Liverpool Biennial: The Medium is the Medium
The event I was in Liverpool for yesterday was an afternoon of discussion on critical writing billed as, “A day of expert debate around why critical writing is important in a mature and thriving arts landscape” curated by The Double Negative in collaboration with the Biennial.
http://liverpoolbiennial.co.uk/whatson/past/all/448/the-medium-is-the-medium/
I wasn’t anticipating much rubbish research at this event but did think it’d be useful for thinking about this blog in relation to my research.
Speakers included: Cherie Federico (Director, Aesthetica Magazine), Edgar Schmitz (Co-director of A Conversation in Many Parts with Lisa le Feuvre and Senior Lecturer in Critical Studies at Goldsmiths), Rachael Jones (Freelance Writer and Social Media Manager) and Miranda Sawyer (Journalist).
Interesting stuff, particularly from Edgar and Miranda, each approaching the subject from widely different perspectives and styles. The fundamentals of why people write, for who, as well as what is criticality and for what (contemporary) purpose, was brought to the surface and this could easily have been a full day conference to really dig deep into these questions.
What was especially useful to this research is Aesthetica had provided delegates with a free copy of their current August/September 2012 issue in a lovely The Double Negative tote bag. One of the articles Defining the Territory looks at the first large-scale survey of land art at MOCA, LA “End of Earth: Land Art to 1974” which led me on to think about rubbish in relation to the movement; a movement defined largely by human relation to the earth and the introduction of man-made elements.
Initially what might seem a tangential line of thought, the traditions of land art and the art historical context might be quite considerable. Richard Long’s practice, for example, of walking in the landscape and collecting/moving found materials could be paralleled with the notion of rubbish collection in urban or rural settings. Many “land art” artists work with the temporal nature of the landscape and thus have a particular perspective on materials and permanence that may be of interest when thinking about rubbish in the landscape.
Vik Muniz previously mentioned for his 2010 film Waste Land is listed on wikipedia as a contemporary land artist. The techniques he uses in the portraits assembled from found/discarded materials bears some resemblance to land art. Furthermore, the materials used in the portraits featured in Waste Land, are sourced from the landscape of huge garbage heaps.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_art
http://www.vikmuniz.net/
Another Aesthetcia Magazine find is a listing in 10 to See: Recommended Exhibitions this Season (p.25) at number 10: Gabriel Orozo – Asterisms at the Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin, until 21 October 2012.
Comprising thousands of items of detritus the artist has gathered at two sites—a playing field near his home in New York and a protected coastal biosphere in Baja California Sur, Mexico, that is also the repository for flows of industrial and commercial waste from across the Pacific Ocean.
http://www.deutsche-guggenheim.de/ex_gabrielorozco_full.php
Sandstars (2012) is particularly of interest, baring such a close resemblance to the Museum of Contemporary Rubbish. “This monumental sculptural carpet of nearly 1,200 objects is accompanied by twelve large-scale gridded photographs of images of the individual objects in a studio setting.”
