washing machine

'empty club gabriel orozco'

A train of thought reveals the process for what it is...today I spent the morning completing commercialisation module, which is now Im happy to say sent! this afternoon I was meant to be online with SE and EL for 3:30 supervisory session, however nothing happened...unsure what happened?? ok so form there i have spent the rest of the afternoon reading this time on mexican artist gabriel orozco...this thread came from the conversation between raimer strange (BM p144 art critic and exhibition commssionor and bismuth) strange references orozco as an artist who bismuth has interests in because of the open, available nature of his works. what was of interest to me was the term 'circulation system' initially coined by james lingwood. link-''circulation system'' in gabriel orozco, empty club, london, artangle, 1998. It liken to my theory of the 'washing machine' stage, that is, the invisible threshold between the artist and the viewer. lingwood describes as 'a material with which orozco could see in 'play' a series of dualities where the players and spectators in the model lose their identities...they now merge into a scenrio  with unknown rule (the billard table above has no pockets) taken from article..

Right at the heart of this imposing, inanimate building, and at the core of Orozco's project, the visitor encountered a tiny, moving centre. At the centre of a building in the centre of a city which considered itself to be the centre of the world, a red billiard ball hovered just above the green baize of an oval billiard table. Inspired by Foucault's pendulum which, in the 17th century, had given empirical evidence to the proposition that the earth was not the still centre around which the planets orbited, but was itself a mass rotating around the sun, the red ball was a perpetuum mobile. The destruction of certainties implicit in Foucault's exposition was echoed by the construction of the game without its conventional limits and rules. The billiard table's traditional rectangular shape was transformed into an oval. The game was possible, indeed enjoyable, to play, but it was one in which the rules, the scores, the limits had to be rethought or invented. The movement of the balls, like planets in the cosmos or atoms in a demonstration of the laws of physics, fractured the silent suspense of the sleeping building: the sharp retort of the white ball cracking against the red, setting the pendulum in orbit around and beyond the limits of the table, set many of the ideas informing the conception and realisation of Empty Club in motion.

this confirms the notions of 'play'. Oscillates-to move back and forth, the the input from the artist behind the idea and the viewer called in to particiapte in it. A good example i read here was orozco 'parking lot' in which he opened an art gallery as a parking space to any passing motorist...'the anonymous (guy brett 1998) motorist and symbolic car slip into the role of the 'protagonist' by crossing the 'threshold' between one context and a another, which are as much mental and physical, maybe invisable to one person as they are loaded with meaning to another...'

lastly..looking over writings from last year, i.e. paper and then referring to current thinking...i can confirm that it is not the creative process as a process i am dealing with here, but the looking in on that process, I guess in the same was 'rear window' is viewed, the spectator being impassive to the situation because he/she use mechanisms to speed up of slow down what it is to be viewed but participate as one they share common ground with the artist and or the creative process and two the material realised will be reinterpreted in a new way. the washing machine (circulation system) allows for this because it is a continuation and 'open' to a train of thoughts given originally from the artist onto the viewer...a temporal act that continues on and on..

  

 

a day of Alfred Hitchcock...

Yesterday I spent pretty much of the day watching films suggested to me...I think they were suggested? I say that  because I can't exactly remember who did suggest those films?? Anyway nevermind the important thing is I watched two Alfred Hitchcock films; Rear Window and Vertigo....I want to  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rear_Window concentrate on 'Rear Window' which touches on the notion of the voyuerist, or perhaps more scopophilia, (yes) the pleasure of looking, but always maintaing a distance (links to warhol). briefly the story is about a professional photographer (played by James Stewart) who having a leg in plaster spends the summer looking out of his window onto a court yard and other apartments. The apartments he gazes into is key here...we see 'torso girl' (a dancer), 'lonely hearts' women (forever enacting romantic situations), a pianist, a young married couple (who spend most of the time with the blind down) , a couple with a dog and the a sales person and his ill wife (who stewart believes has murder his wife?). all can be seen as representing the veiwers own life. robin wood (hitchcock revisted p102) suggest that 'we tend to select from a film and stress, quite unconsciously those aspects that are most relevant to us, to our problems and our own attitude to life, and ignore the rest...he continues that we tend to use such id again, usually unconsciously as a means of working out our own problems in fantasy form. what is also interesting is that stewart  (stella calls him ''a window shopper'')sees what he wants to see, that is, he is not interested in the happy family or the young couple, he is more interested what reflects his own life the fact that he is not happy in his relationship etc is viewed a parallel to that of the salesman and his murdered wife?. we as spectators from the outset of the film only see what he does, he is then in control...I guess this could link to being an impassive spectator living up to the expense of what the camera will allows us to see

