Taconis Stolk Hosted by Col McCormack

Taco, as Taconis was referred to is Netherlands based.  And I see his work emerging from a European context; a conversation that I am aware of, but not familiar with.  In short, it is foreign.  But well crafted.  The talk was divided up into three sections and Taco had an advanced knowledge of Powerpoint; of structuring presentations in general.  He gave a good, in fact, excellent talk.  So, the talk was about work that is not preference, is that important?  Do I expect everything to address me all the time? No.  And so I am pleased about Taco’s exciting and dynamic take on string theory.  I am genuinely pleased I know about an artist how is creating an artificial flavour that does not relate to other flavours.  I am now able to slip into conversation that I do know of someone who’s practice intersects with science and geography in quite interesting ways.  I need not mention the heaviness of my eyelids during the talk, whatsoever.

Transmission Objective Voice Amanda Beech 25th November 2009

It was with a sense of pleasure and aliveness I sat through Amanda’s talk. I sat and thought and enjoyed her assured, controlled delivery. I enjoyed her loud, bright video with thumping soundtrack. So, should I blame myself, or Amanda or the art or the theory that I was not able to follow the logic? Do I expect to? Or should I rejoice in the diversity and challenge that art presents? I was happy, just, don’t ask me to recount Amanda’s position.

Transmission 3rd February 2010 Col McCormack presents Taco Stolk

(b) Taco Stolk presented the main concepts of his meta-modernist work. He gave a multi-media display of sound and image. The technological capabilities of the showroom struggled at times with some of the subtleties of Stolk’s productions. While the ideas were interesting and clearly presented the audience seemed awe-struck by scientific facts and impressive technology and failed to ask critical or challenging questions. There could have been a really exciting discussion at the end, instead we got a human beat-box, a question about which font he’d used in his presentation and one slightly challenging question about poetry that wasn’t taken very far.

Transmission review: Kate Davis Queen of Monotony (27th Jan 2010)

By Brook Davis

Kate Davis began is presentation by stating that the movie had been made a little rushed and had some technical problems, therefore would expect some failures

Well, who is honest deserves respect, but…

The movie started, a camera fixed on one side of a bridge, showing the other side in the darkness, the visibility was almost none, seeing only a few moving lights. Behind, a voice quite monotone, his own, reading a text about bridges and how they connected the people and how people were connected to each other, yet the prevailing thoughts throughout the text, was absences and a repetitive me, me and me. In fact that entire monotonous monologue spoke of misunderstandings and chance encounters, past somewhere behind, under or over bridges. Connections and disconnection all this over a day that would lighten the image, while a monotone voice continued to unwind the thread, but getting nowhere.

At the end, another excuse, I’m not a writer and this was my first text… Frankly, it was better to have been silent.

However behind all that blablabla something left that made worthwhile, a phrase resonating in my head: If a city is a body, the bridge is its spine.

Want to read more? Writings from my Head

Transmission review: Juan Cruz the Translator in Person (02nd Dec 2009)



By Brook Davis

Juan Cruz is a Spanish living in England who decided to exploit their knowledge of culture and language, to become a translator, translating into English some interesting names of Spanish literature.

This presentation showed another interesting facet of Juan Cruz. From a conventional translator, became a translator in direct, making a piece of theatrical art, a live translation of Don Quixote. For the piece presented it was possible to attend the difficulty of such representation.

However, perhaps tired of translating books, he decided to produce a different kind of work and began to experiment different things.

Two books clamped together to a table, “Simplified Dictionary” and “Artists Artifacts”, theory and practice joined together or how to simplify the execution of art. However according to the author was an accidental artwork.

A video work about a normal day of his life, works at home, the musical education of their children, playing with them…

Anyway it was interesting, deserves a “worth it” for originality.

Want to read more? Writings from my Head

Transmission review: Amanda Beech the Little Dictator (25th Nov 2009)

By Brook Davis

The Amanda’s Beech presentation was based on totalitarianism and some key statements:

Art is the process of difference and change.

Art is enlightenment, making us advance.

Materiality or Materialism?

Nazi art is not art.

Criticism is a bad habit.

Frankly, criticism is a bad habit? What she wanted to insinuate? And this after saying that criticism was important for students…

She basically denied the art developed under totalitarianism, sticking Nazi aesthetics and Soviet Realism under the same roof ignoring them and denying them as an art form.

