I’m still not drawing. After updating my research folio I’ve been on a mission to clean and tidy the house and plant my seeds for veg and fruit this summer, alongside this I’m re-reading my books on feng shui and biodynamic gardening which I’m thinking of including in my art (I am no expert on either, I’m just hoping that there might be some sense to it all). Until I start drawing however I don’t really know what I’ll do. I think I’m gonna have to dedicate a day for going to the studio each week as things are slipping and I’m drowning in all the books I think I need to read. I’ve completely tidied my desktop in real life and on the computer which is a good start. And after 5 days camping with the family I’ll start the new routine. I’ve let my blog slip and there are a few things I’ve been to that I need to summarise here before I forget them.
ETHICS
The first is a lecture at the college at the beginning of the term given by Dino, a research student here. He is interested in the ‘guise of the artist as bearer of moral values’. He has suggested we read Ludwig Wittgenstein’s lecture on Ethics.
http://www.galilean-library.org/manuscript.php?pos…
I’ve spent a bit of time improving my research folio for the first module of the MA – it’s now on wordpress, it was very helpful to reconsider what I’d written and present it in a clearer layout as another condensed blog.
http://abbitorrance.wordpress.com/
Whilst I was considering my drawings and ideas for new work I remembered a show I went to of Alex Baggeley’s 12 full moon drawings at Alma Enterprises a few years ago, he made this amaizing series from memory, remembered from a solitary performance camping out with no tent or sleeping bag in different parts of the world under a full moon. I love the drawings and also loved the way he left the edge of the different works.
There is a very good article written about the show below
http://www.almaenterprises.com/alexbaggaley_public…
WHAT IS THE CONTEMPORARY I joined another reading group as this text seemed to be important to research ideas that I’m thinking about re Alain Badiou’s 15 thesis on contemporary art and Nicolas Bourriaud’s theory of Altermodernism.
I was not disappointed. Giorgio Agamben from his book What is an apparatus? has made a reflection on contemporariness, or the singular relation one may have to one’s own time.
He states that those who are truly contemporary, who truely belong to their time, are those who neither perfectly coincide with it nor adjust themselves to its demands. He explians though that this dys-chrony does not mean the contemporary is a person who lives in another time, a nostalgic.
‘Contemporariness is, then, a singular relationship with one’s own time, which adheres to it and, at the same time keeps a distance from it. More precisely, it is that relationship with time that adheres to it through a disjunction and an anachronism. Those who coincide too well with the epoch….are not contemporaries, precisely because they do not manage to see it; they are not able to firmly hold their gaze on it.’
He goes on to talk about the contemorary as seeing the darkness, i.e things that others can’t see, I take this to be science yet undiscovered or inventions not yet thought of. However it is not possible to be self-consciously contemporary.
I like this, it means that I shouldn’t try too hard to be contemporary as I wont then be contemporary. It also absolves me from trying too hard to get art right. I will read the research I deem necessary for an artist today, then I will let instinct and intuition play its part.
I thought I’d be drawing madly after my essay was handed in but no I’m trying to organise my research folio that has to handed in end of April. However i’ve been side tracked by thinking about the use of pattern in art. Juan Munoz uses it quite a bit I think, also someone else at college is using, I also think Charles Avery might have used it. Anyone know of artists using it like this.
The Wasteland (1987) was Muñoz’s first large-scale installation, taking its title from the poem by T S Eliot. The patterned surface simultaneously invites the viewer into the space and elongates the distance between the spectator and the small bronze figure sitting demurely on a shelf, its feet dangling in the air. Muñoz’s optical floor recalls antique Roman architecture, but also suggests a stage onto which the viewer has unwittingly stepped. The floor distinguishes an area and builds an expectation for some kind of exchange between the figure and the viewer to occur.
Muñoz was fascinated by illusion and used simple devices to destabilise the viewer’s experience. Our movements and our relationship to the object are guided, not to direct our interpretation of the work, but to ensure that we appreciate the illusion without being distracted by the mechanism of the trick.
VERY HELPFUL TUTORIAL
I had a tutorial with Anne-marie Cramer on friday where I specifically asked if we could discuss what i could write for my research paper, of which the first draft had to be in by wed in this week. I said that I was interested in Bourriaud’s concept of altermodernism. She suggested that I should look to my work and discuss my type of work (i.e. reconfigured naturalistic representative drawing) within the history of drawing. This obviosly is a very sensible idea, so other interests i can leave as implicit, and explicitly concentrate on contemporary drawing and it’s wider contexts such as current philosphical and art theory.
So Essay finished and handed in I feel very releaved, I have posted a copy on wordpress (without references as I could’t get it to copy over) until I find a better platform for my research folio. The title is
Is it plausible to use naturalistic representative drawing technique reconfigured to suggest social and political possibilities in the era of Altermodernism?
http://abbitorrance.wordpress.com/
comments welcome
