Author: Diane

FOOD ART

What I’m Saying:

I used to hate eating, It made me sad, Because I felt like it would lead to me looking the way I dreaded looking. I am mad at how much time I have been concerned about things that do not matter, Hanging on to mean things people have said, Calling me a slut, a whore, ugly, And I actually let myself be upset by it, And wasted my time being upset about it, Upset that people found me ugly. I am mad that female beauty standards are rooted in pedophilia, At one point in my life i wouldn’t let myself eat because I wanted to look like that, All of the time I have wasted removing my body hair, Making myself look younger than I am, Like I looked like when I was a child, To be beautiful the way I’m told I should be,I am mad at how much energy being afraid of people who didn’t like me, People who thought I’d somehow done something to wrong them, Kissed their ex boyfriend, Didn’t give them enough attention, Lied to them, And when I wonder why I did these things, It was to make other people like me, The endless journey to be perfect. I’m mad about all the times someone has made me not be myself, My parents telling me i couldn’t wear something, Dye my hair a colour, I can’t pierce my nose if I want to work there, People judge me by how I would look on the outside, Don’t get tattoos that you can’t hide, What is the point of being yourself, Being authentic, if you have to hide that to be professional, That my clothing can tell more things about myself than my mouth can, Can looking like I want to because I want to look like an art piece Will take away from me ever being taken seriously, From everyone thinking I am beautiful. I am mad that I have to pay to be alive, That I have to work tirelessly only to give it all to someone Who was fortunate enough to have the money to own a house, And make me live there And to pay to get an education, To have a good job, To make enough money, To one day live in a place that belongs to me, We all go through the motions, And in the end, We all get to the same place, We die. And then what? I imagine as I am dying I will feel regret for trying too hard to please other people, I will regret wasting the energy and wasting the time, And mostly I will regret all the food I didn’t eat, And all the things I never tried, And it is because I want to be beautiful to people who see me, And that it’s never really mattered if I’ve felt beautiful to myself, As I am dying I will regret the food I never ate, Because then I will be dead, And that will be the end. 

This performance was very much inspired by Marina Abramovic, specifically her work ‘Art must be beautiful, Artist must be beautiful’, as well as her work ‘The Onion’. I chose to eat fruit in my video because there is a cliche eroticism of women eating fruit, however, I did it in a way there is very messy and off putting, while talking about how much validation I feel I need from other people. In Abromavic’s piece ‘The Onion’, she i eating an onion by biting it like an apple, and complaining, while crying. My dialogue was heavily influenced by the voice over in ‘The Onion’, instead of complaining about things, I decided to talk about how frustrated I am with myself.

FOOD ASSIGNMENT NOTES

• video 
• me eating really colourful food with my hands  
• similar to cherry video 
• talking with my mouth full
• complaining  
  • Complaining about people who were mean to me 
  • Complaining about how I am 20 and just found out I have ADHD 
  • Talking back to all of the mean things people have said to me
  • Ask if I can record a therapy session and then use its dialogue 
  • making people uncomfortable by my words but laugh by my demeanour 
  • Nihilistic but not in the sense of giving up, but in the sense that nothing matters except for how I feel about myself 
• orange slices 
• juice in wine glass
• grapes 
• cherries
• pomegranate 
• apple
• fruit spread 
• play on eroticism of women eating fruits

PODCAST REFLECTION – THE RISE AND FALL OF BREAD

Unlike many people currently, the act of baking bread holds a very special place in my heart. Not because it is a comfort food, or because one of the most intense pleasures to exist is cracking open a fresh loaf right after removing it from the oven, but because baking bread has actually connected me with the most important people in my life.

