People's Foreign Exchange

New Blog

2009-09-12T17:12:00.001+01:00

I am moving my blog to wordpress, so if you want to see more of my musings go to peoplesforeignexchange.wordpress.com

Chris Marker: Sans Soleil

2009-07-24T16:34:00.001+01:00

With Spanish subtitles

Chris Marker: Metrotopia

2009-07-24T16:25:00.003+01:00

Rip! A Remix Manifesto

2009-07-22T20:39:00.001+01:00

http://www.ripremix.com/

CIRCA Blog entry about the Venice Biennale

2009-07-21T15:45:00.005+01:00

When I read the following entry by Rayne Booth on the CIRCA website, I fully empathized with her struggle not to think of viewing art in a right or wrong way. I specifically had this issue with the Irish pavillion work; I understood the work, but was not gripped by it in such a way to entice me to engage with it fully. My response to Sarah Browne's and Gareth Kennedy's work was disaffected, although I recognized that with further research I might be able to benefit from a more wholesome experience of their work. However, taking into consideration the context of the Biennale, I did not have the energy or the willpower to dedicate an extensive amount of time to a particular piece of work to fully grasp it if I didn't already do so upon first or even second viewing (I had a similar response to the Belgian pavilion in the Giardini, and I left it before I could appreciate it as a new experience rather than a pavilion that had a remarkably similar formula to Sophie Calle's two years ago- a letter translated into several languages with grammatical corrections drawn onto it, drawings and photographs adorning whole walls, etc.)

Unfortunately, that is the way of a Biennale, and perhaps art in a grander sense- not to much time is afforded to realizing that the product is not the object but the thought. The audience is desperate to "get it", so desperate that the slightest kink in the path to artistic enlightenment throws them off and the piece is left to dwell in its own theoretical framework, untouched. But, as is alluded to in the CIRCA blog entry, art shouldn't be about the one winning formula, it should be about interpretation, the multiplicity of responses possible to (aesthetic) experience.

Venetian translations (Wednesday 24 June 2009)
It has now been over two weeks since I got back from Venice, and I'm slowly writing a full article about the exhibition to post here. It's taking much longer than I expected, and I keep procrastinating by reading online reviews and blogs so that now my mind is completely overflowing with the subject and, frankly, a little bored with it. It can be gratifying when I find an article where the writer's opinion is the same as mine, and I feel like I actually might have gotten it right. Then I have to slap myself on the wrist and remind myself that there is no correct way to interpret art. Just because someone has put their ideas down on paper (or online) it doesn't make them any more valid.

While in the midst of my procrastinating / research I came across an interview by Tim Griffin with Daniel Birnbaum, the Curator of the Biennale, in the May edition of Artforum. "I think that a Biennale can be seen as a place where more or less successful translations and productive misreadings take place." Caoimhín Corrigan, when speaking about his (slightly controversial) choice of Sarah Browne and Garreth Kennedy for the Irish pavilion, told an audience at their studio in Temple Bar Gallery & Studios that he wanted to select, not the best artists for the Biennale, but the artists that would be right for the Biennale "this time" That the Biennale can be seen as constantly in a state of growth and flux is a good thing. Rather than treat it as a stall on which to set out our 'best offerings' (artists at the peak of their career), maybe it is more interesting to give the opportunity to less tested artists and, in showing confidence in them, allow them to rise to the occasion.

In the same interview, Birnbaum went on to say, "...if it is true...that with each language's disappearance from the world something of the imaginary in the world dissapears with it, then it is likewise true that the imaginary is enriched with every language's translation into another." One of Kennedy Browne's works at Venice involves the translation of a text by Milton Friedman into 40 languages using Google translate, a game of chinese whispers that in the end results in a page of uninteligalble text a bit reminiscent of beat poetry. For the title of this year's Biennale, 'Making Worlds' was translated into several different languages, and Birnbaum has indicated that the fact that these words take on very slight differences of meaning in each language is an integral part of the title of the exhibition. Sarah Browne and Garreth Kennedy seem to have (unknowingly?) tapped into one of Burnbaum's overriding themes for Venice and, along with the millions of daily users of Google translate, enriched the world's imaginary at the same time.

Venice Biennale 2009: Arsenale and Collateral Events

2009-07-18T12:29:00.021+01:00

De-Forme/Distortion
This exhibition was held in a building close to the Arsenale, curated by James Putnam. It was a group show made up of British artists who mostly had a humorous approach. In the blurb about the exhibition in the Biennale's short guide, the tag line is as follows:

Distortion is central to creative expression combining elements of the comic and the grotesque with deviations from the norm in scale and space.

Australia: Once Removed

This was a secondary pavillion for Australia which was located near to the Arsenale in an old church. It's curated by Felicity Fenner and, like Shaun Gladwell's work in the Giardini, all of the work exhibited here made specific reference to displacement and the effect it has on culture (specifically and logically, the predicament that Aboriginal culture faces was a central topic).

There were three separate works on show; one was a stack of 195,774 VHS tapes arranged in a solid block by Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro called 'Life Span' (the combined running time of the tapes would amount to an average life time of 66.1 years).

Ken Yonetani, a Japanese artist who immigrated to Australia 6 years ago, showed a work called 'Sweet Barrier Reef', an installation made out of sugar in the form of coral reef, arranged in a way akin to a Japanese Zen Garden. According to the catalogue,

Sweet Barrier Reef is an installation about coral bleaching...a symbol of colonisation and modernisation, sugar also represents human desire and consumption, both of which fuel the industries impacting disastrously on fragile ocean environments.

The third piece was by Vernon Ah Kee, called Cant Chant (Wegrewhere), a combination of an installation and a video piece. There were several surfboards hung from the ceiling, each covered with a tribal pattern on one side and a black and white illustrated portrait of an Aboriginal person. The video piece shows Aboriginal surfers using the boards on the beaches of Australia, usually reserved for the iconic caucasian surf culture.

Cant Chant (Wegrewhere) proposes an improbable story about Aboriginal surfers reclaiming one of Australia's most populated beaches. Interspersed with violent allusions to historical executions of indigenous people, it is a surreal, fairy-tale narrative, given that in modern Australia racial alienation is often most evident in the context of iconic cultural sites, such as the beach.

Ireland/Northern Ireland Pavillion

Work by Susan MacWilliam, Sarah Brown, Gareth Kennedy, and Kennedy Brown.

Visually rich across film, video, sculpture, and installation, this year the Ireland Pavillion offers unique Irish perspectives on identity, labor, craft, design, globalization, economics, language, architecture, beauty, money value, and being human.

Susan MacWilliam takes the paranormal as her subject and explores accounts of extraordinary sensory perception. The scope of her work is broad, encompassing research into psychic mediums, x-ray vision, and dermo-optical perception. She uses video, photography, and sculptural installation to investigate these accounts.

GLASS STRESS

This was an absolutely amazing collection of glassworks by artists such as Man Ray, Kiki Smith, Mona Hatoum, Robert Rauschenberg, and Tony Cragg to name a few. It examines the use of glass in contemporary art spanning from the first half of the 20th century up until the present day.

One of the highlights of the show would have to be Hye Rim Lee's hypnotic video piece 'Crystal City Spun'.

Arsenale

Michelangelo Pistoletti: Twenty-two less two

One of the halls in the Arsenale

Installation of Ulla von Brandenburg's work

Cildo Meireles

Venice Biennale 2009: Giardini

2009-07-17T19:39:00.014+01:00

Exhibition

Tomas Saraceno: 'galaxies forming along filaments, like droplets along the strands of a spider's web', 2009

Nathalie Djurberg: 'experiment', 2009

Rosa Barba: 'Coro Spezzato: The Future Lasts One Day'

Hans-Peter Feldmann: 'Schattenspiel (Shadow Play)'

Richard Wentworth (installation): 'Untitled', 2009 and Susan Hefuna (drawings)" 'Drawing Poems'

Yoko Ono

Tobias Rehberger: 'Was du liebst, bringt dich auch zum Weinen'

Pavillions

Hungary: 'With Time-The W-Project'

Denmark and Nordic Countries (Finland, Norway and Sweden): 'The Collectors'

Australia: Shaun Gladwell: 'MADDESTMAXIMVS'

Uruguay: 'Critical Landscapes'

Canada: Mark Lewis: 'Back Story'

Russia: 'Victory Over the Future'

Japan: 'Windswept Women: The Old Girls' Troupe'

Exhibitions at the FotoMuseum Antwerp

2009-07-17T16:50:00.012+01:00

Theatres of the Real: Contemporary British Photography

There is currently a really interesting show on at the Fotomuseum in Antwerp, showcasing the recent work of 8 british photographers; what connects all of them is a sense of the theatrical in relation to the photographic image. Although all of the photographers are concerned with contemporary sociocultural issues (in specifically British culture) they each take a unique approach towards their subject matter, redefining what it is to document a historical moment photographically.