Subsequently presents us with Leviathan of Thomas Hobbes, a force of nature and a pre-political space. The state protects the freedom ensuring our security. It is about the torture of the community as art, the strange task of modernist and what art should and could do. The art should say something about our social relationships; relational aesthetics is equivalent to neo-conservatism. She is opposed to socialism believes in rationalism. She spokes of the power of language, transmits its force and vitality. The success of the image as an end…

After all we come to the conclusion that she speaks against Nazi art but is ideas are of a liberal fascist. In fact all of his speech was a great Salmagundi.

Finally with his hand on the hip, as if it was a matron, she presented us a video with an overwhelming text impossible to read. The music was incredibly high and the images that have a fierce, almost dictatorial, imposing an idea with a brute force. The aim is to persuade, not to be persuaded.

In short, we are faced with an incongruous artist, openly anti-Marxist and anti-Nazi, but shows the capability to use the same techniques of persuasion used in those regimes and by absurd she criticizes the criticism. Machiavelli wouldn’t have been better. However if we believe in the words of Picasso who said that art needs to shock because if doesn’t shock isn’t art, we are in the presence of a great artist.

Want to read more? Writings from my Head

Transmission review: Roderick Buchanan and his dreadful accent (21st Oct 2009)

By Brook Davis

Roderick Buchanan showed us a very interesting slide show, which supposedly represent is background.

Also presented a video of his latest work, which was notorious a separation between two musical bands of the same city because of its cultural past and, finally, finished the presenting with a summary of a exhibition he made on Thomas Muir (often known as Thomas Muir Younger of Huntershill) (25 August 1765 – 26 January 1799) and on their failures.

However, due to his dreadful accent, I understood little or nothing of the explanations of their work. The public liked it and I can only say this, after all, was interesting.

Want to read more? Writings from my Head

Transmission review: Penny McCarthy and Tim Etchells, a work about “Absence” (14th Oct 2009)

By Brook Davis

Penny and Tim have provided us with one of those rare moments in art. The creation “in live” of an art work.

At the beginning of the presentation they captivated the audience by stating that before making it they would read some e-mails that were exchanged in order to prepare the presentation. After a few minutes, became obvious that the presentation was none other than the exchange of e-mails, were in the presence of the creation of an art work “in live”.

However, this was the only highlight of the presentation, as the reading of the alleged e-mail showed up boring and incipient, not for the content, but because the way the work was read.

In fact, the intonation given by Tim in his reading, demonstrated a rude unwillingness and imperious absence (subject that the text meant in its entirety) taking us almost thinking that their attitude would be part of the representation, but it was clear that that was not. It was clear the utter lack of willingness of the author to be there.

From Penny, perhaps by empathy, their intonation as the beginning was vibrant, became blurry and insignificant, following the flow.

They ended the presentation with a very quick view of Tim’s past victories (read past works). From the faded Penny, not even a line.

Honestly I expected more from these two authors who already accustomed us with better moments with his class and previous publications.

Want to read more? Writings from my Head

Kelly Large, Transmission Review Objective Voice

Throughout Kelly Large’s talk I had a sense of a highly intelligent, articulate, brave practitioner, able to challenge her collaborators, use stealth and cunning in her in engagements with institutions with a compulsion to put herself into the very situations that scare her most.  In short, Large’s work is ballsy and confident, even though I sense she has not hit her stride yet.

So, my question is, why the terminal self-deprecation?

A winced my way through Large’s chatty talk.  In spite of herself she came across as immensely likeable, but, she made me want to de-brief her in the pub and tell her not to put herself down in this context, audiences have a temptation to believe what they hear.  Of course, I am not suggesting that all I wish to sit through is male bravado and smarmy showing off each week, but Large’s talk made me wonder if is a female compulsion to talk themselves down in this type of arena.  Is it that Large is a woman that she feels unable to say, ‘I have a PhD and years of practice behind me, damn it!, I know what I am doing and I know who I am and  I’m ok’.  Instead, I heard her tell me she was nervous, she hates residencies and she does not like people.  She then started to list her skills, almost as though she had been challenged as a phoney; which she sees are administrative, social, analytical and critical.  The way she described the process of working through residencies she is offered made it sound as though she was a gun for hire, never able to choose a direction.  Oh Kelly!  Can I hire you to be a confident artist?

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.

Closing Crossing, Transmission

Kate Davies Transmission

Closing Crossing

A bridge, a voice. An invisible body. Total silence. Total darkness. Here, tiny spots of light, water from a river flowing under a bridge: Sheffield.

