He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.
Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche
The end of my sketchbook project
I have finished my sketchbook, I have drawn one drawing a day over the last 67 days, a way of compiling new imagery without being precious. I call these drawings starting points and now I will endeavour to make new work from these starting points. However first I want to read about two architectural theories ‘the fold’ and ‘other geometries’ I have been thinking of these since doing a workshop with Rupert Hartley last term, I have no idea what they really mean but I am intrigued. I am also thinking about the tyranny of the page.
What then is the problem of “other geometries”—- “geometry” in what sense and other to what? We can talk, for example, of the geometry of a novel or a character in a novel, or else of another person, someone in fear or in pain, with a toothache. Such are the geometries of living —- the geometry of a young Japanese woman walking down a Parisian street or a Dutchman made to feel clumsy, elephantine, in a traditional Japanese house or inn. Each of us has such geometries, composed of lines of different kinds, coming to us in different ways, which make up the arrangements or dispositions of space —- the “assemblages” —–in which we move and relate to one another. But how then do such geometries of living come together, intersecting and interfering with one another in the space of a city or a building?
John Rajchman, Constructions, 1997.
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EARTH: Art of a changing world (part 3)
Suzanne Moxhay’s work Halcyon is another epic large format photograph. Showing a beautiful misty landscape we read that her images are constructions of imagined worlds, she photographs 3D collages she has made from collected cut outs. her worlds appear haunting yet beautiful.
Yao Lu’s photograph Spring in the city, Is at a distance a typical chinese landscape painting, on a closer look one sees that he has photographed mounds of rubbish covered in protective green nets, he has then manipulated the photograph by adding in motifs of typical landscape painting. It is a beautiful and clever take on the changing landscape of China.
Mariele Neudecker is another favourite of mine. Her work is called 400 Thousand Generations, the works title is how long it took for photosensitive tissue to evolve into the human eye. Her work explores the sublime landscape little changed over time.
The last work that I also was impressed by was Emma Wieslander’s series of landscape photographs she had taken using a Claude glass, a small black convex mirror used widely by artists in the eighteenth century to frame a landscape by reducing it to an ordered view. She is interested in romantic notions of the celebration of landscape where nature can be appreciated for its pure beauty.
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EARTH: Art of a changing world (part 2)
The next piece of work that I really loved was both sublime and conceptual by Antii Laitinen called It’s My Island. The work consisted of three video screens and three large photographs. The video screens show him building an Island (over three months) out of sand bags. The photographs show the ideal beautiful Island scene with a tree set against spectacular skies. I feel this piece is dealing with our desire for our own paradise as well as the futility of our desires. Also with the futility of our small measures for stopping climate change.
The next piece I thought was really provoking is Thomas Saraceno’s work Endless Series. This is a series of Photographs taken in Bolivia at Salar de Uyuni, the world’s largest salt flat. These photographs reminded me of casper David Friedrich’s
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caspar_David_Friedric…
famous painting The Wanderer above the sea of Mist, where the man stairs out over nature, his smallness and inconsequence is emphasised against the vastness and grandness of the landscape. This series made me here made me feel humble in the face of nature and sad that we had desecrated something so pure.
A highlight of the show was Lemn Sissay’s poem What if? shown as a video of a studio session with a jazz accompliment cut with images of the world. It is a powerful poem but I think it would have been better without the extra imagry, just the remarkable studio performance & let us imagine the rest.
Lemn Sissay
What if?
A lost number in the equation
A simple understandable miscalculation
And what if, on the basis of that
The world as we know it changed the matter of fact
Let me get it right. What if we got it wrong?
What if we weakened ourselves getting strong
What if we found in the ground a vial of proof
What if the foundations missed a vital truth
What if the industrial dream sold us out from within
What if our impenetrable defence sealed us in
What if our wanting more was making less
What if all this wasn’t progress
Let me get it right. What if we got it wrong?
What if we weakened ourselves getting strong
What if our wanting more was making less
What if all this wasn’t progress
What if the disappearing rivers of Eritrea
The rising tides and encroaching fear
What if the tear inside the protective skin
Of earth was trying to tell us something
Let me get it right. What if we got it wrong?
