Black Spot

Space project: reference dump

2012-02-10T13:39:00.002Z

From: Matt Boynton
Date: 21 January 2012 19:18
To: Sam Kelly

Hi Sam,

I breifly touched on this in an earilier email but: Thinking about how we work together I feel it would make for a much more exciting space and series of projects if we collaborated on delivering whatever the space will become. From my point of view I fell our collaborative work has been strong and I find you tend to keep my tendacy to overcomplicate thing in check, I also feel the ideas and concepts we generate are very strong and exciting.

There will be both a physical and online space in which projects will occur (the online space could be a good location for Anonympolis). My early thoughts ( which i'm sure you are already aware of, but I will repeat the none the less) are that the gallery will investigate architecture/infrastructure. I feel these subjects we discuss and the ideas are located within this architecture/infrastructure dialogue, they are about the spaces around us, how they affect us and how we can affect them. For me Architecture/Infrastructure will be about making work that is a space for the viewer to inhabit and interact with, I feel the viewer/experiencer (not sure thats a word) should be integral to the work. Whats the point of architecture/infrastructure without someone or somthing to inhabit/utilise it?

Is this something you would be interesting in collaborating on? Also what are your thoughts on Architecture/Infrastructure and where do you think it could go?

Matt

----------
From: Sam Kelly
Date: 22 January 2012 18:40
To: Matt Boynton

Hi Matt,

Yes, I am all for collaborating on this. I agree that we work well together and why mess with a good thing?

I like the word "experiencers", I think it's apt to replace "viewers" with it.

Using the online/offline space / dual-space as a vehicle for An/onymopolis sounds good. Makes me think that it should have an offline counterpoint of some kind though. I have this feeling about the whole project; that the two spaces should co-operate and the work should be informed by that dynamic.

I'm on board with "architecture/infrastructure" as a thematic parameter yes, it has the necessary scale. I see it going along the lines of "exploring, highlighting, subverting, etc, the relationships we have formed or have been indoctrinated with our physical environment, particularly the city (obviously, currently Coventry)". I see this happening on a number of different levels:

Marxist/Situationist International/psychogeographical, whereby subversion, or ideas of detournement and derive are useful
"Our virtual worlds have real world consequences"/contemporary media theory/Troemel/fragmented reality type shit
Phenomenological/Matta Clark

Obviously all these areas interlink and I'm sure that is where the art will be. Some of the interactions I like so far include taking street skating/Jackie Chan/Cov swimming baths ("low brow" or under appreciated cultural phenomena) and highlighting the phenomenological and psychogeographical merit inherent to them. I also like they questions "What is the benefit of Relational aesthetics over Situationist International?" and "What can Relational Aesthetics learn from 4chan?".

I'll keep this thread going whenever I think of any more relevant ideas, brain's just stopped for the evening I think.

Sam Kelly
www.freshpap.com

----------
From: Matt Boynton
Date: 22 January 2012 19:41
To: Sam Kelly

Hi,

That's good, I think it is an opportunity to move forward and also take control of our own destiny really. Create our own platform.

I wonder what the word is for some one experiencing something? It like the right as viewer seems so passive.

There is definitely a way for the project to exist within the two space. There are already a couple of possibilities floating around in my head such as presentation of the data and having the onymous section in the physical realm. But i think there is a far better idea floating out there which will really work with the online forum.

Architecture/Infrastructure is so open which allows for many possibilities, I also feel that the way architecture/infrastructure are just frameworks will harmonise with experiences. We will be creating the framework for the experience. The possible dialogue is massive.

To add to your bullet points structuralism and post-structuralism are spaces that will work with the spaces dialogues. Also did you know there was a situationist app for the I phone until apple killed it. I have started to build a folder of links that i am reading and taking key notes on at the moment (Wiki entries on Architecture, Infrastructure, Situationist International, Structuralism etc). Mr Troemel of course.

Thinking of street skating/parkour I love the ethic of the interactions they bring. Its what I'm attempting to do with the images I have made from photos of the space around me, an artist view of the city i guess. For me it is a questioning of space, a challenging of the space. Not dissimilar to the legal system where a judge will have their verdicts challenged by the clerk before giving them so as to ensure they a legally robust.

Matt

----------
From: Sam Kelly
Date: 26 January 2012 02:37
To: Matt Boynton

Regarding the dual situation of An/onymopolis: I think we need to locate a more primary and wittily connected real world counterpoint to the online debate. I don't like the idea of a real world debate acting as the onymous counterpart to an anonymous online debate. That seems gimmicky to me. All online seems purer and simpler. I think we need to start the programming - with the original goal of an online forum programmed with participant an/onymity control - and see where it takes us. I like the idea of making a physical document though, definitely.

Regarding "frameworks for experiences": I like that definition also. In terms of the potential for dialogue, this is where I see those questions - Situationist International versus Relational Aesthetics versus the new, open architecture of digital peripherals - coming in. All these systems have their own championed set of rules and devices for creating "frameworks for experiences" and I think it would be fun to pit them against each other in the same space; A Three Way Break Dance of Systems for Socio-politically Subversive Interaction! (If we make a piece with that title I'll die happy!)

I read about that app when it came out yeah, don't remember thinking much of it at the time though. It's pretty cool in retrospect thought yeah.

Contemplating the development of urban space has been one of Photography's most enduring roles as a medium yeah. I particularly used to admire the great canonical exponents of this photographic mission when I studied Photography, particularly Lee Freidlander and The New Topographics.

Sam Kelly
www.freshpap.com

----------
From: Matt Boynton
Date: 26 January 2012 19:00
To: Sam Kelly

Regarding the dual situation of An/onymopolis: I think we need to locate a more primary and wittily connected real world counterpoint to the online debate. I don't like the idea of a real world debate acting as the onymous counterpart to an anonymous online debate. That seems gimmicky to me. All online seems purer and simpler. I think we need to start the programming - with the original goal of an online forum programmed with participant an/onymity control - and see where it takes us. I like the idea of making a physical document though, definitely. I agree that having a physical debate would not be the right way to go. I feel there is an elegant solution (Poetic even) I just don't know what it is as yet. I'm sure it will be simple though.

