Idea post #4: Play

sorry this is late; I was hit by a car.

Play

I need more play in my work. I am dealing with children and childhood memories. I am figuring out how to set up scenes for my work but I need to silliness of play to show through as well.

Oppenheimer, Frank. "Adult Play." Exploratorium Feb.-Mar. 1980. Print.

This short article is about how to be playful as an adult. Oppenheimer talks about how he works in a gallery and everyday he is able to play at work. Oppenheimer asks a UC Berkeley professor, “Are there any things which a young person must learn before it is too late to learn them?” and Bob Karplus, the professor responds: “Maybe people have to learn how to play before it’s too late.” (Oppenheimer). I believe as art students we are forced to play every day. Then slowly our play becomes our work. We must use our imaginations to create the work we must turn in and be graded on. But then there are still releases we must have for our personal play. Dr. Stuart Brown, on The Take Away radio show says that as humans we must find our “pleasurable state of play” everyday. In some way that we are there must be playfulness in what we do. It allows our minds to grow even as adults. Humans are built for play. Dr. Brown says that play is the fertilizer for the brain.

So play is important for every type of person no matter how old. I feel that sometimes I as an artist get too serious. I feel that I need to be more playful and loose when I create new work. I am dealing with children and childhood as a theme so I need to not be as serious when creating this work. I need to reflect how a child’s mind works or at least have a childlike view when making this work. When dealing with adults I feel that there is a need for silliness. I want to capture my everyday silliness and put it into my work.

Oppenheimer, Frank. "Adult Play." Exploratorium Feb.-Mar. 1980. Print.

The Science of P-L-A-Y | PRI.ORG. John Hockenberry, Celeste Headlee, and Stuart Brown. PRI: Public Radio International: National and World News, Talk, Arts, Entertainment and Music. The Take Away, 17 Mar. 2009. Web. 30 Sept. 2010. .

Miguel Palma's response

Lisboa - Roterdam, 2001 from Miguel Palma on Vimeo.

Miguel Palma's lecture was interesting. There wasn't really a question and answer part of the lecture so I wasn't able to ask anything. He had a lot of work to show and part of this lecture wasn't working on the computer so that was added confusion to the "language" barrier. Palma is an artist from Portugal and he lives in Lisbon and New York City. His English wasn't bad at all but there were different questions that the audience was asking and he responded rather obviously. He didn't go into a lot of artist, interesting ideas behind the work, just baseline, obvious situations. Although he didn’t answer many questions in depth there were other things that he said that spoke to me.

“My work is about low-budget special effects.” Palma said this about his project “Lisbon-Rotterdam” where Palma added a trailer to the back of his truck and drove from Lisbon to Rotterdam. On the trailer was a tiny made up city and a pool of water at one end. There was also a video camera capturing the contents of the trailer during the ride. In the end he displayed the trailer and the video. The video shows the town getting destroyed by the water or “waves” crashing in on their town. The plastic people and houses get covered by the water and it is to replicate a natural disaster. I love the low budget special effects idea behind his work. Miguel Palma makes many models and also larger scale installations. I enjoyed this piece the most for the miniature feel and just using everyday situation like driving your car and creating it into a disaster like ruining a town. There is a certain drama in the piece but also a silliness that I want to portray in my own work.

Three words I would use to describe Palma’s work: Transportation, Technology, pollution

I like that his work wasn’t immediately political and in fact some works weren’t at all. However, some works had political ideas behind them like how people pollute the earth (Ecosystem 1995, 360° 2008). The works are about pollution and how people are slowly destroying the earth. I like them because the message is subtle. There is more depth than just saying “don’t pollute.” It allows you to think about how you are polluting every day.

Artist Lecture: Miguel Palma's Q's

Q #1: Using many different vehicles and technology, is it hard to master and understand the machines you create/use? Is part of the art in the making of this device? (Palma has made many different cars, planes and other machines)
Palma describes that when he goes into making most projects it isn't just by himself. He has a team of other people helping him. He didn't say this outwardly for his vehicles that he created but for other works so I'm assuming that he must receive some type of help as well.

