Transmission 3rd February 2010 Col McCormack presents Taco Stolk

(a) Taco from Amsterdam and Jaspar is still flogging those chapbooks. Excessive crunching (Hello W!) and shouting.. it’s a bit like the cabbage throwing section of the globe theatre.

A big delay, no sound and then feedback. It’s the large shabby looking fellow I saw earlier on in the studios.

Lots of prestigious teaching. Conceptualist, mete-modernist (we’ll come back to this later.). CRINGE. (How much did it cost to get him over and how long will he stay.) Someone behind me clearly fancies him, I see why, there is a pop star quality about him.

THE WORK! Musical projects, composer. Nature, nurture, number. Categories appeal to me. Deliberately create things (?). Found poetry. Growing database. Collection. Logic. Logistics. Texts. Codes. These are the lowest form of text. They have one purpose and then are thrown away. (perhaps monkey should come along and save them). T thinks they are poetic. Poetry is found in things having more than one meaning, things that conjure ideas of other things in your mind. How can we find poetry in these codes when they have such specific meanings? They are esoteric, but I’m not sure about poetic. Poetry for robots. That kind of knowledge is needed.

Taco is imaginative in that way that scientifically bright people sometimes are, they produce conspiracy theories. Another set of ideas are being presented. Fields-rules-pitch. Something has just clicked, It is interesting but the ideas are not what I need, I want to know how it happens. Where he started. (this is what I liked about Amanda Beech’s presentation). I can flick through a book or catalogue and find the ideas of other artists. What could he bring to us that can only be brought in person? His presence is required. I can’t find him in the work but neither is he in this presentation. Having all the answers makes him appear smug. The questions don’t challenge him.

How is he funded? Where does research begin and art work end? Or vice-versa?

Projects and research. Creation. Deed. Maths. Aesthetic. Stylish design. Generate. Digits. Automatic. Forms. Relate. Universe. Potential. Points. Relationships. Lines. Find out. Presented. Level. Enter. Small numerical values. Larger scale. Periodical table. Elements. Chemistry. Numbers. Electrons. Protons. Neutrons. Numbers. Element. Scale. Visible. Results. Melting point. Colour. Results. Result. Numbers. Similar. Numbers. Dots. Lines. End up. Aesthetic. Nerd-o-tronic. Rudimentary. (Not leafy not creatures). Divide. Geometric. Architectonic. Mathematical. Difference. Results. Number values. Programmes. (Research for the sake of it?). Dull and heartless. So the sound was generated by…? How? To make what? And..? So…? Please! ‘I get it!’

What makes a piece of art impressive? Is it the difficulty involved in making the thing? Or in the difficulty in understanding how it was made? This makes it esoteric and akin to sorcery. With this kind of work it is difficult to apply your own thoughts or explanations onto it. Has he told us too much?  Just because the idea is clever it doesn’t follow that the work made will be good. (Bryan brings Sol Lewitt in later to make this point). The prime number grid paper works, I can see beyond the image, I can project my own anecdote. Yes, there is a problem when artists talk too much- giving FACTS. Conceptual work seems to go out of date quite quickly. Ironic isn’t it.

This work needs so much explanation that the viewer just gives in to it. We are happy to accept it because the point is not to ask questions of it or challenge it. When was the last time an ordinary person challenged a scientific ‘fact’? We are impressed by the sheer force of it, regardless of it being correct, accurate, right or wrong. Patrick Stewart didn’t have a clue what he was talking about when he played captain Pickard in Star Trek, but I still believed in him.

Taco reminds me of someone like Willy Wonka. He has the space to explore like a scientist and an artist. (I prefer Wonka’s work). I can also see him as a character in a JG Ballard story. Stolk is a brilliant scientist who’s work takes him to the edge of his own reason. David McNab assists him because he thinks what he is doing is emmancipatory, it will liberate them and create a fresh start for what is left of humanity. Stolk doesn’t care about this, he has re-written time and space, invented new notes, flavours, colours, altered the universe. He stops sleeping, he can only count…each second gets a tiny bit longer and finally his mind breaks into a thousand fragments. McNab is left alone in a brave new world…

Transmission 25th January 2010 Julie Westerman presents Kate Davis

(a) First Trans. Back. ‘I’m ………….. delighted’.(J) Painted bronze. Water, bridges, crossings, Venice. All of these connections and meetings between them. (I feel included in a distant kind of way, having swam with J at the Lido myself). A boat house, the interior painted gold- a fire burning. J paints this beautiful picture, so full of love I almost cry. A bare chested man, glistening and taught (I am back at the Lido, watching the sea from my deck chair..I’m faidng away if front of the golden boy).

In the spirit of the host and friendship a gift is presented. The Lady’d bridge. I love that they’ve made a film together for the presentation. A laboratory of only 2 days. A space to evolve, thinking also about the chap book. J mentions the richness of their discussion. Text piece. The bridge. A bridge. Any bridge.

Not to be confused with my own friend Katie Davis.

It begins, the lights go out and KD is reading her piece. I think about voice as a medium. How is it functioning beyond poetry, not yet performance. Spoken work. Live reading. Blake, the poet and image maker. Dreams..cross over into them. Night becomes dawn and day anticipates dusk. The other side. On the way one is neither here nor there. I like the paradox. Busses and coughing are distracting. This is a long piece, which is fine but the people behind me are talking which doesn’t make it easier to endure. They talk through the questions too. How long?the video is unedited, so is the spoken piece. It was a text to be read not listened to, it should have been edited to serve this new purpose. For it to work here and now. In this regard it seems rather self indulgent. The length, (of the bridge), is a bit of a conceit.

How do you read this kind of thing? How do you make the voice sound. K is doing a bit of a newsreader thing, that tone..not too bland some intonation, but with a rythym that bears little resemblance to ordinary speech. She isn’t acting. Compare this to Slam Jam at Bloc last night…the first 5 mins would have gone down a storm and created some awe I imagine.

