|
Lorna Mills and Sally McKay
Digital Media Tree this blog's archive OVVLvverk Lorna Mills: Artworks / Persona Volare / contact Sally McKay: GIFS / cv and contact |
View current page
...more recent posts
This week's little image assignment for school is about "the gaze."
 |
Vito Acconic, Theme Song, 1973 video, 33 minutes sample dialogue: Look right in here, right into me. Oh look how my body’s waiting for you. We don’t have to worry about tomorrow, we don’t have to worry about forever, it just has to be about now. We don’t need any illusions, we don’t want any illusions, right? Sure, you can be on stage, you can be on stage with me. I’ll put you in the spotlight! I’ll admire you, I’ll love you. I’ll watch every move you make. You’re gonna let me be all alone. You’re gonna leave me before we even had a chance to get started. I’ll remember the time when we could’ve been together. Oh wouldn’t you have wanted to be a memory for me? Wouldn’t you have wanted to be fixed in my mind? |
|
Vito Acconci activates ‘the gaze’ in a most aggressive and frustrating manner. The artist lies on a carpet — his face seemingly crushed up against the inside of the monitor's screen — attempting to seduce the viewer to join him in the space that he inhabits. It is a prolonged monologue, conducted an unpleasant, bar-stool tone of seedy, hasty need. Yet at times, watching this video, I thought about succumbing, if only to stem Acconci’s relentless flow of sleaze. But of course, this creature addressing me is not a person, it’s an artwork, and I am categorically, ontologically unable to join Acconci in his representational space, even when I reluctantly agree to do so. As viewers, we are both tantalized and rebuked. We gaze and the artwork appears to gaze back. We are implicated by the representational gaze, but it remains remote. As with Lacan’s glittering sardine can (see comments), we are not seen by that which we behold. Seduced, and then rejected — by an artwork! It’s shameful but it’s also deeply funny. I walked away from Theme Song laughing and feeling that despite (or because of), the existential gaps and voids, I’d been given a weird little gift. see the video here (but it's better full screen on a tv monitor) |
|
Robert Bateman, Burrowing Owl. Image from North Coast Cafe
excertp from Sarah Milroy on Robert Bateman...
Let's be clear: There is no conspiracy operating here. The fact is that Bateman engages with a subject matter that is dear to the hearts of Canadians: the beauty of the natural world. But he describes it in terms that are essentially those of illustration. There is no way in which his handling of paint, or his understanding of what painting is, pushes that medium forward, or even gives it a personal inflection. There is no way in which his paintings reveal interesting thinking about the relationships between man and nature; his environmentally themed paintings, for example, have all the sophistication of Reader's Digest illustrations.interesting letters to the editor (Globe and Mail)...
Over-the-top challenge
Ross Bateman
In her criticism of the Robert Bateman show at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection (A Tale Of Two Shows - Review, Oct. 4), Sarah Milroy has a point of view that neatly wraps a common anxiety of her profession. Her worry is that the public is ignorant and, if it is unfortunate enough to stumble on an art show that panders to this ignorance, it becomes bewildered. If true, it's good this was brought to the public's attention; I don't think it had noticed.
A humble illustrator
Ken Nutt
I have got up off the porch long enough to write to thank Sarah Milroy (A Tale Of Two Shows - Review, oct. 4) for her concern about us small-town folk not knowing enough to defend ourselves from exposure to the art of Robert Bateman. It was helpful of her to give us some guidelines: Abstraction equals good; realism equals bad.
The International Festival of Authors opens on October 17 at Harbourfront. My video, English, updated as usual, will be projected on an 8' by 8' wall for the 10 days of the festival. (2,522 titles as of this week).
(I'm sure that Margaret Atwood & Alice Munro worked very hard on all those books that I just chewed up and spit out onto a screen for two seconds each.)