My personal favourite series would have to be Mitra Tabrizian's work, a series which show familiar scenes with hints of the ominous, converting the photographed environment into a crime scene through the inclusion of simple textual and compositional elements that suggest a darker undertone.

Sarah Dobai

Emily (Corridor), Yellow Corridor, 2008

Born in 1965. Lives and works in London. There were about 3 diptychs of Dobai's on show in the exhibition- she had coupled scenes with a human figure with architectural shots made up of a comparable composition. On Galerie Zurcher's profile of the photographer, it says describes the photographs as follows:

'The shop windows are perceived in their double reality, as "display" zones where a "theatre of consumption" is played out, and as transparent glass plates that the eye traverses, or on which it captures the kind of "reflection" that Walter Benjamin associated with cinematographic effects. The models are photographed in settings that make up a universe in parallel to that of the shopping centres. As in Robert Bresson’s films, these actor-models are shorn of personal characteristics, their poses suggesting the brevity of their passage.'

Annabel Elgar

The Rehearsal, 2007

Joanna Lowry, 'An Imaginary Place' from Theatres of the Real
Photoworks/FotoMuseum Antwerp

The work of Annabel Elgar inhabits a more elaborate and gothic world of storytelling. Narrative here is not something that has been pared away but something that has been embellished and layered. The stories that lie behind these pictures are ones that extend back into a dark folk memory. Elements of legend, fairy tale and historical anecdote jostle with hack journalism, urban myth and B-movie storylines. The scenarios that emerge from this process of allegorical bricolage are ones that we instinctively recognize because, baroque though they might be, we encounter them every day in our newspapers and televisions and at night-time we visit them again in our dreams.

Annabel Elgar's sources are more mythic than literary or art historical, but they also operate through the sense of a shared set of scripts. Her carefully designed sets are sets for plays that will never be fully dramatised and whose full story will never be known: the actors may never appear within the frame- and if they do they will probably be looking the other way, their faces invariably hidden. The props have been carefully chosen to produce an endless proliferation of narrative choices, artfully posed between the fairytale and the everyday. The key characters in her half-told stories inhabit houses that we faintly recognise but they are clearly deranged and obsessive, dressing up in strange costumes, waiting for parties that will never happen, tying themselves up in the curtains, playing with ventriloquists' dummies, or setting the garden shed alight.

Elgar inserts a bleak Orwellian vision of sad bedsits, neglected kitchens and subterranean basements into a folkloric scenery of suspiciously lush green fields, tangled gardens and dark forests. If the uncanny is characterised by a sense of the unfamiliar suddenly revealing itself within the familiar, then it is surely Elgar's photographs that most effectively work at binding these two senses together. In her case she uses the conventions of staged photography to knit them together materially, arranging the objects in her pictures into enigmatic compositions that resist any clear resolution.

The stories that Elgar relates to us are cross-cut by familiar themes: madness and sadness and badness all have their role to play in these scenarios. In these stories the struggles between the rich and the poor are relentless and eternal, the home is a place of poverty and ruin, the family a potential site of treachery and despair.

Tom Hunter

Living in Hell

Tom Hunter graduated from the London College of Printing with a BA First Class Honours [1994], Hunter took his MA at the Royal College of Art, London [1997]. In 1998, Hunter won the John Kobal Photographic Portrait Award. In 2006 Hunter was the first artist to have a photography show at the National Gallery, London.

Hunter currently lives and works in London. His work is often particular, but not exclusive, to the community of travellers he knows as neighbours and friends in East London. He has exhibited work both nationally and internationally, in solo and group shows and is also a Senior Research Fellow of the London College of Communication, University of the Arts London. source

Sarah Pickering

White Goods, 2007

Sarah Pickering's startling and somehow dreamy images of explosions have been featured in magazines such as Art Review, Art Monthly and The New York Sun. Sarah states, "My work explores the idea of imagined threat and response, and looks at fear and planning for the unexpected, merging fact and fiction, fantasy and reality. The images are a representation of society's coping mechanisms, which are often happening out of the public arena."

"My previous body of work, Public Order documented the ambiguous urban landscape of the UK's Metropolitan Police Public Order Training Centre, an unreal constructed world of civic intransigence and imagined threat. The Explosions series further develops this investigation into the crux of reality and its simulation."

source

Nigel Shafran

Joanna Lowry - An imaginary space [Theatres of the Real]
Shafran’s domestic photographs, taken amidst the more benign clutter of his own home, also test the autonomy of the object. In these photographs – photographs that situate themselves more firmly in an observational mode, based upon spaces that are known and loved – objects seem to compose themselves into gentle still-lives, assuming an independent life that the photographer happens upon by chance. He photographs the odd collections of things that accumulate in his Dad’s office, flowers on a table , the washed up dishes by kitchen sink. Yet these objects also share in the strangeness of the prop table, they are, after all the things that prop up the photographer’s life.

Clare Strand

Gone Astray Portraits borrows from the 19th century street portrait convention of using painted murals as backgrounds to photograph city dwellers. Each sitter is carefully styled and propped to assume an urban generic type, on close examination each subject shows signs of wear, from ripped tights to bandaged wrists. The title of the series is taken from a Charles Dickens text, Gone Astray 1853 which is an account of a young child lost in the City of London. A story filled of references to anxiety and vulnerability and to people leading double lives. source

Mitra Tabrizian

White Nights

The Way We Live Now, Stuart Hall

An appreciation of what is radically novel and innovative in Mitra Tabrizian’s most recent work must begin with on understanding of what her previous work had already accomplished: for the latter provides the creative platform on which the new work stands. Powered by her deep involvement in the debates in the 80’s and 90’s around subjectivity and ideology, psychoanalysis and feminism, gender, race and sexuality, and deeply informed by the explorations in photographic practice and the image which her earlier projects represented, Mitra Tabrizian’s has now vigorously mobilized and resumed all the ‘lessons’ of that whole body of work in order to address radically new subject-matter and to attempt a challenging project– a critique of the everyday life of contemporary corporate-post-modernity and its ‘systems’ of representation.

source

Danny Treacy

Them 2. 2002

By definition the monster is incapable of reproduction: to do so would be to abandon deviation through the continuation of a genus, or genre. Invoking the law of the monster in his series Them, wherein a body is understood, but one which does not obey the rules, Treacy has nevertheless, managed to offer Them an equally deviant offspring. His most recent series, Those, is a series of what the artist calls protuberances, the parts of the body which stick out or intrude into space. Treacy's photographs stem from his own body parts- nose, penis, belly, knee, elbow, fingers. Although they appear suspended in space, a ground is indicated by the way they recede slightly into blackness. They transgress genre, emerging as part human, part object, part animal.

source

Nude Visions Exhibition at the Muncher Stadtmuseum

2009-07-17T15:37:00.010+01:00

link to museum website

When I visited Munich about a week ago, I was lucky enough to come across this amazing exhibition spanning 150 years of nude photography at the Muncher Stadtmuseum. It chronicles the development of the human body as a photographic image throughout the history of the medium, starting off with daguerrotype and the like and working its way up to modern nudes. I was really excited to see a photo of Charis Wilson by Edward Weston, and there was an interesting video documenting different world cultures' approach to the body as a performative tool.