Before I was born, my grandmother, my dads mother, had a brain aneurysm and was left in a wheel chair, with very poor memory, and very little of who she was left of her. As I grew up, I always heard from my relatives, that I reminded them of her. She was an incredibly strong woman, she had four kids, not very much money, a farm, 18 siblings, and was an artist. To this day, I wish I could’ve met her when she was still herself, I have so many things I wish I could ask her. When I was young, my family and I would visit Tignish, PEI, the town where she grew up. Her sister Lois, my great aunt, taught me how to bake my first loaf of bread, and biscuits, and pastry. I realized it was so much more than just baking bread, because these recipes that Lois had, the ones that were her mother’s, and her mother’s mother’s, were so important to her, that the act of teaching me to make them with her, was somewhat of the ultimate form of her expressing her love for me. I have carried this with me for my entire life, and it has lead me so many places I probably would not have gotten to if it weren’t for bread.

In my second year of university, I was at a bar, and talking to this girl, who I would later call my best friend, about how I bake bread. She asked me if I wanted to come over later that week, and teach her. I obviously said yes. When I got there, there were way more people than I thought there would be, all anticipating a three course meal of various breads I had planned to make. First course: plain white bread, crust softened with olive oil, baked in a cast iron pan, paired with a dip of olive oil, black currant jam, and balsamic vinegar. Second course: white bread filled with pieces of red onion, and olive, paired with hummus, and cream cheese. Third course: cinnamon and brown sugar bread, with peanut butter and banana, or honey one top. I taught everyone how to bake them, and everyone loved the outcome so much. This would later be a monthly reoccurrence we called ‘Bread Night’, and this moment, is when I began to construct many of my most valuable relationships. I rode my bike home, and thought about how I had done exactly what Lois had done for me all those years ago.

Growing up, my dad never let us buy bread. He would always make it. Which I never understood why people just didn’t always do. It tastes so much better when it is home made and fresh. Free of preservatives, and catered to exactly what you expect out of your perfect loaf of bread. I think that many people are baking bread during the pandemic, because they have been given more time, to figure out how to enjoy life. Prior to this, many people would have believed they did not have enough time in the day to bake bread, so instead they would buy it, and make quick meals out of a pre-sliced loaf of bread. Most likely not thinking about the things that would change if they took the time to bake instead. Or maybe they believed they didn’t have time to learn, or that it would be too hard. then, everyone is stuck at home for weeks, being encouraged to not do anything, and are suddenly gifted with many more hours of the day, so they bake bread, and they realize it isn’t just a loaf of bread. It is love, and pleasure, and enjoyment, and happiness, and delicious, and put together and baked, and then consumed. And without knowing, they bring these things into their lives, and think it’s just a hobby to bake my own bread, but really, unknowingly, it is so much more than that.

In the very beginning of the podcast, they explore the roots of the word companion, and how it relates back to the breaking of bread with your companions. My entire view of the importance of bread in my life is based on this, and having no idea that this was the root of the word, it was very striking to me, and could not be more true.

ZOOM ART

VIDEO NOTES

For each of the videos we were instructed to watch, they seem to have a similar levels of choreography, in the sense where the performer seems to have been given conceptual instruction, but not so much to the extent where what they are doing seems like an action that is orchestrated by someone else. Additionally, the videos containing more than one person doing the action, such as ‘Suck Teeth Compositions’, the performers preform individually, yet their actions contrast the other performers actions harmoniously, but still seem very natural to each person. This makes the video very easy to watch, and get lost in, because the flow of it grabs, and holds on the to attention of the viewers so effectively.

ZOOM ART PROPOSAL

When thinking about what I miss the most about my friends, it isn’t so much that I miss talking to them, but I miss just being in their presence and having their energy around me. My idea for the zoom art is to just coexist with someone I really miss, and haven’t seen in a very long time, because of the pandemic, the concept is to try to transfer friendly energy and friendly presence over zoom in a way that feels almost like they are here with me, and being alone physically, not so lonely. Similar to Factum Tremblay, shown in class, the idea is to have two people, connected over the internet, who also have a strong bond in real life. Unlike Factum Tremblay, the communication isn’t verbal, but instead, it is through someone’s energy, and just feeling close to that person, even though you are far away.