I won't be at the gala opening because its the same night that ETHEL AND THE MERMEN are playing at the Smiling Buddha on 961 College st. at 10:30 pm. (and also, I forgot to ask for comps to the big party with Maggie and Ian before the damn thing sold out, because then I could have brought Ethel and the Mermen with me as arm candy)
More bad shit in USA...
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
media@caedefensefund.org
DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE PERSECUTION & ILLNESS FORCE SCIENTIST TO PLEAD IN PRECEDENT-SETTING CASE
Scientist's Wife and Daughter Comment on Case
Buffalo, NY – Today in Federal District Court, Dr. Robert Ferrell, Professor of Human Genetics at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health, under tremendous pressure, pled guilty to lesser charges rather than facing a prolonged trial for federal charges of "mail fraud" and "wire fraud" in a surreal post-PATRIOT Act legal case that has attracted worldwide attention.
"From the beginning, this has been a persecution, not a prosecution. Although I have not seen the final agreement, the initial versions contained incorrect and irrelevant information," said Dr. Dianne Raeke Ferrell, Dr. Ferrell's wife and an Associate Professor of Special Education and Clinical Services at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. "Bob is a 27 year survivor of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma which has reoccurred numerous times. He has also had malignant melanoma. Since this whole nightmare began, Bob has had two minor strokes and a major stroke which required months of rehabilitation."
Dr. Ferrell added that her husband was indicted just as he was preparing to undergo a painful and dangerous autologous stem cell transplant, the second in 7 years.
The Ferrell's daughter, Gentry Chandler Ferrell, added: "Our family has struggled with an intense uncertainty about physical, emotional and financial health for a long time. Agreeing to a plea deal is a small way for dad to try to eliminate one of those uncertainties and hold on a little longer to the career he worked so hard to develop... Sadly, while institutions merely are tarnished from needless litigation, individuals are torn apart. I remain unable to wrap my mind around the absurdity of the government's pursuit of this case and I am saddened that it has been dragged out to the point where my dad opted to settle from pure exhaustion." (read Gentry Ferrell's full statement )
Dr. Ferrell's colleague Dr. Steven Kurtz, founder of the internationally acclaimed art and theater group Critical Art Ensemble, was illegally detained and accused of "bioterrorism" by the U.S. government in 2004 stemming from his acquisition from Dr. Ferrell of harmless bacteria used in several of Critical Art Ensemble's educational art projects. After a costly investigation lasting several months and failing to provide any evidence of "bioterrorism," the Department of Justice instead brought charges of "mail fraud" and "wire fraud" against Kurtz and Ferrell. Under the USA PATRIOT Act, the maximum penalty for these charges has increased from 5 years to 20. (For more information about the case, please see "Background to the Case" below or caedefensefund.org)
JURIDICAL ART CRITICISM?
The government is vigorously attempting to prosecute two defendants in a case where no one has been injured, and no one has been defrauded. The materials found in Steve Kurtz's house were obtained legally and used safely by the artist. After 3 1/2 years of investigation and prosecution, the case still revolves around $256 worth of common science research materials that were used in art works by a highly visible and respected group of artists. These art works were commissioned and hosted by cultural institutions worldwide where they had been safely displayed in museums and galleries with absolutely no risk to the public. The Government has consistently framed this case as an issue of public safety, but the materials used by Critical Art Ensemble are widely available, can be purchased by anyone from High School science supply catalogues, and are regularly mailed.
PROFESSORS OF ART & SCIENCE EXPRESS ALARM
"The government's prosecution is an ill-conceived and misguided attack on the scientific and artistic communities," said Dr. Richard Gronostajski, Professor of Biochemistry at SUNY Buffalo, where Professor Kurtz also teaches. "It could have a chilling effect on future scientific research collaborations, and harm teaching efforts and interactions between scientists, educators and artists."
