Here are my notes for today’s presentation. A recording of the event is at the end of the post.

Introduction

As I’m sure is true for all of us, I’ve found this course to be a bit of an emotional roller-coaster ride. Not only from day to day, but from lecture to lecture, and even within each lecture I can go from elation to depression in the course of a few minutes.

What I think this shows is that I’m at least being challenged by the work we’re doing, which has to be a good thing, when all is said and done. I keep telling myself, when the tasks seem insurmountable, that if I wasn’t feeling this way I wouldn’t have any way of knowing when I was up against my limits and potentially making progress.

There is a distinct difference between this presentation and the first. The first was an introduction to me and my life up until the point at which I entered Goldsmiths, concentrating on personal, anecdotal evidence.

Review the first presentation

List of objects:

• DVD: Jacques Tati’s Playtime (my sense of humour, modernism, architecture in general)
• Some Monopoly houses (suburbia – my upbringing, architecture)
• my iPod (music, electronica)
• A small maquette for a sculpture (lovely objects, my interest in art)
• 2 of my own artworks – the erratum slips and the Malevich book (the work I was producing while at College)

New objects

List of objects:

• Performance
• Blog
• Deleuze and Guattari

This time around I’ll talk about specific things which have developed during the course and which I hope will develop during this term and beyond.

Perhaps the main theme (or problematic) of last term was my search for a hook within the course subject-matter on which I could hang my own interests and (potential) work. This has only very recently started to become clear to me.

Up until the end of last term I think I was somewhat at a loss as to how the course actually intersected with my own interests. The main problem being that I’m not sure what my interests are at this point, which obviously makes any kind of connection and subsequent progression difficult. This has always been a problem for me – even before we started this course I was viewing it as more of a move away from a negative than towards a positive, real goal.

Diagrams/Performance

But the presentation that I did with Ian in the last week of term clarified some things for me. Certainly what I enjoyed most in this presentation was the analysis of the display of the Beuys work at the tate, and—perhaps more pertinently—the representation of that analysis through diagrams and performance during the presentation itself.

In relation to this presentation I’ve started making links with aspects of previous work I’ve done (specifically my activities at Middlesex University doing my first degree, where I would write and “perform” those writings). So the writing, and performance of those writings; the concern with space and perceptions of space; the systems of awareness and control of space—I can see this as a method for future work which will now be placed on a far more informed basis than anything I was able to do in the past.

Blog

As a parallel exercise, over the past few years I’ve been keeping a blog on my website. This serves as a repository of thoughts and comments on what’s been happening to me. At the same time I’m seeing this more and more as another performance space for my writings, another area in which they are being presented.

Deleuze & Guattari

Another thing which is developing is my interest in Philosophy.

In what at first appeared to be a huge mistake I chose to take the Philosophy and… course. I originally came to it wanting to improve my knowledge and experience in this subject, but wasn’t prepared for the obscurity of the teaching. To begin with it was very disheartening to have to sit through lectures week after week and not be able to grasp the point of anything that was being talked about. Here was a situation where I felt completely out of my depth, but at the same time knew that I was learning something completely new that could only expand my thought processes, as painful as it felt.

At this point in time I don’t claim to have much more of a clue about what it’s all about, but I have been introduced to some authors whose work I’ve found interesting. I was particularly taken with the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari. Right now I’m attempting to write an essay on the concept of ‘the refrain’ as a musical motif as well as a wider concept applicable to other forms of art and society. This is described in frustratingly obtuse detail in their book A Thousand Plateaus. Needless to say I’m finding it quite ‘interesting’ (and challenging). For me, it’s a new way of thinking and thinking about thinking, and I’m keen to see where it leads me.

Conclusion

So essentially my objects are the writing – represented by the blog; the performance – represented by this presentation; and the philosophy – represented by this book, as my objects for this presentation.

I can’t tell you what implications these objects will have for my future activities – that remains to be seen.

Recording – 24mins (Ogg Vorbis format – 10.6MB)

As I mentioned in my previous post I was unable to use some of the material that I had prepared for our presentation to the Lab course just before the Christmas holidays, and wanted to present some of it here with a view to showing the kinds of things that I concentrate on in my analysis of galleries.

This animation runs through the various stages of analysis of the space at the tate Modern holding Joseph Beuys The Pack, starting with a basic exposition of the space itself, the work’s positioning in that space, then moving on to various social aspects of the space. The animation runs quite fast, but there is a ‘pause’ button to hold a particular image for further inspection, CTRL-click (or right-click) for zoom options.

Run Animation

The last day spent in College included our Lab session, in which we were asked to work in pairs producing a presentation on a work of art selected from the tate collection.

The partnerships were chosen randomly, by drawing names out of a hat, and I was paired with my colleague Ian Evans. There were four sets of two artworks, and one set was assigned to each pair of presenters (again, randomly). We received Joseph Beuys’ The Pack 0f 1969, and John Baldessari’s Hope (Blue) Supported by a Bed of Oranges (Life): Amid a Context of Allusions of 1991.

We were originally drawn to Baldessari’s work, but in a negative sense as he was an artist we each knew little about, but we soon reverted to Beuys – as much as we had distinct problems with his work, there just seemed to be more get your teeth into with him.

Baldessari’s work, on our (rather superficial) inspection, seemed to have little to say outside of its immediate context (which of course would probably be the point, and very typical of the art of his time). In itself the piece seems to deal with montage and collage, filmic references, the play of meaning of loose referents, it has some formal elements that could also be interpreted or connected to other works, as well as the piece’s own position within the development of Baldessari’s oeuvre.

Beuys, on the other hand, afforded a veritable cornucopia of material to work with.

The presentation itself was organized along our own particular areas of interest. Ian concentrated on the social and political aspects of the work, for which I have little interest, and I took the formal and museological direction.

The Pack by Joseph Beuys, on display at the tate Modern
Presentation by Ian Evans and Edward Sanderson
Goldsmiths College 14 December 2006
Recording – 20mins (Ogg Vorbis format – 15.7MB)

Postscript

While working on the presentation, I was drawn to the presentation of the piece itself and started working through some analyses of the tate’s displays in relation to Beuys works from the Collection. Near the end of the recording there is a section on the positioning of The Pack and it’s relation to the audience and the audience’s relation back to the piece.

There was a lot that I looked into on this subject that wasn’t relevant to the presentation, given the time constraints, but I realised that this was something that really interested me and that I’d like to work up into a new post here, on the blog.