Water as a passage of time, the time of separation. As a fixed place in a space, a bridge crossed by different cars, vehicles, buses. A nowhereness animated by memories of two separate beings. The water flowing under the bridge carries a text full of emotion. Words uttered slowly by a feminine voice. On her tongue, a flavour of love lost, of kisses exchanged. The smell of bodies entwined. The author of this text is an artist, Kate Davis.

Plunged into the darkness under the bridge, a body of perdition, carried by a voice, is awaiting a presence, the presence of an invisible yet unnamed beloved, a burst into his reality ravaged by pain. He does not manifest himself. “It’s raining and the river rises” this phrase chanted the text until the end. Dreams intersect in the absence, the reality is filled with ghosts, voices, gestures, elk unfulfilled, scents of enlaced bodies, kisses exchanged.

Tears reach the river, the river rises, emotion wins, the night is darker. Nothing can stop that voice, not even brushed memories. Nothing has come to end sleepless night under the bridge. Nothing can stop her melancholy. If the body is a city, the bridge is its spine, the river is a mixed blood of lovers through which memories are vivified by words.

Closing crossing. A sunrise. The narrator’s body is a red spot blend into the dawning day. Her white voice is masked by the noise of cars passing over the bridge. Between two runs, her figure is draped in a red cardigan. She walks. The voice of shadows is hit of clarity but no presence of the missed one on the bridge. She walks like Jensen’s Gradiva. Without destination. She stops, appears and disappears. What did she expect? No promise can justify her coming and going. Expectation is the only justification, the ceaseless flow of coming and going without reason. Walking aimlessly, with words of love, forgetfulness and lack sole sacrament.

Walk, live, fall, get up when fatigue wins. She is still living under the appearance of vacuum in a rubble of memories, words of missing, kisses exchanged, clasped hands. “ I’m here to catch your eyes. I am here to catch your glaze”. No glimpse, no glaze, no promises. The gift of peaceful words is not the promise possible of elsewhere. The hands of the invisible lover have long left her body, caresses have vanished in a glowing oblivion. Walking is the only resource for the one who claims to have lost everything. Crossing the bridge to the other side of life, where all could be reborn, love renewed. The bridge is a memory, a gap between two possibilities, in the middle of nowhere. Unfortunately for her, the bridge is still a place where nothing happens.

Walking, falling, walking : is the only way of the vacuum. “ Closing, crossing, closing the gap crossing.” The words continue to flow in a steady stream. Hope stumbles against a wall with red bricks ; red as the melancholy of days without events, without caresses, without the taste of lover’s kiss on her abandoned lips. Red as the color of her coat, as the blood of a sealed pact. The bridge connects two definite points of a city but the lovers are still separated. Illusion of possible meeting on the bridge is brought by a hopeful voice. The truth is : absence prevails, the reality is punctuated by a lack, a  vacuum filled with memories and distressful gestures of the past. Under the bridge, considered as a body junction between past and the present runs the water. The water carries her illusion where it belongs: in the nothingness.

What else happens when you lost everything? Your voice, your words, a body of solitude, your treasurehouse. Is talking the only issue, as said Novalis ? Maybe. Walking, falling. …Speaking is trying to get the balance. Talking, caressing the running present, kissing the memories of the past, brushing the same gestures of tenderness and deep love. Closing crossing.

It rains and the river rises.

The voice falls silent.

Bona

David Bate/ Michelle Atherton, Transmission

Transmission

18 November 2009

NOT THE OTHER.

David Bate. Host: Michelle Atherton.

I come in this transmission to learn more about the notion of difference, the title is attractive. David Bate is the name of the photographer, his lecture is on friendship, the notion of the OTHER. On the screen, an image of Gustave Courbet’s painting “Bonjour Monsieur Courbet.” The original is displayed in Montpellier’s Museum.

Michelle Atherton introduces the photographer as her best friend, then follow words ok kindness, generosity and… of true friendship.

Then the photographer starts by giving some explanations on what friends are, what friendship is, why one chooses to be with another. A friend is another. Being friend is sharing points of view, physical sensations of being together, recognizing sameness and difference. I can not help but agree with the presentation, because all my present work is based on otherness, relationship, friendship, questioning the Otherness…

He then extracts highlights of works which seem relevant, talks about some narrative background of 19th and 20th century : communism and fascism.

According to him, Fascism is linked to nostalgia, to returning to the past, to the purity of the past, the purity of the race. It is an idea of purification while communism is getting rid of the past, going forward.

