needs and wants.  I feel like if I were in this space, I would feel extremely uncomfortable and almost smacked in the face by these statements, which I believe is the feeling the artist is aiming for in viewers.

Banner Project Week 3

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After poking through the article Dirty Words: Interesting, I discovered the powerful words “depend on the feminist” and decided to turn it into a statement piece. Currently, the feminist movement is stronger than it has ever been, its main focus on the rights of the female population and the issues of equality, domestic violence, sexual harassment, maternity leave, and many others. When creating this banner, I felt that the words “the feminist” deserved special attention and chose to have them stand out in a bright sparkly red. This setting reminds me of a banner on a wall at a party and the thought of having a feminist party after the movement becomes successful would be amazing, and I believe these exact words would fit the occasion perfectly.

My 2nd banner I decided to create just for fun was the word “camouflage” found within the article Dirty Words: Interesting. I thought it would be intriguing to camouflage the physical word ‘camouflage’ and so I shot the image of the black letters in a very dark room with only a little light coming from a window.

Social Distance Videos Week 4

Notes:

I was very inspired by Adad Hannah’s 1 minute stills of people protesting and holding the motivational signage, as I felt very moved and thought they made powerful statements. Here are some examples:

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THIS IS NOT A PROTEST ABOUT ANY COMPLAINTS THAT HAVE BEEN SPOKEN DURING COVID OTHER THAN THE ONES ABOUT PEOPLE NOT WANTING TO WEAR MASKS !! As a statement contrary to the recent protests against wearing masks where people have been saying “my ears are hurting from wearing masks”, I decided to create a still video of the opinions me and my housemates share on the matter. COVID-19 is not going to disappear on it’s own and everyone needs to do their part by following public health policies and wearing their masks properly! #wereinthistogether

Housemates: Serena, Sheyda, Anna, Shelby

Serena: “Covid has been a tough time for everyone, its so important for us to follow public health guidelines so we can hopefully end this thing sooner than later!!”

Sheyda: “Pointing fingers at anti-maskers and making this a political problem is not going to solve the issue since it is against human nature to do the right thing when they’re forcefully told to do so. Instead if we want to motivate good public health decision making, we have to appeal to people’s core values. This means connecting mask wearing to the value of caring for each other in all Canadians and how it is worth the inconvenience and discomfort to wear one.”

Anna: “Think of it this way: wouldn’t you want a stranger who could possibly have COVID who comes near one of your family members to wear a mask? I just think people need to put themselves in other people’s shoes!”

Shelby: “I think the main problem is that people don’t believe they have it since it takes up to 14 days for symptoms to show up. Thats the real danger in all of it! Protect yourselves and others!”

Another still video I created regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on the over-consumption of the public and how so many people are being left without their amenities or basic human needs. This obsession with the fear that the world is going to run out of paper products is so mind-boggling. Why aren’t the food isles completely sold out instead? The first wave was toilet paper. Now, WHERE IS ALL THE PAPER TOWEL?

Notes for Food Video Project

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Sips & Bites

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkcxaJQWLpw[/embedyt]

Zoom/Grid Video Edits

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNL6P335uKM[/embedyt] [embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zq1oTEmYT6E[/embedyt]

Video Art Notes

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Social Distancing Film Stills

When I was researching Adad Hannah, I was inspired by his painting stills of The Raft of Medusa (St Louis) and A Vulgar Picture based on a series of paintings by William Hogarth. The idea of shifting mediums is key in the works I was focusing on; namely, the painting becoming video performance, and the social distance portraits with photographic elements becoming video performance. I wanted to incorporate this and bend it with my own tastes while still remaining true to Hannah’s style of the still video performance. To do this, I originally asked a few of my friends at Sheridan college if I could take some social distancing portraits of them while they were shooting one of their films, then take the medium of a moving picture (film) and freeze it. Due to the increase in covid cases in Ontario they were no longer able to shoot the film together, so I had to shift my idea. I wanted to stick with altering the medium of film and the unique paradox of a tableau film still, while still being a video performance with obvious intriguing movement from the elements of wind, water, birds, human balance. I carefully selected two films with opposing genres and styles of cinematography that I was able to use on location, the pier. By using the same location for the two stills, I am speaking to our situation in the world right now, we are all in the same physical place we were a year ago, but the angle has changed and we are looking back to the world before the pandemic, which feels very juxtaposed compared to the way we live now. It’s up to the interpreter whether or not the darkness was before or after the pandemic, or perhaps it is a combination of both. 

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elgMAMEAH5U[/embedyt]

Still #1 | inspired by Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6M4LqT_jZA[/embedyt]

Still #2 | inspired by Robert Egger’s The Lighthouse

Notes Week 1

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WRITTEN RESPONSE

Nina Katchadourian used multiple techniques to select books for her books

1. Going in blind and objectively, getting to know the person through their books
2. Looking at every book in the “getting to know you phase” and listing repetitive and interesting titles
3. Categorize the titles that jump out
4. Testing out different combinations with Q cards and finally going to the books and taking into account their mass and sculptural quality

The book stack “RELAX”

• The layout is very compelling, the spines are framed by a yellowish border, with the one green book and the purple spine emphasis good the colour in the word “guilty”
• The composition of colours is truly purposeful and carries your eye to the important words (“relax”, “no”, “guilty”, “yes”) and the book with the simple, dainty type is like a faint voice in the story of the titles or a thought in the back of this person’s mind, a whisper “God Always Says Yes”.
• I believe even apart these books say something about their owner, the repitió of the titles emphasizes this persons possible struggle and internal conflict. The back-and-forthness of the titles is as if the books are fighting with one another and an interesting dialogue reveals itself from within this person’s library and brain

Books Stack “The Junky’s Christmas”

• This assortment of books made me laugh. First off the title “The Junky’s Christmas” is a jarring title and these books truly bring it to life
• without one another these books do not speak all that loud, but together these titles almost read as a comic book, especially with the “SMACK!” Title
• The colours are cohesive and come together well, even thee design of the top book points down encouraging you to keep reading the spines while also mimicking the needle, and book titles turn to red evoking the look of blood dripping down the stack.
• These books tell a different story about the owner than the “relax” stack of self-help books an the story of an internal struggle. I do not believe these books point to the owner as being a junky.
• It is fascinating to me that simply arranging a person’s library can tell such stories and create these narratives, truthful or not, the care and purpose put into these stacks is admirable

Book Assortments from My Family Library

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Notes Week 2

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Text as Art Written Response

After watching the lecture on text as art, two pieces grabbed my attention for very different reasons (1) Fruit and Other Things by Lenka Clayton and John Rubin, and (2) Jenny Holzer’s Truisms. 