Regarding "frameworks for experiences": I like that definition also. In terms of the potential for dialogue, this is where I see those questions - Situationist International versus Relational Aesthetics versus the new, open architecture of digital peripherals - coming in. All these systems have their own championed set of rules and devices for creating "frameworks for experiences" and I think it would be fun to pit them against each other in the same space; A Three Way Break Dance of Systems for Socio-politically Subversive Interaction! (If we make a piece with that title I'll die happy!) Good title. Not to sound like a broken record but this is again a space/architectur/infrastucture to be explored through the gallery (gallery feels like the wrong word) programme. We will be creating work that is about the plurality of space. Although taking critical points of view as it would just become messy if everything became about everything being everything. I feel on of the most impotant part of what we create will be about showing that these spaces can be questioned, reclaimed and occupied.

Matt

------------------------
From: Sam Kelly
Date: 8 February 2012 15:51
To: Matt Boynton

Not interested in the statement this is supposedly making, just the action.

http://youtu.be/GbPPNKMV2CA

Sam Kelly
www.freshpap.com

----------
From: Sam Kelly
Date: 8 February 2012 16:25
To: Matt Boynton

This is awesome. Regarding space.

http://vimeo.com/7887463

Sam Kelly
www.freshpap.com

----------
From: Sam Kelly
Date: 8 February 2012 16:28
To: Matt Boynton

http://youtu.be/4FGbZDv3elk

Sam Kelly
www.freshpap.com

----------
From: Sam Kelly
Date: 8 February 2012 17:31
To: Matt Boynton

http://pietmondriaan.com/2011/08/10/cyprien-gaillard-2

Sam Kelly
www.freshpap.com

----------
From: Matt Boynton
Date: 8 February 2012 17:34
To: Sam Kelly

I like Cyprien Gaillard. I saw this a while back and rather enjoyed it.

----------
From: Sam Kelly
Date: 8 February 2012 17:35
To: Matt Boynton

http://pietmondriaan.com/2011/08/04/gelitin-2

Sam Kelly
www.freshpap.com

----------
From: Sam Kelly
Date: 8 February 2012 17:36
To: Matt Boynton

Yes, the Cyprien Gaillard thing is very witty.

Sam Kelly
www.freshpap.com

----------
From: Sam Kelly
Date: 8 February 2012 17:37
To: Matt Boynton

http://pietmondriaan.com is the source for all these, btw. It's very pertinent to me/us.

Sam Kelly
www.freshpap.com

----------
From: Sam Kelly
Date: 8 February 2012 17:59
To: Matt Boynton

http://pietmondriaan.com/2011/06/03/job-koelewijn-3

Sam Kelly
www.freshpap.com

----------
From: Sam Kelly
Date: 8 February 2012 18:06
To: Matt Boynton

http://youtu.be/z4xas7L2BJE

This obviously isn't the most efficient form of communication, in fact it's rather ugly. I've started it now though, and i don't want to stop (for some reason).

Sam Kelly
www.freshpap.com

An/onymopolis

2011-12-03T22:10:00.001Z

Therelinquished accountability that anonymity offers the individual can enableboth positive and negative possibilities within a social context. It hasoffered protection to agents of free speech, although simultaneously that samepossibility of immunity from repercussion has proliferated antisocial rhetoricand action. Emerging behavioural patterns, which are evolving alongside newcommunication network structures, only seem to intensify the power the anonymousindividual has to effect change on a societal scale. The role this latterlyeffective form of anonymous agency has played can be noted in many recentsocio-political phenomena, including Chinese dissent, Wikileaks, The ArabSpring, within most forms of online criminal activity, international protestsand riots, the emergence of the “troll”, and so on.

At apsychological scale, one could theorise that an individual’s behaviour may besignificantly different given either onymous or anonymous status.

We propose aseries of conversations focussing on contemporary social and political issuesbe conducted in an environment where the availability of the participants’identities can be controlled. For example, the conversation would begin in atransparent environment, with all willing participants having a known identity.Then, at some stage the profile of each participant would become obscured. Wouldthis switch enable an alteration in the individual voices or the direction ofthe conversation to be discerned?

The ubiquityof digital media means that mediated communication is becoming ever morecentral to our social conduct. We hope this experiment and the resulting text(the transcript) may act somewhat as a case study, via which it may be possibleto glean further realisation of the consequence of our current behaviours andtendencies.

Interior Transpositions related musings - more phenomenology

2011-06-07T15:46:00.002+01:00

"... harness, expose and manipulate natural phenomena as a way to create phenomenological experiences"

... extract from "Anthony McCall at Luciana Brito, São Paulo" written by Rebecca Najdowski for Daily Serving

Interior Transpositions - Black spot do objects

2011-05-30T17:29:00.007+01:00

Interior Transpositions - Statement update

2011-05-26T09:53:00.007+01:00

The constraints of limited time and resources forced the collaborators to forgo the usual process. In order that we would be able to operate within these restrictive parameters we decided to eschew exterior content. In its place, we adopted a framework of reductive methods to respond to the environment itself. Physical idiosyncrasies of the warehouse’s interior have been iterated, and fed back into the space. This insular and recursive pattern creates a reverberation between the objects, as they simultaneously describe the space and alter it.

2011-05-23T01:23:00.002+01:00

Alvin Lucier - I am sitting in a room (1969)

This is a hugely important work to me and the current project, "Interior Transpositions".

Interior Transpositions press release statement

2011-05-23T01:14:00.001+01:00

~~This is a response to an almost empty space.~~

Due to palpable restrictions in time and resources an approach was adopted by the collaborators whereby exterior content was consciously rejected. This necessarily reductive process is perhaps aesthetically similar to Minimalism - favouring simplicity of form, denying artifice. The forms present reflect an insular, recursive motif. Physical idiosyncrasies of the empty warehouse space have been replicated, magnified and repositioned. The objects simultaneously alter the experience of occupying and traversing the space, heightening awareness of spatial attributes relative to the body. These "transpositions," which reverberate internally, contemplate the phenomenology of physicality.