Edward Weston

The exhibition also included the famous nude shots of Marilyn Monroe, and artists included ranged from Auguste Belloc and Alfred Stieglitz to Juergen Teller and Gerard Vormwald. Nazi propaganda images of Olympic athletes were also an interesting feature of the show, and a breathtaking image of an elderly woman's wrinkled belly was among the highlights of the show.

Gerhard Riebicke

Bert Stern

Jan Saudek

Linkeroever Exhibition Antwerp

2009-07-17T15:25:00.002+01:00

Me with my video installation at the Linkeroever Project Exhibition in Antwerp. Will update this post with more photos, just need to format them properly.

Black and White Film Photos

2009-06-06T15:16:00.003+01:00

Portrait Project Jan Gruyaert

2009-06-06T13:47:00.004+01:00

Possible Portraits

2009-05-26T12:03:00.002+01:00

Portrait Project Jan Gruyaert

2009-05-25T20:49:00.002+01:00

Dark Room Exhibition: Work

2009-05-15T00:24:00.003+01:00

Dark Room Exhibition, Back Loft, Dublin

2009-05-10T12:48:00.002+01:00

Opening on Wednesday the 12th of May.

visit the website. it takes a while to load, so be patient. it's worth it!

Alternate Endings- Milan Public Design Festival

2009-05-05T14:27:00.002+01:00

visit Nova Jiang's/the project website here

Alternate Endings | Project Proposal
Milan Public Design Festival | April 2009

Two sewing machines and a large roll of brightly colored fabric will be set up in the project space with two tailors. A different colored fabric will be chosen for each day of the festival. The tailors will replicate the clothes worn by visitors to the space using the fabric provided for the day, copying exactly the cut and style. Once these replicas are finished, they will be given to the visitors as gifts to wear. Participants are invited to return to the streets of Milan wearing their new monochromatic costumes or stay in the space and socialize with each other.

Each new garment is identical to the original in every detail besides color and material, giving its wearer an arbitrary new identity but at the same time preserving some traces of individuality. On the last day of the festival, everyone who has participated in the project are invited to turn up for a party around the project space in their new costume. They can play games, dance, read or picnic, all the while being subtly regulated by the color they are wearing. Through the way the costumes alter and extend the participants’ relationship to the outside world and each other, Alternate Endings seeks to explore the process through which group and individual identities are constructed. The project also borrows from the idea of art as a gift, and is designed to facilitate social exchange.

Films I have watched Recently

2009-05-05T13:40:00.003+01:00

Elegy (2008)Isabel Coixet

Rachel Getting Married (2008) Johnathan Demme

Two Lovers (2008) James Gray

Machines that almost fall over

2009-05-04T17:56:00.001+01:00

by Michael Kontopoulos

Joggers

2009-05-04T13:04:00.006+01:00

here's some videos I shot at the marathon, with the intention of creating some sort of visual diary which I will later put together into some form of narrative film. Maybe turn off the sound in the first video, it might be too distracting. Also, apologies for low quality- I saved them for web streaming so very small file sizes.

Linkeroever Project- Escalator videos

2009-05-04T12:39:00.004+01:00

Portrait Project Jan Gruyaert

2009-04-27T19:12:00.002+01:00

Antwerp Marathon

2009-04-26T18:07:00.003+01:00

Courtisane Festival in Gent- A Simple Truth Exhibition

2009-04-25T09:18:00.008+01:00

Yesterday I went to the exhibition 'A Simple Truth' in Gent, which is shown as part of the Courtisane Festival. The central theme this year is 'memory'; as I'm planning to write my thesis on memory and language, I found that the exhibition - and the rest of the festival program - were extremely relevant to my research. Phil Collins' piece, for example, specifically deals with the connection between linguistics and cultural memory. The pieces on show in the exhibition were poignant statements about collective and cultural memory, asking questions about the role of media (both art and mainstream) in the shaping of these concepts.

Truth and doubt are inseperable. There's no such thing as an absolute truth, it can't be exactly described, we would need too much words. Sometimes you have to look for details. There you'll find motives that colour and guide, which you'll have to filter and interpret. You've got to build truth, with doubt. A simple Truth looks at the way small gestures and little words define personal recollections and collective memory, how they hide or reveal details.

Telethon- Kevin Jerome Everson, US, 2009

On Memorial Day in 1973, Sammy Davis Jr. hosted a national telethon to raise funds for the Highway Safety Foundation. It wound up losing nearly three-quarters of a million dollars, thanks in no small part to Sammy Davis Jnr’s insistence on having the telethon relayed to over fifty television stations in order to ensure good exposure for himself. Even more curious was the rumoured involvement of the favoured foundation in the production of pornographic films, with filming taking place on a.o. the Highway Safety Foundation bus. But Everson’s Telethon is really about two talented acts waiting to perform in this ill-fated telethon...

I am not sure what to think of this piece; the introductory information provided in the exhibition (and catalog) reads more like an analogy rather than a critical explanation. What I did get from this piece was the questioning of media portrayal of real events. Obviously, Sammy Davis Jr. was the headliner in this telethon, and was the main focus of media attention in relation to the public profile of this event. However, in this piece, two unknown performers are highlighted (I presume they are fictitious characters played by actors). Interjecting actual footage of the telethon with fictional narratives of unknown participants raises the issue of what is shown in the media, and what remains hidden.

Ten Men- Mark Raidpere, EE, 2003

Alienation and isolation are recurrent themes in Raidpere’s work. Ten Men shows a series of ten violent male offenders in Tartu prison. They are all serving long-term sentences, shut away from social life, deprived of any normal professional and individual dignity, imprisoned in a place that leaves them no other possibility of identifying with the society around them. Raidpere asked them how they wanted to be perceived in regard to their personality. The work is unscripted and set against a background of crackling music, reminiscent of a musical box. The prisoners flex their muscles and flaunt their tattoos for the camera, but also smile in embarrassment and look away in hope of solidarity. It is a divergent display of masculinity that leaves us wondering which of the prisoners are brutal criminals and which are simply victims of society.

I found this piece perhaps the most controversial- the portrayal of the men is obviously intentionally ambiguous; we don't know what crimes they committed, only that they were of a violent nature, and that the men continued to be aggressive when imprisoned. The music that plays over the images is the main operative in altering our perception of the men (you can hear it at the start of the video below). I found this quite a disturbing technique- I was watching the videos with the knowledge that these men were dangerous criminals, yet the music attempts to disarm your preconception of them as 'bad'. Freeze frames and slow motion are also employed to single out facial expressions and body language that further confuse our interpretation of these portraits. The piece was effective in that I found myself simultaneously empathetic and fearful of the men.

Visitor- Ivan Grubanov, RS, 2003

When the Serbian artist Ivan Grubanov began his residency at the Rijksacademie in Amsterdam in 2002, this coincided with the start of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague against his former president, Slobodan Milosevic. For two years he visited the Tribunal regularly. Confronted with the man and the events which had shaped his life, he looked for a way to capture the intensity of this experience. He started to make drawings, in an attempt to relate to this chapter in history. Again and again, from the same angle Grubanov draws the man who dominated his life, although he had never met him before. Gradually he developed a sensitivity for Milosovic’s slightest gestures. The intimacy of the drawings is insidious...

I really liked the presentation of this piece- a projector was beaming out the illustrations onto a wall. A very simple, clean exhibit, that relied on the weight of the drawings for meaning. The drawings themselves were minimal line drawings, effective in portraying body language and recognizable characters (Milosevic being the center piece, alongside the judicial participants). Most drawings had a line of text scribbled, almost illegibly, marking out a significant moment in court relating to the crimes Milosevic was being tried for. The illustrations show the retelling of war atrocities and crimes that affected a whole population, played out in the clinical setting of a systematic courtroom. The seeming visual disconnect between Milosevic on trial and the stories of war crimes is effective- we know of the artist's personal involvement in these events, and as a consequence the drawings become a therapeutic, if not a somewhat obsessive attempt, to process memories that are so far removed institutionally from the court proceedings.

