Archive for the 'Relational Aesthetics' Category

SPLINT MATE

Published
by
Lucas
on July 9, 2004
in Relational Aesthetics and writing by me
. 0 Comments

[this article was written in early July 2004, and originally appeared in Spinach7 Magazine, under the title SPLINT MATE. Before that, it emerged as a scrappy blog entry here.]

LUCAS IHLEIN argues that ‘interactive’ arts practice means more than pressing buttons; and assembles a gammy billy-cart to prove his point.

Much has been made of recent advances in new media art — particularly the development of ‘interactive’ and ‘immersive’ environments and installations. Melbourne’s Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) and its German sibling Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie [ZKM] pride themselves on supporting artists who experiment with new ways of overwhelming our senses with sound and image. The public (so the marketing department tells us) is hungry to see futuristic interfaces between human and machine. Yet how many of these artworks succeed in engaging museum visitors beyond “press here and see what happens”? How often is it that a simple, old fashioned conversation is more rewardingly ‘interactive’ than the choose-your-own-adventure style new media works to which we are increasingly exposed?

Around the same time that ACMI launched its teched-up exhibition 2004: Australian Culture Now in Federation Square, CLUBSproject inc, an artist-run venture above Melbourne’s Builders Arms Hotel, presented multipleMISCELLANEOUSalliances (mMa). Taking place in July, mMa was an ongoing series of “art conversations” taking the form of “collaborative events and activities […] by and between people whose practices construct, explore, and enact multiple social relations”. The most sophisticated items of ‘new media’ in mMa were video cameras and television sets — all of which have been more or less available as artists’ tools since the early 1970s.

Among the myriad of old media projects at mMa was Splint, a kind of organic Meccano set made by Jason Maling and Torie Nimmervoll. Described as “the way of the stump and the strap”, Splint is a toy/tool-kit, hand-made from wood, rope, and leather that deliberately comes without instructions or hints.

Nimmervoll and Maling rarely present Splint within an art gallery context, which they claim can restrict free play and participation (they prefer to work in schools or public places). Gallery visitors usually come with a tentative not-sure-if-I-can-touch inhibition, which they learn from the conventional presentation of art. Splint’s makers set arbitrary (and often silly) tasks for themselves and willing participants to carry out — usually within an urban context. For instance, “use the apparatus to scale a tall, sheer wall”.

When I arrived at CLUBS my friend Damien was already sniffing around Splint — he was instinctively drawn to it, but wasn’t sure exactly how to tackle its mysterious inventory of spare parts. The elements of the kit seem very much like found industrial tools for the engineering of a car. They look like something ‘proper’ — something extremely well made with a (hidden) intended purpose. The kit is divided up into “cells” – each cell contains wooden disks, various lengths of rope, spiral-carved “stumps” (much like medieval cricket stumps), and a leather harness and hexagonal mat. All are engineered to withstand the hammering they receive from enthusiastic users, and are often repairable when damaged or worn out.

Splint lends itself to — and almost demands — collaboration. Soon enough Damien and I were diving into the metal cases containing the stumps and rustic-smelling sisal rope, and attempting, in our uncritically-masculine way to make our own ‘billy-cart’. This playful, absorbing construction task kept us going for a few hours, and even when our makeshift vehicle ended up in the pits, with a tragically split chassis, Maling didn’t chastise us — “I guess we’ll retire that piece,” he said with a shrug.

Cleverer than us were a duo of (also male) theatre designers who set about designing a comfy and functional chair out of the versatile kit. The dedicated pair, concerned not just with the use-value, but also the look of their piece of furniture, gave themselves the limitation of not using any knots. Such aesthetic concerns are very much a part of the Splint experience. The kit comes complete with a “self-assessment” system — a blackboard (pictured) upon which participants can rate their own progress — using criteria like “environmental negotiation, utility, gameplay, geometry, physical negotiation, and aesthetics”. And Maling and Nimmervoll have kept a log of results at regular intervals during the evolving life of Splint.

One of the most important products of Splint is also one of the most intangible: the collaborative relationship which stealthily develops between the two or more ‘players’ as they work on a common task. This was evident in the knotted brows of the chair-makers as they quietly tackled problem after problem with the utility of their ad-hoc furniture, while not wanting to sacrifice the aesthetic decision to avoid knots. Splint is thus a tool for learning, not only about physical construction, but also about how to negotiate joint decision-making in a (self-determined) task. This educational aspect renders the kit ideal for workshops with children — and watching them work with the elements of Splint helps Maling and Nimmervoll improve its materials and design in a constant process of evolution.