Q #2: Being from Lisbon and having made work in the US, how does your view of the United States translate from your Portuguese heritage? In the work In Image We Trust we get a reference to America with In God We Trust and you are saying that images can deceive, is this work to help understand America or to have Americans question themselves?
He also didn't go into the rest of this work but I did find the work interesting itself. He spent months putting different things on top of the turntable.

Artist Post #4: Paul Pfeiffer

Paul Pfeiffer

"John 3:16," detail
2000
Digital video loop, LCD monitor, DVD player, and metal armature, 51/2 x 6 1/2 x 36 inches
Edition of 3, AP of 2
Courtesy the artist and The Project, New York and Los Angeles

"Four Horseman of the Apocalypse (7)"
2001
Digital duraflex print, 48 x 60 inches
Edition of 6, AP of 1
Courtesy the artist and The Project, New York and Los Angeles

"Four Horseman of the Apocalypse (6)"
2001
Digital duraflex print, 60 x 48 inches
Edition of 6, AP of 1
Courtesy the artist and The Project, New York and Los Angeles

"The Long Count (Rumble in the Jungle)," details
2001
Digital video loop, LCD monitor, DVD player, and metal armature, 6 x 7 x 60 inches
Edition of 6, AP of 1
Courtesy the artist and The Project, New York and Los Angeles

All pictures from Art 21

Paul Pfeiffer was born in Honolulu, Hawaii and spent most of his childhood in the Philippines. He attended Hunter College and the Whitney Independent Study Program. He's done artist-in-residence at MIT and ArtPace in San Antonio. He currently lives and works in New York City.

I hadn't heard of Paul Pfeiffer until the last week and I was instantly drawn to him. He came to VCU and had a lecture while I was in Italy. His work was very appealing due to the amount of handiwork involved. Paul Pfeiffer creates different videos and photographs where he manually deletes characters from their original scene. He originally took photos of Marylin Monroe and digitally deleted her from them, leaving behind a ghostly shadow. Pfeiffer then started deleting NBA athletes from old photographs and changing what the meaning of those photographs. Pfeiffer is interested in movie stars and athletes for their spectacle. The attraction from the media of these different people creates strong attention and adoration from the public. His work of deleting people from old footage moves naturally into video. He takes famous fights of Muhammad Ali's career and deletes both boxers. All the viewer sees is the ghostly figures of the boxers moving around in the ring and the flashbulbs and movements of the crowds around them. This deletion is highlighting the boxers strength and the obsession that fans have with these images. People from around the world know who these people are but when you delete them, Pfeiffer is saying that “Pop culture erases history as well. I think of the spectacle as a kind of forgetting.”(Bomb Magazine). That spectacle of any kind is empty but can be filled with whatever the creator wants. Spectacle can be filled with emotion or homage or adoration.

My direct connection with Paul Pfeiffer's work is the grueling schedule. The way that he works appeals to how I work. Creating the final art piece isn't just shooting an image or shooting a video. Its the handiwork and craft behind the image that speaks to me.

And what’s curious to me is it’s actually a process that I enjoy. If I had my way and there were no other added complications to renting a studio I would happily sit in my room and do this work all day. It’s a bit like meditation.

-Art 21

I feel this way when I am cutting out picture of my mom or sitting in front of my screen trying to get Photoshop to do what I want. Its the act of making the art that I enjoy. And Pfeiffer in his interview with Art 21 says that its becomes more like drawing or painting, that you are entered into this different type of thinking. You are creating something new. I was never really that great at drawing or painting but creating and using my hands is relaxing.

Also, Paul Pfeiffer's work with the deletion, is all about forgetting and remembering. You see the figure missing but the clues help cue you in on who the work is about. You see signals and you are informed by your own imagination and can remember perhaps what the original photograph looked like. As part of this society the media and popular culture that informs us of Pfeiffer's work. We can see the missing pieces and that makes us question our exposure to the popular world and the spectacle that is created.