The intersection in the middle of a bridge is a kind of crossroads. River and bridge, (a Carrefour. In celtic belief rivers were a portal to the underworld. I read recently about a former archbishop throwing valuable religious relics into the river near Durham cathedral. He wasn’t supposed to do it. I love him for it.)

We find out how she’d made a proposal (for the original). It was interesting how she responded, how her circumstances changed,  and changed her reaction. It changed even further (though not enough for my liking) with this performance today. The kids behind talked through that bit too. Idiots! The dicussion is like a crit given the nature of the presentation.

Crossing..to-ing and fro-ing. Those stories, were they dreams. Im disappointed when she intimated they might be true events. They’ve been turned into dreams through her repetition. You are just like your mother, go away etc.. an internal bridge. Being a child is like being a bridge..between worlds, between your parents. Some one asks why the presentation was this way, I wonder if they felt cheated. I become aware how difficult it is to communicate with students of this age, How is it possible to share a common ground? There’ll be one person who’ll be totally obsessed with avoiding clichés from now on. KD didn’t mean to humiliate her but she did. LS is the only tutor in the front row. The talk was so long and boring that I sense an air of lawlessness. The works relation to psychoanalysis. ‘I pick at it like I pick at materials’ she says. Repetition, the events . Acting outside what has happened to them. Relentless.

David Bate, Transmission Review Stream of Consciousness

I don’t remember him, he’s not how I thought he looked, he’s got a different haircut.   A  slide of two dogs running together, smiling and grimacing at each other – love or competition in their eyes?  Michelle is speaking still.  She’s talking about a philosophy of friendship.  I know Matt is here because I can see his voice recorder on the table.  The cloth has fold creases, the table looks nice.  Michelle is saying that friends share similarities but have differences, we recognise the self in the other.  She says she wouldn’t want to go to the pub with herself because she knows what she’d be getting.  Does it make me narcissistic to say I think I would like to go to the pub with myself (I wonder how I move, I wonder what my body language looks like, my tics).  She’s handing over.  David has titled the talk ‘Not the Other’.  It is him, I recognise him as he moves, as he speaks.  He used to have a bob with a fringe, it was very androgynous.  I like bobs.  He’s talking about fascism and communism, about their essential differences in their relationship to history.  Fascism predicated itself on re-routing the past to take in purity.  Fascism returns to the past.  Communism must abolish the past, to rid itself of the aristocracy and the class system so that everyone can get on.  I like it.  He makes a link with art – Modernism must cut itself off from the past, and I miss the point, is he saying Post-Modernism returns to the past.  I am a Post-Modernism.  I am thinking about that.  He is showing work from 1992 called ‘European Letters’, it was a timely work, exploring relationships with our near neighbours, I like its use of text and image.  It reminds me of Victor Burgin.  I did not know that the Euro was initially called the Ecu.  He wanted to visualise the subjective moment of otherness.  He quotes Donald Rumsfeld “the known unknown”.  He speaks in phrases that make sense to me, I understand him.  It was early digital work, he was scanning in 8 x 10s.  There are lots of photos, we are seeing lots of slides.  I am looking at images and enjoying his voice.  He is in control, imperceptibly.  He has a generosity and lucidity.  He is a teacher, by name and by nature.  He is showing us his version of Holbein’s ‘The Ambassadors’, the painting with the anemorphic skull.  A photo, early Photoshop, moving out of the orthadox photographic space.  He is saying that work on computers was becoming increasingly Baroque, I don’t know what he means.  He is saying that is never endless, there is no obvious point to stop.  In a darkroom, I plan my work around the amount of paper I can afford to nail a print.  He is saying he returned to video, he called it ‘The Politics of Friendship’, the title of a Derrida book.  He says he never fully grasped the book, I find his honesty endearing.  The video is made of still photographs he shot on 35 mm film, the sequence is shot, and silent, its of dogs in Barcelona sniffing wee.  He is saying he went from surreality to sequentiality.  He quotes Allan Sekula’s phrase “they tyranny of surreality”, I want to tell him about my relationship to Allan.  How I resolved it in the end.  His voice is serious with softness, there is a friendliness.    He was asked to set up a photo department in Tallin, he found dialogues difficult because of the hangover of the Soviet Union.  Tarkovsky’s The Stalker was filmed there, he used the text of the film as a common language, a shared experience to shape discussion, to form photographs that have an entrance point, in reaction to the film.  I like what he is saying, I understand his strategy.  We see a clip from Stalker, last time I saw a clip from Stalker was the last Transmission he spoke at.  The photos were fragments, he shot on 35 mm on fast film, he likes grain.  Presented in diptychs.  An alienated viewpoint.  Someone said to him, “Dave, your work’s great, shame you are not Estonian”.  Its interesting, identity politics tells us that we speak of our own identity, we speak of our own difference.  Is it linked with a cultural colonialism (Modernism?) to want to represent the other?  Is David a closet Modernist?  I don’t think I want to say that, that’s not helpful.  His work is very generous, he’s talking about wanting to connect with the other.  I think Allan Sekula would really like his work.  He mentions that he was a student of Victor Burgin.  I guessed it, I guessed it!  Oh, the founding fathers of theoretically engaged, text including, contemporary photography!  I love them dearly, but I am trying to move away from trying to please them.  I have to make my own way, I have to let go my impulse to re-make to re-cycle inherited strategies.  But I understand what David is saying, go on.  A paper he gave in Ireland on Globalisation (more Allan!)  led to a residency in Australia, he had to name a theme, he named Globalisation.  He shows us photographs that weren’t working, another act of generosity, perhaps self confidence.  He made triptychs with text in the centre panel, he brought the critical context into the frame of the work.  Outside it are nature/culture binaries.  The human exploitation of nature.  The relationship between text and image is really working.  In one the central panel is blank.  David is talking about his resistance to identity politics, its not just about collecting/recognising.  “Thank you for listening”.  The questions, he’s talking about self as a convenient fiction, we don’t know ourselves.  We see ourselves in the mirror not photos, a strange alienation of seeing yourself.  Photography allows space for reverie (compared to film which suppresses our creativity).  I want to ask a question, I wonder about his work based in Tallin, it seems like his relationship with his students is an element of work, how does that get transmitted?  As opposed to the critical context being within the work he made in Australia.  I ask the question!  He talks about the ‘anxiety panel’ by the door – the didactic text.  He’s talking about his anxiety at not having a signature style.  I’m in the bar and I wish I could talk to him, in a way that is not sycophantic, but I think his work has a coherency and weight that I really enjoy.  I speak to him, sum up my studies; I don’t do a good job.  I can’t quite articulate myself in a way that demonstrates the connections between our thinking.  I blurt out the anecdote he tells last time, I remind him of his slide carousel he left on the train.