Through his European Letters, a series of photos, he tries to explain the idea of “the Other” in what he calls a post-communism world. By exploring the strangeness, by manipulating the images with the computer, they become broke. What is familiar to us may become strange. Exploring the way to work, it’s experimental, the images become strange. (e.g how European families use and move in caravan)

It’s a subjective moment of otherness, the notion of known and unknown. Picture, motto and title, (images and text) altogether illustrate what he intend to do, he demonstrates how national identity and an attempt of homogeneity are not far from Xenophobia in different countries of Europe. Inclusion/ exclusion.

The second part of his lecture is called The Politics of Friendship. Through a video in Barcelona we see how narrative becomes important to the work. Seriality and sequentiality of photos explore the way human beings  and animal live together, the closeness between dogs (animals) and human beings.

He then talks about his experience in Estonia, while teaching photography. Students could speak English but they were a mile from a true understanding of the subject. Narrative/ problem of comprehension/ language…

In Zone 1, in reference to Andrei Tarkowski’s film, the Stalker (1979) he points out an allegory of what was happening in USSR. Aliens are contaminating the inhabitants of the Zone. Nobody knows what is really going on. The zone is a space where your unconscious desire will be fulfilled. Berlin was a zone where your desire would be a desire for capitalism, for the inhabitants of USSR.

In Zone 2 we see sixteen photos of the Zone (Tallin) in Estonia. The work is a dialogue between cultures, a kind of realism. Fragments become narrative. Realism and documentary : a fragmentary experience. The city has changed, it becomes strange, different, but it is still a city of soviet inheritance. A recipe of disaster things are not recognizable, everything is constantly changing. His work offers a picture of strangeness. Night-clubs and bars are like in the western world. It’s a kind of lost innocence…

The last work is an approach of what is similar within the western world. It’s a series of recent photos in Australians’ life titled Australia (09). The comfort of their apartments is like ours, the objects of the daily life, fridges, cups of tea, gardens, buildings, universities etc… Talking of friendship, If we think only in terms of likeness, sameness and togetherness we discard what makes us different each other, we are weakned. If we explore the boundaries between the sameness and the difference, we question our ability of living together.

The issue of is not in the recognition of the sameness, but in the division, a kind of split between public and private, their boundaries, nature and city, how we engage our implication. How we think urban space, nature, the cellular life and the possibility of thinking about globalization.

I have no doubt that together, considering our differences, we can rebuild a world different from this one, with a real sense of friendship, of otherness and togetherness, accepting the notion of strangeness as a whole, because in some way we are strangers to ourselves (Julia Kristeva). We will be working with our dreams, questioning our ability of finding solutions to our problems together…

All for Amanda, transmission.

Amanda Beech– Jaspar Joseph Lester

Transmission 25 november 2009

Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. How strange yet familiar these three words sound to me.

Language, language of force and the force of language. Jaspar introduces his friend in a few words of such clarity, quoting Giorgio Agamben on friendship, I forgot to ask him the reference of the book.

A few words about what friendship should be. For sure, friendship is unstable but without it, impossible to live. Who can disagree? What is friendship for, what the purpose is? It requires pragmatism while the question of criticism is important. Pragmatism is Amanda’s work. The presentation of Amanda’s work hits me strongly by the choice of words, their impact: materialistic, political, radical, persuasive, charismatic. What happens when we refuse to be persuaded by our friend’s words? Friendship goes on despite that.

I wonder if they feel like I do. It seems Amanda and Jaspar work together in various projects (on curatorial and writing project). They explore different areas of research but they seem fascinated each other by their artworks.

Then comes Amanda Beech, elegant, revealing the risky program around her work full of intensity, of pragmatism and conviction. Democracy, Violence, Art. Force of language. The artist appears to be strictly radical. She explores different focus in a strong narrative, moving around the subjects, insists on the relation between democracy and violence. There is somewhat an idealism in this concept but Amanda stands adamant, questioning, going on her exploration of language, modulating her voice with force and conviction, in various tones. Could I follow her in this way of thinking? Whatever the reason, I keep listening, observing, waiting the issue of such strategy.

In series of images ( Studio of Joseph Torak, Image of Olympe, Kiefer Sutherland in a T.V series called Season Six) she tries to demonstrate how the art produced by Nazi could not be called Art because it doesn’t rely on the universal, highest principles of LIBERTE, EGALITE, FRATERNITE. What is the political impact of such a production? According to her, Art world was a free space for thinking in Nazi. The ideal of Democracy is liberty, freedom. In some way, the Nazi world polarity produces regimes of meaning, it doesn’t guarantee plurality.