Work in progress at the Unit 4 warehouse

2011-05-23T01:05:00.002+01:00

"Black spot" - Interior Transpositions (work in progress)

Interior Transpositions flyer

2011-05-20T13:49:00.000+01:00

2011-02-11T19:56:00.005Z

The space we inhabit is ~~loaded with hierarchies~~ [open]. So much of the space that surrounds is inaccessible to us ~~due to~~ [regardless of] our social background.

The art world is a very elitist environment, it is full of walls keeping those who 'don't belong' out. This is a very troubling thought as art should be open to everyone shouldn't it? Shouldn't art be concerned with the varied milieu?

We are here to challenge those class systems. We are here to break down the boundaries.

But where does this begin?

It begins with destroying the elitism surrounding the gallery, by tearing down the boundaries.

How can this be done?

We will do this by filling the space with what is beyond its boundaries, it will become part of the space beyond its physical form. These spaces will be filled with the sounds and smells, with the atmosphere of the world outside of itself.

Beyond real

2011-01-25T13:54:00.000Z

Originally posted by Matt Boynton.

Disneyland is there to conceal the fact that it is the ‘real’ country, all of ‘real’ America, which is Disneyland (just as prisons are there to conceal the fact that it is the social; in its entirety, in its banal omnipresence, which is carceral).

Jean Baudrillard, Simulations (1983)

It is ever so apt that it is Disney are the backers of the Celebration development near Orlando, Florida. Baudrillard described Disneyland as being

Presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real, when in fact all of Los Angeles and the America surrounding it are no longer real, but of the order of the hyperreal and of simulation.

Disney Imagineers have manufactured another hyperreality, Celebration. Celebration is a development built upon New Urbanist principles is a wonderfully seductive manufactured simulation of an ideal Americana. It is an illusion of the ‘perfect town’; we are presented with a hyperreal environment akin to those presented to us by Buena Vista.

The US is awash with the hyperreal; it is constantly presenting the world with ‘wonderful’ new fantasies. The US, like new urbanism is built upon great fantastical ideals of being a land of equality and opportunity. These ideals though, are Utopian ones and are by definition are unobtainable. Here is where my love of this subject and country lies; we are presented with something that is so impossibly beautiful that it cannot possibly exist but we are seduced by the beauty of its siren song.

Other works that spring to mind

2011-01-25T13:51:00.003Z

Other works that spring to mind regarding the as yet unrealised form of our “city project” are:

Hideyuki Nakayama - Glass Lens Door Knob (2010)

DESIGNTIDE TOKYO architect Hideyuki Nakayama, in collaboration with Japanese company UNION, presented a glass globe doorknob that gives you a sneaky glimpse as to what’s on the other side of the door.

This design is elegant in how well it achieves the tranformation of a familiar object and creates an uncanny effect. The glimpse that it provides doesn’t fit with ones expectations of privacy or personal / public interaction.

Gordon Matta-Clark - Conical Intersect (1975)

For the Paris Biennale in 1975, Matta-Clark made a major cut in two houses adjacent to the Centre Georges Pompidou in Les Halles. The cut, shaped like a twisted cone, was inspired by Anthony McCall’s film Line Describing a Cone.

Conical Intersect - in rather more dramatic fashion - performs the transformation of a space, and the way we percieve its boundaries.

Richard Wilson - Water Table (1994)

Two tons of concrete drainage pipe, one full size billiards table, one hole 13ft x 7ft x 3ft deep and exposed ground water. These constitute Richard Wilson’s latest sculpture which opens the second gallery space at Matt’s Gallery in March.

At first sight the room appears to be empty. However, sunk flush with the newly laid floor, one immediately discerns the green baize of a full size billiards table. Simultaneously, one recognises the sound of splashing water coming from below. Five skip loads of rubble have been removed from the gallery floor to create a hole in which the billiards table now sits. There is a small gap between the table’s cushioned ledge and the ragged edge of the hole. A concrete drainage pipe measuring 32 inches in diameter has been sunk into the table passing through the clay underneath the building right down to London’s water table 3 meters below. Peering down this pipe, one sees at the bottom the moving water that one first heard on entering.

Although particularly Wilson’s work does not contain immediate social implications, each of these pieces activate a profound reappraisal of our environment whilst in the same instance they are all very simple concepts. To me, this is an attractive quality for a work.

New Urbanism

2011-01-25T13:48:00.001Z

Originally posted by Matt Boynton.

The Congress for the New Urbanism views disinvestment in central cities, the spread of placeless sprawl, increasing separation by race and income, environmental deterioration, loss of agricultural lands and wilderness, and the erosion of society’s built heritage as one interrelated community-building challenge.

We stand for the restoration of existing urban centers and towns within coherent metropolitan regions, the reconfiguration of sprawling suburbs into communities of real neighborhoods and diverse districts, the conservation of natural environments, and the preservation of our built legacy.

We recognize that physical solutions by themselves will not solve social and economic problems, but neither can economic vitality, community stability, and environmental health be sustained without a coherent and supportive physical framework.

We advocate the restructuring of public policy and development practices to support the following principles: neighborhoods should be diverse in use and population; communities should be designed for the pedestrian and transit as well as the car; cities and towns should be shaped by physically defined and universally accessible public spaces and community institutions; urban places should be framed by architecture and landscape design that celebrate local history, climate, ecology, and building practice.

We represent a broad-based citizenry, composed of public and private sector leaders, community activists, and multidisciplinary professionals. We are committed to reestablishing the relationship between the art of building and the making of community, through citizen-based participatory planning and design.

We dedicate ourselves to reclaiming our homes, blocks, streets, parks, neighborhoods, districts, towns, cities, regions, and environment.

Copyright 1996, Congress for the New Urbanism.

New Urbanism is a movement within town planning that believes in designing on a ‘human scale’. Its principals describe the sacrificing of the ruthless efficiency of modernism for a community oriented and diverse ‘nearly perfect town’.