Kelly Large, Transmission Review Stream of Consciousness

She went to Liverpool Uni with Becky. The cloth on the table is distractingly wrinkly. She’s talking about process and product. She admits she’s nervous. She says she hates residencies. She puts herself through the mill, New Art Gallery Wallsall. “I’m just going to take some water”. Fear of publicness. She doesn’t like people, she produces socially engaged practice but she’s antisocial. I wish I asked her about this, I think getting to her motivations would be very illuminating. Maybe her unconscious motivations.
She’s self deprecating, she is talking herself down. She’s talking about exposing positions and structures, art in residency situation versus art in the gallery. Work from residencies don’t make it into the gallery archives. She is telling us her skills, administrative, social, analytical and critical.
A residency in a school. New awareness of CCTV of being observed, for who they are in public. (In my head I think about the contrast between who they are in public and who they are online, young people are growing up with online social networking, they are going to have a very different conception of they public self). Does the video work make sense out of its context, she asks. I wondered if it could make the right sense in that context, to me obviously is more readable to an art audience. Who are the participants in the artwork? The children in the video – are they the audience? Or are they the props? Or the artwork itself? Or is the art the ideas and only us – an initiated audience – the only ‘correct’ viewers?
Unofficial artist in residence in the British Library. I am doing a project a collaborative project where we decided to be unofficial artists in residence. Pipped to the post.
She says St. Pancreas instead of St. Pancras which always makes me laugh.
I wonder if she is able to direct her flow of residencies. I wonder if she has a wish list of institutions she would like to work with. I wonder if she feels like a gun for hire sometimes. I wonder if her work in the British Library addresses this. I wonder about the agency of the artist. I don’t ask.
I typed Clare Short by mistake at the top of the page. Interesting confusion.

Transmission 2nd December Sharon Kivland presents Juan Cruz

(a) Brotherhood (of man). Internalized friend, the inner voice. The super ego is the punative voice, even when it commands you to enjoy, (even when it commands you to let go and write a stream of consciousness style). The real-the unconscious.

Returning to works over familiar…the muse. Guilt about what you have or haven’t done. Guilt about returning to the muse. Guilt about a show that goes up to easily, we fuss over the one that isn’t working not because we nned it to work as much as we need to fuss. He tells us he might be anecdotal, yes do I like to empathise with you. I decide to play a bit of word bingo…Rubric 2

Two books clamped together, theory and practice, Ii wonder if he thinks the two get forced together sometimes..one illustratyting the other? An accidental artwork, and yet…? Suspicious 2

Its not a work or a photograph its just something. (Oh I bet the tutors cringe when they hear this…) Work that uses language isn’t necessarily clever-er. (some of it is quite stupid…but never dumb)

Translating don Quixote by word of mouth. Like going back to the muse this is his skill, his mainstay. Something to fall back on, clearly his grandma didn’t advise him to do a typing course. Stumbling across someone doing something in a space. Interrupting the space. Listening, slightly broken pauses..gaps for thought…you can hear him thinking.His accent changes a re quite dramatic. Cruz is saT IN A SPOT LIGHT ON THE SHOWROOM STAGE, WITHIN KIND OF AURA, LIKE A HALO. HE CASTS EXCELLENT SHADOWS. A photo of a book. Rarefied.

Covered in blankets to keep the sound out. N. Kant is stupid…ha ha! The video, the stuff that moved him was what he used, (not reasonable criteria?) (I wonder how well the visitors consider the effect their words have on the audience…they have a lot of influence)..he is a teacher…

Protagonism in the work, images of men. Work for the multitude, not the ‘public’…B and I both turn to look at F at this…funny.His iunformal chatty style is honest and self examining. Enlightenment, shepards, heroic, the good shephard, the good man JC. The flock, authority has been eroded. Open interpretation vs authoritive interpretation…alarming news from TM.  Could S get JC in for artwriting…? The small text texts are not boring, funny, A bit silly.  He has the book and the folder just behind him, he reaches over so casually to get them so he can illustrate a point, its as if his office is right there on the stage. I like that. Not to finish…

Diabolical goats. (D with his whiter than white skin and straighter than straight hair was once mistaken for being the devil. The black preacher said he looked like a goat). The miners in Taussig. The absurdity of a supersticious society.

He hasn’t talked much about the actual translation. That act. What it is. Is the verbal performance a kind of priestly transubstantiaion? Liturgical yes, but trasubstantiation is a bit extreme. What happens when you translate from one language to another? Forms of language. Its feeling a bit long now, his soporific voice…I drift. Restlessness, noises all around. Phone are ringing, I spot S checking if it was hers..if it rang would I rush over and answer it? Coughing…Then he just decides to stop.

