Updates from November, 2013 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • Vanessa 02:51 on 27/11/2013 Permalink | Reply  

    Amazing statement from one of the Spatula &… 

    Amazing statement from one of the Spatula & Barcode relational projects I peer reviewed:

    I decided that for my part of our group relational art project I would buy some nice chocolates to offer to other passengers on the train. When I got on the train, there were two women seated near me and I offered them chocolate. One declined, but the other took a chocolate and remarked that it was the first time in 7 years of riding the train that anyone had offered her anything.

     

  • Vanessa 22:42 on 17/11/2013 Permalink | Reply
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    Letters 2 Nadya 

    When I contacted EnglishPEN about writing to Nadya Tolokonnikova in prison they gave me her (now former) address in Mordovia and cautioned that if I wanted the letters to get through the censors, I shouldn’t talk about anything political. How do you write a non-political letter to the most politically aware person in the Russian nation? About whom I know nothing, save for the political? I wound up sending her several letters of chit-chat and drivel. On Friday The Guardian revealed that at least 1 person was able to have far more substantive correspondence with her:

    • Nadezhda Tolokonnikova’s correspondence with Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek

     

    • Ciara 12:39 on 18/11/2013 Permalink | Reply

      Dear Vanessa, Thank you for drawing my attention to this article. There are so many points to consider here – Nadia’s courage is amazing – Zizek’s humility, touching. (Notably, he does not inquire directly about her politics but focuses his questions on her wellbeing – encouraging her to talk about her rituals and routines that serve as ways of coping with her imprisonment.) However, my first instinct is an urge to “mother” Nadia (a move, I suspect, she would strongly resist!!) for I worry that the over-arching political cause spares little compassion for the fate of the young woman upon whom it is draped…I worry about the archaic closing “comrade” (though this gets dropped as their correspondence continues) – it smacks of a heady belief in a system that also failed people abundantly… But this comment is not a discussion about political poles, it is rather about a comparison between ZIzek’s correspondence and your letters to Nadia. I think you underestimate the significance of your personal correspondence with Nadia. While, in terms of her profile as a political activist, ZIzek’s support is valuable, when Nadia is considered less as an emblem and more as a human-being, your chit-chit and banter offers her an anchor in the everyday outside of the walls of her confinement, a grounding context for all the political theorising. I think, appealing to her as a person rather than political symbol, this communication is equally as important.

  • Christa Forster 18:47 on 06/11/2013 Permalink | Reply  

    I came across this prompt today on Plinky… 

    Screen Shot 2013-11-06 at 12.47.04 PM

    I came across this prompt today on Plinky, and I thought it might help artists brainstorm about their websites if they are participating in Vanessa’s Micro-X challenge.

     

  • Vanessa 10:32 on 05/11/2013 Permalink | Reply  

    Sitting is The New Smoking 

    Xta posted this vid in our discussion group. Thought I’d share it here!

     

  • Vanessa 08:31 on 05/11/2013 Permalink | Reply
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    What’s the difference between Re search & Re… 

    What’s the difference between .Re/search & .Re/act?

    You can really post whatever you like on either page. If you have multiple paragraphs, images, etc, something to document, it might go better on .Re/search. Here on .Re/act it’s ideal for short questions, ideas, thoughts, venting, etc. Here on .Re/act you don’t even have to go “New Post,” you just click “Hi [Vanessa]” and type stuff! 😀

     

    • Ciara 09:44 on 05/11/2013 Permalink | Reply

      Vanessa, thank you so much for creating this space and making it so accessible! It’s great to have somewhere that supports a more informal chat with our fellows than the “official” PBR forums. In the spirit of that informality, here’s a little something “8 bit style” I stumbled over yesterday – Is it a kind of Super Mari(na)o?? 😉
      http://www.pippinbarr.com/games/dmai/

      • Vanessa 10:24 on 05/11/2013 Permalink | Reply

        Ha Ciara, very cute! Did you back that Kickstarter project?

        • Ciara 14:09 on 05/11/2013 Permalink | Reply

          Hi Vanessa, No I didn’t. In fact, I’ve got to confess that I just became aware of the whole Kickstarter movement. I’m a bit uncomfortable with the kind of work M.A. is doing these days – but I like the retro graphics of that site and the “old-fashioned” gaming environment.

          • Vanessa 15:40 on 05/11/2013 Permalink | Reply

            Ha! With an oeuvre as vast as hers who knows what part of “these days” makes you uncomfortable. (I do know which part of her oeuvre makes my students uncomfortable – definitely anything with a knife. — interesting side note — some students think she’s insane (I had a student raise a hand and literally ask “is she insane” once) but overall, while she makes them uncomfortable, they do have a real respect for her. Vs. Eva & Franco Mattes (who I think are brilliant) who really, really piss a lot of students off.

            Anyway, given her unparalleled stature in performance art, I think her late-life “pandering” for credibility is sort of unbecoming, and of course, unnecessary. For me MA & Allan Kaprow are these giants in the field. In many ways they ask similar things from us. Yet in many ways the’re so opposite. MA wants an institution, and AK ran as far from them as he could.

            • Ciara 18:43 on 05/11/2013 Permalink

              Funnily enough, I’ve no problem with the knife-wielding work. Au contraire 😉 However, I am uncomfortable with the rather prescriptive “performance-art method” approach that she’s been promoting in later years and the manner in which she’s been promoting it. I agree absolutely with your comment about the unattractive and unnecessary “pandering”… Her historic works are extremely interesting in and of themselves.