SOCIAL DISTANCING SELF PORTRAIT

Nevan

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“The pandemic has been really awful for my brain. As someone who struggles with my mental health regularly, having to stay indoors, and not see people has been a very intense struggle for me. The amount of people I have seen since this all started, I can count on one hand. As someone who uses going out as a coping mechanism, the results of having to stay inside, and in my own space, in my own head, have been less than good.”

—

For this assignment, I decided to take a Social Distance Self Portrait. I chose to be very honest with how it is going for me. Since the beginning of the pandemic, I have watched my mental health decline. More than I would like to admit, I am like this for the majority of the day. I find it very empowering to create art about my mental state and be very honest about it, because it makes something I despise and find exhausting about myself, into something I can appreciate.

NOTES WEEK 5:

• Most videos go along with a blurb that seems somewhat optimistic about the pandemic
• Still person, background movies – maybe have TV in back?
• Neutral music or background noise
• Self portrait?

BANNER

Minimalism: The first banner I made reads ‘MINIMALISM’ in very small, simple letting and is displayed on a large empty wall on its own.

Disturbance: The second banner reads ‘DISTURBANCE’. It is hung in two places, and the end is strung but not hung. This implies that the banner has been disturbed, and is no longer hung in three places, as initially implied.

NOTES WEEK 3:

Possible banners:

• boring art

• minimalism- really small, on big empty wall

• letters

• passage of time- like a birthday banner

• like a birthday banner 

• taken for granted 

• settler colonial violence 

• dematerialization – gradually becomes harder to see 

• not here

• create a space 

• discrete colours

• anxieties about death-rainbow coloured like happy birthday, a star at the beginning and end

• dont be shy

• black and white-black side white, white side black

• moral obstacles 

• disturbance -half hanging, half falling, black 

• flowery

NOTES WEEK 3

Word art displayed on billboards in public is such an interesting, and effective way to make simple words have such a big meaning, and having it displayed so large really just throws all the meaning and thoughts behind it right into the faces of the public. Expanding on this, the public display of such an artwork, reaches a much more broad audience, because it includes a large amount of people who may not wander into a an art gallery, or come into contact with much art in their daily lives. One of my favourite pieces we explored was ‘The Last Billboard’. I found this to be one of the most intriguing pieces, because of its power, as well as its simplicity. I think this method of displaying art does exactly what it is supposed to, and really gets the message through to people, who may be ignorant to exploring the deeper meaning of other installations.

BOOK STACKS

Katchadorian specifically with their work on the series ‘Sorted Books’, gives new perspective and meaning to books, without any kind of description with the content inside them. Additionally, the series tells a story with multiple books, making the viewer almost no longer consider their individual contents anymore. Dymants work with his piece ‘One Billion Years’ used a similar approach, where the meaning of the work was not found in each individual book, but in the collection as a whole. Although the concept of both these works is very similar, as well as the execution being very similar, they give off completely different conclusions to each piece. Katchadorian uses the titles to write very short, poetic stories, that are worded in a somewhat choppy way, but still make sense, and flow nicely. Whereas Dymants tells a continuous, less poetic story over the past as well as the future, using book titles which are seemingly unrelated, but somehow connected and relevant, and keep track of time.

I took an approach similar to that of Katchadorian’s book stacks, making the title of the books create somewhat of a narrative between the books. To create this, I took all of the books I could find in my house and laid them out on the floor so I could see all of the titles. My library consisted of books I have used for classes over the past three years, as well as books I moved out of my childhood home with because I have an emotional connection to them, as well as books that I use for personal reference.