Transmission 25th November Jaspar Joseph-Lester presents Amanda Beech

(a) Would it be possible to sit in the lecture, take my notes and still find a space to dream within it? Oh no, AB with a fembot-bob. Turn UP your mobile phones. Im surprised by S, there was much frustration last time we spoke on the subject..more and more I realise how naïve I am. O’ friends, there are no friends. The purpose of friendship, (Everyone must answer the question of what he is as distinct from the question of who he is- H.A) I wonder how easily we will understand AB, today, I fear for myself and hope she doesn’t pitch it too high. Im looking forward to the insight, A way in at last! I will understand and be understood, and be accepted for it! That is my dream. How can we talk about our work in a way that it understandable? In a way that even Kim’s mum will have a clear idea about what we do? She is always so well dressed.

Statement as position. A position can change at any time, we can shift about, dart off. (A girl behind me is  choking, I can hear her gurgling). Scary sentences, Critique is significant (to us as students) because it is what we are assessed on (?).

Her starting point was totalitarianism-the work/ideas developed, grew out of her confussion (Nazi art was not considered to be art) Interested in the hopes that are attached to art-to unite people, be the social glue (view). Aspirations of the avant guard being fulfilled by fascist art-set out on an explorationof Liberalism in art, a critique of the art-space. How does this ethical space relae to our ideas of democracy or freedom?

Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan. A state of nature-a pre political space. The state protects-Liberty in security. 24-Jack Bauer-Torture.(Activated by hands). I lost the connection here. 24 is a fiction…(perhaps she finds more truth there.) Art-community. For it with it/critical different- produce new forms? A strange and difficult task- Modernist role for what art should and could do. Get rid of rules and regimes in art. Critique as bad habit- process of difference of change (what? I don’t understand my own notes). Enlightenment-making us aware. Art should tell us something about our social relations…not! Relational aesthetics=neo-conservativism. Poster-billboard (maybe we should invite her to Bloc?). Using research groups. Talking about the things you want to talk about to inform your work. Mashing together a chapter from James Ellroy. Force of language. Force. Power. The success of image. There is something on the border between joy and terror that is induced by her work. (Can you be a fascist liberal?) AB is charismatic, commanding, would it be wrong to say masculine. I think of Jennifer Jason Leigh. I (think I) hate her, which only adds to the attraction and frustration.

Harlow-brutalism. Problematic claims for culture. Socialiism believed in a constructed rationalism. We can will the world. Hand on hip, this woman has something to say to us. She seems pleased about this. All of the text in the long video-bombastic, difficult to read. Towards the end the smaller fragments gave me more room. It still had an attacking style. The prowling, predatory movement of the camera. Radicalization is a big job for art- is this being just as dictatorial I wonder? How do you know when something is radical. Morandi is really radical to me, precisely because he was so unradical. Materiality-materialism of language. How can this be so? How do words manifest into material? To be pursued..text-image the objective is to be persuasive – affect, force. What does it DO? The contingency is in the fact that we might not be persuaded. (A. Gell). (I wonder what she thinks of magic?) Heirarchy of meaning. (Do I bring its status up or down?) J and A play out their discussion in fromt of THIS audience. As an undergrad lots of this would have gone over my head. It is clear that A is a good teacher, if she had more time to expain… would I want to ask?. Can Art Save Us (millennium galleries) Here art is being instumentalised.

Liberty, equality and fraterenity….or death.

Transmission 18th Nov Michelle Atherton presents David Bate

(a) Bonjour Monsier Corbet, 1854. I admire the way the travellers beard points up toward his addressor. It has been painted at just the right angle. Looking around, see whos arriving. EC, this moment isjust right social but loose. There is no need for me to catch anyones eye just to prove I know someone. Expectant gazes, Ive saved you a seat. Its quite empty in the auditrioum when we start. Announcing the chapbooks, yummy! (A paid bar, lots of fun, look forward to see ing you there… remember these for next week when I make my announcement for Pleasurewood thrills!)

At least I meet MA (What is today’s theme? I mean in relation to our crits today and my reading last night. Would it be possible to filter this talk and only find what I want or will I need to hunt?)

Civic friendship

(MA has a young voice, it has authority though, no hesitancy, no apologies)

Dominant, economic individualistic model. social glue. (crude thinking, vulgar, constellatory)

As she talks her guest is sat looking around, checking things- notes- a sensation of existence. A friend=an Other self. (Pain in someone else’s body) a recognition of the self. (At my left is D, her hand is moving the pen as if she were writing but it is nowhere near the page). Surrealism and photography. 2 large jugs of water that might fall. Not the other (extracts of the work relevant to the theme).

2 Narratives of the 20th C. Fascism-communism. the past. Historical. (Not quite an accurate view) Oblitorating the past- relationship to art and aesthetic debates. Modernism cut off the past.

(Im uncomforably being cramped in by my neighbour on the right.) appearance familiarity…the EUHysteria about losing national identity. Not oppositional but descriptive (!) The known unknown-Rumsfeld. Text and Image Scanning an image and waiting is like being in the darkroom.The latent image becomes manifest. Emblem theory. Pictur-motto-title. Tripartite structure. Strangers, strangerstooursellves. Strangees. the work should be strange, should have otherness. Im not sure if his are working, a little heavy handed? Iillustrative. His exploration of this technology is lost in tme for us. Anamorphicprojection.

The baroque-to go on manipulating endlessly… Dogs sniff around, the politics of friendshipis explored, the graffitti on the wall does a similar thing. Someone has left their mark, others may countersign. these things are meant forthe gallery, here they are given a cinematic screening. Cultural differences, not just language, misunderstanding double-speak-saying nothing is saying everything. Tarkovsky a way in .we all get Stalker- the Zone. Nobody knows how this space works. Images became a narrative matrix. fragmentary, dialogue. Culture writing over culture in redevelopment, regeneration. Transformation of the city. Authority, authenticity, ethnicity. It makes the meaning of the work, who you are. (Berger, ways of seeing) (photograms- what is the phenomena of photography?)

