Category: PGDip

2007: PGDip in Contemporary Art History at Goldsmiths College in London

LOVE—Forgetting Oneself

This quote is from Julia Kristeva’s ‘Women’s Time’, in the context of the changing attitudes towards the desire to be a mother among feminists:

. . . love for another. Not for herself, nor for an identical human being, and still less for another person with whom ‘I’ fuse (love or sexual passion). But the slow, difficult and delightful apprenticeship in attentiveness, gentleness, forgetting oneself. The ability to succeed in this path without masochism and without annihilating one’s affective, intellectual and professional personality – such would seem to be the stakes to be won through guiltless maternity. (Kristeva, 1981, p. 206)

  • Kristeva, J. (1981). Women’s Time. In Moi, T. (ed.). The Kristeva Reader. Oxford. pp. 187–213.

Technorati Tags: ,

Posted on by escdotdot 0

COLLEGE—MA Application

I’m making some progress on my MA application form. I found out last week that I had missed the deadline for submitting the form for it to be ready for the associated funding application. I’d misunderstood the instructions on the College’s website as applying just to the their internal funding scheme, not to the AHRC’s process as well.

The AHRC would probably have been my major source of funding next year. Looking at their information it seems they can grant an individual around £14,000 a year, which is designed to cover all living expenses. However, I have been warned that they will not consider anyone who doesn’t get a 1st in their previous degree.

Now, I don’t want to sound overly ambitious, but of course I aim to get this 1st.

But having missed the deadline, of course, all this is moot. So I’ve done a bit of rethinking and although I’ll still apply, I’ll have to find a part-time job in order to be able to pay my way.

Getting back to the application, the biggest stumbling-block has been the personal statement. At present it looks like this:

MA Application Statement

Why I wish to study at Goldsmiths.

Looked at simplistically, the MA in Contemporary Art Theory is the natural follow-up to Goldsmith’s PGDip in Contemporary Art History which I will complete this year. That said, during the PGDip I have developed proven skills in this area, through the areas in which I have worked and subjects I have been drawn to.

The PGDip built on an existing area of interest for me. Prior to taking this course I had completed a BA in Fine Art at Middlesex University, not in itself a particularly theoretical environment, but by the end of which I was producing artworks which were concerned with the nature of art in general and the relationship between the artwork and the institutions in which it existed or was placed. For instance, for my degree show I invited another artist (Peter Fend) to exhibit in my place and used the opportunity to probe the limits of the academic structures in place at the college.

At the time, I had only a very cursory knowledge of the theory backing up such artistic manoeuvres, although I was greatly attracted to theory as a concept in itself, borrowing quotations and particularly loaded author’s names as exemplars for a potential depth of knowledge which I did not yet have.

Choosing to take the PGDip was designed to give me that knowledge. A knowledge that would give the necessary backup to my ideas and works.

What do I want to do with the MA?

Over the past few years I have begun writing on a combination of theoretical and quotidian subjects as part of my daily activities and aim to expand on that writing during the MA by improving the quality and also the visibility of it. The MA will provide the opportunities to perform research and write extensively, in a critical setting where I will be pushed to make more of these writings.

The MA will also give me the environment in which to fully concentrate on particular subjects that I have become interested in while on the PGDip. I have become somewhat enamoured of Deleuze (a phase I believe a lot of people go through) and have spent many a happy(?) session trying to get to grips with his work. I am also interested in looking at the political in relation to philosophy, and vice versa, as a means to investigate theory as a practical source of social effectiveness. This MA will allow me to really get to grips with these subjects in a much more detailed and personally relevant fashion.

Personal reasons for doing MA

I believe I have the talent and ability to think and write both critically and philosophically. I enjoy pushing my thought processes into new areas and to turn those thoughts around in strange ways. In general, I am curious to know what it means to think about things, then what that means in the context of art, and then what that means in a wider context.

Finally, I know from my previous experience that Goldsmiths gives me access to many useful extra-curricular events and facilities and this MA will provide a high quality teaching environment and milieu in which to consolidate my own work.

Technorati Tags: , , ,

Posted on by escdotdot 0

CREATIVE JOURNAL—Mujeres Creando—Art and Political Activism

In Lab last week I was quite negative about the Bolivian feminist performance/action group Mujeres Creando1, mainly with respect to their relevance and effectiveness, but also with their translatability to the present state of affairs in Europe and particularly Britain.