In Clayton and Rubin’s piece there was an underlying melancholia and sombreness that is provoked in this exhibition. They carefully write out the title of the rejected painting and display it alphabetically and then give them away. What caught my attention of this work was the very mechanical systematic production of these pieces; from archival records, in alphabetical order, all in the same size, colour and font. But with this systematic nature there is also something beautifully poetic and calming about their choice of medium; the display room is plain, simple, not overpowering or demanding, it’s almost meditative. The works read together in a completely new context, they are no longer categorized by their era, or artist, or genre. These are the mediums that failed the original artist, and now all that exists of their work is the titles, the titles hold a paradox of failure and success not the original material. 

In contrast, Holzer’s Truisms were made for contemplation and questioning, they are blunt, political and hilarious. The broad and loud medium of her truisms is “in your face” and anything but calm and sweet. Her statements have found themselves on billboards, subway posters, t-shirts and hats, LED signs and more, they are more of a public forum in that they are not there to be appreciated they are there to start conversations, make people ask questions and consider their own views. Since they are prominent in public spaces they are likely to be seen by many more people, and people from different walks of life, and when you get all types of people talking, sharing perspectives and listening to one another, you can start to chip away at ignorance. 

Notes Week 3

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until our eyes bleed

‘Until our eyes bleed’ is a relatively horrific statement, and its imagery lends itself to this time of intense technology use. The feeling this phrase gave me was a trapped uneasy one, in which we have a growing dependency on our screens. Our lives can entirely become defined by pixels (zoom. FaceTime, social media, online shopping, streaming services) if we are not self-aware, and carve out time to unplug. I used the plain default Apple font Helvetica Neue in red to signify the ‘bleed’, I used wire to string together the letters, and made the sign rather quaint and un-invasive. This is because the spiral of getting sucked in to the internet and being on a screen happens quite naturally for a lot of people, it is gradual. Secondly the viewer is intended to zoom in to get a better idea of what the sign says; zooming in on a screen within your own screen. The banner may not physically be overtop of your screen but the message is still there inside the pixels, encouraging self awareness and the importance of putting down the technology when you can.

Below is a photo of each member of my immediate family on their screen in their work space, on a program they frequently use, I felt the ‘our’ in ‘until our eyes bleed’ lends itself to a collective.

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Week 10: Food Art

The Colours of Food

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For this project I created a series of photos of fruits and vegetables, with colour as the visual aspect of food. Originally I wanted to focus on the compositions and displays of food. I wanted my photos to look like the photos of food that you see in advertisements such as commercials, or grocery store flyers. When I began this project I photographed my many different meals. I played around with the lighting and camera angles, and ended up with a bunch of photos of food like pasta, chicken, and bread, but none of them really stood out to me. I then took a few photos of blueberries and bananas, and realized that I wanted to focus on the colours of food as one of foods visual aspects. So I decided to only photograph fruits and vegetables as they are the most colourful type of food. I love how vibrant the colours of these foods turned out. I really enjoyed taking these photos, picking out the most colourful fruits and vegetables I could find, and playing around with different camera angles and the positioning of food.

Week 9:

Food Art Ideas:

For this project I really want to focus on the overall look of food, the composition of it. When I think of food photography, I think of the photos of food you see in advertisements, such as commercials, magazines, billboards, and grocery store flyers. You can tell that there is a lot of thought and planning that goes into these type of photographs, from the specific positions and arrangements of each piece of food, to the overall composition, the lighting, and a clean background. This is what I am looking to do for the project. I want to really focus on the specific positioning and placement of food to truly capture the visual aspects of food photography.

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These are a couple of my very rough unedited ideas. I shot these two photos with my phone, however, I plan on using my DSLR camera for this project, and much better lighting. But I find that these photos are still able to capture the idea of the display and composition of food that I am looking to focus on.

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Here are a couple examples of food photography seen in advertisements. With these images you can see that there was a great deal of thought and planning that went into the arrangement of food and the composition. This planning and arranging of food is kind of what I want to base my idea on for this project.

Week 8:

The Rise and Fall of Bread Podcast Notes:

• A companion is someone you break bread with
• There is a social aspect to bread, it is meant to be shared
• Bread teaches us civility, democracy, and who we are
• Bread is life
• The yeast that makes bread rise is a living organism
• We use bread because Jesus was the first to use bread
• Bread is a symbol of God’s generosity
• The art of baking bread is in the feel
• Bread needs the human mind, and is what caused the population to grow
• Is bread our salvation or our damnation?
• Grain has shifted the balance of power
• Bread is money, people used to be paid with bread. “Making dough”
• Bread is about religion, politics, society, language
• Bread gave rise to civilization
• Bread is a connection to the divine, and a symbol of equality
• Flour, water, and time are the three main things to make bread
• The story of bread is every story

I’m not really sure what I would do without bread, it is one of my favourite foods. I eat some sort of bread at least once a day, I have a bagel or toast everyday for breakfast, and I always have a loaf of Villaggio bread and either sesame seed or cinnamon raisin bagels in my house. Bread is also one of my favourite smells, I love the smell of a bakery or the bread section of a grocery store. Whenever I go to my mom’s house there is always a lot of food there, especially bread. She will always have a loaf of bread, a couple things of bagels, english muffins, wraps, and baguettes. I never understood how four people could go through that much bread, but apparently its possible. My mom also has a bread maker, she’s had it for 20 or so years and it doesn’t get used that much, but in April at the beginning of quarantine we used it a lot. She would get my brother and I to make bread to go as a side with dinner. Surprisingly my teenage brother was a lot more interested in making bread than I was. One of my comfort foods is probably grilled cheese. Bread and cheese are two of my favourite foods, its easy to make, and I’m always cold so I love eating food that warms me up. I think the reason why so many people have been making bread throughout the pandemic is that it is a fun and enjoyable way to pass time. It may also help with stress, and there are many different recipes and kinds of bread you can make that it will never get boring. One thing that I found very interesting about the podcast is that bread can have so many different meanings and can be about so many different things.

