My presentation and notes…

I presented on the reading:

Shit Happens

Notes on Awkwardness by Amy Sillman

This article was written for :

Reading Response 5

Rebecca Belmore: Facing the Monumental, in conversation with Wanda Nanibush, U of T, Daniels Faculty of Art and Design, 2018 (video)

In this video Rebecca Belmore and curator of the exhibit Wanda Nanibush discuss Facing the Monumental which was exhibited in 2018 at the AGO in Toronto.

The exhibit is a raisone of sorts and includes a great deal of work from throughout Rebecca Belmores career.

The two discuss the exhibit piece by piece in a non chronological order.

Another show that came to mind during this interview was Teras Terra,

Lito Kattou, Petros Moris

https://www.contemporaryartlibrary.org/project/teras-terra-at-galeria-duarte-sequeira-braga-13171

I think my reason for thinking about these works comes from the fact its Marble like Bellmores Biinjiya’iing Onji (From Inside) which is also rendered in marble.

For whatever reason this artist talk got me thinking about the art work of Irish Painter Gerard Dillon, maybe its the issue of indigenous soverignhty vs settler colonialism discussed and inherent in Mrs.Bellmores work that is also part of Some of Gerard Dillons Paintings? (not in a Canadian but in an Irish context) Im not totally sure…

I don’t really see a formal relationship between the works but maybe that is also part of it and I just don’t see it yet…

Reading Response 4

This isn’t a full response but the reading made me think of these images! Please see my others one for a full response.

These are some works by artist Andre Bloc

Reading response 3:

Timothy Morton

Reading Response 2:

How to Do Nothing: Resisting The Attention Economy | Jenny Odell

I really appreciated this reading, the more I researched the text and read/watched interviews with Jenny Odell the more my interest grew. In general I understood the chapter and the book more generally to be arguing against the normative conceptions of productivity and the tying of time/productivity to work/capital… that is to say time must be spent working and most often working for money.

The surrealist painter, Giorgio de Chirico foresaw a narrowing horizon for activities as
‘’unproductive’’ as observation.

Looking at this quote from the reading one can begin to speculate and consider some deeper meanings later explored in the reading… A real life example I think of when considering this idea of valuing productivity ina capitalist sense first and foremost appears in something like the film industry in which movies that get large amount of studio funding and big budgets are most often those that can show big financial returns for example things like marvel superhero movies and other serialised never ending sequel films in comic book universe’s… however i would argue that just because these movies have big returns and are popular with the masses especially in the anglosphere and america does not make them worthy or more worthy than an arthouse / small budget etc film. I also believe it influences and forces itself upon the masses and limits our viewing of anything alternative from the hive mind…

’’Given how poorly art survives in a system that only values the Botton line, the stakes are
cultural as well. What the tastes of neoliberal techno manifest-destiny and the culture of Trump
have in common is the impatience with anything nuanced, poetic, or less-than-obvious. ‘’

Some artists I thought about during the reading include:

Another Artist I thought of while reading this chapter was George Henry Longly.

I see these works as exploring ideas related to meaning and value within art, they are both cleanly produced images and video still which can be sold as art objects but also depict sculptural scenes which are-in some cases impermanent or commercial in quality.

Looking at this woodcut created for the St.Paul Minnesota (USA) Union Advocate Newspaper, which was discussed by Odell in some of her presentations on the book,

Below: A comedic play on the usual poster seen above^

Reading Response 1:

Patricia Kashian on Queer Mycology: Mycology as Revolutionary and Political Practice.

A key idea that grabbed my attention when listening to this podcast was Mrs. Kashian asked us to reconsider the ways in which we see fungi. I began to consider how she suggested the ways in which Fungi are viewed negatively despite their highly positive effects upon humanity and the world more genreally. Fungi have been used for tens of thousands of years if not longer as food, medecine among other things and may have even played a role in the development oif the human species as explored in the ideas of human evolution via psychadelic fungi.

I began to consider how fungi is avant garde, its goes and grows where it wants to … it forces us to see the world in a different way and

Artists I thought of during the podcast:

While listening I began to think of the ways in which binary views that are applied to the supposedly sinister fungi are applied to things in the world more genrally and how these binary and broadly brushed ideas and viewpoints might hinder aspects of artistic creation and production. An artist that comes to mind when I think of the avant garde as it applies to art is PAblo TOmek, a painter based in PAris and once a prolific wall painter and now prolfiic gallery artist, his work conurs to me relationships to the fungi… both are mis understood both chalklenge the norms of their respective landscapes adn are important to these landscapes. For the fungi they pop up as rouges in an otherwise semi uniform forest or grass patch… and much like these mushrooms Pablo’s painting would appear by his hand in the city scape braking through the usual and making us reconsider a previously passed by corridor or wall. Although many might not appreciate these wall works, many do and most will have some kind of changed perspective after seeing something rouge appear wheter it is pro-wall painting, anti wall [ainting or indifferent and just a registration of a visual disruption in an otherwise passed by space.