Zasto Ne Govorim Srpski (Na Srpskom)- Phil Collins, UK, 2008

“A few years ago I was in Prishtina with a friend from Croatia, miming at the guy behind the counter for beer. In the end my friend came out and asked ‘Imate li pivo, molim?’ There was a very complex reaction from the elderly shop assistant. He said, in Serbian, that he hadn’t spoken Serbian for such a long time. My friend from Croatia corrected him – she was from Croatia, and was actually speaking Croatian. And if his face fell a little, I don’t know. Someone else came in the shop, we made our purchase and left.”

Phil Collins often works in socially and politically contested regions, employing elements of popular culture, low budget television and reportage style documentary, to articulate a critical fascination with the ways in which contemporary media structure lived experience. Shot in black and white 16 mm film, the film weaves unbearably intimate close-ups into a fragmented and effective panorama of Kosovo’s recent past. Contributors include politicians, intellectuals and public figures as well as ‘ordinary’ people recounting in Serbian the reasons why they no longer speak the Serbian language. They range from attempts to historicize experience to deeply personal accounts of trauma and loss.

Friederike von Rauch & Charlott Markus Talk at the Academy, Antwerp

2009-04-24T11:53:00.006+01:00

Friederike von Rauch
website

Friederike von Rauch is a German artist based in Berlin, who is a member of the POC (Piece of Cake) Collective, together with Charles Freger, Bert Danckaert, Charlott Markus and a number of other artists. She came into the Academy, together with Charlott Markus, to talk about her work and the progress of her career up until now.

As a photographer, she has established herself with great success- she's represented by two galleries, one in Antwerp and one in Berlin, and has published two books.

Her work is about documenting places formally; that is to say, she is not interested in their geographical location, but in the aesthetic of the resulting image. Her work has become more and more abstract; she believes it is not necessary to show reality in photography, even if you are dealing with it through the lens.

Her work method is very slow; she never features people in her photographs, and prefers overcast weather due to the absence of shadows. As a consequence, her photographs are the result of careful timing and reasoning, considered meticulously before being taken. Her shooting time ranges from anything between an hour and a day; she uses a roleiflex camera, and up until recently has completely worked with analog processing. She still only shoots analog, but has recently started printing digitally.

Before dedicating her career entirely to photography, she worked as a location scout for film productions, including the Bourne Supremacy. She studied industrial design, although she focused heavily on photography in her work.

Charlott Markus
website

Charlott Markus is a Swedish photographer recently graduated from the Gerritt Rietveld Academy in the Netherlands. She creates scenes with found objects, and arranges them in a way that questions the play between order and chaos.

She prefers to work with harsh light because of the interference of shadows; like Friederike von Rauch, she is interested in the formal composition of an image. However, her work completely differs from von Rauch's; her colours are vivid and play an important role in the investigation of form and composition.

There are obvious references to painting, and as was pointed out in the discussion, Markus seems to draw more inspiration from painting than from photography. She believes that everything in her images have to be of equal matter and importance.

In her piece Pygmalion, she references Greek mythology and Bernard Shaw. She questions the state of being in between, her work being a comment of dissonance.

In another piece, Why Confess When You can Perform, she looks at religious institutions and the importance of the organization of a place of worship. She wanted to create an installation that would aid a visual revelation if seen from a specific (photographic) perspective- where distance and relativity becomes lost in form and color. Why Confess is an example of her installation work; she has increasingly shown more installations, but plans to focus on photography in the future.

She believes that you 'can't control the interpretation, but you can control the view' from which the audience perceives the piece.

Bienvenue Chez Les Ch'tis

2009-04-24T11:46:00.001+01:00

Philippe Abrams is manager of the post office in Salon-de-Provence. He is married to Julie, whose depressive nature makes his life impossible. To please her, Philippe tries to obtain a transfer to the Cote d'Azur. But is, instead, transferred to Bergues, a small town in the North.

For the Abrams, very prejudiced southerners, the North is a nightmare, a freezing region, inhabited by uncouth beings, spluttering out an incomprehensible language, 'cheutimi'. Philippe goes alone. To his great surprise, he discovers a charming place, a warm bunch and welcoming people and makes a friend: Antoine, the postman and village bell-ringer. When Philippe returns to Salon, Julie refuses to believe that he likes it in the North. She even thinks that he is lying so as not to upset her. To please her and to make his life easier, Philippe makes her believe that actually, his life in Bergues is hell. But when Julie decides to move to Bergues, Philippe must either tell the truth, or keep deceiving her. Showing exclusively at Cine Lumiere in South Kensington from 1st April 2008.

very theatrical, exaggerated acting. Good film, but the editing wasn't the best.

Minolta shots

2009-04-23T10:23:00.005+01:00

Antwerp Photo Walk

2009-04-22T14:37:00.007+01:00

Martha Colburn

2009-04-22T10:16:00.001+01:00

Marie Losier- 'Manuelle Labor' 2009

2009-04-22T10:12:00.001+01:00

A film by Marie Losier. Two sisters, five brothers, a doctor and two nurses and the miraculous birth of a pair of hands..but whose hands? a film inspired by Guy Maddin

Marie Losier, born in France, is a filmmaker and curator working in New York City. She has shown her films and videos at museums, galleries, biennials and festivals. In 2000, she became the film programmer at the French Institute / Alliance Francaise in New York City, where she presents a weekly film series. She also programed experimental films at the Robert Beck Memorial Cinema and Ocularis in Brooklyn and brings programs in Europe and all over in the States. She just finished a film portrait on Tony Conrad that was shown at the Tate Modern, Berlin Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival...and many other festivals.

David O'Reilly- 'Please Say Something' 2009

2009-04-22T09:48:00.001+01:00

Boris Savelev

2009-04-21T23:21:00.002+01:00

A former rocket scientist, Boris Savelev has been documenting Russia through his lens for the last 31 years. His first exhibition in the UK opens 21 April 2009 at the Michael Hoppen gallery, London, where over 30 of his photographs will be on show. His works of elegant observational realism are preoccupied with light and form – a constructivist aesthetic Savelev credits to his 'methodical, scientific background'. Both melancholic and playful, Savelev's photographs capture the social and political upheaval of the former Soviet Union, by 'simply having a gut feeling for that fleeting moment'. Here, he talks us through 10 works from his show source

Truth and Lies (Spank Moons) Photo Prints

2009-04-21T21:56:00.003+01:00

Some notebook drawings

2009-04-21T21:50:00.003+01:00

Rivane Neuenschwander

2009-04-10T23:03:00.002+01:00

Frieze article

Frieze Article on Reproductions of Art Works

2009-04-10T22:53:00.001+01:00

Not so Black and White

Are reproductions of art works helpful, or do they confuse our experience of the real thing?

Truth and Lies in Photography College Project (Spank Moons) Research and own work

2009-04-07T23:30:00.002+01:00

JERUSALEM - Twee rechtse kranten in Israël hebben twee vrouwen op een foto van het nieuwe kabinet van Israël weggesneden en twee mannen ervoor in de plaats gezet.

In de religieuze krant Yated Ne'eman zijn de vrouwelijke leden van de nieuwe regering, Limor Livnat and Sofa Landver, vervangen door de silhouetten van twee mannelijke ministers.

In de krant The Maariv werden Livnat and Landver gewoon zwart gemaakt.

De ultra-orthodoxe kranten weigeren foto's van vrouwen te publiceren.

source

Linkeroever Mock-Up Videos

2009-03-31T11:41:00.007+01:00

Portrait Project for Class (Jan Gruyaert)

2009-03-30T19:54:00.003+01:00

Truth and Lies in Photography College Project (Spank Moons) own work

2009-03-29T22:01:00.001+01:00

Horizon: How Does Your Memory Work?