...center on the relationship between Jeff and the other side of the apartment block, seeing it as a symbolic relationship between spectator and screen. Film theorist Mary Ann Doane has made the argument that Jeff, representing the audience, becomes obsessed with the screen, where a collection of storylines are played out. This line of analysis has often followed a feminist approach to interpreting the film. Doane, who used Freudian analysis to claim women spectators of a film become "masculinized", pays close attention to how Jeff's rather passive attitude to romance with the elegant Lisa changes when she metaphorically crosses over from the spectator side to the screen: it is only when Lisa seeks out the wedding ring of Thorwald's murdered wife that Jeff shows real passion for her. In the climax, when he is pushed through the window (the screen), he has been forced to become part of the show.

Other issues such as voyeurism and feminism are analyzed in John Belton's book Alfred Hitchcock's "Rear Window".

Rear Window is a voyeuristic film. As Stella tells Jeff, "We've become a race of Peeping Toms." This applies equally to the cinema as well as to real life. Stella invokes the specifically sexual pleasures of looking that is identified as exemplary of classical Hollywood. The majority of the film is seen through Jeff's visual point of view and his mental perspective. Stella's words sum up Hitchcock's broader project as film maker, namely, to implicate us as spectators. While Jeff is watching the rear window people, we too are being "peeping toms" as we watch him, and the people he watches as well. As a voyeuristic society, we take personal pleasure in watching what is going on around us...

Vertigo

Vertigo also played by James Stewart is a story about an ex policeman who suffers from acrophobia. An old friend asks him to tail his wife, which he does but in the process falls in love with her. 

The next day Scottie follows her to his house and they decide to spend the day together because Scottie fears Madeleine might commit suicide. The two travel to muir woods where Madeleine, embarrassed from confessing that her dreams sound mad, runs to the ocean and they kiss. Upon hearing the details of her nightmare Scottie identifies the setting as  mission san Juan Bautista and takes Madeleine there where they proclaim their love for each other. Madeleine suddenly runs into the church and up the bell tower. Scottie, halted on the steps by vertigo and paralyzing fear, watches as Madeleine plunges to her death.

An inquest declares Madeleine's death a suicide but Scottie feels ashamed his weakness has rendered him incapable of preventing someone's death. Gavin does not fault Scottie but in the following weeks Scottie becomes depressed. While treated in a sanatorium, he becomes mute, haunted by vivid nightmares. Although Midge visits, his condition remains the same. After release, Scottie haunts the places that Madeleine visited, often imagining that he sees her. One day, he spots a woman who reminds him of Madeleine. Scottie follows the woman to her hotel room where she identifies herself as Judy Barton from Kansas. Though initially suspicious and defensive, Judy eventually agrees to join Scottie for dinner.

After Scottie leaves Judy has a flashback revealing she was, in fact, the woman known as "Madeleine," but she is not Gavin's wife. Judy writes a confession letter to Scottie explaining she was an accomplice to the real Madeleine Elster's murder by Gavin, and how Gavin had taken advantage of Scottie's acrophobia. She rips up the letter and decides to continue the charade because of her love for Scottie.

Scottie remains obsessed by his memory of "Madeleine" and their similarities. He transforms Judy until she once more resembles Madeleine. Judy agrees to change on the chance they may finally find happiness together. Scottie realizes the truth when Judy wears a unique necklace that he saw in the portrait of Carlotta Valdes. Instead of dinner, Scottie insists on taking Judy to the Mission San Juan Bautista.

There, he reveals that he wants to reenact the event that led to his madness, admitting that he now knows Madeleine and Judy are the same. Scottie forces her up the bell tower and angrily presses Judy to admit her deceit. Scottie reaches the top, conquering his acrophobia at last. Judy confesses that Gavin had hired her to pose as a possessed Madeleine; Gavin faked the suicide by tossing the body of his already-murdered wife from the bell tower.