Links:

Interview:

http://bombsite.com/issues/83/articles/2543

Galleries representating Paul Pfieffer:

http://www.thomasdane.com/artist.php?artist_id=12

http://www.gagosian.com/artists/paul-pfeiffer/

Artist Website:

http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/pfeiffer/index.html

"BOMB Magazine: Paul Pfeiffer by Jennifer Gonzalez." Interview by Jennifer González. Bomb Magazine Mar.-Apr. 2003. Print.

Pfeiffer, Paul. "Art:21 . Paul Pfeiffer . Interview & Videos." Art 21. PBS. New York, New York, 2003. PBS. Wesley Miller. Web. 27 Sept. 2010. http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/pfeiffer/clip1.html. Transcript.

Idea Post #3: Child/Parent relationship

picture from: http://flatrock.org.nz/topics/men/assets/marilyns_childhood_picture.jpg

Parent/child relationship

Pelusi, Nando. "Parents and Children in Conflict | Psychology Today." Psychology Today. Psychology Today: Health, Help, Happiness Find a Therapist. 01 Jan. 2007. Web. 23 Sept. 2010. .

This article talks about the fact that “unconditional love” isn't necessarily present in all child/parent relationships. That a parent may find that they don't unconditionally love their child everyday. Many parents feel that they are compromising their life in some way after they have children. The article goes on to describe different ways that child and parent relationships don't always work out to be the best. It says in one paragraph that children and parents views of what they want in this family, this team are much different. Our parents hopefully want what is right for the child and the child just wants the love; all of the love. So when you have more than one child, there becomes a pull from each sibling to receive the most love. The article goes on to say that the middle child is usually cared for less by the parents even without the parents realizing it. So the suicide-death rates in middle children is higher. Scientist see teen suicide attempts as a way for deep attention from their parent that they need. (I believe there are other factors and the article notes at that but doesn't go into them). And middle children are more likely to succeed in committing suicide rather than the youngest/oldest counterparts because their need for attention is much higher. They will go to more extreme risks for love from their parents.

This is interesting to me but not really relevant to my project. There were two things that did resonant for me though. “Mark Twain noted, 'When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned.'” - Pelusi

This quote from Mark Twain about how as a child he thought his father didn't understand him, as most teenagers do. Then as an adult at twenty-one could see that his father had always loved him and Twain realizes that his father really does know him. The author of the article also feels that after becoming an adult he had the courage to ask his father why all those years he felt neglected from him. His father tells him that he felt that his new opportunities were over after having him. This sentiment from his father is not unconditional love. It is something that as children we might have some understanding of but do not fully comprehend until adulthood. This misinformation, or confusion as children is interesting to me. And then the complete thought that you then understand the ways of your world as an adult is interesting. Its the constant learning and reinterpreting that your brain does everyday that changes how you felt about everything. Childhood is perceived in many different ways because of the reevaluation we do as adults. Like I've posted before, memories are constantly changing and they are never real. Our childhoods are now much different from when they originated. I want to make work on this change. This “awakened” understanding of our own past. The way we might be able to see our old child self as something more scary or sad than we might have experienced it.

The queen of daddy issues:

“And I said I do, I do.

So daddy, I'm finally through. “

-Sylvia Plath

Plath realizes the harshness of her father and learns to throw him out. I want to incorporate issues with parents in the work. I also don't want to the parents to have a solidified role in the work, just outside players to the children in the work.

Pelusi, Nando. "Parents and Children in Conflict | Psychology Today." Psychology Today. Psychology Today: Health, Help, Happiness Find a Therapist. 01 Jan. 2007. Web. 23 Sept. 2010. http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200612/parents-and-children-in-conflict?page=2.