2009-03-29T10:12:00.000+01:00

Going Where I've Never Been: Photography of Diane Arbus Documentary

2009-03-27T15:09:00.002Z

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Truth and Lies in Photography College Project (Spank Moons) more more work

2009-03-27T10:58:00.006Z

Linkeroever Hitchcock visual play II

2009-03-26T13:05:00.003Z

Truth and Lies in Photography College Project (Spank Moons): More Work

2009-03-25T15:02:00.004Z

Linkeroever Hitchcock visual play

2009-03-25T10:52:00.002Z

Sam Taylor-Wood

2009-03-23T19:49:00.001Z

Sony Photographer of the Year 2009

2009-03-23T18:00:00.002Z

go here to see a selection of winners

Michael van den Bogaard, Shanghai Series 07

Open Dag Academie Antwerpen

2009-03-23T15:06:00.004Z

Truth and Lies in Photography College Project (Spank Moons): Own Work continued

2009-03-22T20:57:00.003Z

Truth and Lies in Photography College Project (Spank Moons): Own Work so far

2009-03-16T22:26:00.002Z

Truth and Lies in Photography College Project (Spank Moons)

2009-03-15T23:08:00.003Z

'over waarheid en leugen...
min. 7 werken
Benadering can documentair/enscenerend/studio zijn

Onderzoek naar deze zeer specifieke begrippen. Hun impact. Bestaan ze eigenlijk wel binnen de context van de fotografie? De opdracht is een sleutel naar autonoom werk.

Looking at truth and lies in photography and their impact on the medium. Do they actually exist within the context of photography?

I think I'm going to take a cue from Stalin in this project, and use his photo manipulation in his propaganda as a starting point for the fictionalisation of my family photos.

For this project, I propose to censor out people/things/happenings from my life that I would have attached negative connotations to. A childhood bully, an embarrassing moment in the school play, etc. I'll airbrush my life, so to speak.

here are some examples of Stalinist photo editing (from this wiki page):

Portrait Project for Class (Jan Gruyaert)

2009-03-15T22:24:00.003Z

Over echt - Under Act
Portret van je omgeving

Medium fotografie leeft mee in en door de maatschapij. Zij is ervan doorspekt.

Op de foto's ervaart men de fotograaf zelf als deelnemer aan het sociale gebeuren. De gefotografeerde is zich bewust van de optiek. Het portret is niet van een persoon, maar minstens dat van een persoon en de fotograaf...de familie...de vrienden...het gebeuren...de maatschapij...de academie...de kroeg.

de relatie van fotograaf met omgeving is heel belangerijk- betrokkenheid van fotografie.

humor en asthetiek. 10 foto's, zwart/wit of kleur. minstens 18x24

Basically for this college project, I have to take a series of portraits that reflect my relationship to my photographic subject, and has some sort of social/cultural values embedded in it. The images need to reflect my surroundings, my interactions, my relationships.

here are some photos I've taken already; I haven't discussed them with the tutor yet.

Jabberwocky Series: Available Space- My Work

2009-03-15T22:18:00.002Z

see photos of the opening night at jabberwockyseries.wordpress.com

Masterclass with Charles Freger at the FotoMuseum Antwerpen: Own Work

2009-03-07T08:47:00.006Z

Lisa and Claudius

Ilke and Vincent

Sophie Calle-style investigation of my Polish neighbors' kitchen one morning when i assumed they were out working

Self Portraits

Masterclass with Charles Freger at the FotoMuseum Antwerpen: Further Suggested Artists

2009-03-06T22:18:00.012Z

Sophie Calle- No Sex Last Night

Andrew Phelps- Higley Series

Martin Parr- Love Cubes

Pieter Granser- Alzheimer series

Bill Owens- Suburbia

Bill Sullivan- Stop Down (www.3situations.com)

Lumiere Brothers film

www.europafilmtreasures.fr

Bruce Gilden Street Photography

Hans Eijkelboom

Sanne Kannisto

Hippolyte Bayard

Contesse de Castiglione

Claude Cahun

Bertillon system

Execution of the Lincoln assassins

The legends and mythologies surrounding figures being assassinated/executed (Lewis Payne, Zapata, Che Guevara, Jesse James)

Dorothea Lange

Masterclass with Charles Freger at the FotoMuseum Antwerpen: Research 1 (prints we got to see from the Museum Collection)

2009-03-06T21:48:00.004Z

Nicholas Nixon- The Brown Sisters (5 prints)

Henri Cartier-Bresson- Matisse, 1944

Rodchenko

Julia Margaret Cameron

August Sander

Diane Arbus

Masterclass with Charles Freger at the FotoMuseum Antwerpen: Freger Profile

2009-03-06T21:43:00.003Z

http://www.charlesfreger.com/

Born in 1975 to Bourges, Charles Fréger is awarded a diploma by the fine art of Rouen. He dedicates himself to the poetic and anthropological representation of the social groups such as the sportsmen, the pupils, the servicemen, etc. His works propose a reflection on the image of the contemporary youth.

These photos are often close some of the others from a plastic point of view (point of view, colors, light, outstrips from the camera) but nevertheless and in spite of their superficial resemblances (garment, age), the personality of the subjects it transparait always.

Charles Fréger's work is thus an inquiry on the individual identity and the collective identity. source

Masterclass with Charles Freger at the FotoMuseum Antwerpen

2009-03-06T20:52:00.005Z

For the past 3 days I have been taking part in a workshop organised by the FotoMuseum in Antwerp with the photographer Charles Freger. I'll organise my posts into 3: one profiling Charles Freger himself, one showing photographers and artists mentioned over the course of the workshop, and one showing my work which developed as a result of it. The above two pictures are of the group getting a look at some of the museum's collection: saw a few authentic Diane Arbus, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Rodchenko prints. Very impressive.

Research for installation at Jabberwocky1

2009-03-02T10:13:00.006Z

Silvia Bachli

anna barriball

Sandra Cinto

Joseph Grigely

Nedko Solakov

So, it seems that some of my ideas for this exhibition are very similar to the above artists'approaches (Sandra Cinto in particular). Here are some sketches of possible installation ideas:

Jabberwocky Series: Available Space

2009-03-01T12:00:00.005Z

Linkeroever Project- Antwerp

2009-02-16T14:14:00.006Z

Linkeroever

For one of the projects that I have been assigned here in Antwerp, each student has to respond to a specific district, place or building in the Linkeroever region of Antwerp. This place, which literally translates to 'Left Bank', lies across the river from Antwerp's city centre. There is one pedestrian tunnel connecting the two, and a seperate traffic tunnel.

As I was new to the area and wasn't aware of the cultural and historical significance of the area, I asked some other students to describe it to me; most responded with negative, even stereotypical observations of the place. It's dull. Eery even. Like a ghost town. Initially I got the impression it was an industrial district, but it turns out there are residential towers and neighborhoods spread throughout. The relationship between the two halves is comparable, although not equal, to the relationship between North and South Dublin. Inhabitants of either side undoubtedly have allegorical convictions against the other.

With this relationship in mind, and the ghostlike stories told to me by my classmates, I went on my first trip to 'the other side'. However, I did not get much further than the pedestrian tunnel; lead down by old fashioned wooden escalators, you descend into the tunnel which is over half a kilometer long and a few meters below waterlevel. The entrance buildings on either side are identical copies of one another, yet are surrounded by completely different settings. The tunnel itself is tiled blue and white, and seems unendless and awkwardly chilly when you're walking through.

I decided to base my project within this crossing between left and right, between 'eery' and 'normal'. And because of the tension between the two sides (and also because I kept getting linked to a horrorfilm called Linkeroever when I was researching) I decided to make my piece a work of suspense in the vein of Hitchcock. The tunnel is perfectly suited to Hitchcockian psychological allusions; the fact that it is submerged under water, and connects two sides that don't connect in character, could be quite a good metaphor for the divisions of the human mind (id, ego, superego).

A quote from Vertigo that I find quite relevant and inspiring for this piece:

It is as though I were walking down a long corridor that once was mirrored. And Fragments of that mirror still hang there. And when I come to the end of the corridor, there's nothing but darkness. And I know that when I walk into the darkness, that I'll die. I've never come to the end. I've always come back before then, except once.'

I took a series of polaroids last week, documenting a trip through the tunnel. (you can find them here) With these pictures, I wanted to point out parallels between the two halves of the tunnel, making the relationship between Linker and Rechteroever uncanny. I used polaroids to try and manipulate the feel of the image into becoming a storytelling device (however, I dont think I'll be using polaroids for the rest of the project- it was an experiment as to how best convey that Hitchcock feel of suspense and plot)

Alternatively, I want to use a slide projector and a tape recorder, inspired by James Coleman, to make the experience of the piece an embodied narrative.