NOTES WEEK 2

Books Stacks:

• Poetic stack – have a common theme
• Story telling stack
• Stacked to read level – not lines up along the side
• stacked vertically

Week 10:

Regrettably, this super cool project came at a time when food was the last thing on my mind. For two weeks, I was in bed with fever and hardly any appetite. The next week after that, I was in the hospital, recovering, hooked up to an IV, gaining some appetite but being fed a healthy arrangement of hospital food three times a day. It was like being on an airplane for a week straight. With every meal came these funny little slips of paper. I saved a few, but not one for every meal I was there. Below are examples of breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

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I found these papers quite charming and I hoped to do something with them, which is why I suppose I kept them. My initial idea was to use them as some kind of recipe/menu for my meals for a few days. But aside from it being hard to go out and obtain all these little snacks, I thought it would be a horrible waste, since now that I’m out of the hospital I’m quite enjoying eating whatever I choose.

So, I took inspiration from Aislinn Thomas’ Pancakes, and stacked them:

In doing this, I stumbled on a fairly good representation of what the last few weeks looked like to me: an overlay of semi-transparent days and meals all congealing into a hardly legible single piece of paper.

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Week 9:

Aislinn Thomas’ A Stack of Pancakes to hold up the Ceiling (2015)

I think a lot of the best artworks fall into the section of art which some people complain about that “that’s not art, I could have done that”. Thomas’ pancakes definitely falls in that category. Her pancake tower is simple, and exists without reasoning. I find it funny that she did not even consider her reason for doing the work until her partner asked her if she did it because her ceiling had previously caved in, at which point she said maybe I did do it because of that… It speaks to the magic of art, and the way it seems to reach in past your conscious mind to bring you things you didn’t even know you were thinking about. Yeah, I could have made so many pancakes that I stacked them to my ceiling and let them start rotting, but I wouldn’t have and I didn’t.

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Week 8:

Bread for me has always been a breakfast food, and meal in its own. For whatever reason, if given a slice of bread on the side of a meal, say for lunch or dinner, I never quite got into the habit of eating them together; using the bread to wipe off the leftover sauces on the plate the way I saw my mom do. When I was a younger, picky eater, bread was the only thing I would eat on vacation. We would be in the Dominican Republic, with a full buffet of delicious cooked food, and I would grab a bun and some butter.

A more meaningful relationship I and my family have to bread is to a sweet Romanian bread called Cozonac. My mom makes it twice a year: on her late father’s birthday, and for the holidays. Making cozonac takes a full day of work of mixing and flattening and rising, then my mom braids three strands of dough and puts them into a pan to bake. Normally if she’s making it, she’ll make enough dough for 3 loaves. The result is a sweet bread with cocoa, nut, and raisin swirls throughout. I grew up eating cozonac and look forward to it every year.

Bread has never been an addition to my meals, but something I would eat alone or not at all, so I wouldn’t consider it a comfort food nor the center of a meal. I think my comfort food is spaghetti, with butter and feta cheese, which I suppose is similar to bread in composition.

I think baking, like knitting, is an old hobby that appealed to people in the pandemic for several reasons. For one, it is a skill, and something you can work to improve on, which sets up a sort of psychological ‘ladder’ for one to climb. Next, it takes up a lot of time, which is important since we all have nothing but time on our hands. And lastly, when you’re done, you have something to show from it: something you can tangibly grab and consume as part of your day. In short, pandemic baking seems to have become so popular because of the way it takes up so much time, without feeling like that time was wasted.

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Week 7:

Video link: https://youtu.be/M8cLKxICzDU

For the video art, I was inspired in reading Castro’s article and the way they spoke on how Zoom affects our days. Making another appearance this semester, I asked my partner to stay on Zoom with me for the first few hours of our day, despite us being in the same room. We stayed muted and I told him to close the tab so he could focus on doing his work, and I did the same. Castro speaks about having this ‘immediate’ or sometimes laggy feedback of ourselves over Zoom – we can sometimes hear our voices bounce back, and we can always see ourselves in the little square at the bottom. In meetings, our attention, already so weirdly divided, is also in part taken up by our own mirror-image which looks back at us through the screen.