Judy pleads to Scottie to forgive her because she loves him. The two embrace when a nun emerges from the trapdoor; startled, Judy steps backward and falls to her death. Scottie stands on the narrow ledge while the nun rings the mission bell.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertigo_(film)  

After watching the films in particular 'Vertigo' I read a conversation between Bismuth and Michael Newman, who discussed how in films such as Bond movies, somebody always gets killed in the beginning and then the story unfolds to how that happened...this made me think about the how we see the final product as perhaps being 'The End' like in films, the creative process being the journey leading up to that end. ..I need to look up mark cousins who lectures on closure??? this is a 'superfluous' act, that is, there should never be a full stop, an ending not with a creative process, as it is temporal in that it is handed down over and over again...

later in the conversation Bismuth states' in most cases they (the consumerist) position themselves as cultural consumers, outside the creative process, whereas in fact they should consider themselves as the potential creator of the work'..  

'the messenger or story is less important for the construction of a narrative than the way we look at things' Bismuth

to be continued...

The all seeing eye...

This week I have spent time researching more on the French artist Pierre Bismuth...Ive become obsessed!! this has lead me to finding a recording hosted at BFI (2008) here he discusses his work in detail i.e. Postscript, The all seeing eye (seen above) etc. The all seeing eye shows subtraction as a metaphor for a world without communication and relationships (the orginal idea came from a friend of his who had had sex with someone whom she wanted to forget about because it was so bad, Bismuth played on the notion of  erasure, specific details etc). In the film a room is stripped bare, the not immediately apparent visual erasure taking place creates a moment of displacement in the spectator compapable to the feeling experienced when a memory is lost, desite its strengh and against ones

(www.bfi.org.uk/audio/exhibitions/bismuth.aif) will, simply by means of time passing. The All-Seeing Eye interestingly is taken from the Film 'External Sunshine of a Spotless Mind' (Bismuth & Michel Gondry worked collaboratly together on and as a result received an 'Oscar' award) Bismuth decided to take the notion futher by using it as an art piece that involed another collaboration between the two.

(Bismuth describes the work as a theatre set model in which the camera is a rotating apparatus working at 360 degrees...people had to come in, ahead of the rotating camera to remove objects...he says the film was full of suspense, because everybody had to be quiet with no room for shadows..) 

He speaks further of Gondry and his use of appyling the camera as another way of looking at reality...accident/inccident...'how' could it be used in practice. I thought this could work in terms of filming my reflective practice, that is, hesitation, pause, typing thoughts and erasing them and so on and so on... 

Interestingly he talks consistly of 'perception' and how subtraction is a link to a private relationship , that is 'see and don't see'. I guess it is the same as i sit here typing im in control of what I want to see, something that the spectator will not be envolved with unless I show it..maybe?Bismuth discussing that he uses films because they are readily available, a ready made object..brings attention to the public He considers the link between his music and cinema...the unfolding, (listening to it) the duration (important elements)

Relates to Warhol in that he is not interested in editing..prefers the duration and the idea of 'ready-mades'. How we put meaning on something. How do we percieve, consider the direct relationship between you and the world.

talks about Hitchcock 'Vertigo' considers end of film shown at beginning...and then subsequently the journey leading up to event..Im thinking here about Columbo...will come back this ?

To think about Postscript..I want to explain that the sound track is given to a secretary (she has not seen the film) she describes the soundtrack and (writes dialogue) it is shown like subtitles. she percieves and selects by creating through something she is describing...her actions she is centre of attention. she is now the artist. Perceiving something is a creative act because you have to make a selection in what you are looking at, remember somethings and not others.

Bismuth talks about John Smiths film 'Girl chewing gum' (1976) a structural film. 12 mins B/W. sound 16mm. 'in the girl chewing gum a commanding voice appears to direct the action in a busy london street. As the instructions become more absurd and fantasised, we realise that the supposed director (not in shot) is fictional. he only describes, not prescribes the events that take place before him. smith embraced the 'spectre of narrative' to play word against picture and chance against order.

Theres some intestering links to what I looked at above, in particular 'perception' has come up again, it occurred to me that I had over looked this when looking over old recording templates, I did not think to look back over journals...back in a minute. Back... Ive just look over some old notes from last year and I did cover perception..even coming up with the notion of perceptual thought...which of course is not new! this is what I wrote at that time.. 19.6.2011

The particpant interprets ideas communicated by the storyteller. The participant uses his/her imagination, memory or intuition in cognition to form new meaning and understanding. I think this is perceptual thought? Where the participant brings the illusionary world into existence in order to be able to look at own experience, make connections and reason?? 

I also thought this was interesting to refer back to, in particular the playing out of ideas.(ref to gardemar)

1.Storymaker, i.e. student = becomes story teller by means of communicating to his/her audience their creative process/activity. The creative process/activity is a construct of ideas played out. These constructs of ideas are temporary, because they are performed in the present and will change in time. This is the conceptual part..! 

and this...