Plath, Sylvia. "Daddy - Sylvia Plath." Internal.org Poets. Web. 23 Sept. 2010. http://www.internal.org/Sylvia_Plath/Daddy

Artist Post #3: Moira Ricci

Autoritratto - “20.12.53 - 10.08.04”, 2004-2009
Lambda Print, Aluminium
Courtesy l’artista; Galleria Alessandro De March, Milano
© Moira Ricci

Da nonna - “20.12.53 - 10.08.04”, 2004-2009
Lambda Print, Aluminium
Courtesy l’artista; Galleria Alessandro De March, Milano
© Moira Ricci

Mamma in cucina - “20.12.53 - 10.08.04”, 2004-2009
Lambda Print, Aluminium
Courtesy l’artista; Galleria Alessandro De March, Milano
© Moira Ricci

Mamma e Zia Carolina - “20.12.53 - 10.08.04”, 2004-2009
Lambda Print, Aluminium
Courtesy l’artista; Galleria Alessandro De March, Milano
© Moira Ricci

Moira Ricci, a young Italian artist born in 1977 Orbetello Italy, Ricci graduated from the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan (2004). She won a residency, Location One, and lived in New York in 2007.

“She looks at reality in an attempt to overcome its spatiotemporal dimension by meeting her mother virtually in various moments of her life before her sudden death. Digital image manipulation serves the artist to eliminate temporal distance and use the photographs of her “family chronicles” to consider her mother’s past and her own present and origins at the same time.”

-CCCS Strozzina

“Yes, all of my work is autobiographic because my life is the only thing that i truly know and that I want to share and analyse.”

-Ricci, interviewed by Gulia Simi

When I first heard about Moira Ricci's work I felt like someone had opened my own brain. She has created many different works and even though many of her works show up in varying media there is a lot of the same ideas in all of it. The past. Her memory of her passed mother. Her memory of her childhood home. Her memories of being told scary stories when she was little. Every project is fueled by her memory of her life. When I first saw “20.12.53 - 10.08.04” , which is the work that she made after her mother died suddenly, I felt like I was seeing work that I want to make. Or that in some ways I have made. Ideas that she was thinking I could understand and live. In “20.12.53 - 10.08.04” Ricci inserts herself into old photographs of her mother, in a time that she couldn't be there with her. She does this to maybe warn her about how she will die. Or to understand what her mother was like in a time that Ricci herself was not even alive. The way that Ricci addresses time and memory is something that I want also to translate into my work.

Also, having a common thread in all the work I've done is something of interest to me. Artists are interested in many things. I feel that artists that work on similar themes but in different medias and processes are really delving into something more scientific. It is a process that needs to be explored. Art is trying something new to see if it works, stays afloat. Science is in its own, much more controlled way, about experimenting with new ideas to create theories and laws. As artists, we are creating manifestos, ideas that we know to be true. We build these rules based on making several works of art based on similar ideas. These issues for me are: Family (like Ricci), History (like Ricci), and memories (like Ricci). I think I should start to study the fourth dimension again.

LINKS:

Artist Website:http://www.alessandrodemarch.it/index.php?&zone=5&idartista=159&azione=immagini

Gallery:http://www.alessandrodemarch.it/index.php?&zone=10

Interview: http://www.digicult.it/digimag/article.asp?id=1737

Photos from "Manipulating Reality"

"MANIPULATING REALITY." Strozzina. Web. 20 Sept. 2010.http://www.strozzina.org/manipulatingreality/e_ricci.php#top.

Simi, Giulia. "Absence/presence. (im)possible Images by Moira Ricci - Giulia Simi." Digicult - Digital Art, Digital Culture, New Media Art. Mar. 2010. Web. 20 Sept. 2010.http://www.digicult.it/digimag/article.asp?id=1737.

