{"id":32,"date":"2022-09-13T14:10:22","date_gmt":"2022-09-13T18:10:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/experimentalstudio.ca\/gradseminar\/?p=32"},"modified":"2022-11-29T20:07:33","modified_gmt":"2022-11-30T01:07:33","slug":"megan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/experimentalstudio.ca\/gradseminar\/2022\/09\/13\/megan\/","title":{"rendered":"Megan"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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SHOW AND TELL:<\/strong> Ed Video is hosting their annual Holiday Party (first one since before the pandemic?) on December 16th from 7-11pm! It’s going to be so fun!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

“Shit Happens: Notes on Awkwardness” – Amy Sillman<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Abstract painting is so far outside my frame of reference but awkwardness is near and dear. It\u2019s in that cluster of descriptors and affects that includes clumsiness, the unrefined, the amateur, and cringe. My bread and butter! I thought Sillman\u2019s definition of awkwardness was setting up a dichotomy between beauty and ugliness\/meaning and destruction\/empathy and hatred, but it turns out I started reading the article partway through: the first three paragraphs were tucked up on a separate page, above an image of one of her paintings. \"Awkwardness is that thing, which is fleshy, funny, downward-facing, uncontrollable; it is an emotional or even philosophical state of being, against the great and noble, and also against the cynical. It is both positive and negative, with its own dialect and dialectic.\u201d Oh. I see what you\u2019re saying now, Amy. My bad. I may not \u201cget\u201d abstract painting but I get the Beckett reference\u2013you have my attention.\n\nArt-making as a metabolic process\u2013the metaphor of digestion\u2013is one I\u2019ve come across before. Lately I\u2019ve been feeling constipated: I\u2019m still taking a lot in, but it\u2019s not coming back out. There\u2019s a block, or a lack of the right stimulating forces. \u201cFinding a form is building these feelings (in this case, dissatisfaction, embarrassment and doubt) into a substance.\u201d The digestive transformation going on in my brain is not going well and I\u2019m straining to produce a substance that\u2019s all wrong.\n\nSillman says \u201chaving a body is a daily comedy\u201d and I want to add that it\u2019s a tragedy too, and in my opinion tragicomedy is the only genre of real substance.\n\nThere\u2019s this other bit in the text that caught my attention: \u201cI know of no artist who is attempting to make something more beautiful, but I do know many artists who are looking for a form that \u2018feels right\u2019 without knowing why. Maybe it\u2019s just satisfying to see something productive come of feeling like an idiot and the accompanying feeling of embarrass\u00adment.\u201d First of all, I can\u2019t imagine being an abstract painter because my attachment to the figurative is so ingrained. I also have the midas touch with paint\u2013it turns to shit at my fingertips. But that\u2019s not the important part of this quote. There\u2019s a meme going around the Internet lately of a graph that shows the more you fuck around, the more you find out. This meme maybe distills this quote as well as Beckett\u2019s \u201cfail better\u201d. This improvisational learning by doing makes a lot of sense to me, and every shameful piece of work I hide away is evidence of it.\n<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
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“Having and Being Had” – Eula Biss<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Like a comedian, Biss is highly attuned to the everyday: she picks apart, questions, and exposes the mechanics we take for granted. Her anecdotes end with sucker-punch-lines. Reading this excerpt, I found myself laughing \u2013 nervously. The sign of humour doing its work. \n\nThere\u2019s a tiny essay in Black People Are Cropped<\/em>\u2013a book of William Pope.L\u2019s Skin Set<\/em> drawings\u2013by Helen Molesworth, who says, \u201cSome people end up laugh-crying forever. Others, well, they just shake their heads, turn, and walk away. They might still be laugh-crying\u2013you just can\u2019t see them anymore\u201d (23-24). And I think Biss is doing the same thing. A reaction\u2013laughter or tears\u2013is an implication. We\u2019ve been had.\n\nFor the Skin Set drawings, Pope.L uses the formula \u201c___ people are ___.\u201d For example, \u201cOrange people are my balls in summer.\u201d \u201cGreen people are America eat its ass-ness.\u201d \u201cBlack people are guilty.\u201d The more nonsensical phrases highlight how nonsensical the ones that \u201cmake sense\u201d already are. The perceived social \u201ctruth\u201d of a statement like \u201cBrown people are illegal immigrants\u201d is weakened next to \u201cPurple people are the Capote.\u201d Like the house paint colours Biss names, both are highlighting the absurdity of racial codes within colour, and the social\/moral values that come with them. Amanda Williams\u2019 project Color(ed) Theory Suite<\/em> takes its colours from products marketed towards black people, in the way that Biss\u2019 house paints are marketed towards white (or what Pope.L might call \u201cless-black\u201d) people.  Marketing\u2013what a strange and terrifying beast!\n\nThis excerpt made me think of Bridget Moser, whose work is very attuned to the absurd and disturbing power of consumer capitalism and socially constructed whiteness. Her palette is pastel, washed out, and inoffensive. This palatable palette lures you in. She uses strange readymade objects marketed to\u2013who? Honestly, who? Why does this crap exist?! Moser, like Biss, is an astute observer of the everyday, and her tragicomic work incites that same uncomfortable laugh-crying. I know I can relate to having bought (into) something that ended up being completely useless. We\u2019ve been had!\n\nI wonder what my favourite colours say about me: Strawberry milk pink. Matcha green. Thai tea. King crab. Raspberry jam. Butter yellow. Peaches and cream.<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
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WORKS CITED
Molesworth, Helen. \u201cWhen Pope.L Shakes His Head\u2026\u201d Black People Are Cropped<\/em>. Zurich: JRP|Ringer, 2013.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
SHOW & TELL<\/strong>: November 5 trip to London to see Artist Materials Fund<\/a> at artLAB Gallery, hunter gatherer<\/em> <\/a>at McIntosh Gallery, Spectral<\/em> <\/a>at Museum London, in and as an ecosystem<\/a><\/em> at Good Sport, and Chains & Crowns<\/a><\/em> at Forest City Gallery. <\/p>\n\n\n\n