Another option would be a video piece, documenting the journey through the tunnel, mirroring/reversing halfway through to point out the uncanny parallel between the left and right. An artist I would look at for this would be Willie Doherty and his video installations at the 2007 Venice Biennale (1 and 2)

Here's some shots of the tunnel and a view of Linkeroever

This project is done in collaboration with the city council; it will amount to two exhibitions (one in march and one in june) and a book.

Besides this project, I've also been assigned a portrait project (with emphasis on the relationship between my subject and I; autobiographical portraits I guess) and a photography project exploring the possibility of truth and lies in a photograph. For the latter project I'm thinking of collaborating with a theatre company, documenting sets, stage and theatre make-up. Otherwise I'll look into the use of mirrors in creating 'false' images.

Thomas Street Shop Front Portraits

2009-01-13T18:59:00.003Z

Portraits will be uploaded shortly onto shopfronts.blogspot.com

Loopdeeloops

2008-12-15T20:08:00.005Z

Random musings on the graphics tablet

2008-12-06T21:56:00.003Z

Animation drawings

2008-12-05T22:38:00.007Z

Projection Documentation

2008-12-05T10:38:00.001Z

Kelly Reichardt

2008-12-03T23:04:00.001Z

Old Joy (2006)

Wendy and Lucy (2008)

reichardt interview

St. Catherine's Animation

2008-12-01T18:14:00.003Z

Archive Photography Thomas Street

2008-12-01T18:09:00.001Z

Location shots St. Catherine's Animation

2008-12-01T16:31:00.001Z

St. Catherine's animation research

2008-11-29T11:36:00.002Z

Robert Emmet

2008-11-27T01:43:00.003Z

Drawing of a public execution on Thomas Street, Dublin

Drawing of a public execution on Thomas Street, Dublin. This picture is showing the historical gallows outside St. Catherine's church where Robert Emmet was executed in 1798.

Dublin ghost stories

She is Far from the Land

She is far from the land, where her young hero sleeps,
And lovers are round her, sighing;
But coldly she turns from their gaze, and weeps,
For her heart in his grave is lying!

She sings the wild song of her dear native plains,
Every note which he lov'd awaking
Ah! little they think, who delight in her strains,
How the heart of the Minstrel is breaking!

He had lov'd for his love, for his country he died,
They were all that to life had entwin'd him,
Nor soon shall the tears of his country be dried,
Nor long will his love stay behind him.

Oh! make her a grave, where the sun-beams rest,
When they promise a glorious morrow;
They'll shine o'er her sleep, like a smile from the West,
From her own lov'd Island of sorrow!

Thomas Moore

www.robertemmet.org

The Speech from the Dock

What have I to say why sentence of death should not be pronounced on me according to law? I have nothing to say that can alter your predetermination, nor that it will become me to say with any view to the mitigation of that sentence which you are here to pronounce, and I must abide by. But I have that to say which interests me more than life, and which you have labored (as was necessarily your office in the present circumstances of this oppressed country) to destroy. I have much to say why my reputation should be rescued from the load of false accusation and calumny which has been heaped upon it. I do not imagine that, seated where you are, your minds can be so free from impurity as to receive the least impression from what I am going to utter--I have no hopes that I can anchor my character in the breast of a court constituted and trammeled as this is--I only wish, and it is the utmost I expect, that your lordships may suffer it to float down your memories untainted by the foul breath of prejudice, until it finds some more hospitable harbor to shelter it from the storm by which it is at present buffeted.

Was I only to suffer death after being adjudged guilty by your tribunal, I should bow in silence and meet the fate that awaits me without a murmur; but the sentence of law which delivers my body to the executioner will, through the ministry of that law, labor in its own vindication to consign my character to obloquy--for there must be guilt somewhere: whether in the sentence of the court in the catastrophe, posterity must determine. A man in my situation, my lords, has not only to encounter the difficulties of fortune. and the force of power over minds which it has corrupted or subjugated. but the difficulties of established prejudice: the man dies, but his memory lives. That mine may not perish, that it may live in the respect of my countrymen, I seize upon this opportunity to vindicate myself from some of the charges alleged against me. When my spirit shall be wafted to a more friendly port; when my shade shall have joined the bands of those martyred heroes who have shed their blood on the scaffold and in the field, in defense of their country and of virtue. this is my hope: I wish that my memory and name may animate those who survive me, while I look down with complacency on the destruction of that perfidious government which upholds its domination by blasphemy of the Most High-which displays its power over man as over the beasts of the forest-which sets man upon his brother, and lifts his hand in the name of God against the throat of his fellow who believes or doubts a little more or a little less than the government standard--a government which is steeled to barbarity by the cries of the orphans and the tears of the widows which it has made...

My lords, you are impatient for the sacrifice-the blood which you seek is not congealed by the artificial terrors which surround your victim; it circulates warmly and unruffled, through the channels which God created for noble purposes. but which you are bent to destroy. for purposes so grievous. that they cry to heaven. Be yet patient! I have but a few words more to say. I am going to my cold and silent grave: my lamp of life is nearly e4inguished: my race is run: the grave opens to receive me, and I sink into its bosom! I have but one request to ask at my departure from this world--it is the charity of its silence! Let no man write my epitaph: for as no man who knows my motives dare now vindicate them. let not prejudice or ignorance asperse them. Let them and me repose in obscurity and peace, and my tomb remain uninscribed, until other times, and other men, can do justice to my character; when my country takes her place among the nations of the earth, then, and not till then, let my epitaph be written. I have done.

Research for Liberties Public Art: Animating the Space Project

2008-11-27T01:23:00.003Z

http://www.archiseek.com/

thread on the architecture of Thomas St.

A walking tour of the liberties area

Maps, Files and Ephemera

information about medieval dublin

article about Frawley's demolition

Planning Documents for the demolition of 32-36 Thomas Street, and 10 Hanbury Lane, D8

article on plans for 'no-star' hotel next to vicar st.

http://www.archiseek.com/content/showthread.php?t=6318&page=8

Let's Talk About the Rain (2008)

2008-11-20T15:55:00.002Z

written and directed by Agnes Jaoui. French film exploring relationships, politics, and the weather.

Photography Research for Liberties Project

2008-11-20T15:48:00.006Z

Eve Arnold

Bruce Davidson

Inge Morath

Doug Doubois

Test Shots for Liberties Project

2008-11-20T15:42:00.002Z

Irish Artists brought up in Joint Course

2008-11-06T22:25:00.002Z

Bea McMahon

McMahon mostly uses video and small drawings to articulate her ideas which weave a strange and boundless path between an inner reality of thought and the ordinary outside world, a world in which her version of events have a somewhat hallucinogenic feel. Even though her practice does not subscribe to an obvious visual lexicon of science, it does rely on thought process she learnt through the study of mathematics – one which exists in a state of logic and before language. Her work forces little gaps to open up, or makes a life moment to come apart into two distinct things, one of which gives way to the other, whilst retaining the memory of the world as it was before. She has chosen, simply for reasons of aptitude, visual art as a medium to explore this process – a thought process which Werner Heisenberg describes as ‘not a precise language in which one could use the normal logical patterns; it is a language that produces pictures in our mind, but together with them the notion is that the pictures have only a vague connection with reality, that they represent only a tendency toward reality’ . In her work is a withdrawal from the search to expose underlying structure towards a position that the action of thinking and feeling is an active force generating the underlying structure.

source

The Bea McMahon piece we watched in the lecture was called Audience and was a short video showing someone playing a snail-infested piano. Exploring the interference attached to the making of art, or on a broader scale the interactions between actor and subject, questions of ethics and responsibility arose. Was it cruel to use snails (involuntary participants) for the sake of art?