A standard talk, words and pictures. The pictures bookend the text. Is his work too literal, roots, rooted…yes. signify, allegorical. It has a corporate look. Global ,starbucks. The soft greens, surely its deliberate? Twice he says descriptive without condemming. So it lacks critical content?An argument for otherness- does this mean everything is ok? By standard do I mean bland? Im drifting now. Thankyou for listening.

I enjoy his presence more than last weeks speaker because I see a process ofthinking-talkingas opposed to reading.His eyes dart up and about searching for the words. He used the expression ‘not my cup of tea’. I applaud him for that.

Movies filtering the world as if they (it) were real. He knocks zizec (Ballard said it differently). Was it prohibited to read Marx during the soviet era?How strange! How ‘other ‘ is the work? It looks pretty familiar to me (Ballard said otherwise). He uses familiar imagery. a student of Burgin. the text/image. Anxiety panel,it explains the work to you on your way in and out of the gallery. JJL Globalisation, rejected ideas. investing in ideas.Less familiar criteria for selecting work-Friendship?

How can you make this work about globalisation without criticising your host? You want to maintain the status quo, make friends. In friendship we can criticise, it is a part of the friendship. Otherwise we treat people as objects. If you make art work out of this without the friction, then the work is bland and pointless.

Transmission 11th Nov Gary Simmonds presents Jane Harris

(a) This is your new governess, Frauline Maria! There is a huge groan as the film is turned off. I join in silently. GS, I don’t know you, although I’ve seen your excellent shoes. Jane Harris is Rococco Minimalism. I like the sound of that, KP would too. I’ve been thinking about real abstraction.  She looks nice, lacking in charisma though. Stood at the podium gives this an air of importance. Its better this way. Special. The work must be seen clearly, she wants us to be able to see the brushstrokes, apologises for poor quality, gives canvas sizes, introduces the talk as if it were an essay, outlining the main points. STOP FUSSING and get on with it! P can’t turn her phone off, this is starting to become more interesting. I don’t want to be bored. CONCENTRATE!

This would probably read quite well, stop explaining! The wide angle lens will cause distortion. Faffy. You could have shown 6 images of your work by now. She appears to be engaged in an act of hero worship..of herself! Mythologising, the video shows the exhibition set up, the first painting is revealed accompanied by the sound of awe-inspiring music. The voice over is over-explaining the work and the volume is too loud. Telling us what we are looking at, it puts me off, makes me unhappy, I want to run screaming when this happens. Restlessness and mild disorientation is what the images are, and do to be fair, invoke. A conversation btw artist and curator, not unlike tim and penny’s, only blander and it reminds me of SLR going on about dialogues. This feels like an art appreciation lecture, the slade circa 1952. This is how to look at this work, , all the hallmarks of a Harris. I can’t take it in in this Open University style. And the sound effect over the typing? WHY?

She is sure of herself, I guess this is comforting. She has developed her style, her motif. Reading her reviews! Reading out what the critics have said, without a trace of irony. What do you think of your work Jane? Why are you reading us your reviews? 193×290 cms, she tells us. Tennents taken from Greenburg. I want her to read out some of the bad reviews, there probably aren’t any.

Drawing geometric shapes and colouring them in, I want to do that too!.  She should give this talk to the WI, they’d love it. I wonder if she wrote this script especially for the talk today? Painting in and out of fashion. The ‘crisis’ has been going on for longer than you think. Not just in the 70’s. Maybe she is really referring to her own crisis. Parochial dichotomies. Mondrian, conctructivism etc, 1910’s ! Where is conceptualism in your world? Oh, you mention some. Pier and ocean..Judd and co. Reading out is naff isn’t it? ‘hitherto’ name dropping, stumbling over the words, not running smoothly, slipping off the toungue, straight from the heart. So it feels like an oscar speech, a lifetime achievement award. Be positive, theres some insight into that art school world view of the 70’s-90’s. Present one’s own work. I ought not to be grumpy, this is just someone elses style.

Aesthetics, life. Form influences behaviour-J.Albers. Doing is essential, form of thought. Abstraction, representation. Somewhere in-between. I wonder what PS’s paintings are like? She falters as she reads, gaps in the wrong places, mispronunciations. Discipline.

These are beautiful and clever paintings, my words. If I’d seen them 10 years ago they’d have rocked my world. I’d have tried to paint like that. They redefine abstracton, it does work. Coded limits, signs and associations. Paint on the surface.

Quoting more critics. She must be delighted that has spent time thinking about her work, putting it into words-defining, describing, analysing it. We could all do with that, someone to do the thinking for us. I mean that. Comparisons with Tomma Abts. ’these are his words not mine’, discipline of process. Ellipse, geometrical with real world associations. (Don’t tell Plato!) It is the starting point for all her work. Japanese garden making. Slade scholarship, details please! How do we get to go? Everyone loves the Japanese gardens. Scale, perception, reality. This must be where D is thinking about my drawings, the lines, concentric.

Is it possible to oververbalise your work? Over-describe and explain it? I’d love her to say, “I dunno really, the colours look good, all I want to do is paint, make something beautiful. It’s a compulsion.” Is she worried we might not get it or that we might not like it?What personal, artistic conflicts? ‘impurity of my thoughts’ wow, a bit Presbyterian!

Two books on a shelf, a rug on a tiled floor, grass on the edge of a lake. Nice! Edge border, counterpoint, figure, ground, static, dynamic. The particular and the general. Paradoxical activity-reffering to a variety of conflicting elements. (They still look very similar).

Another quote. I might make up a few quotes about myself and my work, and slip them into conversations.

I don’t want to hear this music! Don’t spoil the paintings with a song to illustrate it. Country music. Does she play this in the gallery? I think not!