              Ak, on the other hand, was my girlhood hero and continues to inspire my “blurring” 🙂

  • Vanessa 20:45 on 04/11/2013 Permalink | Reply
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    THE FUN Conference on Nightlife as Social Practice… 

    THE FUN Conference on Nightlife as Social Practice
    8-10 November 2013 in NYC
    http://madmuseum.org/series/fun-conference-nightlife-social-practice

     

  • Christa Forster 13:55 on 03/11/2013 Permalink | Reply  

    Another Phenomenal Day (Individual Assignment, week 4) 

    I used the Kozel transcript instead of the video; because of the transcript’s portability, I explored my project in my backyard on another glorious Houston day. I noticed a more dramatic interplay between nature and civilization than I would have had I been in my office/classroom. Anyway, the true research/practice space for my work is my journal/notebook (earlier I said it was my office/classroom, but honestly it’s my journal, which I make sure is always small enough to take anywhere).

    (More …)

     

    • Vanessa 14:35 on 04/11/2013 Permalink | Reply

      haha Xta! That totally makes sense that your “studio” is your paper journal. You’ll never guess, but I think mine is my online blog! My blog that you’ve been looking at is actually new, a new sprout to focus on Virtual Public Art. My 4-1/2 year blog is
      http://iRez.me

      When that site first launched it was a way to document performance works. Back then I had more experience with Wikis than with Blogs, and it was kind of a coin toss which to use. I kind of thought a wiki might be better for documenting, but I went with blog on a whim. For a while it was just a place to document works. Later it also became a place to express ideas. Later still it grew into a community space with 3 dozen authors. And while I do my work, Performance Art or Public Art, as an avatar in 3D virtual worlds, over time the blog, perhaps like your journal, became not just the adjunct documentation place, but the primary focus of energy.

      I love that sentence, “Spend some time engaging in low-focus data retrieval”. There’s so many ideas in there.

  • Michael Masucci 02:22 on 03/11/2013 Permalink | Reply  

    Phenomenology, some experiential art pioneers 

    Vanessa,

    Thanks again for continuing to build this online community.  I hope this new site of your becomes used by this community that you are building, and continues long after the MOOC we are part of is completed. That truly would be proof that the course was worthwhile and effective.

    It occurred to me after listening to Kozel’s talk, how much of the contributions of underground artists, and thinkers has been, in shaping contemporary art theory and discourse. Some of these were already notable in academic circles, but many other key people are only now beginning (often very late in life) to achieve the recognition that they always should have enjoyed.
    (More …)

     

    • Ciara 18:07 on 03/11/2013 Permalink | Reply

      Michael, thank you for sharing the video of Barbara T Smith’s extraordinary final performance. I found it incredibly moving: particularly the passing the mantle of her work to her trusted, younger friend and colleague. The sense of dignity with which Smith enacted her ritual, combined with the healing affect reminded me of the work of Alastair MacLennan. MacLennan resists the term “performance” preferring to describe his performances as “actuations”. He has lived and worked in Northern Ireland since the mid 1970s and is currently a Research Professor in Fine Art at the University of Ulster, Belfast. Immersed in some of Northern Ireland’s cruelest and bitterest moments, MacLennan made “actuations” that served as a poised and poetic counterpoint to the surrounding violence and offered healing possibilities within the peculiar rite of the performance. Thank you both for introducing me to Smith’s work and reminding me of MacLennan’s today.
      Hope you are enjoying the tail-end of the weekend!
      Best wishes,
      Ciara.

      • Michael j. Masucci 23:46 on 03/11/2013 Permalink | Reply

        Ciara,

        Thanks so much for taking the time to write your reactions to Barbara’s piece and to introduce me to the work of Alastair MacLennan. Through sites such as this one, we can all better inform each other about such artists.

      • Vanessa 22:53 on 04/11/2013 Permalink | Reply

        Amazing pieces Michael, thanks for bringing them – you must have such a vast archive!! 😀

        All 3 were precious insights and yes, I agree with Ciara that the Barbara T. Smith mantle passing was really a sweet and beautiful piece. It’s wonderful to be sharing these pieces here… and… with Studio West finally opening and revealing whatever it is pretty soon… perhaps you’ll also be able to post them in “Your Studio” there!

  • Vanessa 12:02 on 02/11/2013 Permalink | Reply  

    How’s the Phenomenology project going I’m really excited… 

    How’s the Phenomenology project going? I’m really excited about Susan Kozel’s ideas, I actually think they apply amazingly well to avatars! I started to work on it Wed and 5 mins in my graphics card fried! 🙁 (new one just arrived) oh, slave-2-tech!

     

    • Ciara 20:35 on 02/11/2013 Permalink | Reply

      Hello Vanessa,
      I’m also finding this week’s assignment particularly exciting. I’ve just finished my individual submission which is, in part, inspired by our exchanges last week. It’s called, “What do you get if you put a performance artist in a MOOC?*” It struck me that, despite the rather sober nature of its content, it sounds like the opening of a joke….A joke to which I do not know the punch line!
      I hope you are having fun with your new graphics card 🙂

      • Vanessa 20:57 on 02/11/2013 Permalink | Reply

        Sadly I’m working with students and haven’t had a chance to install the exciting, new, hopefully not fried graphics card! 😛

  • Vanessa 11:42 on 02/11/2013 Permalink | Reply
    Tags:   

    Re search for posts on any topic Re… 

    .Re/search – for posts on any topic
    .Re/cipes – creative recipes, public art actions, etc
    .Re/act – less formal, more interactive, like a personal twitter
    (More …)

     

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