Week 7:

Notes:

The first video I watched was Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay’s Live to Tell. This work is made up of 16 screens of surveillance camera footage. It consists of 16 men who look similar and are all wearing black clothes, in what appears to be a dance studio. The men are singing a cappella and performing a choreographed dance routine. I found this video to be very interesting because I still can’t quite tell if there are 16 different men or if its the same man wearing different clothes. I also can’t tell if each screen is in the same room because the walls and floors look very similar, but the camera angles are different. I think that this video was well thought out and choreographed because the dancing and movements were perfectly lined up for where each of the 16 screens were placed within the video. I also really like how some of the men were facing the surveillance cameras while others had their backs to it. The artist chose to use multiple camera angles, multiple screens, and had each person standing or dancing in a different position or doing different movements. I think that these choices made watching the video visually interesting. However, with 16 screens I found it a little difficult to watch because I couldn’t just watch one screen, I would have to jump back and forth between all of the 16 screens.

The second video I watched was Michelle Pearson Clark’s Suck Teeth Compositions. This work consists of multiple people standing in front of a white background performing the act of sucking their teeth. This video stood out to me because at first I thought it was such a weird and simple task for random people to perform. Then it seemed as though the artist was trying to make some sort of beat out of the different sounds of sucking teeth, and I found that to be quite interesting. I like how the artist decided to use three people on the same screen, whether it was three shots of the same person or three different people. I feel as though when explaining the instructions the artist simply told the performers to suck on their teeth, and thats why it looks as if the people are kind of judging her and look a little confused.

My video:

I ended up changing my video a bit from my video art proposal. I still went with the idea to do a zoom call while playing just dance on the wii, but instead of having three screens and three people, I decided to use two screens and two people. We originally tried using three screens but I found there wasn’t enough space in the living room for three people because we kept getting in each others screen, and there was a lot more random sounds with three people that the song we were dancing to wasn’t picking up in the video at all. The problem of getting in each others screens lead me to decide on a song that my roommate and I have played maybe once or twice that also involved a lot of side to side movements where we could jump back a forth between screens. I think that jumping between the two screens made the video more visually intriguing. I also like that even though my roommate and I were standing next to each other, it looks as though we are in different rooms because the lighting is different on the two screens. I was really interested in making and capturing a fun, energetic video that shows how my roommate and I have been spending our time during the pandemic doing something that we both enjoy.

Week 6:

Zoom Video Art Proposal

My first idea is for my two roommates and I to do a zoom call in the living room playing just dance on the wii. I was thinking we could each set up our laptop and angle them so that there would only be one person in front of each laptop. I thought of this idea because my roommates and I play just dance pretty much everyday. I’m leaning more towards this idea because I think it would be a lot of fun to try, it would be a very interesting video, and my roommates have already both agreed to it. Some of my thoughts on this idea are that I’m not too sure how the sound will work with three laptops being in the same room. I’m also not sure if we should pick one song to dance to or a couple and keep recording the zoom call in between songs. If I try this idea I would want to pick a more upbeat song with lots of movement, and one that my roommates and I know pretty well. If I were to record a couple of dances, I could choose one song the three of us know well and one song that none of us have ever played. Below are some images of how I would set up this idea. The laptops are angled so that there would only be one person on each screen and in a way that we would all be able to still see the tv.

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For my second idea I was thinking about using my instrumental ensemble group and playing our piece over zoom. One of the courses I’m in this semester is an instrumental chamber ensemble. I play the flute, and in my group there is another flute player, a violin player, and my instructor also plays the violin. It’s been very different this semester, we record ourselves playing the piece and then talk about our recordings over zoom every week. Sometimes we all try playing over zoom. It’s not always that easy as it’s difficult to listen for the other parts over zoom, but I think that if all four of us played the piece over zoom it would make for an interesting video.

Week 4:

Liam: “Not thankful for covid on thanksgiving.”

Erynn: “Stressed but happy he’s in my bubble.”

This video is of my brother and his girlfriend at an apple orchard and pumpkin patch in Stouffville. I took this video over the thanksgiving weekend. They wanted me to come to the apple orchard with them only so I could take photos of them. It was very awkward and I felt like the biggest third wheel, so I said to them if I’m taking photos of you then you get to be a part of my project. In this video I wanted them to stand 6 feet apart because thats what I think of when I think of social distancing. I also thought it was a bit ironic to make them stand that far apart because they are always close together. I noticed that in Adad Hannah’s videos, the people in them are close to the camera, most of them are looking directly at the camera, and the videos are shot from eye level. I wanted to change it up and kind of make it my own, so I decided to place the camera on the ground for a different perspective. I got my brother and his girlfriend to back away from the camera until they were six feet apart and in the frame. I also wanted them to look at each other as if they were having a conversation while social distancing.

Paul: “The pandemic allowed for more time to get into shape.”

This video is of my dad right before he left for his bike ride. Adad Hannah’s videos seem to be of normal people out in the world simply living their lives, and doing everyday activities. So I asked my dad what is the one thing that you enjoy doing everyday, and he said biking. That’s why I decided to take the video of him on his bike. I also wanted to include the mask because I think that with it on it shows that we are living in different times, where a mask is one of the most important things you need, and is something you can’t leave the house without.

Week 1:

The strategies that Katchadourian uses to select and order books is sorting the books by titles that she finds interesting. She then orders and stacks the books so that the titles are readable and almost tell a story from the top to the bottom of the stack. Dyment orders books chronologically. In his one book stack, the books are ordered chronologically over the span of one billion years. Park orders books by the colour of the book covers. The books are colour coordinated, and they are all opened up about half way through each book within the stack.