4 black ovals, on a black ground. Quite Victorian, morbid and romantic. Abyssmal. While the music plays JH stands primly, holding her pages like a newsreader. I catch her eye for a second, or rather she catches me staring. She looks down and shuffles the papers. Then she reads the lyrics, Tongue in cheek, while being from the heart. Ok, it makes sense now. Your paintings are beautiful but ultimately very dull. (David Read, celluloid/paint. The Western). It is just on the verge of being interesting.

ANOTHER QUOTE! And she keeps reffering to herself in the 3^rd person. ‘Mawkish’. No just end it please. Smug. A lecture explaining how the 5 elements of the picture are in play.

ONE MORE QUOTE! CM is staring off into space…sigh!

Transmission 28th Oct Becky Shaw presents Kelly Large

(a) Comfy seats, eyes closed, taking a moment to rest my eyes. Relax, listen to all the voices in the auditorium.

Becky wants to see her friend. The problems of collaboration (sleeping with the enemy!) A relationship between process and product, grains of jealousy. Who would I say is my best friend? Do I have an artistic relationship with my best friends? Is this going to be a sisterly dialogue?

Having time to examine the picture for some time, I take interest in the post-it notes. Ideas laid out in neat little packets on the table. Required to be public and present which brings on the anxiety. What had she planned to do before this realisation? What was in the proposal? When does one reach the stage when people just invite you to ‘work’ in their empty space? I wish theyd explain some of the nitty gritty things in these talks. We want to know how they really do it!

Yes, I recognised the HUT project, surprised perhaps. They remind me of the incident that has left me feeling a little upset and distracted this evening. My anxiety. Speaking on someones behalf, articulating them through you. Barthes, the impossibility of knowing someone, the lovers discourse? H tears a corner of paper from the page, I hope shes going to pass me a little note but she puts her chewing gum in it. I hope it doesn’t unravel in her bag. It was evident in the questions later that the younger members of the audience didn’t understand this anxiety. Sometimes there a huge distances between us.

The social, intangible event, the residue a document. She produced a manual. Archive. A guide for other artists who might do a residency there. This formal, linear presentation is different to the ones she describes. Yes, a girls high school, I can feel a sorority. CRITICAL THINKING Questioning the workshops practise. 2 practices, Oh dear, do I do tht? It is a compromise.

Why do you, or do you deliberately choose these residencies that you eel uncomfortable in? This isn’t sisterly but critical, Examining circumstances and atmospheres. Students are whispering behind me, I sense a mocking tone..I hope not. How could the talk inspire this reaction, are they getting bored? It bothers me.

Evangelistic, pursueding people to take part. (epiphany, I learn the meaning of that word, ive been meaning to for ages) Opting in and opting out, the yellow vest becomes a visible sign or declaraton of ones commitment to art. I’d love to really hear what they are saying behind me, I need an excuse to turn around and shoot an angry glance. The school that opted out, could his students have rebelled? Where there issues about filming these kids?

Formal qualities. A swarm of comformity.

In the british library, being an unofficial artist in residence anywhere sounds exciting and secretly subversive. The dumb beast..a rationalising dumb beast. Space, physical, intangible and invisible, how do you make artists visible. I think of Elizabeth Price.

Unpopular books are sent up north. If I become popular will I be summoned south? This seems the way to formulate a project, work secretly, inadvertently. Sort out the project then make the proposal from it.

Is the talk a little long winded? Is this a nervous anti-social thing?These seem like projects that Becky would make. Romantic gestures.Question. Oh God weren’t you listening? I always crane round to see, I need to see the speakers face. Its unlocatable sometimes. An affable atmosphere. Becky’s skills are a lightness of touch. Still the muttering and whispering bothers me.

Art and agency, a dirty secret. I think everyone should write down their embarrassing art secret on a card. Anonymously. What makes you uncomfortable?

The meniscus of your skin as you operate. Think/overthink. Whatever you make is out of your hands. Is F making that noise to give me something to write about?

Transmission 21st October Andrew Sneddon presents Roddy Buchanan

(a) Yes all those little noises do contribute- lots of sympathetic ‘aw-s’. who is that?

A celtic theme-Glasgow-Northern Ireland- context is half the work, art school mantra. A wee introduction. Legacy artwork in relation to the troubles- his father’s take on who we were as a family.

Power-point presentation.

The velt-over the Arabian peninsular. Central Europe- snow, beech, bee, wolf Gaels and Bengalis. Until we reached the Scottish islands- then Ireland. Are these my ancestors too? Finn Mccool. The Giants. I wonder if everyone understands his accent, it makes people laugh, his storytelling style- using common sayings, words like knackered. Charming. F is muttering something to S, I bet he doesn’t understand the slang.

He claims his father’s words, is he spinning a yarn? Our family, as if we all know or are members of the same family. The little people. Cleve to the celts. Tir na Nog/ the promised land- Joseph Beuys, history in an anecdotal style. Time stood still in Tir na Nog. Lots of stones in Scotland.

A proper lecture- we are all engaged we feel like we are learning. We could be in a bar having a pint, sharing stories. The slides don’t always match the text, but they do. The Viking looks beautifully askance, sceptical of the whole project.

I’m thinking ahead to Q and A, what kind of questions will he get? Political, historical, art related? Signal to the backroom people, dvd time…

Social justice programme- Laure and I stretching, posture! Well, N would like this, would be able to respond.

He has to be so measured and diplomatic. That PPP was a piece of work. He seems so involved. Like an undercover cop. The quality is excellent, cinematic, piercing flutes. That tune, all I can think of is ‘Hitler has only got one ball…’

The problems of making work that is about or involves community. Does fairness take over from the work you really want to make?