What if we weakened ourselves getting strong
What if the message carried in the wind
Was saying something
From butterfly wings to the hurricane
It is the small things that make big change
What if the question towards the end of the lease is
No longer the origin but the end of species
Let me get it right. What if we got it wrong?
What if we weakened ourselves getting strong
What if the message carried in the wind
Was saying something
http://gps.southbankcentre.co.uk/poems/668/what_if…
EARTH: Art of a changing world (part 1)
This exhibition sets out to explore the challenges posed by climate change. Climate change is a concern of mine. I note that GlaxoSmithKline, a pharmaceutical company sponsor the show. Which in my mind amounts to an oxymoron….. “And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true.” Tennyson‘s Idylls of the King.
I must therefore digress: A while ago whilst researching health for various family members including myself I came across the book ‘What Doctors don’t tell you – the truth about the dangers of modern medicine’ this is an informative read and will release you from the notion that your Doctor can make you well. In fact the statistics show that your Doctor is likely to contribute to your early demise. The book says ‘Every year, 1.17 million British people…..are put in hospital bed by a medical procedure gone wrong’. Also ‘did you know: Mammograms may be more likely to cause cancer than identify it & Cholesterol-lowering regimes can actually increase your chances of dying. I have also read examples of pharmecutical companies hiding research data. We know of course of drugs such as Thalidamide which tragically caused many birth defects. But lessor known facts are that antidepressents such as Prosac can actually cause self harming and suicidal thoughts. In fact many antidepressents/antipsychotics can cause the same side effects as they are supposed to treat – does this not make a mockery of the treatment of mental illness. What chance do we stand. Incidentally I read a water report that indicated that traces of all medications have been found in our ‘safe to drink’ tap water therefore we are all taking small doses of antipsychotics, which will no doubt dive us psychosis.
Currently a major concern is swine flu. An apparent hoax. There is major controversy about the benefits of vaccines, including the swine flu vaccine. Pregenant women have been advised to get it, but many women in America have reported miscarriage after it. Some patients have died, others have contracted Guillain-Barre syndrome. One of the major issues with vaccinations are the toxic substances that are put in it, one such is adjuvants, this makes the action of the vaccine stronger with a smaller dose. However adjuvants usually have side affects such as with the Anthrax vaccine causing golf war syndrome. You can read more about it here.
I would note also that I read in the paper recently that Glaxosmithkline have put in adjuvants into the British and Europe vaccines, but America are purchasing a vaccine without it beacause of grave health concerns.
Back to the show EARTH: Art of a changing world
http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibitions/gsk-con…
despite mixed reviews I’m really glad I went. I found the show inspiring and sublime. When seen like this we are reminded of metaphysics, that we have something spectacular here, a beautiful planet and we are without doubt polluting and destroying it. The artists here have all responded to Global warming in different ways.
The first piece to entrance me was an early piece of Anthony Gormley Amazonian field. I have seen it before and it is one of my preferred works of his, it consists of thousands of tiny figures made out of terracotta all placed next to each other filling an entire room of about 20m x 10m. It conjures up the miracle of life and at the same time problems of dense population.
The next work that stood out was by Ackroyd & Harvey, they made conceptual pieces Beuy’s Acorns and Polar Diamond. In the first piece of work they collected acorns from Joseph Beuy’s 1982 ecological project, planting 7000 oak trees in Kassel, and from the acorns grew new oak trees some of which they showed on the balcony. They are also researching how Beuy’s vision of ‘forest-like’ towns and cities may become a necessity in the face of climate change. Dr Roland Ennos has shown higher temperatures in urban areas known as the ‘urban heat island’ he said this can be dramatically reduced by a 10% increase of green space and trees in cities and towns. More trees will therefore help to counter global warming. In Polar Diamond they made a diamond from burning a bone, thus speeding up a natural process that takes millions of years in the same way mimicking how our industrial and mecanised society has sped up a process of global warming that might otherwise have occured naturally in millions of years.