In Nina Katchadourian’s A Day at the Beach, the final composition of the seven book titles tell a story. Each one of the books need to be where they are in the stack in order to understand the story. If one or two of the books were not in the stack, the final composition would have a completely different meaning, and tell a much different story.

In Dave Dyment’s One Billion Years, the final composition is ordered in chronological order, with the books dating over the span of one billion years. If a few of the books were switched around, it would change the meaning of the work entirely as it would no longer have order. I really like how the books are stacked in a way that the centre or the middles of each book are all lined up.

My Book Stacks:

This first book stack consists of all of my philosophy books. They are stacked in alphabetical order by the last name of each philosopher. I tried to line up all of the last names on each book so that they were right in the middle of the photo. As you can see they are kind of tipping, so it’s not perfectly centred, but I do like how the top three look like they’re about to fall over. I chose to use my philosophy books because I liked that they were all one genre or theme, and these were the majority of books that I had in my house.

This second book stack consists of all of my books that I could find. They are also stacked in alphabetical order, but by the titles instead of last names of the authors. I personally love when things are organized or are in some sort of order, and alphabetical order is one of my favourite types of order because it makes sense to me and is visually pleasing. With this book stack I wanted to stack it kind of like Dyment’s One Billion years. I really like how he centred all the books directly in the middle.

With this third book stack, I kind of wanted to use Katchadourian’s strategy of sorting books by titles that I find interesting, and then stacking them so that they are readable and almost tell a story. In this stack I used a couple of my roommates books, who is in criminal justice, and a couple of my philosophy books. I liked how these book titles gave the overall composition a kind of dark philosophical feeling.

Week 2:

The first artwork I chose to write about is by Yoko Ono titled Fly. This work is the word “Fly” on a giant billboard, in black text on a white background. The work is so simple, yet it is so bold with its large, noticeable letters. The medium that is used is a billboard, and the message simply says “fly”. The medium is relevant to the message because in order to view the message you must look up in the sky where things fly. I think it would be very ironic if a bird were to sit on top of this billboard. The viewer can interpret this word in different ways, and it can have many meanings based on who is looking at it. The first thing that I thought of when I looked at this work was freedom.

The second artwork I chose to write about is Barbara Kruger’s Untitled (Your Body is a Battleground). Barbara Kruger uses found photographs and then places bold white text on a red background on top of them. I think that in this image the message comes off as strong, bold, and intense. Just like Yoko Ono’s Fly, Kruger’s work is mainly noticeable billboard sized images. At first look you can already tell that the image portrays a very feminist theme. The medium used in this work is a black and white found photograph of a woman. This medium is relevant to the message as the message is clearly about a woman’s body. The small text on this image reads “support legal abortion birth control and women’s rights”. The large text that reads “your body is a battleground” is a metaphor for women not having much of a say in what happens to their body.

Week 3:

The words I decided to choose from the article were “Accumulating Endlessly”. I’m not exactly sure why, but the word accumulating really stuck out to me. It made me think of earlier that day when I went to get into my car and it was covered in leaves that had fallen from the tree hanging over the driveway. The leaves had accumulated on top of my car. I looked up and could see that the tree had many more leaves left on it, so I decided to park in the garage so that the leaves would stop accumulating endlessly on top of my car. This story is why I chose to use a floral, leafy looking paper to cut the letters out of. It is also why I hung the banner outside in my backyard with trees and leaves present in the background.

Week 11

Food Piece

Food Piece Notes:

• Use the food left in my old studio mini fridge 
  • Mouldy Potato Soup
  • 1 can of Bubly carbonated water
  • 1 can of Christmas Canada Dry gingerale
  • 2 containers of ranch veggie dip 
• Approach it materially and sculpturally
• Want to freeze all the food and take them out of their containers and set them out 
  • thinking about Rachel Whiteread and her casts of objects, specifically her series of resin chairs 
    • noticed how the chair casts which show the negative space beneath a chair between the legs are functionally still chair looking, like small stools 
    • the food in my piece is still food, but they are more casts of the inside of their container since all conventional functionality of consuming them is gone 
  • the foods become their container removing any functionality or way of eating or drinking 
  • this removal of function speaks to the fact that they are abandoned food, food waste 
    • they are really now just physical space takers in the fridge with no intention by anyone to consume them 
    • this displays them as exactly that, stripped of the veil of their containers which suggest some sort of intention to store keep or preserve

Week 8 : Zoom Video Piece

Week 7

Pipolotti Rist 

Be Nice To Me (Flatten 4)

• This piece communicates the medium so effectively, as Diane said in class if this was played in a gallery space on a CRT television it would look like she is somehow inside the box of the television pressing against the glass of the screen
• It could also communicate the opposite, that she is witnessing us on a screen and we are looking out towards her
• After watching the full Be Nice To Me piece the moments of her against the glass with makeup were by far the most captivating
  • you can follow the trace of the colour and intended shape on her face to be pressed onto the glass and warped and then picked up again and printed back on the skin 
  • the patterns the colours made that were indicative of her movement and which stayed on her face and the glass
  • and then when the video plays in reverse being able to almost predict where she goes through the smears of makeup and spit 
    • such a cool way to engage the viewer
• I think possible prompts for this piece would be to engage the viewer in as visceral as possible through the medium of a screen, using the divide to create intimacy with the viewer
  • im assuming the performer is Pipilotti herself

Week 6

Week 6 Notes

The Case for Video Art

What sets apart video art from other video media?

Early cinema was inherently experimental because there was no standard for creation yet. 