Grace Weir

still from Turning Point

Grace Weir studied at the National College of Art and Design and also at Trinity College Dublin, where she won an award for her Masters in Multi-Media graduation project. She co-represented Ireland at the 49th International Venice Biennale in 2001 with her video installation 'around now'. She has exhibited widely both nationally and internationally, most recently seen in 'Biennale! Artist film and video' at Temporarycontemporary in London, ‘As Heavy as the Heavens' at Kunsthallen Brandts Klaedefabrik, in Denmark, 'Tir na nOg' at the Irish Museum of Modern Art , Missing Time at the Agnès b. cinema in Hong Kong, 'Flights of Reality' at Kettles Yard Cambridge UK, in 'Are we there yet'? at Glassbox in Paris, France, and at her solo exhibition at the John Curtin Gallery in Perth, Australia in 2002, and at the RHA Gallery in Dublin in 2000. In 2002 she was commissioned by NIFCA, the Nordic Institute of Contemporary Art in Helsinki Finland to make an interactive work ‘Little Bang' for their online gallery at www.ionic.nifca.org. Grace Weir collaborated with an astrophysicist exploring aspects of Einstein's relativity and was commissioned by Cornerhouse in Manchester UK to make two film works ‘Dust defying gravity' and ‘Bending spacetime in the basement' in regard to this. They were premiered at her solo show titled ‘a fine line' at Cornerhouse, Manchester UK in September 2003. In May 2005 she was elected a member of Aosdána. Her work is held in many collections including that of the Irish Museum of Modern Art.

source

In relation to her work 'the Turning Point', our class discussion turned to the framing of shots and its importance in conveying intention. The link between science and art also came up, as most of Grace Weir's work focuses on 'humanising' this relationship.

Jaki Irvine

still from Room Acoustics Revisited

Irvine currently lives and works in Dublin having spent many years in London and some time in Italy. Her works in film and video, whether in single-screen format or in more complex multi-screen installations, weave together enticing, though ultimately elusive narratives in which image, voice-over and musical score variously overlap, coalesce and diverge. These languid explorations of human interaction with the natural world, the built environment, and with other humans are suffused with a melancholic lyricism and leavened by a dark, dreamlike humour. Subjectivities split and fragment as the boundaries that separate self from other, or human from animal, become fluid or permeable. In 1995 Irvine was included in the seminal exhibition of Young British Artists, General Release, at the Venice Biennale, and she represented Ireland at the 1997 Biennale.

Her solo exhibitions include shows at Project Arts Centre (1996) and the Douglas Hyde Gallery (1999) in Dublin, Frith Street Gallery (1997, 1999) and Delfina Project Space (2001) in London, and the Staatliche Kunsthalle in Baden-Baden, Germany (1998). She has also participated in numerous group shows throughout Europe, Australia and Japan including Sonsbeek International, Arnhem (1993), NoWhere Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark (1996), White Noise, Bern Kunsthalle, (1998), Intelligence, Tate Britain (2000) and Shifting Ground: 50 Years of Irish Art at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) (2000). A major new work, The Silver Bridge, is due to be exhibited at IMMA in Spring, 2004. Irvine is represented in the collections of IMMA, the British Council and in numerous other collections, both public and private.

source

Again, we spoke about her work in relation to filming technique and framing used to convey a particular intent. In Room Acoustics Revisited, Irvine addresses the issue of semiotics and meaning; she uses sheet music as an example of seeing the world 'through a straw'. Limitations of depiction and representation manifest themselves intentionally in the style of the piece, as Irvine plays with the audience and their interaction with the visual and the conceptual sides of her work.

Isabel Nolan

Dublin: Isabel Nolan at Project

And so it stays just on the edge of vision
A small unfocused blur, a standing chill.1

In his poem Aubade, Philip Larkin reflects upon the impending inevitability of death in the lonely darkness of night. He describes the moving shapes that haunt the corners of his vision. As daylight slowly strengthens, his bedroom returns to its normal shape and the presences of the previous night seem strange and out of place.

Everything I said let me explain is the title of Isabel Nolan's recent exhibition at the Project Arts Centre, Dublin. The show is a visual exploration of the thoughts and shapes that occupy the mind at night. Like Larkin, Nolan attempts to interpret how these presences morph and change, grow bright and disappear in order to be felt and understood.

One of the seven artists from the Republic of Ireland selected for this year's Venice Biennale, Nolan's work is primarily concerned with forms of representation and addresses the difficulty of attaching meaning to experience. In this exhibition, drawing is the main discipline through which she expresses her experiences of the night. Along the gallery wall, which was painted a light grey in order to soften the sterilised white, small drawings and paintings explore the shifting shapes of the night-time presence. Many of these shapes have a repeated circular motif, others are more angular. In the centre of the gallery, two mahogany tables present a series of portraits of sleeping faces and another collection of night-time shapes.

Torn from a notebook, these drawings are placed under heavy sheets of glass. They seem to be floating over the dark table top and have an abandoned, spontaneous beauty. Also on the table, a small silver screen plays a short DVD entitled Quiet please, in which most of the drawings on show are animated into a short film. This film begins with a sequence of sleeping portraits and shape drawings. The images are occasionally interrupted with fragments of handwritten text which refer to night-time thoughts. The thoughts shift from simple descriptions - "These presences vary in size, but are never very big" - to more intimate personal reflections - "How could you know what or who you are?"

As the text grows increasingly reflective, the night-time shapes begin to multiply, becoming larger on the screen, filling it completely before receding back into pulsating circles of orange, red and green. Flickering and shimmering, they are the colours seen when you close your eyes.

The tenderness Nolan expresses towards her slumbering subjects is almost palpable in her delicate Sleep sequence drawings, most especially in Sleeping dog. Whilst the exhibition offers many glimpses of intimate narratives, it simultaneously uses tools to prevent the viewer from fully absorbing them. The glass upon the table top or the newsprint that covers the text in Available ensures that elements of Nolan's night-time experiences remain private, almost contradictory.

This contradiction, between the physical intimacy of lying next to someone and the sense of distance experienced when they sleep, is prevalent in the show. Nolan has created a strong visual metaphor for the unaccountable phenomenon that separates two people, even as they lie side by side. Her drawings are an expression of the difference between distance and proximity, sleep and consciousness.

Ciara Healy is an artist and writer based at Pallas Studios; she is currently completing her Ph.D. in Irish curatorial policy at Dublin Institute of Technology.

Isabel Nolan: Everything I said let me explain, Project Arts Centre, Dublin, March - May 2005

source

Links

2008-11-04T14:12:00.002Z

Sexy People (blog that collects 70s, 80s and 90s portraits)

Rhizome art community site linked to the New Museum of Contemporary Art

Faund magazine which publishes a collection of images found on the internet. Each issue has different contributors.

(Caos Calmo) Quiet Chaos- Antonio Luigi Grimaldi (2008)

2008-11-03T13:59:00.002Z

Italian film portraying a man's response to his wife's death. Quietly humorous, simultaneously sad, it explores how a father and daughter cope with their sudden bereavement, uncovering the public expectations of grief and the actual individual reactions to death. There were a few subplots thrown in, with attention also being drawn to the absurd demands and consequences of business deals, and the relationships between the parties involved in death and mergers. The film has quite a psychological approach, and sometimes views as a therapy session outside of the doctor's office.

Studio Reactions

2008-10-29T14:07:00.006Z

Bryan reacting to the camera in studio

Dave reacting to the camera in studio

Elizabeth reacting to her image on the camera screen, 'looking' at the Guernica in studio

Grace reacting to her image on the camera screen

Siobhan reacting to the camera in studio

Collective screening of the reaction videos (random idea- probably not going to use in relation to project)

Reactions edited

2008-10-28T18:19:00.005Z

These are reactions edited to focus on expressions. The videos are reactions to the the reactions recorded of dave and grace last week. These are just experiments, I will stick with the static shot for the actual project videos.

Anaelle Reacting/Blinking to Dave's Reaction Video

Laura Reacting to Grace's Reaction Video/Looking up at Simon

Michelle Reacting to Grace's Reaction Video

Buddha Collapsed Out of Shame (2007)

2008-10-22T20:23:00.001+01:00

Directed by Hana Makhmalbaf. Iranian film about a young girl who wants to go to school.

Video Reactions

2008-10-22T19:40:00.003+01:00

Dave Reacting to Jackson Pollock Painting

Grace Reacting to Stan Brakhage Mothlight

La Jetee- Chris Marker

2008-10-19T17:39:00.003+01:00

I watched this the other day, and had never seen anything like it before. In a way, it reminded me of delicatessen by Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet, but probably only due to the subject matter.