When I returned to CLUBS a few days later, I found our billy-cart had been recycled by subsequent participants into a harness and rope ladder for scaling the exterior wall of the Builders’ Arms Hotel — a MacGuyver-style emergency exit system from the bustlingly sociable art venue.

Each time I visited mMa it was jam-packed and chaotic. Groups of artists seemed to be cooking up projects in every corner, and newcomers were warmly welcomed to join in. Soup was doled up as you walked in the door, and free tea and coffee were available. These humble, hospitable gestures may seem minor, but I don’t doubt that they were as thoroughly discussed and orchestrated as any of the other rich and interactive elements of mMa.

…………………………
addendum for blog:

Also part of mMa:
-a vast repository of artists books, zines, articles and journals, set up in a comfy couchy carpeted space next to a ricketty photocopy machine.
-a re-creation of Azlan McClennan’s censored artwork - complete with a planned forum to discuss the issues surrounding the work, on Sunday 4th July…
-an old Mac Classic set up so that visitors can log in their immediate responses and messages regarding the show (presumably these responses will be posted on the CLUBS website shortly)…
-documentation of The Laws Project by Damien Lawson and Kylie Wilkinson - this piece began with the distribution of hundreds of fridge magnets outlining the US government’s INTERROGATION RULES OF ENGAGEMENT - rules which became apparent following the scandal surrounding the treatment of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers.
Wilkinson and Lawson followed this up with a “re-enactment” (in Federation Square) of the famous photograph of the Iraqi prisoner balancing precariously with a black sack on his head.
-and there are DOZENS more projects coming up during the rest of the mMa…

The launch afternoon of mMa was jam-packed and chaotic. Soup was doled up as you walked in the door, and tea and coffee were constantly available for free. These humble, hospitable gestures may seem minor, but I don’t doubt that they were as thoroughly discussed and orchestrated as any of the other elements of mMa.

mMa was organised by Bianca Hester as a part of Resistance Through Rituals, coordinated by Lisa Kelly at Westspace.

bourriaud/huyghe

Published
by
Lucas
on January 9, 2004
in Relational Aesthetics
. 0 Comments

…Huyghe fabricates structures that break the chain of interpretation in favor of forms of activity: within these setups, exchange itself becomes the site of use, and the script form becomes a possibility of redefining the division between leisure and work that the collective scenario upholds. Huyghe works as a monteur, or film editor. And montage, writes Godard, is a "fundamental political notion. An image is never alone, it only exists on a background (ideology) or in relation to those that precede or follow it." By producing images that are lacking in our comprehension of the real, Huyghe carries out political work: contrary to the received idea, we are not saturated with images, but subjected to the lack of certain images, which must be produced to fill in the blanks of the official image of the community.

 

 have you found nicholas bourriaud yet? he wrote postproduction. in speaking about pierre huyghe, an artist who does things like "photographing construction workers on the job, then exhibiting this image on an urban billboard overlooking the construction site"

i thought the following quote spoke a little to your tshirt screen idea, especially the notion that "we are saturated with images/we are saturated with the WRONG KIND of images"

…Huyghe fabricates structures that break the chain of interpretation in favor of forms of activity: within these setups, exchange itself becomes the site of use, and the script form becomes a possibility of redefining the division between leisure and work that the collective scenario upholds. Huyghe works as a monteur, or film editor. And montage, writes Godard, is a "fundamental political notion. An image is never alone, it only exists on a background (ideology) or in relation to those that precede or follow it." By producing images that are lacking in our comprehension of the real, Huyghe carries out political work: contrary to the received idea, we are not saturated with images, but subjected to the lack of certain images, which must be produced to fill in the blanks of the official image of the community.

by the way, do you know kirsten bradley and cicada (www.cicada.tv) - they often do quite interesting imageplay with video where they replay images of the city back into the spaces they filmed. i think this is a possibly interesting direction when thinking about exactly what kind of stuff is going to occupy these screens…

xxlucas

drapery service and coffee service

Published
by
Lucas
on June 12, 2003
in Relational Aesthetics and odds and ends
. 0 Comments

some rough notes, thinking about expanded cinema, Bourriaud, Museums etc…

Sussi suggested doing expanded cinema stuff at the kelleberrin cinema …. i had heard about domenico’s cinema in that town, thought it was a marvellous purchase. so i would definitely be into doing something out there. i reckon the locals would be into expanded cinema, i think, being “movies”, it might transcend the “wanky” conceptualism of its contemporary productions in art.
Continue reading ‘drapery service and coffee service’

Nicolas Bourriaud

Published
by
Lucas
on June 11, 2003
in Fluxus and Relational Aesthetics
. 0 Comments

wow have just started reading a conversation with nicholas baurriard and karen moss… here’s an extract:

NB: Avant gardes were about utopias. How is it possible to transform the world from scratch and rebuild a society which would be totally different. I think that is totally impossible and what artists are trying to do now is to create micro-utopias, neighborhood utopias, like talking to your neighbor, just what’s happening when you shake hands with somebody. This is all super political when you think about it. That’s micro-politics.