This reaction was sparked by an anecdote about their presence at a conference last year where they performed and talked about their work. Apparently their presentation was greeted with a degree of scepticism by the audience as to it’s effectiveness when taken out of the Bolivian (or South American) context. The way the response was described, the audience were put off by the group’s less than academic style (given the context within which they were presenting), and the methods proposed as being those which Britain had seen from activist groups in the 80’s and 90’s and which had proved to have had little effect on politics and society in general.

After this we watched a video of one of Mujeres Creando’s performances in Bolivia. It took place in a public square, with a woman throwing pots of red paint (possibly blood) over the floor while haranguing the assembled crowd. Another member of the group, gaudily dressed as a caricature of someone from the upper-middle-classes (I think). The performance leads to the involvement of the police, performing a predictably heavy-handed eviction and arrest of the troupe. Much struggling and screaming ensues.

And here lies a problem with all works, it depends for it’s immediate effectiveness—it’s affectiveness?—on some knowledge of the context on the part of the viewer. Speaking personally, for this work I have only the vaguest idea about the background in Bolivia, about the treatment of female and/or gay members of their society. So my first contact with the piece lacks the necessary information for me to make anything of it (and given that I do not speak Spanish, I cannot gather anything from the dialogue), and I am hence only able to interpret formal aspects of the show, and relate what I am seeing to similar events I am aware of.

Is this a surmountable problem? In the context of the performance itself, is it a problem in the first place? The Performance only loses it’s context—it’s meaning—through the recording, so when performed I assume the piece works for it’s audience, and only by being mediated does it fail (at least on that front).

So what can be done to regain that context, if that’s all that’s necessary to make the piece work? At a very basic level, the video would need to include a lot of extra information to situate to performance within the social and political milieu, and this information would need to be tailored to a certain extent to the particular audience viewing the piece.

So what can be said about the reaction of the English audience to their work? Many will have no direct knowledge of experience of the situation in Bolivia, thus losing any possibility of an empathetic reaction. The performers at the conference may be able to engender an affective reaction through their engagement with the issues and ability to communicate with their audience.

So is this particular (lack of) reaction just apathy or a reasonable suspicion of this type of activism? Has performance of this type lost it’s effectiveness in Britain?

And what about it’s status as art? Is that relevant anymore? Does being classed as art neuter the work’s political aspirations? Again, does ‘art’ give the work some caché in Bolivia that is lacking in Britain? Have the British become inured to art? Is art not the place to make any kind of statement, if you want that statement to be taken seriously? Has the avant-garde tradition of épater le bourgeois been emasculated?

It’s very difficult for me to relate to what is undoubtedly a very serious situation in Bolivia. Using performance art to address it leaves me with conflicting emotions – on the one hand I can see that in it’s place it could have been effective; on the other I am repelled by the methods that seem to me to be embarrassingly ineffective. But of course, I am only thinking of them in relation to myself, one person’s reaction. Just because I do not react well, does not prevent the work from being effective with other people. I feel bad for being so negative now. I was being very limited in my thinking. I should ask myself what I would do in this situation.

  1. Mujeres Creando

Technorati Tags: , , , ,

Posted on by escdotdot 0

CORE COURSE—Tino Sehgal research

It’s difficult to find textual information on Tino Sehgal, probably because he exercises a policy of no objects and no photos or recordings, which makes it difficult to research the essay I’m writing on his work.

Here I’ve collected some quotes from online sources that may prove useful.

de Selby is in some places transcribing the artists own words, so while they will be useful in themselves as opinion or critique, I’m also trying to get hold of the recording of the original talk for the source material.

The Moisdon article is perhaps the most interesting from a theory point of view, while the Frenzhel piece has lots of Sehgal’s own comments.

As Moisdon says, the works make for an interesting situation for a writer, leading you into what could easily become “tautological traps” – I see this as an opening for some philosophical debate, and I’m looking forward to writing the essay.