Set in underground post-apocalyptic Paris, la jetee is a photographic story following the time-travel experiments exercised on a prisoner of the surviving population of the french capital.

Here it is in full on youtube, and the trailer to delicatessen.

Beautiful Losers

2008-10-19T17:29:00.000+01:00

Interrupting the Screen Project: Video Reactions (Tests)

2008-10-19T15:53:00.005+01:00

I used iShowU at first, but the watermark was too intrusive in the demo. I switched to Screen Mimic, although I'd probably use iShowU if I could get access to the full program.

The first video I recorded with Screen Mimic (which I won't upload because the file size is inexplicably big) is a recorded reaction of me watching a video on William S. Burroughs on youtube. (There's a time limit on recordings in the demo version of Screen Mimic, so videos will only be 30 seconds for the trials.) Also in this first recording, I didn't realise there was a watermark on the Screen Mimic demo recordings as well, so my position on screen isn't ideal.

The second video is a reaction to the first 30 seconds of Un Chien Andalou.

The third video is a reaction to the second recorded reaction.

The fourth video is a reaction to the third video.

Visit to IMMA 19/10/08

2008-10-19T14:46:00.002+01:00

Exquisite Corpse

Exquisite Corpse is an exhibition of 17 works from the IMMA Collection that seeks to reveal a variety of perspectives on the Collection. The title of the exhibition is drawn from the game ‘Exquisite Corpse’ which was invented by the Surrealists in 1925 where a collection of words or images are collectively assembled. In this case the game’s structure is used to tap into the eclectic character of IMMA’s Collection through the choices and viewpoints of individuals from a broad spectrum of the arts including Dawn Ades, Gerald Barry, Aileen Corkery, Barrie Cooke, Michael Craig-Martin, Mark Garry, Deirdre Horgan, Jaki Irvine, Nicola Lees, Tony Magennis, Lisa Moran, Frances Morris, Colm Tóibín and Mick Wilson.
The ‘exquisite corpse’ principle provides a framework for the exhibition, with each participant selecting a work that responds to the work selected by the previous participant. Following the Surrealists’ methodology participants are only aware of the work that is selected immediately before them. The nature of the exhibition is that the final outcome of the show is largely unpredictable and partly determined by chance. However, it is likely that the exhibition will include a wide selection of works ranging from different eras made in a variety of media. While Exquisite Corpse depends on the participants’ having some previous experience of IMMA’s Collection, their knowledge of the collection will have developed individually and may be haphazardly constructed. As a result, their curatorial choices will inevitably be highly subjective, a point that affords the opportunity of revealing perceptions of IMMA and the audience’s experience of its Collection. source

Self as Selves

Self as Selves is an exhibition of works from the IMMA Collection which explores the nature of ‘self’, as being a series of transitory states, always provisional, never fixed. The selected works invoke intersecting notions of self – internal and external, corporeal and conceptual, personal and collective.

The exhibition wishes to address this premise not only in terms of what certain artworks may suggest about their maker’s investigation of self but also to what extent they implicate the viewer in a reciprocal flow of shifting states. To varying degrees the selected works summon the viewer’s participation for their completion, thereby eliciting a range of selves or ‘roles’ through which the viewer may consider their own subjectivity and the nature of their looking.
The artists included in this exhibition are: Marina Abramovic, Janine Antoni, Fergus Byrne, Maud Cotter, Gerard Dillon, Marcel Duchamp, Fiona Hallinan and Caoimhin O’Rathaillaigh, Ellen Gallagher, Antony Gormley, Ann Hamilton, Brian O’Doherty/Patrick Ireland, Dusan Kusmic, Julio Le Parc, Juan Muñoz, Isabel Nolan, Hermione Wiltshire and Paul Winstanley

Curatorially, this exhibition has evolved from a preceding IMMA event, The Burial of Patrick Ireland, which saw the ritualised disposal of an artistic persona with a wake, funeral and burial in the grounds of the museum. Throughout his career as an artist and a writer, Brian O’Doherty/Patrick Ireland has invoked several aliases through which he has explored the nature of identity and the notion of self as more than a singularity. source

Interrupting the Screen Project Development

2008-10-18T22:48:00.003+01:00

Interrupting the Screen Project

2008-10-14T20:55:00.002+01:00

Basically what I want to do with this project is examine the role the audience plays in creating the artwork. I'm going to take this very literally and make the audience the artwork.

I want to create an installation which consists of 3 or 4 'white cubes'. in these cubes, video loops will be playing, triggered by the viewer coming into the space. On these loops, recordings of reactions to another video will be playing. The videos on show will be 'placebo' videos; in one of the cubes, the viewer watching the loop will be filmed. His reaction will then be streamed into one of the other cubes, so as to leave the viewer unaware he was being filmed.

I'll be using isadora and final cut pro, but given the time limits, i probably won't be able to realize my idea in its entirety. I hope to have about 4 placebo videos shot, and optimistically speaking i'll be able to create a prototype of the white cubes.

Research for Interrupting the Screen Project

2008-10-08T21:58:00.004+01:00

Harun Farocki

Underscoring the political and ideological function of image-making, Farocki's films often combine newsreel, archival, and industrial/technological footage with text or voice narrative in the form of "film-essays."

The subject of retrospectives at the Museum of Modern Art (199) and the Westfalischer Kunstverein (2001), Farocki has stated about his films:

"One must work with existing images in such a way that they become new. There are many ways to do this. Mine is to look for buried meaning and to clear away the debris lying on top of the pictures. In doing so, I try not to add ideas to the film; I try to think in film so that the ideas come out of filmic articulation."

. . .

"Eye/Machine addresses the automation of images in the present era of "smart machines," "smart bombs," and person-less cameras. Deriving from military technology, the first automated images were those photographs taken from airplanes to measure the accuracy of missile drops in World War II. Eye/Machine charts a kind of geneaology from this moment to the current ubiquity of mechanized imaging in the technological and commercial sectors. This film's "launching" image is a grainy black-and-white picture of an airstrip seen through an automated viewfinder. Beneath it, a subtitle reads: "Images like these could be seen in 1991 - of the wart against Iraq/Operational images/Not Propaganda, ye an ad for intelligent machines."

Source: GreeneNaftali Gallery, NYC. Eye/Machine courtesy GreeneNaftali Gallery.
Source

Marie Sester

Marie Sester is a French media artist based in Los Angeles. She began her career as an architect, having earned her master's degree from the Ecole d'Architecture in Strasbourg. Her interest, however, shifted from how to build living structures to how architecture and ideology affect our understanding of the world. Her work investigates the way a civilization originates and creates its forms. These forms are both tangible -such as signals, buildings, and cities- and intangible, such as the aspects of values, laws and culture.

Quoting a profile of Sester written by Holly Willis: "What do these signs, these forms, these things that surround us mean?�? asks the artist. "What do they say about ideology? About capitalism? I realized after I finished my degree that I was interested in architectural forms on all levels, from the concrete elements such as city streets to ideological values, and how they evolve together.�? Marie Sester has received grants and residencies from the IAMAS, in Japan, Creative Capital Foundation, New York, Eyebeam, New York and many others. She has taught in France, Japan, and the United States and has exhibited internationally at SIGGRAPH, Ars Electronica (in the 2003 edition of the festival ACCESS received an Honorary Mention in Interactive Art), La Vilette, etc.

A few months ago, i was visiting the ZKM and i knew her work ACCESS was exhibited there. I had read what the work was about and was expecting to find it in the entrance lobby but i never suspected i'd be so startled and disturbed by it. ACCESS is a robotic spotlight and acoustic beam system that tracks individuals in public places. The beam is either activated as people move through the space under surveillance, or it is piloted remotely using a Web interface. While a friend of mine found the installation quite fun, I felt surprisingly guilty and isolated under that spotlight, exactly what i'd feel if i remembered that i'm under the gaze of surveillance cameras much about everytime i step out of my house. The experience taught me that i should never judge any interactive installation before having tested it myself.

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