Sony porta-pak- changed everything for video art 

• portable 

Nam June Paik 

Zen for Film 1964

Minimal, focus on the process and mechanism of video 

Shigego Kubota

expanded cinema

when films exited theatres 

sculptural videos 

playing with projection and light and the viewers’ involvement

Had Video- Art Prepared us Enough for Zoom Meeting 

Vivian Castro 

• iconologically the face occupying the whole frame of an image was rare in painting
  • “video is the first medium that is used to being so focused on the face, differently from film” 
    • interesting distinction, also what about still images
  • artists using the “potency” of the smaller camera
    • referring to the intimacy ascribed to it
    • physical closeness = intimate experience my be simplifying it a bit or maybe I have too narrow a definition of intimate experience 
      • intimately unnerving? 
      • intimately unattractive?
    • the narcissism of the medium, the longing for absolute video feedback to become like a recorded mirror

On Boomerang (1974)

• anxious energy so much of it 
• drawing lines between Holts experienced distance between thoughts and the slowing down of connecting thoughts and words. “Do we have trouble making connections between thoughts? Are we expressing everything we want to?”
• frustrations more to do with the medium than the content.

• but is it also then the context, I don’t feel frustrated or tired when I’m on calls with friends, but school it can be mind-numbingly annoying 
• Why is that?
• “impulse for participants to talk all the time” 
• this this this this
• it is either silence or a monologue, so difficult to keep a social rhythm 
• being “surrounded by ourselves” on the screen 
• “online meetings are the ultimate modern life’s immobility.” 
  • to Castro, this social isolation of the self on the screen through video art was precursory to what technology like this would do to us in real life, outside of an art context 

Candice Breitz 

Legend (A Portrait of Bob Marley) 2005 

Queen (A Portrait of Madonna) 2005

• Loved the moments between tracks the waiting, or when people are feeling it and start talking to the recording 
• I viewed the videos before reading and it’s funny I didn’t pick up on a geographic specificity in the sample of people shown, I don’t know if I imagined it as just indicative of the fanbase demography or what. 
• It does feel like a study of a group of people, almost like interviews of a specific demographic like you would see for a documentary around a single person or a community of people or experience. 
• their artist is their shared experience, their community, so it makes sense that the manner of the interview would be their music
• I don’t know if I ever picked up on the critical aspects of mainstream entertainment itself but rather the culture it inadvertently creates
•  something so streamlined in its production to be shown from the other side, in an infinitely diverse way, is an interesting point of tension 

Factum Trembley, 2009

• so so so impactful on me
• the narrative form of their answers is almost too perfect, speaking too their twinhood 
  • Albeit Breitz makes many cuts to communicate her perspective through her subjects (repeating a phrase of one of them later in the video, almost responding as a third connecting member of the “conversation”(?))
  • she draws attention to contradictions between the two separate accounts or differing opinions on single events, its fascinating to see the spectrum of experience so clearly on such a minute scale

Video Piece Notes

• obstructing the webcam 
  • with wax paper or plastic wrap
  • created a fuzzy or crystalline effect 
• I kind of want to formally and visually play with two obstructed (abstracted) laptop cameras back to back, walking around them  
• thinking about Bruce Nauman’s walking pieces
• maybe play with the audio freaking out when the two microphones pick up the same audio and reproduce it  
  • audio of me talking? 

Week 4

Notes:

Adad Hannah

• Mainly photographic practice 
  • Interested in tableaux vivant, the french practice historically to get live actors and performers to pose in recreations of famous paintings 
  • Focus on the bodies movement while being still, 
  • Moment of the pose, when the subject freezes
    • tableaux vivant spreads that moment out 
    • watching a video of someone standing still while they themselves stand still prompts the viewer to examine their bodies more carefully
    • almost like a Foucault mirroring 
  • Movement in stillness
  • Even in his still photographic work like The Screen, there is a focus on one’s own bodily awareness, the skin beneath the exterior skin 
    • I wish that one model wasn’t looking at the camera, breaks from the shape trying to be created 

Vancouver Sun Article

• Hannah goes deeper into his process of capturing these covid portraits 
• Used long lens and went to public spaces and asked people if they wanted their photo taken 
  • Having a blown-out background associating with “deep conversation” feels like a stretch. I think there is no emotional intimacy given in these portraits but rather bodily vulnerability
  • He are being given access to these people in a way even they themselves are not aware of 
    • How the body moves in this moment of posed tension
  • The videos expose how people think one ought to look while being photographed, especially in the ones of people playing a sport it is revealing how much sports media effects the posing of “what people playing sports” looks like 
• Hannah asks questions about the pandemic to each of his models and their words are quoted beneath each portrait 
  • I don’t know how I feel about the necessity of these quotes in the work, while yes they do feel heartfelt and play into exclusively present sentiments surrounding the fear, stress and adaptive nature of our current lives, I think the videos could stand alone, or just names could be given. The quotes are too similar to “Humans of New York” for my liking.

Self Portrait a la Adad Hanna: Party

The thing I miss most at this moment in time, self-indulgent as it may be, are my friends. On the screen behind me is one of the many recordings I made at a friend’s birthday party two summers ago. This documentation of that night was more impactful to me viewing it now than I probably ever had imagined it to be when I made it. This work feels like documentation in response to that video; responding to a record of an experience that feels so far away at this moment.

Formally, I wish to experiment with tableaux vivant-ish things more, especially with this camera (a very old digital Pentax) which gives away quite quickly that the viewer is watching a video, through the pulsating of the camera refocusing and shivering of the horizontal grain. I like how the edges of my figure are fuzzy, I look even more still than if the video quality was better and my movement instead seems now to be caused by the grain itself.

I didn’t want the image on the screen to be clear to the viewer, as that would be obviously distracting but also personalizes the video to me, which is not my intention. I want the viewer to see that it is a video of some sort of party playing in contrast to the dark monotone stillness of the scene. A video of such abundant joy and energy within one that has seemingly none. Perhaps a metaphor for our current situation. 😉

Week 3

Notes:

Hiba Abdallah Artist Interview: McMaster Museum of Art

• projects embedded in social practice, text exploring locality and civic agency 

 We remain profoundly and infinitely connected

• human connectivity as an interconnected feedback loop 
• visual art and human biochemistry

Practice – Communities 

• social engagement 
• most works are collaborative projects
  • projects are led by the people Abdallah works with 
  • back and forth, a feedback loop 
  • results often  in a text work (book, billboard) 
• interested in the intersections of art and civic responsibility 
• drew connections between Windsor and hamilton as post-industrial cities 
  • “Two tales of City” (2012) revealed hamiltons often looked over the historical textile industry 

COVID’s effect on work:

• how languages intersect and how words change from day to day 
• how language shifts over time 
• covid changed the context of of her work as other present contexts will change it in the future

Banner Candidates: 

I wanted to take an ironic approach to the placement of my banner, at first picturing putting it around the car metal scrap yards that are near my studio. But then I found this spot on my search for scrap and thought it would be perfect. The covered-up graffiti, the bland colour pallet, the lack of seemingly any of the “cultural material” as the article probably intended to mean.