A couple of examples of New Urbanist towns are the Disney sponsored Celebration, Florida (pictured above) and the DPZ designed Seaside, Florida. These towns are fascinating as they seem hyper-real, they are manufactured chocolate box Americana.

Michael Rakowitz - Large city dynamics

2011-01-25T13:46:00.001Z

Michael Rakowitz - Rise, 2001

Michael Rakowitz - Rise, 2001 (inside the Fei Dar Bakery kitchen)

Fei Dar Bakery is located on the ground floor of an adjacent two-story building at 191 Center Street. The bakery is one of the most popular Chinese pastry shops and also functions as a meeting place for many young Chinese neighborhood residents.

In Rise, the central oven duct of Fei Dar Bakery is extended through the rooftop of the bakery, up 125 feet, and into the ninth floor gallery space at 129 Lafayette Street, filling the gallery with the aroma of Chinese pastries as they are baked. For the opening reception of the exhibition, Fei Dar Bakery provided pastries so gallery-goers could taste what they were smelling. Throughout the duration of the show, Fei Dar received a steady flow of customers who had visited the gallery.

… extract from michaelrakowitz.com

This work does something similar to what I envisaged our city project would do. Also, if you visit Rackowitz’s website and take a look at his other projects, for example “paraSITE” (which is essentially a design that reuses the waste hot air that is pumped out of large city buildings to inflate and warm a shelter for homless people) you will see that he is concerned with the same idea as us, that is, the dynamics of large city communities. He creates very witty connections between different sectors of the commnity. They act like worm-holes which transverse what is only a very short physical distance between these different groups but also bridge the very large cultural distance between them.

'A nearly perfect town'

2011-01-25T12:36:00.002Z

Originally posted by Matt Boynton.

A perfect town is made up of all elements. It has affluence, symbolised by is grand architectural monolithic shrines to business. It also has poverty, the subways housing the homeless and slums full of people looking for the better life in the town where the streets are paved with gold. A perfect town is a melting pot.

Downtown and Uptown

Depot, market, factories, warehouses, slum - these features, combined with the fascination of the riverbank and stockyards and the assorted public of railroaders and Latinos and occational ranch hands - have all given South Main a very definite character: easy-going, loud, colorful, and perhaps during fair week or at shipping time a little disreputable. Boys on the Cougar football squad have specific orders to stay away from South Main, but they don’t. Actually the whole of Optimo looks on the section with indulgence and pride; it makes the townspeople feel that they understand metropolitan problems when they can compare South Main with the New York waterfront.

North Main, up on the heights beyond the courthouse square and past the two or three blocks of retail stores, is (on the other hand) the very finest part of Optimo. The northwestern section of town, with its tree-shaded streets, its view over the river and the prairie, its summer breezes, has always been identified with wealth and fashion as Optimo understands them. Colonel Ephraim Powell (Confederate Army, Ret., owner of some of the best ranch country in the region) built his bride a handsome limestone house with a slate roof and a tower, and Walter Slymaker, proprietor of Slymaker’s Mercantile and of the grain elevator, not to be outdone, built an even larger house farther up main; so did Hooperson, first president of the bank. There are a dozen such houses in all, stone or Milwaukee brick with piazzas (or galleries, as the old timers still call them) and large, untidy gardens around them. It is worth noting, by the way, that the brightest claim to aristocratic heritage is this: grandfather came out West for his health. New England may have its “Mayflower” and “Arabella,” east Texas its Three Hundred Founding Families, New Mexico its Conquistadores; but Optimo is loyal to is loyal to the image of the delicate young college graduate who arrived by train with his law books, his set of Dickens, his taste for wine, and the custom of dressing for dinner. This legendary figure has about seen his day in the small talk of Optimo society, and the younger generation frankly doubt his having ever existed; but he (or his ghost) had a definite effect on local manners and ways of living. At all events, because of this memory Optimo looks down on those western mining towns where Sarah Bernhardt and de Reszke and Oscar Wilde seem to have played so many one-night stands in now-vanished opera houses.

Brinckerhoff Jackson, J. (1952). “The Almost Perfect Town” from Landscapes. Univ of Massachusetts Press.

The essay which I quoted from is a criticism of post WWII developments in town planning, which looked to rip the heart out of towns through re-development.

For further information;

Le Gates, R T (ed.) & Stout, F (ed.). (2007). The City Reader. Fourth Edition. Oxon. Routledge Page 184.

More Mylar

2010-07-29T22:45:00.002+01:00

Cracks & Hacks: my approach to the proposal

2010-06-30T15:53:00.011+01:00

A work in progress of course ...

It's useless to wait - for a breakthrough, for the revolution, the nuclear apocalypse or a social movement. To go on waiting is madness. The catastrophe is not coming, it is here. We are already situated within the collapse of a civilization. The Invisible Committee - The Coming Insurrection , 2007

It is usual to think of the apocalypse or a catastrophe on a global scale: but for many people it is only noticeable when we feel the effects closer to home.

I have approached the quote above from a more personal angle, the collapse of civilization as an idea can be represented just as clearly in the collapse of an individual reality. Much of our life, reality, morals, and memories can be drawn from home, from the material possessions one is always drawn back to; giving us the illusion of security. it is usual to feel there is a sense of collapse of our own reality in times of extreme change or trauma, for example; the breakdown of a family unit, a revolution or social movement, the loss of a home, living in a war torn country and other disturbances to the things that personally shape our daily lives.

What I take from the proposal of cracks and hacks is the idea of the disintegration of seemingly solid structures; and the creation of something new from the remnants left behind.

My focus is on an aesthetic representation of reality; the home and one’s own possessions. The home provides a very insular sense of reality; there is a security in personal artefacts. Certain objects act as symbols that are reminiscent of people, events and other memories. What happens to such memories if the object is destroyed?

I hope to morph and modify domestic possessions through a destructive process to create something new, which is not immediately recognisable with the object I began with. I will use processes such as sanding, burning or grating parts of the objects, and will deliberately choose such objects that appear to be nostalgic or homely.