My original plan was to create two videos following the exact same format, but to see what happens if we kept the tabs open rather than closing them. The video posted was around 2-3 hours, sped up and condensed into a 12 minute video (arbitrarily chosen, as I played with the playback speed to find something not too slow but not too fast). I meant for the subject to be mine/my partner’s attention; which you can see through darting eyes across screens, or times when the screen gets no attention at all. Unfortunately, I got sick shortly after filming this video so the second iteration didn’t come to be.

I had hoped to see a difference between the two, noticeable only to those who have been immersed in Zoom for the past few months. I wondered if, while having an image of myself on the screen, the little changes in behaviour (i.e. looking often at myself, adjustment of hair/clothes) would read on the video as purposeful, or if it wouldn’t even change the outcome.

NOTES:

1. Pipilloti Rist – Be Nice To Me (Flatten 04) 2008: The insistent, almost literal “in your face” way in which the video is filmed is hard not to immediately notice. It’s gross, uncomfortable, and weirdly real. By using the glass in front of the camera, Rist affects the viewers by making us feel as though it is our own eyeballs that she’s rubbing against. We all know the feeling of pushing, pulling skin; so Rist puts us in a space where we are viewers of the act but also know exactly how it feels to be in her situation.
2. Suck Teeth Compositions: What strikes me is the semi-musical compositions that the artist probably spent a long time considering and editing in succession. I believe as a viewer these videos affect you in one of two ways, and it is extremely dependent on your race and upbringing. On one hand, as you watch you feel as if you’re on the receiving end of the sounds. Even though you know you’re watching a video of strangers, you can’t help but take it personally. On the other, (I imagine, if you are part of the black community) the videos are like a dictionary of sounds: you may be able to dissect each sound and place it as ‘disdain’ or ‘annoyance’ and so on, with each sound being different to the “trained ear”. The videos present a form of language that doesn’t need words to be understood.

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Week 6:

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Week 4:

I’ve been staying with my boyfriend for the past two months and a bit. We only leave the house to go grocery shopping, or to walk around the neighbourhood when we find time. Everyday, we wake up to the alarm ringing at 8:00 AM, then it’s head underwater until our work for the day is done. Write some notes, take a small break. Finish that assignment, cause the next one is due soon. Is it already 2:00? We should probably eat. Then back to work. Suddenly it’s 8:00 PM, 12 hours have passed, so we start to power down. Shower, climb into bed, “goodnight”, “goodnight”, and we start over again the next day.

I chose to take my two videos portraits of us in our everyday spots. The concept of Adad Hannah’s video portrait fit in quite nicely with this moment, since we’re stuck in this moment; for now. Like a lot of his distance portraits of strangers reflect, society as a whole is stuck holding its breath until the ‘video’ is over and we can move again, but we don’t know when that’ll be. My partner and I are stuck in the same way as everyone else is right now, and as students, we’re stuck in our daily schedule as well. Not much changes from day-to-day, maybe the clothes and the content of the work, but suddenly it’s nearing the end of October when we could’ve sworn we only just hit September.

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For my banner, I found that a lot of the phrases/words I put together from the article related to our current situation, so I decided to go with one of those. The words I found play off at least two meaning of “here”. Firstly – not that we do it much in university anymore, but – is the use of “here” as an answer for role call in school. Second is the physical use of the word. We are present in classes, but we are not in classes.

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Nadia Myre’s Indian Act (2002) used traditional Native American techniques of beading to erase all 56 pages of the Federal Government’s Indian Act. The pages were mounted onto cloth to facilitate the beading process. The page is beaded in red and any “words” appear as white beads, leaving behind a facsimile of a document, where words are just lines of colour.

Lenka Clayton’s (collab. with Jon Rubin) Fruit and Other Things (2018) project took the written records of rejected artworks from the Carnegie International (10,632 artworks) and turned each into a hand-lettered text painting. Each painting was exhibited for a day, then given away to visitors.

In both cases, Clayton and Myre are using documents as the basis of their art. In Clayton’s case, the documents seem to be a serendipitous discovery of titles with a certain history; whereas for Myre, the Indian Act holds a great amount of weight and importance to her and her community.