Artist Lecture: Waafa Bilal Response

When I first looked up Waafa Bilal's work on his website I was unenthusiastic about it. And my questions reflected that. I asked about his use of art historical paintings and other things like that. Then his lecture was much different than I had expected. I was interested in hearing about his process of different works and his humor was engaging. His explanations for Domestic Tension were great. I loved his "conflict zone vs. comfort zone" concept. Bilal was reaching people in their homes, where they are most comfortable. He compared this to how the media didn't report all of the Iraqi civilian death counts even though the number was very high. This knowledge, Bilal thinks, would upset Americans (as it should upset anyone) and the media leaving it out is to make Americans feel comfortable with the war. To leave the war humanless. So Bilal came into participants' homes and faced them. Bilal put a face to all the nameless deaths of Iraqi civilians. He was speaking out for them. This is a theme or motif behind all of the work that Bilal spoke of. I enjoyed "Shoot an Iraqi" the best for its interaction with the public. I think that his concept and work came out very clearly. Many other works either confused me in one way (the video game was clear but hard for me to communicate with others the exact point) or wasn't strong enough (tattooing the invisible, nameless victims with invisible ink...). But "Shoot an Iraqi" is clear. The act of American's obsession to shoot things is clear. And the mode of having a paint ball gun hooked up to the internet is exactly the key to making the art accessible which Bilal needed to prove his point. He wanted all people to know about his project.

Three words I'd use to describe Bilal's work: political, topical, interactive and maybe performance

I was impressed with his work and perseverance through many failed projects. His work online was thoroughly unimpressive, but after having him talk about all of his work, extremely satisfying. He said something about even with many projects that didn't work out and had many people against him is much better than making art and having no one react to his work. And after talking to friends after the lecture, everyone had different opinions on the work he showed us. So even to open minded, art school, photography people there was still debate of whether or not Bilal's work was offensive. I think thats a sign of a great photographer.

Idea Post #2: Memory

photo credit: http://www.cinepremiere.com.mx/files/images/eternalsunshine.jpg

from the movie, Eternal Sunshine and the Spotless Mind

Memories. Many of us believe that memories make us who we are. That because something happened to us and we remember it that this is what shapes us. However, this is not true. Memories aren't really anything. Once the reality is over and we start to remember certain events as truths, our brains immediately start to change and distort what really happened. When you are looking back on things that happened when you were young, like say a birthday party, you are stringing together many different emotions and faces and things you did. With each string of memory that you place together is like putting together a bunch of fake realities. You are painting a picture of what used to be true. And each time that you look back on this same birthday, you remember it slightly differently than you did the last time you remembered it. Your emotions affect the way you remember something. So every memory isn't the same as the last and it is always changing the way you perceive it.

(the ideas and research from this paragraph is taken from Radiolab: Episode #304: memory and forgetting)

Howard, Jan, and Laurie Simmons. "Picturing Memories." Laurie Simmons: the Music of Regret. Baltimore: Baltimore Museum of Art, 1997. 15-16. Print.

We as photographers deal very much with memory. Think of photo albums either on facebook or in reality, that someone has taken many photos of an event, (ie wedding, graduation, party) in hopes to never forget that moment. People believe that recording the event in the form of pictures solidifies the moment. Many photographers build projects based on memory. Laurie Simmons does this in a different way. Laurie Simmons draws from her childhood and the memories that she has from then. "Rather than records of events, memories are constructions that record our interpretations of events. Emotions determine how we experience daily routine happening..."(Howard, pg. 15) This is how Jan Howard describes Laurie Simmons's work. The memory that drives the work and records how she feels about the memory. This lines up perfectly with the idea that every time you think of something, your emotion has influence on that memory.

Memory relates to my work and work I'd like to make in different ways. I am interested in memory in the way that Simmons is interested in memory. I have created memories of my mother and my grandmother together in a place that doesn't exist. Like Simmons I am creating my own memory of this event. It in some way is based on true events but is distorted in my mind and in my creation. And I'd like to continue making work in this fashion. I think I want to do childhood, or growing up for themes of new work.