"It's deeply alarming that the government could pressure someone of Dr. Ferrell's stature into agreeing to something like this. The case threatens all Americans' Constitutionally guaranteed right to question the actions of their government," said Igor Vamos, Professor of Integrated Electronic Arts at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
PLEA COMES AMIDST OVERWHELMING PUBLIC SUPPORT FOR DEFENDANTS
The plea bargain agreement comes at a time of overwhelming public support for the two defendants. A film about the case, Strange Culture—directed by Lynn Hershman Leeson and featuring Tilda Swinton (Chronicles of Narnia, Michael Clayton), Thomas Jay Ryan (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), and Peter Coyote (E.T., Erin Brokovich)—has drawn widespread critical praise and public interest, with screenings in dozens of U.S. cities after its selection to open both the 2007 Human Rights Watch International Film Festival and the Berlin International Film Festival doc section. An October 1st screening of the film at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City drew a crowd of 400 who stayed for an hour afterward for a discussion with Hershman Leeson, Professor Kurtz, and Tilda Swinton. Special Benefit screenings of the film in numerous cities have raised thousands of dollars to offset the two defendants' escalating legal costs.
BACKGROUND TO THE CASE
The legal nightmare of renowned scientist Dr. Robert Ferrell and artist and professor Dr. Steven Kurtz began in May 2004. Professor Kurtz and his late wife Hope were founding members of the internationally exhibited art and theater collective Critical Art Ensemble. Over the past decade cultural institutions worldwide have commissioned and hosted Critical Art Ensemble's participatory theater projects that help the general public understand biotechnology and the many issues surrounding it. In May 2004 the Kurtzes were preparing a project examining genetically modified agriculture for the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, when Hope Kurtz died of heart failure. Detectives who responded to Professor Kurtz's 911 call deemed the couple's art suspicious, and called the FBI. Within hours the artist was illegally detained as a suspected "bioterrorist" as dozens of federal agents in Hazmat suits sifted through his work and impounded his computers, manuscripts, books, his cat, and even his wife's body. The government has pursued this case relentlessly for three and a half years, spending enormous amounts of public resources. Most significantly, the legal battle has exhausted the financial, emotional, and physical resources of Ferrell and Kurtz; as well as their families and supporters. The professional and personal lives of both defendants have suffered tremendously. A trial date has not yet been established.
For more information about the case, with extensive documentation, please visit: caedefensefund.org
We're studying semiotics this week in school. I modified a bit of an assignment for the blog. It's not scintillating, but I gotta post something cause I'm afraid L.M. will abandon me for my bloggy slackerness!
 Rogier van der Weyden, St. Luke Drawing the Virgin, c. 1435-40. Image from SUNY- Oneonta  Joseph Kosuth, One and Three Chairs, 1965. Wood folding chair, mounted photograph of a chair, and photographic enlargement of a dictionary definition of “chair.” Image from philosophie-spiritualite.com Joseph Kosuth’s “One and Three Chairs” reads like a text book illustration for semiotic theory. Here the sign of the chair is presented in three forms, a photograph of a chair, a chair, and a dictionary definition of a chair. Each instance of ‘chair’ functions very differently, yet all three are presented under a third, unifying category — that of art. It is as if the kind of self-reflexive step taken by artists such as Rogier Van der Weyden in his portrayal of St. Luke drawing the Virgin was here presented bare — divested of context and content so that the cognitive act of reference is itself the object of the work. By choosing a referent as neutral as a chair, Kosuth draws attention to the codes of meaning rather than the content. In a contemporary context, the piece reads as illustrative, dry and didactic. But in the early days of conceptual art, there was an exhilaration to the notion that art ideas were not on reliant physical form. Releasing the idea from the object meant, at that time, emancipation from the market, from aura, from the gallery, from authorship, from genius and a whole host of artworld hierarchies. History has shown that conceptual art was ultimately as susceptible to commodification as other forms, but it did open the door for a slew of modes of meaning. |
The artists behind VVORK (a favourite site of mine) recently curated an exhibition at Gallery West in Den Haag and invited me to write an intro essay for them.
(I also took advantage of Sally's reading on Aby Warburg to start me off on it)