Clayton’s method of work takes the idea of an image, shortened into a title, and transformed so that the words themselves become the artwork. To viewers (or readers), the imagery behind the title can only be imagined; bringing to mind questions of the visual importance of art. What are we missing when we read this title without an image to accompany it? Would it have been better with its image? Does that even matter?

Myre goes the opposite direction. In her case, these words that have been written so long ago, about her people, and have caused so much destruction to their way of living, need to be erased. Using traditional beading, the Indian Act is transformed into a piece of Native American art. Myre utilizes irony as part of her message, and allows (or hopes) for a sort of healing process to begin, whether within herself or within her community.

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Weekly Assignment 1:

I have a handful of books in my student house in Guelph, which I use for various reasons. There are many picture/encyclopedia-type books, art books, poetry books, and fiction books which I’ve read so many time their spines are cracked. I found it hard to look for titles to string together into coherent messages, so rather than look for “inconsistencies”, as Katchadourian did, I found a consistency. Nearly all my books start with the word “The” (which I doubt is uncommon among book collections), so I arranged them so each “the” lines up down the middle. Taking inspiration from Dyment, I decided to block out the background with black.

The titles of my rather small collection of books did not bring me much further inspiration, so I stacked all paperback books and lined them up flush left to create this image, which ended up being a nice composition of the various horizontal topographies of my books.

Trying to go in another direction again with my third image, I wanted to make use of space/emptiness. Ripped straight from google, Existentialism “explores the nature of existence by emphasizing experience of the human subject.” In this image, the book is a placeholder for the human subject; metaphorically alone on the shelf, and all meaning must be created by itself.

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My Chocolate Cake and Bread From The Semester

The 5 Day Lifespan of a Piece of Tomato.

For this piece, I decided to document a slice of tomato every day for five days to see how it changed. The tomato stayed unbothered on a styrofoam plate in my kitchen. It was interesting to watch the changes each day, and I wonder what would have happened if I didn’t have to get rid of it.

Food That Reminds Me of My Family (One with illustrations, and one without).

Food That Reminds Me of My Family, 2020. Victoria Abballe

Here is a conceptual food portrait of the members of my immediate family. These were the first food items that came to mind when I thought of each family member.

A dozen of butter tarts for my mom because she bakes these every other week – I swear

A single shot of espresso for my dad because he has at least one a day.

A gluten-free loaf of bread for my sister Laura because she has a gluten intolerance.

A steamed head of broccoli for my sister Abbey because she loves broccoli and I had a vivid memory of her once cooking me some in her apartment.

And lastly, a cup of coffee for my oldest sister Emilee, but it has to have a bunch of cream and sugar in it.

Notes from Bread Podcast/ Week 8

Morning Routines on Zoom with Sydney

https://vimeo.com/476986209

https://vimeo.com/user108364993/review/476986209/df0cbfbee6

Apple Eating on Zoom- Video Art

https://player.vimeo.com/video/476102220

https://vimeo.com/user108364993/review/476102220/37aec21dfd

https://vimeo.com/user108364993/review/476102220/37aec21dfd

IDEA 2) 5-10 people Miming each other. One person will start to make a movement, then the next person will copy the movement, then it will be passed on to the next person, etcetera. This will go on until the leader stops their gestures. OR it can be like broken telephone and the leader will make gestures to reference a sentence/ short story.

IDEA 3) Using the tiny zoom screen to put on makeup instead of looking in a mirror.

IDEA 4) Throwing an object (like a ball) to one person back and fourth. To make this work, there should be one person with each artist in real life throwing the ball to the artist so it looks like the ball is passing between two screens.

IDEA 5) 5 people playing different songs on different instruments.