My aim is to evoke a sense of unease that comes with the feeling that your personal reality has

been disrupted. Possibly present them in their state of destruction? Or allow some fragments of the objects to sit in the rest of the object as though waiting to disintegrate or melt into the undoing of itself?

These are my thoughts so far, I think they need to be made more clear, possibly with some examples or quotes, or just narrow my focus in one a singular aspect of the proposal. I would love some help in writing it up to make it more succinct. Suggestions needed.

For Matt

2010-06-27T14:35:00.013+01:00

Considering both myself & Matt's fetishistic proclivities for repetition I thought that the American conceptual artist Mel Bochner's Repetition: Portrait of Robert Smithson 1966 (Ink on graph paper 7.5 x 6.75) might be a useful conceptual touchstone for thinking about repetition. Specifically in relation to his Measurement series exposing the interpretative framework of the gallery system in it's creation of the 'autonomous' art object.

In a 1969 interview (click here) Bochner proposed a way of thinking about Repetition in which there is no conclusive original, thus no copies. He goes on to suggest that if a work is held in various locations, that as long as it's material presence is internally consistent, then it is same work. "It is therefore not a portable object but a portable idea [...]. Signalling the need to distinguish between works that are physically and conceptually site specific and those that are site-dependent but conceptually independent".

Click here for a related article on Tate papers: Systems Theory & Sytems Aesthetics characterised by Ann Rorimer as "crossing the divide between the Modernist belief in the self contained object and Post Modernist attention to relational, non autonomous, multi-faceted open endedness" discussing among others Hans Haacke, Smithson & Bochner.

References:
Miwon K (2004) ONE PLACE AFTER ANOTHER: Site specific art and locational identity p.174

http://www.tate.org/research/tateresearch/tatepapers/06spring/skrebowski/htmaccessed 27th June 2010

Message for Joanne

2010-06-27T13:31:00.005+01:00

Rachel Goodyear, Banff self directed residency, Week 2, entry 1, 2010

After visiting your blog and noting your interest in the Artist Ericailcane I couldn't help but make connections with the work of Rachel Goodyear whose drawings " present captured moments where characters reside within an existence where social etiquette no longer, or maybe never, applied [...]. Each physical piece of work and the occurrences and characters they deliver are pre-occupied with their own individual existence within the boundaries of the surface they are drawn upon." For the rest of the article on Goodyear's website click here.

All text & images reproduced from http://www.rachelgoodyear.com/menu.html accessed 27/06/10

More musings on hacking

2010-06-26T12:34:00.005+01:00

One of the great ironies to mark hacking is the fact that mainstream public perception of hackers is based on the idea that hacking is totally immoral and yet the actual history of hacking shows that many hackers are in fact quite obsessed with ethical questions and with what Steven Levy defined decades ago as the "hacker ethic."

But what if the question of ethics is simply the wrong question to be asking? This is what Brian Harvey suggests in this old but thought provoking piece, which we read last week, where he argues that:

"Steven Levy, in the book Hackers, talks at length about what he calls the ``hacker ethic.'' This phrase is very misleading. What he has discovered is the Hacker Aesthetic, the standards for art criticism of hacks. For example, when Richard Stallman says that information should be given out freely, his opinion is not based on a notion of property as theft, which (right or wrong) would be an ethical position. His argument is that keeping information secret is inefficient; it leads to unaesthetic duplication of effort. "

I think he raises some important question about what we mean by ethics in the first place as well as about the relationship between aesthetics and ethics.

An older, Greek, definition of ethics as virtue did not separate aesthetics and ethics so starkly in so far as Greek philosophy emphasized ethics as the virtuous and good life, rooted in the fulfillment of excellence. But even if you separate these two domains, one interesting question remains, when might the aesthetic become the ethical?

One can argue that the relationship between aesthetics and ethics in hacking concerns the broader issue of productive autonomy: the constellation of institutions, social norms, legal devices, and moral codes that hackers have created and draw upon in order to autonomously improve on the work of peers, refine their technical skills, and extend engineering traditions. Their actions, their guidelines, their norms however strike as ethical not for any inherent reason but because they sit in tension with mainstream proprietary models of knowledge in general and software in specific. So if we take a relational instead of ontological view of ethics, we can see how hacker aesthetics commitments are also ethical ones.

I have always wondered in fact whether Levy in Hackers identified the hacker ethic when he did and as he did (he noted that hackers did not themselves talk about ethics; he interpreted their actions as ethical) because this was a moment of crisis—a crisis of social reproduction to be specific—among the MIT hackers.
That is, the early 1980s was just the time when copyrights and patents were creeping into the world of software, when lucrative companies were hiring programmers, when NDAs were becoming more common, when in short, the aesthetics of hacking was forced to move into ethical territory. Stallman reacted to the evisceration of his MIT hacker community with what was clearly an ethical response: he established the idea and institution of Free Software aimed as cultural preservation and political advocacy. Perhaps it was just this crisis, these set of responses, that allowed Levy to identify the ethics of software freedom.

Enid Gabriella Coleman - "From Hacker Aesthetics to Ethics" posted on STDIN (one of NYU's Department of Media, Culture and Comunication class blogs)

For Sam - On the double edge sword that is language

2010-06-16T15:46:00.002+01:00

Panofsky refers to it as the ‘Boa Constructor, a private myth for the private eye.’ [1]

Yes ‘words restrict ideas as well as develop and organise them’ says Allen Leepa. [2]

Quite, our apprehension of the world is a ‘product of acts of selection, foregrounding & symbolization’ replies Daniel Chandler. [3]

Langer concurs ‘language plays a key role in constituting reality simultaneously reducing our awareness of its mediation & materiality through its communicative transparency”. [Ibid]

‘The technology that is the alphabet has been so deeply interiorized it is almost impossible to separate our experiences from the categories in which we organise them’ says Ong [Ibid].

It alos explians why you can still raed and uderstnd this centense even thow it is mispelled, says I.