However, the scene is simultaneously superficially absent yet internally filled with cultural material regardless. All of these small elements on the periphery of our considered world are reflective of our culture. The North American romanticization of the highway. What motivates the censoring of graffiti on a highway underpass? The fence to obstruct people or animals (?) from crossing the highway. Im doing a poor job articulating it but basically, I liked that the placement of this statement (almost an exclamation) here in a place where the definition of cultural material is shifted to encourage a closer examination of the everyday and banal.

Week 2

Notes:

“The Optics of the Language: How Joi T. Arcand Looks with Words” Canadian Art 

• Native misery apparent in everyday aesthetics 
  • the Optic of the murderer of an Indigenous woman 
    • “optic” is the lens or filter by which one looks and from this looking ropes what is seen into an encounter humming with all sorts of potential”
    • Bushby’s optic is a part of “settler horror” 
    • This optic ropes indigenous people “the ante-Canada… into a representational field where all things… can be put to violent use.” 
    • “I got one” phrase when Bushby murdered Barbara Kentner
• The second paragraph is wildly confusing, super flowery 
  • “modes of enfleshment” 
  • in summary, words encapsulate simultaneous danger and pride by creating worlds around them
    • like how “one” in terms of Bushby’s “optic” creates “death worlds” for indigenous people, violence in everything 
    • the “double-bind of enunciation” ??? 
  • “savage call to being with a more spacious one (word world?)”
    • is Arcand answering this call? 
• Arcand’s using words as “emotional architectures” which “change the visual landscape” 
  • Arcand titles her new word world “Future Earth”
• References Maggie Nelson (American Writer) speaking of words being able to “incite “the outline of a becoming””
  • Is Arcand inciting “a becoming” through her commandeering of Cree syllabics into everyday aesthetics? 
  • In an aside reminder to self to read “Something Bright Then Holes” 
• Bushby’s use of “one” as a “refusal of a name and the humanity that comes with it” shows the “terrible mechanics of language” 
  • Arcand is subverting these mechanics through presenting language in a native futuristic way 
• Arcand is “mourning language loss” of the Cree syllabics but through a method that signifies a “world-to-come”

Onto the Work

Here on Future Earth

• “where Arcands photo-based practice and interest in textuality synched”
• These images are to thought about as an “alternative present” 
• digitally manipulated signs and replaced original text with Cree syllabics
  • shows us a present parallel to our own allows us to “loop into a new mode of perception”
  • shows us “the rogue possibilities bubbling up in the thick ordinariness of everyday life” where they weren’t before. 
    • the power in the mundane language around us once changed becomes clear 
  • Using signifiers of nostalgia Arcand orients the viewer to “think back on a future past” not “a Utopian Elsewhere” 
  • “The mise-en-scene of settlement”: interesting
    • Her new world portrays deep meanings separate from “terra nullius” and “myths of Indian savagery and degeneracy” 
      • the bucolic untamed wilderness, the stillness (stagnancy) in that false landscape
    • instead, “a future (built) atop the decayed remains of coloniality”

Week 2 Assignment: 

Both of these artists are repurposing textual media to fit their own created purposes, however the scale of both the mediums and the message could not be more different.

In Germaine Koh’s Dear Mercer (2006) she utilizes a practically obsolete and banal media; the telegram, as a way of conveying her disinterest in participating in fundraising events. The telegram is simple, always stating “I AM SORRY TO SAY I CANNOT PARTICIPATE, GERMAINE KOH”. The repeated use of this text along with the unorthodox medium turns what could be an banal emailed message into an artist’s multiple which the gallery oftentimes frames and auctions off at the fundraiser event. This piece utilizes double meanings and methods in every aspect of its appearance and function. It is simultaneously a rejection of the acquisition while still providing a “work”. It is also simultaneously a piece of ephemera and a printed work that is now privy to formal examination (ie. the placing of the text, the way the telegram is cut, the texture of the paper.). These double meanings confront the viewer, at first belying its complexity and depth through its seemingly banal, almost bureaucratic appearance. 

Joi T. Arcand’s Sweetgrass Store (2009) along with all her images from the “Here on Future Earth” series utilize different text in much different ways. She digitally replaces texts from storefronts and other building signage with Cree syllabics in a way to stake out a parallel present future that asserts indigenous presence and prosperity taking over the remnants of a colonial prairie landscape. Instead of repurposing the text of communication, she commandeers the text of place, ownership and power within the landscape. The scale of this textual shift is much larger than Kohs’ it is far more charged than the wit and cynicism of Kohs’ telegraphs.

Week 1

FOOD ART FINAL VIDEO:

Student Dining: Mind Full vs. Mindful was inspired by Christian Jankowski’s The Hunt (1997) in which modern advancements are contrasted to primitive ways getting food. So, I asked myself where there was a similar interplay in life involving food. I realized that my eating habits change when I am under stress, especially as a university student during COVID-19 and final exam season. But there was another culprit—the over reliance one of society’s greatest advancement: the smart phone, an innovative modern tool providing instant volumes of information whether it is history, news, or social media. This work shows the addiction to modern technology and how when eat when our mind is full. Eating when in a “mind full” state is to be unaware of the food and variety of utensils in front. We eat with the same frenzy speed as we live our lives, unable to disconnect from our phones as it is our priority. Although I want to eat the soup, I do not use my rational thinking when under stress in this case. Instead, I become primitive like in Jankowski’s work when in a “mind full” state. The “mindful” state in this video is demonstrated when I am calm and centered and surrounded by plants and my cats. Although a spoon (correct utensil) is not used to eat the soup in the final clip, slow and mindful eating is the correct tool and hints to choosing whether to use it or not. Moreover, our state of mind is important for approaching food.