. . . his art takes place on the macro level of institution and medium more than on the micro level of an individual work. (de Selby, 2006)

. . . the subject of any particular piece was secondary to it. (de Selby, 2006)

Sehgal said once again that he was not interested in adding more things to the world and that he was interested in figuring out an alternative form of production and exchange. (de Selby, 2006)

. . . he turned to the social institutions of art deliberately because its character and structure lent itself to this sort of experiment. (de Selby, 2006)

His most caustic remark, though—and he apologized for possibly being reductive—was about the antimarket attitude of many twentieth-century avant-garde artists. He said he thought they were misguided and naïve. (de Selby, 2006)

One cannot write about Tino Sehgal’s works without committing a first anomaly, by attempting to give them a title, to describe or to list them, that is, to enter into rivalry with the form of the work itself, which is the affirmation of what it is. (Moisdon, 2003)

. . .a series of traps, which render the artist and the viewer complicit, more by means of play than by default, of the context in which they come about, of the place in which they are exhibited; of the mercantile system which will, in order to sell them, inevitably seek to extract them from the trap. (Moisdon, 2003)

This work opposes certain illusions of what one could call the militant modern avant-garde, whilst nevertheless observing the mechanisms by which the art work is a spectacle destined to sacralise merchandise, to dissimulate regulations/deregulations of a system that precisely never really succeeds in distinguishing itself. (Moisdon, 2003)

Even though his pieces sometime appear destined to reveal the relationship of dependence that links the artist to the economic system, they are nonetheless also completely autonomous. and disalienated from this critical and political perspective. (Moisdon, 2003)

He aims for a mental reality beyond a visual reality and rediscovers the implacable (which is not irony) of affirmation. (Moisdon, 2003)

Sehgal’s tautologies (This is good, This is propaganda) are true by definition, and serve to situate the exhibition spaces. (Moisdon, 2003)

Via these affirmations, which contain their own solution, he renders obvious the retreat of knowledge, expertise; this competence, which allows to determine the meaning of an enunciation. Tino Sehgal’s signature does not dominate the representation of the space, it doesn’t refer to him as a real individual; it represents a place which allows ample space for other, equivalent identities. By means of repetition of the signs of self, Tino Sehgal’s enunciations finally liberate the work from the character of the author . . . (Moisdon, 2003)

The museum guards and gallery staff are part of this system of communication; they are the instruments, the relays that allow the artist to pursue his demonstration. Neither subjects now objects, they simply form part of the material elements of a proposal that seeks to verify the post-Duchampian question of the museum as medium, to know whether it is the museum that makes the work or the work that makes the museum. (Moisdon, 2003)

Duchamp affirms that only the artist’s signature suffices; that it is stronger than the institution. With Buren, the signature is the institution; he has no need to place his signature. Tino Sehgal inscribes himself into this perspective, in producing a third voice, a displacement; a subversion of the historical function of the signature and the readymade. (Moisdon, 2003)

That which Tino Sehgal bestows upon the place of his signing, is precisely this space of invention, its necessity: why invent? Why even «present a world» which would «add to» reality? To produce a discourse, a fiction, a representation? Perhaps merely for the creation of employment. (Moisdon, 2003)

Sehgal stages situations in which the observer is directly addressed and required to react. He surprises his viewers without making unfair demands on them. (Frenzhel, 2005)

. . . one wonders more about the framework in which the actions take place than about the actions themselves. (Frenzhel, 2005)

“My work belongs in a museum.” (Frenzhel, 2005)

“What intrigues me in art is the tradition of Duchamp, the possibility that a thing can become different and at the same time remain the same. The objectness of art however, never interested me. Because every object-based artwork affirms the highly problematic mode of production – the transformation of material because it is produced in the same way.” (Frenzhel, 2005)

There are no photographs, no videos of his works – they are saved exclusively in the memory of the participants. (Frenzhel, 2005)

Sehgal wants to go beyond emptiness without losing himself in metaphysics. “For me it’s a matter of looking: what comes after emptiness, how can I create something beyond asceticism or pure negation? One element is certainly the empowerment of the viewer.” (Frenzhel, 2005)

“My work exists in the form of a potentiality – they are realised when the visitor enters. And what happens then is not entirely in my control.” (Frenzhel, 2005)

The tautological trap snapped shut: the discussion had become the work, which had the goal of becoming the object of a discussion. (Frenzhel, 2005)

“The thing can only work because there are certain conventions and the situation plays with these conventions.” (Frenzhel, 2005)

. . . situations in which the distinction between artist, work and viewer are blurred. At this point zero of the white cube logic, something happens which in its fleetingness defies an attempt to interpret; something that is significant but whose significance cannot be pinned down. (Frenzhel, 2005)

Posted on by escdotdot 0