Howard, Jan, and Laurie Simmons. "Picturing Memories." Laurie Simmons: the Music of Regret. Baltimore: Baltimore Museum of Art, 1997. 15-16. Print.

"Radiolab: Episode #304: Memory and Forgetting." RadioLab. WNYC, New York, New York. Radio.

Waafa Bilal Q's

Q1: Where did the pictures come from that you used for "The Human Condition"? And what types of photos are they (ie cell phone pictures, fine art pictures etc) and does it matter the source of these photos used?

Q2: You have been influenced by different Impressionist artists such as Degas and Manet. The works that you have chosen are more "realist" than impressionist and what influence do these paintings do for your work. What about realism paintings speaks to video and photography?

Artist Post #2: Laurie Simmons

"Walking Gun/ The Music of Regret"
2006

"Long House (Red Bathroom)"

2004

"The Boxes (Ardis Vinklers) Ballroom/ Detail"

2005

The Music of Regret from Laurie Simmons Studio on Vimeo.

Laurie Simmons


Laurie Simmons was born on Long Island, New York, in 1949. She received a BFA from the Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia (1971). he has received many awards, including the Roy Lichtenstein Residency in the Visual Arts at the American Academy in Rome (2005); and fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (1997) and the National Endowment for the Arts (1984). She has had major exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2006); Baltimore Museum of Art (1997); San Jose Museum of Art, California (1990); Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (1987); and has participated in two Whitney Biennials (1985, 1991).

-Art 21

Laurie Simmons has been a constant influence on my work. I stumbled upon her a few years ago and became very interested. She “stages photographs and films with paper dolls, finger puppets, ventriloquist dummies, and costumed dancers as “living objects,” animating a dollhouse world suffused with nostalgia and colored by an adult’s memories, longings, and regrets.” (Art 21) Her play with memory and time relates to other projects I have done in the past. I used memory in my work with my mother and my grandmother. In this project, I created family memories that my mom and her mom might have had in this constructed reality. The memory in this case is invented, made up. Simmons also creates memories in her work as well. Simmons uses cut outs or dolls or dummies to create work that looks like someone's memory. The photographs look real for the first few seconds and then you start to notice the strange details from lighting or cut paper or dolls. This realization grabs the viewer's attention and you start to realize that its not real. And that it never was. All of the photograph is a fabrication. Then you can go between the real and the unreal. What you want to imagine and what you know to be true. But at one point, Laurie Simmons set up this scene. She put the paper dolls and furniture together and had just enough time to shoot the created scene. That really happened. But the photograph isn't there for the viewer to see the making of the image. The photograph is there to present this false memory. A memory that no one in particular had and perhaps a memory that has never come to be. This idea is evident in almost all of her work and in her more recent photo series such as “The Boxes”, 2005. Her work continues to inspire me.




“[Simmon's] sometimes-dreamy, sometimes-kitsch, slightly unsettling scenes say something profound about American culture...”
-Dirty Mag

“In Simmons’s toy world we immediately comprehend how stifling such real-world environments are, and how limiting is the petty-bourgeois esthetic they reflect.”
-Art in America

Link to website:

http://www.lauriesimmons.net/

Link to interviews:

http://www.lauriesimmons.net/index.php?mode=objectlist&section_id=164

Links to galleries:

http://www.salon94.com/artistProjects/2/work_7.htm

http://www.skarstedt.com/index.php?mode=artists

http://www.carolinanitsch.com/

http://www.baldwingallery.com/onview.htm

All pictures are from Art:21 and video is from the artist's website.

"Art:21 . Laurie Simmons . Biography . Documentary Film." PBS. 2007. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/simmons/index.html# .

Gloede, Marc. "Laurie Simmons - Reviews." Art in America. 01 Jan. 2009. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. http://www.artinamericamagazine.com/reviews/laurie-simmons-/.

Matthew, Kristen. "Laurie Simmons: Master of Puppets." DIRTY MAGAZINE. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. http://dirty-mag.com/01/art_lsimmons.html .