Stretcher: It’s very demanding of the artist.

NB: What’s an artwork? Any artwork materializes a relation to the world; if you see a Vermeer or a Mondrian, it’s concretized, materialized, visible in relation to the world that they had. You can decode and interpret for yourself and use it for your own life. Or for your work if you’re an artist. It’s a chain of relations. History of art is about that — a chain of relations to the world. So, any artwork is a relation to the world made visible.

Stretcher: About this new relationship between the artist and their audience, Christine Hill, one of the artists in TOUCH, said the other night. “I really wanted to be there to hear what my audience had to say.” I know so many artists who are working in their studios who feel that after they put their work out there they’re completely removed from it. They never hear anything back. It’s as if you throw it into the void ….

KM: It’s true for curators as well. You do have a certain voyeuristic opportunity when you are in a space and you can watch spectators viewing the work, or you receive response back if there’s a publication. But often you don’t get feedback. That’s why having the artist present [Ed. note: three of the artists in TOUCH spent time in the gallery as part of their work] is so intriguing. It’s not an artist shipping a work, you have people actually here. This was also true with some other exhibitions I’ve personally been involved with like In the Spirit of Fluxus at the Walker. Or the John Cage exhibition at MOCA in LA. The live action becomes really important to the beginning of the exhibition. It is also interesting how few of the artists in this exhibition are involved with technology. While their work may somehow comment on the technological, they are not much involved with technology, which is refreshing.

…so interesting, its amazing to find people who think in the same ways…what he is saying about technology, about Post-Production, is so what i am into at the moment.

Last year at the EAF, among other activities, I dug up an old score for a performance by Albert M Fine called “event for fluxorchestra for 24 performers”. each participant has a card with his/her score, a set of numbers from 1 to 15 down the left hand side of the card. these numbers refer to the passing of minutes. maybe on your card there is nothing listed until minute 4, when you have to stand up, declare loudly “i cant take it any more!” and storm out of the room. and so on. there is plenty of muttering, balloon popping, theorising and local referencing. nobody in the room knows anything about what anybody else has to do. each just takes care of his/her own role. in sum, the piece is like a big, rambunctious orchestra of chaos. hilarious. he wrote it in 1965.

the next “re-contextualisations” i am thinking of doing are from “expanded cinema”, a “movement” from early 1970s in london (and vienna too), where filmmakers began to think about the ways that their pieces were presented in space, not just experimenting with the content of the film. there were cool things like billows of smoke in the cinema to illuminate the cone of light, physical presence of performers, spaces set up in a particular way. kind of a pre-decessor of video-installation stuff., but hardly anyone knows of it. hopefully later in the year i will get to london to do some reseach, then bring a programme of this stuff out here mid next year, also to perth (peter mudie obviously very supportive). the important thing for me is that the films come with sets of instructions about how to “re-stage” them, specific, but always relying on the local resources and enthusiasts to bring it off…there is stuff in this project to do with technology, sure, and its partly about going back to that obselete tech and checking out how you dont need all this whizz bang digital shit, in fact, much of what is happening today is a kinda techno-fetishism,,,the “relational” part of “relational aesthetics” is fairly impoverished…

first thoughts to Sussi re residency

Published
by
Lucas
on June 10, 2003
in Relational Aesthetics and residencies
. 0 Comments

(see http://www.pica.org.au/art03/Residencies03.html for Sussi’s clog residency project at perth institute of contemporary arts)

the following is a chunk from an email i sent to Sussi Porsborg:

…regarding praxis and alienation, its certainly easy to feel alienated when at (the wrong) uni…while i did have a good experience at uwa, and remain friends with many of the lecturers there, it wasnt until some time after leaving that i found my real reference points and artistic predecessors…seems like the folks at uwa either didnt think to mention fluxus to me, or they just plain didnt know of it. there are some pieces i did while at uwa which, unknowingly, almost entirely replicate performances i since discovered were carried out in 1965…and so on…
Continue reading ‘first thoughts to Sussi re residency’