(the big drummer chewing gum) I just see the performances,  I want him to corrupt, engage with, pervert, combine, force a resolution a reconsiliation. Mixed identity, standing up for it. It is in the title, ‘I am here’ where? Somewhere in between. Yes, I guess having them both together on the screen is a comprimise( for them)- a big deal. A wall separated the two, two separate videos. HUGE comprimise I guess. I like the way he pronounces seven sivin.

Theres a whispering wall effect behind me, I hear a burp, a rustle as if it was at my shoulder, I turn and there is no-one there!

A wee project just for us. S is in front of me, I like his hair, I know where he gets it cut, I will try that style on N.

Hacking cough! Get a spittoon. The artist asks ‘Are you alright dear?’

Organ Grinder is the word he is looking for. Was it J having the coughing fit? She leaves. www.helpfindmyneighbour.com the talk has ran its course.

Q&A Irish student asks the political question- I cringe. He answers well. I ask mine, a long reply, I nod. He asks again- this isn’t a protestant support group. J gets up, to throttle the boy? No the mic is faulty.

Mythologising of the self. Are you coming to the millennium opening? She shakes her head, no.

Transmission 14th Oct Tim Etchells and Penny McCarthy

(a) Friendship, right friend-wrong friend. Art favors, what if you like them but not their work. I look across at a friend and briefly consider how much I like them and their work.

Tim, writer, director, variety of forms and fiction- live art. The broken world- online game ‘Legacy thinker in residence’ at tate. Artist talk, expand on the form as makers- a conversation in public. An exchange of texts between Penny and Tim. (Tim needs a drink his mouth sounds sticky)

Unfinished conversations. Incomplete, tie this mess together.

The laptop is where I am. My ears prick up, I can relate to this.

This feels like a rather literary presentation.

Someone has died, it is describedas ‘since he fell out of the world’ an anecdote. His partner made discoveries,I have his laptop now I know everything. I found unexposed film in my father’s study. I cant develop them, I don’t want to know everything.

The form of the incomplete artifact. Pull anti-pull- coherence. Forster ‘Only Connect. (The eternal YES!). There is value in not connecting tho’, the separation between materials, separate narratives side-by-side remain unresolved. When the viewer does the work and connects then the work may become stagnant, dumb and without tension. I disagree, this is when it comes to life, understanding, observation interactio doesn’t kill work it animates it with new life each time. Etchells is so bright, so eloquent and prepared. A true performer and yet, I can’t hear his voice. Where is he. He asks Penny Where are you with time?

Penny is longing for a home. Disposessed, Hollis Frampton, Nostalgia. Its gone. All you have left is the drawing. Romantic, retrieval, restorations, fragments. Erasure.

Talking to dead people. I think of the big other, there looking over ones shoulder as one writes. (I couldn’t say my shoulder as I write…), I used to write a diary for posterity, to be found by someone, when I realised how boring this would be for them I stopped. Now I just write my dreams down. Whe Tim talks about the fictionalised audience I feel embarrassed and look away from him. I now understand that every performance I go to is not just for me. We address those that are not necessarily present. All the time, whether living or dead. Is not being there being dead. Being dead means not being anywhere, and yet omnipresent. Borges…I have the book, I still haven’t read it. Fragments create compulsion and invite interpretation. Like making notes. Will these notes not be really tedious? Sometimes artists can be so boring! Writing and being, by extension, is a form of ventriliquism..being a puppet with the voices speaking through you.

The plagarism text sounds great, like a big cut-up. Its easier in art, you cant work in a vacuum, nothing is new, nothing original. Liberate yourself from the idea you will reinvent the wheel, become known.

Death and the invasion of the mourner’s mind with ‘thoughts’ images, sensations. The place they used to be. It shrinks and leaves a little shrivelled scab.

I realise that in my copius note aking I wasn’t thinking, Tim you are invading my mind with your presentation. I will add thoughts later. He takes a drop of water. I remember what I was thinking when I saw you do that I thought, I’ll write that down, it counteracts the comment about the sticky mouth. I was frustrated by there being only one drop left in the glass I wanted Penny to reach over and fill up the glass.

The work does not come from nowhere. I agree, we are not blank slates, tabula rasa means scraped tablet, the must be traces of the previous document there, and we draw on top palimpestuously. I always liked that changing text piece, it was 4 pages in the Sheffield pavilion. I liked the editing, the self revelation. The changing fiction. When he says ‘the constant revelation of it’s own contingency’ I wish that I could come up with a sentence like that. Right now I wish I could do that to this text, go through, make changes. Sorry, this is what I am writing.

Trust ordered chance, let the book fall open. The books we keep closest at hand are possessed by magic. At my bedside is Marcel Mauss- a general theory of magic.

Penny enjoys- rubbing out, first marks, lawlessness. The texture of time on paper-things that pierce time, leonardos shopping list, the list my dad made the day I was born. Wash dishes, present for baby. Im tired though and my mind isn’t up to it. Down-time. Thinking, interpret your own thoughts, commentary. Half-baked ideas. I do some shading in on the page.