[1] Cawes M J (1981) The Eye in the Text, p.7

[2] Biggs et al (1989) Minimalism, Liverpool: Tate Gallery, p 10.

[3, 4, 5] Chandler D (1984) Semiotics for beginners

Duck on a post it note 2010

2010-06-15T19:37:00.007+01:00

Because I am tired, because my practice has gone A.W.O.L, because I am up to my ears in theory, because I have forgotten how to use my face and it has become stuck in deep & serious concentration, because I liked the idea of posting a post it, because it is a conceit (can you guess what it is yet?), because it shouldn't work but it does, because as opposed to flogging a dead horse I feel like flogging a dead duck, because my ideas feel like they are dead in the water (" a simple act of faith, a simple act of faith, a simple act of faith" David Grey: Dead in the Water), because I feel like a quack, because I'm worth it, just because I can.

Untitled video work

2010-06-11T15:16:00.003+01:00

Sam and I made this video as an initial response to Cracks & Hacks. It is a work in progress.

Altermodern

2010-06-10T00:26:00.016+01:00

Nicholas Bouriaud talking about the "Altermodern"; the new cultural paradigm that will succeed postmodernism.

Bourriaud elaborates a very similar historical scenario to the one laid out by myself in the "Cracks & Hacks" proposal (except, whereas he describes the end of postmoderntiy, I described the end of late capitalism via postmodernity). I like the extra point he makes about history being the the last unchartered continent. He really does talk about post-postmodernity with more clarity than anyone I've heard/read. Lots of fuel for the new proposal work here.

Finding the truth in systems: in praise of design-hacking

2010-06-04T03:43:00.009+01:00

Earlier this year we launched a new account of design
for the RSA: "You know more than you think you do:
design as resourcefulness and self-reliance". It described
the big gap that industrial progress and Modernism
opened up between the professional provision of
design and our common competence and readiness
to see and solve the problems around us. Our two-fold
contention is that we need a new accommodation
between professional designers and everyone else;
and that design is uniquely able to make everyone
– people and communities – more resourceful.
This is not an anti-professional stance; merely
an acknowledgement that there is more design
opportunity in the world – a greater volume and variety
of problems to be solved – than will ever be addressed
by professional designers alone. Furthermore since
most individuals are not in a position to pay for the
services of a designer, they would do well to acquire
some of the habits, insights and processes that
designers use.

The word “hacking”, which originally denoted
brazen trespasses into closed systems of electronic
communication, increasingly invokes a broader range
of stunts and sabotages of security and convention.
It has also entered the argot of design criticism.
The stereotypical designer – passionately authentic,
famously unbending and always in black – is newly
vulnerable to the interference of amateurs. The
hard-won tryst between designer, manufacturer and
intellectual property rights, likewise, has few defences
against the open-source spirit and an internet wherein
no secrets are hid. The brave ones embrace it. While
cheerful design jam-sessions of professional and
amateur go on in cities and design festivals all over the
developed world, nothing changes in the favelas and
rural villages where necessity has always been the
mother of invention.

Hacking is the interference in, or corruption
of, the authorship of designers and manufacturers,
usually by amateurs. It happens right there in the
space between the professional and the ordinary
citizen that the RSA is interested in. So we asked Scott
Burnham: is design-hacking merely an introverted
chapter in the history of design, or does it reveal civic
ingenuity and resourcefulness that a century and a half
of industrially-fed consumerism have masked? His
answer persuasively describes the evolution of hacking
from the digital to the analogue world and thence,
with pregnant illustration, into the civic realm of
streets and municipal regulations.

Meanwhile here’s my own thought: our
competence in making things as individuals, and
in manufacturing as a nation, is greatly reduced
and unlikely to be restored soon. Most of us don’t
make anything more complex than an apple pie from
scratch, from raw components, and lack, therefore,
the visceral sense of design that our pre-industrial
and wartime forebears must have had. Is hacking
the new making (along with its close cousin, repair)?
In the waning of common hand-craft, might we
settle for hacking instead?

Forward from "Finding the truth in systems:
in praise of design-hacking" by Scott Burnham written by Emily Campbell, 2009

Essay is here.

Although the posture of this text seems ironically stick-in-the-mud after the status quo it is reporting the demise of, it elaborates very well on a conversation I was having with Matt. The rise of hacking seems to signify a wider movement towards the intentional/inevitable and overdue dissolving of hierarchical modernist systems.

New proposal: Cracks & Hacks

2010-06-03T23:15:00.009+01:00

It's useless to wait - for a breakthrough, for the revolution, the nuclear apocalypse or a social movement. To go on waiting is madness. The catastrophe is not coming, it is here. We are already situated within the collapse of a civilization.

The Invisible Committee - The Coming Insurrection , 2007

This quote solidifies the sentiment well. As late capitalism and the accompanying sham democracy saturate the new global society, it's demise is undeniable.

Through the acceleration of the industrial revolution, through the ideologies of empirical modernism, via the media spectacle, our western culture grew superhuman; too large for us as individuals or even en masse to effect change in its course. The gigantic institutions that define late capitalism lumber self perpetuating movements above our heads. The situation seems dire when we notice this dis-empowerment, for example during election time or anti war protests.

Recently, as the modus oporandi is being exported around the globe, our politics and morals are being tested. And with postmodern duality being incorporated into the vernacular, cracks in the logic are becoming more evident. The theory is being stretched thin.

There are signs that groups are starting to utilise the spaces which are forming around the collapse of this regime. Take, for example, design-hacking; the customisation of ones own possessions. This is a cultural activity that takes it's cues from the open source ethic prominent across the internet. Those who hack pre-existing products into more personal and useful iterations (usually by way of self taught skills) share their methods, most often making sure that the same result can be achieved by anyone with as little funds and equipment as possible. As this culture grows it proliferates creativity and also empowerment, through the understanding of the material world that surrounds the individual and increasing their ability to control it. Design-hacking also dissolves such hierarchies whereby those working for large businesses have the capital backing to innovate. Skills and creative thinking that are usually most successfully cultivated within the incentive of a commercial environment are becoming commonplace in self taught DIYers. There are other examples of fresh cultural models that buck the trend like this, most of them having arisen from somewhere about the digital peripherals which are quickly centralising within our reality.