Creative Process:

• Go beyond just improper use of food utensils like fork used to eat soup…Add a context!
• Main things at time of creation: Final exam season, COVID-19 Pandemic…translates to major stress and lack of focus and connection towards food

WEEK IX: FOOD ART

IDEA 1: Combination proper and improper food eating techniques

Source of inspiration: Christian Jankowski, The Hunt (1997)

• This work featured primitive food hunting techniques from the hunter gatherer era set in a supermarket during the present day
• This represents rebelling against present day innovations

• This work would be similar to The Hunt, but involves eating food on plates instead of hunting in public indoor settings
• This would also feature and unusual/improper eating techniques (e.g. eating spaghetti and meatballs with hands, eating a sandwich with a knife)

IDEA 2: Play on Words

• E.g. Strawberry: straw connected to a berry
• E.g. To “butter up”: knife putting butter onto a slice of bread

Bread Making Activity

• 

• 

WEEK VIII

This video consists of two contrasting ways of spending time during isolation amid the pandemic. The left half features reading and flipping through pages, while the right is playing a video game through the clicking on the controller.

WEEK VIII: “BREAD THE RISE AND FALL” PODCAST

Bread is well known for its captivating aroma and delicious flavour, the foundation of daily meals, and for being one of the key sources of food in the “wheat and grains” category of the food guide. Bread is also viewed as a symbol of companionship as it is meant to be shared within others as a loaf. The simplicity of bread ingredients is parallel to an easy way of building society, as it teaches us civility such as democracy and who we are. Bread is also associated with religion as it is used in church because Jesus first used bread; the combination of yeast with water and grain is compared to process of creation. On a scientific level, bread does not grow from the earth, but through a miraculous process over the 10 000 years of nature and human labours and skills, from hunter gathering to farming—Neolithic revolution.

However, enlightenment thinker John Jacques Rosseau also stated that the growth of agricultural correlates with the growth of inequality. Although this revolution reduces the physical labour needed, it is also known accelerating global warming and the depletion of the oceans; agriculture depends on suppressing biodiversity, humanity’s largest footprint on the earth. also root to diabetes, obesity etc. Some also believe that bread has shifted the balance of power as the wealthy wear able to store grains and wealth, and power over people and could lead to slavery. Although bread has brought rise to the negative aspects civilization including war, tyranny, and slavery, it is also symbol of equality: no matter who you are, everyone needs a source of sustenance of recently good quality, sufficient quantity, and accessible pricing.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many have been baking bread to limit the contact with other people when outside of their houses. It is also possible that those struggling economically have also been baking instead of constantly buying bread from the stores.

The comparison of bread to civilization and religion were striking for me because although I always knew how popular and essential bread has always been, until now I never knew about the profound impact on social and economic classes, as well as greater acceleration of global warming and depletion through agriculture.

LINK FOR INSPIRATION OF THE FIRST IDEA:

Canadian artists come together in ‘Lean on Me’ cover for coronavirus relief

LINK FOR INSPIRATION OF THE SECOND IDEA:

http://abcnewsradioonline.com/music-news/2020/3/17/sales-of-rems-its-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it-other-s.html

WEEK IV: SOCIAL DISTANCING PORTRAITS

CLIP 1:

Nathan Kasprzyk-Heuff, Oceans Apart, 2020

The phrase “oceans apart” fits perfectly with COVID-19 as many of us are isolated, far away from each other. The spread apart figures were glued into their phones to make it seem like at first they just captured an insta-worthy moment and are uploading it, but no, there is much more to that. As part of the current “new normal”, electronic devices have become a significantly more normal part of our everyday lives from doing work, entertainment, to communication including playing games through iMessage’s GamePigeon. Filmed at a beach on the shores of Lake Ontario, no background music needed since the waves already did the job!

CLIP 2:

Nathan Kasprzyk-Heuff, Is Anybody There?, 2020

There is no music in the background, but the captured sounds include the activity in the parks including the tennis courts and kids having fun, and the large echoing perfect for representing the loneliness and emptiness. Although playgrounds have reopened in July as part of Stage 3 of reopening, activities like swinging close together are still more likely to be impacted than with others like tennis.

ADAD HANNAH:

In his clips, the figures are centered within the frame and show the entire body. All figures included were centered within the frame ranging from one person, to multiple people close together whether within an immediate household close together or from separate households and wearing masks. Captures the everyday moments of life and is set in various settings within a city that can be related to the pandemic, whether it is a crowded downtown environment, or a wide open but sometimes populated park. Ambient music is also added to the background of some of the videos and sound surprisingly realistic like it was added during the post-production stage.

My favourite clip was the man in boxing gloves. Although it makes it seem like he is waiting for the opponent in order to practice, it this clip still reminds us to continue doing whatever excites you, as long as the safety measures are followed.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF MY CLIPS:

CLIP 1:

• A park setting where the two figures are maintaining physical distancing on benches and glued into their phones?…Yes, but how also about a windy lake to represent the phrase “oceans apart”? BINGO!
• The dark and cloudy weather during the day the clip was shot perfectly matches the lonely and grim tone of COVID-19.
• Okay, the figures were not centered, but the space in between is. Both figures were not from the same immediate house, so physical distancing was maintained instead.

CLIP 2:

• Inspired by Adad Hannah’s Social Distancing Portrait 17-Dimas
• Use a playground setting when not many people are using those places despite the reopening…try a slide…aha! Do that but at a swing by occupying the right and leaving the left one vacant!

PHOTO I:

Nathan Kasprzyk-Heuff, Daring, 2020

The first book stack is constructed like stair steps and represents an evolution and final product from combination of going from being daring and creative, to being rebellious and ‘badass’, to being even more rebellious and creative—in this case creative cursing. Getting creative and ‘badass’ starts with you…daring greatly. Cursing is a common form of being offensive and breaking rules, but many also use it in a humorous way.  It is important to bend the rules at times, think outside of the box, let the creativity flourish, and embrace the wild and rebellious part within you.