The example of Leviathan (Hobbes) based on the principles of Power, force, government seems relevant. It makes sense. “We would kill ourselves without a government, the regulating power of a King. We need EGALITE, we need to be saved by the King.” Freedom is a scheme. FRATERNITE is in being together, sharing this ideal. A necessity. Liberty never exists without a government, we need an administration. What benefices the individual benefices the group.

But what happens when these highest principles of LIBERTE, EGALITE, FRATERNITE, are ignored by a group of people in charge of a government, an administration? Season Six is a true illustration of the force of the bad. Artist role is to criticize and to accept to be critical, well. I find myself a bit disturbed, unease by the texts and the video. I manage to do not be disturbed any longer. Suddenly the narrative becomes too talkative, emphasizing, overwhelming.  A feeling of toomuchness. Is it intentional? Difficult to take the time of true analysis, reflection, calm thinking. Amanda seems radical in her critics of our society. Defensive critics. Shall I ask her to be more critical on her own work as well, without changing her radical position?

She is re-thinking the structure upon which the neo-liberal society relies upon, questioning its rhetoric, its basis. For example how Hobbes principles are applicable in our modern society? It requires permanent, political, marxist critics. Amanda Beech uses a performative, radical language.  Right!  But on the basis of the principles she stresses, she must accept to be criticized. I think she does. Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite for all. It is a concept, based on an ideal. It’s an idealistic process, a purpose, a target. What is conceivable, thinkable and valuable in the western world, why is it constantly denied elsewhere?

Let ‘s keep up, working on revealing or recognizing the “force of bad” like in Saison Six, knowing Art is a process of difference and constant change. I could say being and struggling together is necessary, despite our differences, it’s ” the degree zero of administration power.”

Is the project of a delphic world achievable ?

Transmission lecture: Tim Etchels

Posted by ‘Anon’

Sheffield based artist Tim Etchels is well-known for his concerns with the mechanics of the live event and questioning or disrupting conventions associated with theatre performance.

Penny McCarthy as the host cleverly introduced guest artist  and old friend Tim Etchels in a written letter style, though speech kind of form. The sense becoming one of two friends [not sitting side by side, on the stage tonight] but communicating by letter, email, from different parts of the world. Emotionally moving elements, disabled, isolated situations and circumstances. There is a kind of sad, lonely, private ’missing you Dear Taeo’ –  ’Dear Penny..’ thing going on. 

And was praised, thanked, later, for it by Dr Sharon Kiveland. “Thankyou, that is the first time anybody has actually made an art-work especially for one of these lectures”. And it was, both a performance, and a lecture. A purposefully, extremely dull presentation used as a tool to empower the emotive content of its subject matter. Positive use of negative sensations and circumstances making us feel something. Spectators in dimmed lights for long periods of time, very little in the way of visual stimulation (slide changes few and far between) analogies made to journeys made through long, dark train tunnels in quiet, low, droning, slow voices. A can move/ can’t move claustrophobic situation. A trapping. An attempt to ‘close the gaps’ indicative of a situation of bringing closer that [which in this sense] you do not wish to particularly want any experience of. In this, its capacity of enforced communication and transmission of the unwanted, it became oppressive. 

‘Afterwardsness’. Doubly trapped by the early [pre-introduction] words and directions of uber-host, Dr Kiveland ”this is a taught element of the course, you may not leave… until the end”. I presume, because the presentation needed to be experienced in its entirety, to act, by its design – function following form – apparently very dull and slow to start, with the cognitive answers coming later. Maybe even ‘in the bar kind of later’. Or ‘at home in front of the telly later’. Afterwardsness.

Analepsis.

The ‘now’. The affect is this ‘doubly trapped’ pinned down, controlled, depressed, audience situation.

 The effect is that the oppressive atmosphere, induces, almost ‘resentment’. With serial group coughing and shuffling throughout. As with Mathew Barney’s ‘Cremaster Series’ the work becomes an art-form that actually induces a physical response in the viewer. But this through a long drawn out performance, rendition, and close physical relation of the artists, their manner of presentation, timing, actions, almost overbearing presences and performativity. The audience is both spectator and participant as opposed to viewer, like it or not. Malleable material. If this was its intention, then it was successful in comparrison to the idea of a passive viewer off on his/ her own, away in a silent gallery somewheres. Left to their own thoughts and devices. Uncontrolled, as such. Also away from, perhaps, as Francis Bacon may have had it, the story as ”conveyed through a long diatribe through the brain” who sought “the sensation without the boredom of its conveyance”.