The aim of this proposal is to create and co-curate a body of work that addresses the issues surrounding the demise of the last cultural paradigm and the birth of the new. Simple as that.

Consumer Transposition FAIL

2010-06-03T21:09:00.002+01:00

It didn’t go well for “Consumer Transposition” at Radiator festival. No one turned up, and without the numbers the intervention is pointless.

The fatal flaw in our estimations seems to have been that we expected (even though we knew it would take hard work) that we could involve a significant amount of the public without an incentive. Well, even after a month of the hard sell; nothing.

Otherwise, everything before and after that behemoth anticlimax was a lot of fun.

Consumer Transposition - Participant information

2010-04-29T17:59:00.004+01:00

"Black spot" - Consumer transposition (participant information), 2010

These are the information pages for Conumer transposition, "Black spot's" public intervention at Radiator Festival in Nottingham, 14th May.

Download a copy, here.

"Black spot" @ R8R

2010-04-29T14:07:00.003+01:00

'Black spot' are at Radiator Festival in Nottingham, 14th May.

This is what we are doing:

'Black spot' - Consumer Transposition

The “mob” or “swarm” seems to be a pervasive behavioural motif within the virtual realms prevalent today; peer-to-peer file sharing uses the term “swarm” to denote the active group of users, sharing a file, “denial of service” attacks are designed to overload servers by inundating them with far more requests than they can handle, etcetera.

We aim to choreograph an amount of people - similar to the expected traffic of a hypothetical online service, for example, fifty - to arrive, at once, at a physical store located in the city centre. Each of them will then attempt to purchase a nominal item, resulting in a huge queue. Once each person has acquired their item, they will then converge on a predetermined spot outside to consume or evaluate their purchase. This mass congregation should affect and change the flow of pedestrian traffic around them. When each individual has acted out and fulfilled the consumer’s role, they will disperse back into the normal, real world fabric. We envisage that in order to gain a sense of visual impact this performance may be repeated in several locations around Nottingham throughout the festival day.

This mass convergence of bodies influenced by the architecture of mass communication has already been realised by the “flash mob”. But, by taking behaviour which is typical of online consumerism - where businesses and customers alike are not restricted by physical, geographical actuality - and transposing it into a traditional, real world commercial environment, we hope that we can learn more about the parameters of each reality.

The intervention to the everyday movements of people around the city, whilst acting as a poetic analogy for the psycho-geography of the other reality, will highlight the mechanics - the pros and cons - of both systems.

For both the business and the consumer, the transposition inverts and negates the benefits of online transaction whilst simultaneously converting what is isolated and detached into a socially powerful event.

More about the festival here.

More about our intervention to come.

Even more VOID

2010-04-24T21:49:00.003+01:00

Christian Robert-Tissot
Bruce Asbestos (check post from 12th April)

Intersections & Counterpoints

2010-04-20T16:58:00.000+01:00

I am caught at the intersection hopping about like a demon on metaphorical hot coals, a miasma of theoretical spiders weave an intricate web enveloping me in a symphony of disembodied voices. An insatiable thirst leads me to drink from the well of culture but alas there is water, water everywhere & not a drop to drink. Can dislocation be posited as a location in itself and can this relationship ever be consummated or am I destined to burn forever?

Post modernity

2010-04-15T15:12:00.002+01:00

Where does the art world sit these days, are we still in an age of post modernity? Have we moved beyond and if so where to?

Untitled Readymade 2010

2010-04-04T15:01:00.002+01:00

Untitled Readymade 2010

2010-04-04T15:00:00.003+01:00

And

2010-04-02T17:59:00.000+01:00

A is in love with D except N is always coming between them.

2010-03-26T11:48:00.000Z

A man walked into a shed & ...

2010-03-21T20:29:00.004Z

ThINKing on Paper

2010-03-06T10:54:00.004Z

Ampers&, Coventry University, 26th Feb - 26th March 2010

2010-03-02T18:08:00.006Z

Ampers& is Denise Startin's first solo project since graduating in Fine Art 2009. Ampers& is a minimal and pithy work, cut off from its usual context and function in language (providing the bridge in grammatical construction) it is instead placed in a relational context between Author, artwork and the provisional space in which it is shown. The Kunstverein performing as readymade host, liminal space and bracket.

As an artwork Ampers& simultaneously questions its own meaning and status, constantly thrown back on itself without resolve. During the exhibition Denise will attempt to respond to the artwork, each response only ever being partial and provisional. Ampers& seeks to capitalise on the informal nature of this space by staging participatory activity.

You are invited to contribute your own responses to the work, perhaps you want to muse philosophically on the nature and status of the Ampersand, consider the context and the relations it is placed in, perhaps you want to direct me or even mis-direct me or simply leave a piece of text, a quote or other comment.

During the exhibition period all comments received will be posted in the Kunstverein generating a dialogue around the artwork. To encourage parity and transparency unencumbered by Authorship please post comments anonymously (select in Comments drop down menu) at Ampersands Anonymous

Capitalist VOID

2010-02-28T19:55:00.004Z

This is a picture I took on the way home from work the other day. It seems to sum up the void the world finds itself in. The billboard is an icon of the capitalist world that we live in, usually covered with bright vibrant images showing perfect ideals of what we should aspire to be. Yet here it is neglected and empty it is VOID.

Temporary events spaces

2010-02-26T21:55:00.007Z

Here are two examples of the type of events space that I think could be an interesting prospect for Black spot. They double up as design pieces, manifestations of a social model.

Moot - Public house, 2010

Ongoing series of events set in Moot's reconfigued gallery space, created to house events that will include music, film and food over the coming months.

From the Moot site, here.