PHOTO II:

Nathan Kasprzyk-Heuff, Up, Up, and Away, 2020

This second collection of books is another evolution style like the first image, but involves the progression from learning how to fly, to the voyage through outer space. The transition from the Flight Training Manual to the book about Helicopters was chosen because helicopters fly differently from conventional airplanes, but if you learn to fly an airplane, you can then easily learn to fly other types of aircraft. The Voyage Through Space book is the largest of the four books and is positioned at the top not only because the outer space is infinite in size compared to the finite Earth, but also because the concepts of space exploration and potential colonization on other planets are highly fascinating and discussed topics nowadays.

PHOTO III:

Nathan Kasprzyk-Heuff, Links, 2020

The third collection of books involves a combination of titles involving music and art from both history and digital technology, along with a book about how computers work. Unlike the evolution style in the previous two, this work was organized in a sandwich style to represent the interconnection between music, art, and computers. The art and music history (Art History and A History of Music in Western Culture) books are at the opposite ends from each other, with the two digital technology books (A Short Course in Photography Digital and Music Technology) still at the opposite ends but closer towards the center. How Computers Work was placed in the center to indicate that computers are used virtually everywhere and are essential in the 21^st century; computers and the evolution of technology is also noticeable and crucial in both music and art. Although computers may seem to take center stage in the musical and arts fields, the history of the arts from the past few centuries and millenniums are equally important and there would be no digital music nor art without this history.

WEEK II: USING TEXT AS ART

1. LOOK AT: Artists who use text in their work including: Yoko Ono, Jenny Holzer, John Baldessari, Barbara Krueger, Geurilla Girls, and Shelly Niro. And more contemporary examples including: Nadia Myre, Joi T. Arcand, Jon Rubin, Eleanor King, Micah Lexier, Lenka Clayton, Alisha Wormsley and Germaine Koh.

John Balderssari:

• I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art, 1971
• Tips for Artists Who Want to Sell, 1966-1968

Lenka Clayton:

• Fruit and Other Things, 2018

Germaine Koh:

– Dear Mercer, 2006

Yoko Ono:

–        Grapefruit, 1964

–        Billboards since 1960s, e.g. Fly, 1996; War is Over, 2008

Jenny Holzer, 

–        Truisms, since 1980

–        Survival Series, 1986

Barbara Kruger, 

–        Untitled (Your body is a battleground), 1989

–        BELIEF+DOUBT, since 2012

Guerrilla Girls, 

–        Guerrilla Girls Definition Of A Hypocrite, 1990

Shelley Niro,

–        The Shirt (detail), 2003

Joi T. Arcand, 

–        Northern Pawn, South Vietnam, 2009

–        Amber Motors, 2009

Nadia Myre, 

–        Indian Act, 2002

Eleanor King, 

–        No Justice No Peace, 2015

Jon Rubin:

–        The Last Billboard, 2010-2018

 

• WRITE: Select TWO artworks from above to write about. Compare and contrast the different ways the artists use media (materials, platform, format) to express their message. How is the medium relevant to the message in each case? How are viewers expected to relate to the text in each case? (Write approx. 250 words).

Shelley Niro, The Shirt (detail), 2003

The first work that I chose was The Shirt by Shelley Niro. This is a photograph-based artwork from the lens of First Nations people criticizing European colonialism in America and consequences in the present day by parodying tourist souvenir tee-shirts and photographs . An Aboriginal woman is in the center of the work facing the camera, wearing a bandana with the American flag graphic, and wearing the tee-shirt with the texts. An American landscape is in the background of the work, adhering to the takeover and destruction of the land of Aboriginals. Rather than stating where the one or multiple people were visited, it states the impact of colonialism, in this case violence, annihilation, massacring, and that the next generations of the ancestors do not get as much as what the white European backgrounds get. No post-production effects were applied to this image and the materials used in this work already effectively communicate the issues.

Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Your body is a battleground), 1989

Untitled (Your body is a battleground) by Barbara Kruger is the second work that I chose to write about. This is another photograph medium like many of her other works as it features an appropriated close-up of a woman’s face portraying feminism. However, unlike Shelley Niro’s The Shirt featuring a landscape in the background, this work only features pure black and white images with a regular and inverted half, allowing the focus on the woman’s face and texts. This work is also larger than The Shirt as it was created to emulate a poster for the April 9, 1989 Women’s March in Washington for supporting legal abortion, birth control and women’s rights. It also differed from The Shirt as effects were applied to image after it was taken. The key titles within this work are in bold white on red background and hence the march, the small title says “support legal abortion birth control and women’s rights”, while the largest and central title is “Your Body is a Battleground.” Kruger states that pictures and words both work together for rallying and there is a combination of photographs and assertive texts that challenge the viewers.

WEEK III: BANNERS

The Three Movements, 2020. By Nathan Kasprzyk-Heuff

This banner was created to represent three major movements that are still prevalent in the 21st century. The bold stencil font was chosen in order to stand out visually and fight against domination, violence, and oppression.

Media: Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, printer paper, string, shot on an iPhone 11 camera

Stylistic Features, 2020. By Nathan Kasprzyk-Heuff

The second banner uses the phrase “stylistic features” with fonts using detailed features including serifs and slabs, italics, red and yellow colours, distortion effects, shrinking and increasing sizes, as well as outlines. A string with party cup lights was chosen to create an illumination effect, shining the light on the text.

Media: Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, printer paper, string with party cup lights, shot on an iPhone 11 camera

PROOF THAT THESE PHRASES CAME FROM DIRTY WORDS INTERESTING:

SELECT ARTISTS FROM BLOG READING:

Micah Lexier:

• Ampersand
• Two Equal Texts
• Notes-to-Self (2007)

Laurel Woodcock:

• wish you were here (2003)
• on a clear day (2010)

Hiba Abdullah