IDEA 6) 5 people taking their computer for a walk around their house. (This may become too chaotic)

IDEA 7) Reading a section of a book with someone. (Aloud or silently)

Adad Hannah & Social Distancing Portraits

Here are my three social distancing portraits I have created in the style of Adad Hannah. I shot my subjects for one minute straight as if they were posing for a photograph. Similar to Hannah’s, my videos were all shot outside on a DSLR camera, about 5-10 meters away. (I have updated my videos and taken out the distracting music)

https://vimeo.com/470358268

Social Distancing Video Portrait 01. Eileen (gardening edition).

“Quarantine has given me the opprotunity to spend time in the garden and take care of my plants.”

https://vimeo.com/470357368

Social Distancing Video Portrait 02. Max (photography edition).

“I picked up a new hobby that I have grown to love over quarantine. Photography. It got me outside in the fresh air instead of staying cooped up inside.”

https://vimeo.com/470357839

Social Distancing Video Portrait 03. Victoria (an extra edition).

“Here’s me posing for a photograph for one minute straight. Nothing too special about it except my eyes wouldn’t stop watering.”

These books (some of which were generously lent to me by my roommate) come together to create a sense of an imaginative starry sky at night.

These book titles together pretty much sum up my existence. I can’t live if there’s no sketching involved.

These books looked very aesthetically pleasing together so I thought I’d add them here. Inspired by Ryan Park.

Here is my banner with words taken from the “Interesting” article. I took the words “Identifying Patterns” and placed two different patterns in my banner for the viewer to recognize and identify.

Media: Colourful letters printed on printer paper, string, and shot on a DSLR camera.

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Here is another banner I made from a word from the “Interesting” article. I made it as simple as possible.

Media: Marker on printer paper, string, and shot on a DSLR camera.

NOTES:

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Exercises by Artists: Abramovic, Fluxus, Learning to Love You More, Do it, Erwin Wurm, Jen de Los Reyes, Academie X, photos of you holding hands with a stranger

Intervention assignments – cross a boundary, go somewhere you shouldn’t

Colour Sculpture/Intervention:

Text As Art: Make a Sign for a Fictional event, Make a BIG BANNER in public, Site specific didactic intervention, Laurel Woodcock, Micah Lexier, Dave Dyment, Lawrence Weiner, Jenny Holzer, Bruce Nauman, Artists who use text

reading on Text as Art

Tattoos as Art

Spacious Quiet assignment (Acoustic ecology podcast from On Being, and artists who use silence –  or Walking as Art – reading/response/exercise

Videos -collage, montage and sound, Daniel Cockburne, Arthur Jaffa, Christian Marclay,

Videos – After Gillian Wearing

Walking as Art: Richard Long, Francis Alys, Tim Knowles,

Some prompts, scores, assignments and exercises by artists:

Yoko Ono

George Macunias, 1931-78 Founding member of FLUXUS in 1960 – wanted to “promote living art, anti-art, promote NON-ART reality, to be grasped by all peoples, not only critics, dilettantes, and professionals”

“When asked to define exactly what Fluxus was, Maciunas would often respond by playing samples of dogs barking or geese honking, rooting the movement firmly in the absurd tradition that had grown up out of dadaism and surrealism. Fluxus activities ranged from public performances and street theatre, to lo-fi sculptures. Maciunas was anti-ownership and refused to allow any of the Fluxus works to be signed, making it difficult for dealers to value their worth. He was also instrumental in transforming Soho from a run-down, unfashionable district of New York city into an artists colony; when a warehouse shut, Maciunas moved in, using it as an art space for his collegues and friends. Those enticed by the movement included Joseph Beuys, who was drawn to the group because of its inclusive philosophy – echoing as it did, Beuys’s own beliefs that everyone was an artist. Yoko Ono was also a member and her bed-in with John Lennon is a classic example of Fluxus performance. “

Text from: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2009/jan/28/artist-george-maciunas

Marina Abramovic:

Learning to Love you More: Harrell Fletcher and Miranda July

Jen de Los Reyes

Diane Borsato and Amish Morrell: Outdoor School