The slides of the dislocated shards and remnants of old documents and maps which spoke of time, were, adequate as visual ‘tools’. Further distressed and torn they offered a leap back in time to those of Bourges’. I have not read Bourges’, therefore I had difficulties and appreciated the illustrative history of his life and work that had been put in place. This too managed to ‘fit’ the dark aesthetic of the performance. Again presented in a depressing, nauseating [Etchels own words] manner. The artists conveyed a simulacra of claustrophobic, potentially empty worlds, where you could experience separation through both time and space.

Like Bourges who after losing his sight, still coveted his private collection of books and employed a personal reader, ‘my imagined elsewhere’ became of importance. If this was its intention, then it was successful.

‘Anon’.

Transmission lecture: Bevis Martin & Charlie Youle

Posted by ‘Anon’

Bevis Martin and Charlie Youle. Two young presenters, collaborative artists and partners. Gave an intimate picture of their struggles and successes, difficulties and triumphs encountered during the early years of trying to maintain momentum post graduation as practicing artists. All this and within the alienation of a foreign culture and art market too.

The audience are transported to Nice, France and some of the early slides were, just like holiday snaps. Nothing wrong with that. Young couple in France, artists too. Exploring the culture, enjoying it and inserting this as a part of their practice. Planning work and installations, working it out together. It must be nice to work on a project like this with some one so close to you. Fantastic. And that, largely, is what you get. Yule logs.

It’s refreshing to see, and they manage to jettison the sense of  portentiousness that you sometimes get with installation. Installation for them becomes a response to their everyday experiences and new surroundings, if you like. I think this is why I like them so much. Balls. The balls to do it in the first place and the guts to stand here in front of this packed auditorium and its crowd of dark, coughing silhouettes and tell them how it is.

Through their personal experiences we are guided with humour, some brilliantly realised photography and a real sense of some of the relationships they have forged. You had to admire the way they forged on in the face of indifference. Constantly rejected by galleries in the area through two years of applications. Ultimately having to settle for a shared room in the towns community centre complete with squatters rights and a swingers club on a Wednesday evening. “Anybody can apply for a show there, they never turn anyone down, you just have to wait your turn!” Again, fantastic, what a refreshing attitude.

A slide change – an image of part of the exhibition, a large room, semi-darkness, dirty carpet, a torn armchair and matching ‘pouffe’. An uneccesary apology. “We kept moving the chair out of the way, but they kept putting it back in the same place so..” A large painting on the wall behind ‘Tears of Golden Spunk’. The no-nonsense attitude further illustrating the already obvious low-level budget, [it must be hard to enough to start life in a new country] but they make up for this in terms of putting the hours in. Mmmm, am loath to criticise but maybe less in terms of the amount of work and more attention to detail on certain pieces.

Next show, another community centre. An installation of small objects on the stage or dance floor. The building today is being shared by a group of ‘war-gamers’. They want to know if they can use some of the objects in their next game. Oh God. Permission is granted. The artists go with the flow and shoot some startling and very amusing photographs. They, the war-gamers [grown men] have selected a plastic mock intestine and two small spheres painted to look like planets. More slides, and an explanation. The title is now ”Two Small Planets Attacking a Human Organ’.

Further elaboration upon the part of the artists wouldn’t have gone amiss, but then you don’t want to tell the viewer everything. Some may say that it raises questions about how far you can actually go with a situation at the drop of a hat, give it a witty title and still get away with calling it art. That’s me too, but on this occasion I’m going to waive that right - I think it was more to with an insight into their working methods and practice, than a final realised piece – and I thank them for bringing it along to share with us.

Towards the end of the lecture the lights are raised and its question time from the audience to the guest artists. It’s always nice for at least a few questions before rushing off to the bar. A slide is still faintly showing on the screen, or is it a cast shadow? There had been a thing like it shown earlier, a small white moulded or carved? Object. A thing of no real form, scratched into, a rough misshape or a found object? A lady nearby raises her hand and the microphone is passed along the row of seats to her. “Hi, what was the white object, on the slide, near the end? It looked like a human embryo, or it could have been one of a fish”.

Ha! What a fantastic way to finish up.

Anon.