Transmission 7th Oct Bevis Martin and Charlie Youle

(a) Fun, pleasure, the pleasure of learning. The planet orbs, the bright coloured shapes, the geometry, the comedy and the awkwardness make me think a little about Daniel von Sturmer at the site. I almost asked ‘do you think pleasure is underrated in contemporary art, which is what I asked Daniel in our interview and Annie and Frederique the other night, but I don’t want to be known as the person who just asks that question. And besides, what would they say? Its clear they don’t underrate pleasure, “golden, spunky enthusiasm’, is how they described one piece. It is full of enthusiasm. They seek methods for making work which include acting on silly impulse, following ideas that are embarrassing or not very good, a foundation tutor once told me to just make the work and think about it later, (Napoleon is quoted as saying something similar in war and peace). Yes, just get on with it, some work might be bad, it doesn’t mean that this wont lead to better things. This is why the other day I said I wanted to be like Bowie, the creative energy exudes/ed from him, some of his work is really bad but some of it is the best. Their undeveloped foetus, so full of potential, but remember, man was not made perfect, the imperfections are the things we love. Middle eastern carpet makers include deliberate imperfections into their designs because only God can be perfect. For a GCSE project they have done pretty well, that is to say, they’ve drawn upon their own resources, recall. In an art exam you can take all your prep in with you. It seems as if they want to resolve the learning they made at school, undo the mistakes, go back and do it their own way. Create their own institution, museum like the man blong of the soloman Islands. The people there kicked out the Christian missionaries, threw off their western clothes and reinvented the traditions that had been as best they could remember, keeping a hold of various bits and pieces that suited them. Like the name of the ceremony, man blong, they formed a kind of pidgin religion. Bevis and Charlie made a pidgin museum, totally hand crafted, totally their own. All the work that was childish, inadequate and seeking approval reminds me of what I’ve been trying to do, my father died and I was thrown back into childhood and adolescence, because that’s who I was when that relationship was formed. I allowed myself to become a child because I still seek approval while at the same time try to kick against it. I wish I’d thought of the pasta, no actually the defaced text book. When I was at school I drew a fart and an afro  hairstyle on nearly every photo of a person in my tricolour, there was also a particular page in one of the history books that a little scrawled message told you to turn to. The page had a picture of a beheading, a photograph, the figure is kneeling, the executioner has just swipped the blade, the head is rolling on the floor. There was sometimes graffiti on this page. I am drawing over obituaries in a similar way to the tricolour graffiti, which, I suppose, is disrespectful but it seems like the right thing to do. Bevis and Charlie have the confidence to be naff, when you’ve got that you can do what you like. Jaspar can pretend to be confused but even he wouldn’t deny them the pleasure of such a naïve criticality.

Art has a function, sometimes this fails or breaks down-the intention- it always has an effect though ( is this different from affect?) Its morning and the moon is still out, waiting in the wings, waiting for the sun, the roar of the fountain. The anthropologist Alfred Gell says that art does have a function, magic or not and that the artist wants a reaction of some sort- he wants the viewers gaze to go a certain way and for them to think certain thoughts. Even an artist who says ‘ this work is open, it is whatever you want it to be’ would still enjoy it if you told them you understood their intentions, saw what they wanted you to see, felt the way they felt. Whats this got to do with our heroes? They spoke of the function or purpose being weak- they play up to it, turn it into subject matter and ultimately a strength. It still ‘works’, that is the beautiful irony.

Supplement

They Wore Glasses *

…the value of that erased drawing. Rauschenberg rubs out de Kooning and presents the page that isn’t empty. A fondness? The erasure is a challenge to its value.

Memoirs of the Blind, by Jacques Derrida (which I haven’t read). Drawings Selected from the Louvre collection. An apocrypha of drawing. The Trace. Thematised looking, blindness or lack of sight, touch (Berger said close your eyes and move around the room). A Picture to a Blind Man. School of Guernico – sculpture yes, painting no. (1591-1660)

Literary figures who went blind, Milton, Borges… Pepys

Writing and drawing produce a trace of things. Significance or meaning can become material in art.

The draftsman cannot see, the act is blinding. There is always a blind spot – when making you are obscuring. You can never get close enough to see the moment. You can never pin down one punctual moment. That is now. Which is impossible to grasp or even conceive.

Trace – time – phenomenology – Capturing a moment. A material relationship performed by the entire body. It has the fantasy that it is the present. (An odd status.) The trace is literalised, it provokes the desire to know or see every moment – erects/creates this kind of Quasi – transcendentalism.

Its rules. Its essence

Its definition.

Drawing. The trace is seductive, it makes one desire that it tells you, this is the condition of drawing. It doesn’t give you what it promises, not fully.

Myths of the origin of drawing. De Butade- (She traced around the shadow of her lover departing for war). The story is ambiguous and confused.  No date of origin

The Feast of Balthazar by Rembrandt. The theological value of the written sign. God’s hand is finite- infinite- immortal etc…(the text itself is sacred).

Drawing is the paradigmatic image of sight. Looking honestly- objectively. It can be the visual form of the performance or gesture of making art. Critique, stepping back- stepping out. Escape problems or dead-ends.

There might not need to be a split if I am into aesthetic engagement.

We look at Rebecca Horn. Her pencils set into cloth (tied around her face, mask-like). They mark the wall. This creates distance, a lack of control – made problematic – out of control. Embodied gesture- strange intermediary of the face that draws- the bit of the body that thinks, that does the sensing. What is the relationship with this to Blindness?  (Bona asks)

Julio Paolini – To the Extent of My Vision, charts the periphery of his visual field – lung-like shape- (Blind spots) The relationship between eye- arm- surface. (He wears glasses! – rarely mentioned).

All are doing distance. Production of the mark is production – the erasure of itself as a single moment – the point becomes a line. The visible structured by the invisible.

Expectations of drawings – distance. Roman Opalka 1 to Infinity – (detail,1965) Absurd promethean. Conceptually structured subject – takes – material form. (Dark canvas  – white paint) ‘til the brush runs out and fades – the charging of the brush. The visible system of traces creates a visual rhythm. It will stop at his death – the horizon of his own death. (He signed a pact with death) D. Human being= (Heidegger)- in essence a temporality – an unfolding of time – a certain dissection – we don’t get younger, only older then we die – A concern for our future- hurtling towards our finite end – we know and we care–Temporal passage. The task is… the thing that might provoke you into thinking how best you might live- do/be the best. Perversity=defined as being towards death- the rest of your life is a count up. Opalka counts down. One number closer but one number more alive. His death makes him want to live…

* (Based upon notes made during a Writing Art lecture, presented by Andy Fisher, 26^th November 2009)