DUS Architecten + Studio for Unsolicited Architecture - Bucky bar, 2010

Last week Amsterdam studios DUS Architecten and Studio for Unsolicited Architecture built a dome of umbrellas around a lamp post in Rotterdam and held a party under it.

Original artical at Dezeen, here.

A portrait project

2010-02-25T12:17:00.008Z

Having recently seen a work that was part of the Walden Affairs by Anke Kuipers Nine portraits of unknown people (2007) an installation made up of stacks of luggage that has been left at the airport I feel inspired to challenge what a portrait is.

Anke Kuipers - Nine portraits of unknown people, 2007

In addition to this piece I also recall a piece that Richard Deacon showed at the Ikon a few years back which was a series of newspaper headlines that his father had collected throughout his life. Deacon had framed these and put them in a gallery situation where they became a portrait of his father, telling us of his life.

The idea I'm proposing would be a one night event. I often find that the music I listen to is reflected within my work and is also reflection of myself (I think you can see where I'm going with this). I am thinking of getting people to create a list of their favorite pieces of music and putting them into a mix for each person which would be used as a soundtrack to the event. A night of musical portraits.

2010-02-24T16:32:00.002Z

... just thinking, after posting "More Void" - void, the nothingness at the centre of everything, futility and existential musings seem to be emerging as the one line of enquiry that has come out of the Black spot group conversation. Maybe it should be the theme when we do our first collaborative art project.

More VOID

2010-02-24T16:15:00.005Z

VOID VOID VOID VOID - Geroge Rippon, 2009

My good friend George Rippon came across this ready-made last year, at the train station. I have since acquired my own.

"This is the last call for the void. Is anyone traveling to the void?"

Transcendental musings

2010-02-23T19:07:00.005Z

Dear Blackspot

I was just enjoying responding creatively, and in all seriousness to a post on Matt's Blog (here). I laughed so hard I nearly killed myself, see below:

Matt Boynton said...

Is this it?

Have we as humanity hit the pinnacle? Is our floored capitalist system the ultimate? Can we hope to attain greater than imperfection? Is there anywhere to go now? Are the only possibilities available if we transcend our current existence?

Denise Startin said...

This is it!

Have we hit the pinnacle or are we just hitting our heads on the roof of the cave? Yes, there is somewhere to go now and with that in mind how do you propose that we transcend our current existence? I thought I might dress up in a monkey suit, read Derrida backwards in French and learn to shoot peanuts out of my arse. Yep I think that did it.
23 February 2010 10:29

Maybe we should all to come up with our own responses to transcending our current existence.

Creative Synthesis & Philosophic Method

2010-02-23T10:08:00.002Z

Dear Blackspot

I enjoyed our banter over drinks and since we were talking about celebration of art as celebration of life and the sharing of such creative acts as the socialization of individual experience I thought you might enjoy this quote:

"The first stage in free action proceeds from the way in which we experience and interpret the world. To live is to decide, and decide anew, each moment. (Hartshorne 1970:5)

It's gonna rain

2010-02-22T11:20:00.008Z

It's gonna rain (after Steve Reich), 2009

"It's Gonna Rain" is a musical composition for magnetic tape written by Steve Reich in 1965; the work is approximately 17 minutes and 50 seconds in length. It was Reich's first major work and a landmark in musical minimalism and process music.
The source material of "It's Gonna Rain" consists entirely of a tape recording made in 1964 at San Francisco's Union Square. In the recording, an African American Pentecostal preacher, Brother Walter, rails about the end of the world, while accompanying background noises, including the sound of a pigeon taking flight, are heard. The piece opens with the story of Noah, and the phrase "it's gonna rain" is repeated and eventually looped throughout the piece.

extract from Wikipedia article, here

This is a good example of how work begins for me. I treat all the entities which act as a point of departure for my creative process as found objects. Whether they are actually objects that I have found or they are artifacts I've come across through other mediums. This status is important to me. It allows me keep the entity that is the origin of inspiration at an appropriate distance from my physical process whilst trying to transpose that though into that form.
Here, I find an intriguing interaction between Reich's work and then how the process of transcription speaks, like a visual elaboration of the McLuhan dictum "the medium is the message".

I was inspired to share this snippet of a future work by Denise's recent word skits.

A modular future

2010-02-21T21:52:00.001Z

Could our future be one based around modular units that are interchangeable? Will we live in a world of plug and play pods, like the one proposed by Archigram in Plug-in City and put into reality at Habitat 67 in Montreal. In an evermore overcrowded world, with modular architecture we could just add on another pod/floor without concern and increase space. There could be a fascinating organised chaos of pods, sprawling, creating a vast labyrinthine environment. Alternatively there could be massive utility stems, shooting upward which you could come and dock your pod with; monumental structures with dwellings spotted about them, creating a sort of industrial Hyacinth. In this world you can take your home with you.

In this modular future we will become cyborgs with interchangeable body parts that fulfill different tasks. There will be practical body parts and couture sculptural parts. They will come in a variety of different styles - from robotic to a natural look. Some will be developed from organic tissue grown in the lab and modified to fulfill a task.
Could we, one day be popping to the Apple store, not to buy headphones but iEars with enhanced sound and inbuilt mp3?

Gone spotty

2010-02-20T12:51:00.004Z

How do I operate creatively in The Void? (out of the institution not yet in the system)

2010-02-11T13:57:00.003Z

The Void

A Void

Avoid

Avoidance

Dance in the Void

Artaucracy

2010-01-25T20:12:00.003Z

The Artaucracy is an idea that been floating in my head for a while and is on my list if things to do. What I'm thinking is that I will create a series of forms to be filled out during the creation of art, forms to clock in or out, forms to requisition the right to make certain types of work, forms to log the art work, you get the idea. I'm thinking of doing this for a few years to build up a volume of forms using several artists, just need some filing cabinets and stamps. This is a very brief explanation but I thought i should put it out there to see what responses and ideas we can generate.

Work in Progress

2010-01-25T20:10:00.004Z

This is what I'm currently working on. The working title is CNS, it is my interpretation of the brain. This is the first in a series of twenty.