The creative process is not thought of in the same as a work of art, that is, a work of art is what it is, it holds its own authenticity, its true meaning intended by its creator. The creative process is the product in which messenger offers an arrangement of parts that seek a whole, it is a product for use that holds no end point except if a solution has been found.   

ok what am I doing with all this, I guess I am trying to build on links...going back to go forward.  I had a supervisory session with SE and EL this week (13.3.2012) good to have Ellies input, interestingly she suggested I look at John Smith...

and then by some coincidence Bismuth makes reference to him?? I think when I speak to SE again I need to ask for guidance..but then I suppose when I write up my evidence in report I hope to confirm some ideas. I still have film to do and IP. the IP I will start this week, will have a look at it anyway and draw up some notes. Im going to finish up by posting up key words...I also sent these to SE and EL. this again needs more depth.

Keywords: spectator, apparatus, performance, creative process, storyteller/source



Keywords

Barcelona!

Samual Beckett not I at the Macba 2012

Noise...is what sums up Barcelona, it never stops 24/7 noise!! people, traffic, babies, bars, loading and unloading barrels, alarms, church bells, music construction. buildings...zzzzzzbangbangbangzzzzzzzzzzzzzz..........My visit to MACBA gallery is very apt that is to experience 'VOLUME! which quote 'identifies the turn of the century as the moment of consolidation of sound and voice as materials lfor artistic production. The new model is rooted in experimental video and cinema works that favour a narrative language that gradually frees itself from the image'...

Not I is a thirteen-minute dramatic monologue written in 1972 and represented the first time the Forum Theatre at Lincoln Center in New York that same year. In 1975 Samuel Beckett was a version recorded by the BBC television interpretation of Billie Whitelaw and directed by Bill Morton. A Not I, a human mouth, in the foreground, hangs in the darkness illuminated by a single ray of light. Recites a monologue of fragmented phrases syncopated on a subject with a painful past. Although the voice is female (the performer is an actress), the text is not clear if this is a man or a woman. The title comes from the insistent repetition of the word: "everything that happened to me I'm not telling me." 

The adaptation of the play to the television format had a decisive effect on the work. If in the stage version, a second character (a figure of indeterminate sex) acted as receiver in the television adaptation suppress it Beckett for technical reasons. If the stage, the vision of the audience was a woman in a monologue, the screen is just a mouth, something that happens to be independent and which is highlighting the condition of the physical body.The lips of the actress kept its original state, but also in turn become sphincter and vagina. The monologue is very fast pace, with interruptions of laughter and desperate cries: a glowing mouth that speaks of herself in third person while he repeatedly denied his identity. 

Although the film is one of the lesser known areas of Beckett, the filmic investigations are not a marginal fact in their production and have influenced contemporary visual artists such as Bruce Nauman and Sol LeWitt. Since the mid-sixties, Beckett was interested in the use of radio and television. For over two decades, he wrote and made ​​a film (Film,1964), seven television productions and was adapted to film the play Not I. His was a formal investigation to ensure that the drama had also sought "the strangeness and beauty of the pure image." 

Another part of the exhibition (and whose name i cannot remember??) which was of interest to me was a video installation of typing, the viewer watched as the narrator typed up the things that were happening around him, for example...the noise from the TV, the sound of the fridge, creaking off the house (pause) this continues for some time, almost i suppose creating a narrative of time, of exsistence, I felt that it worked closely to Warhols films...(stargazer p41,42) 'viewed psychoanalytically, the voyeur might be somebody who feels excluded...for that reason a figure of Pathos...but he is not excluded; he has absented himself. In doing so, he is solving a problem. presence is theatening to him. distance is essential, itself a source of gratification. distance gratifies because it resolves, and the voyeurs claim (if made)'... as I watched the same thing occurs; the typing swings to and fro, goes forward, (make a mistake), go back, go forward (pause)...oh just remembered what I missed out here and that is the headphones. Yes whilist I was watching the words quickly appearing on the screen I put on the headphones, the distance dissapears and now I am envolved... everything came alive, the sound of typing, and the sounds that surrounded the narrator, you also him talking...as you can see I am trying to recreate that here (video camera switched on)...however it isn't going to be the same, therefore I am going to look into a simular method of writing and recording it??? this will be where the film element comes into my reflective practice..stopping for a moment to check out artist name...back shortly..a ha!! found him, french astist Pierre Bismuth (1963-) the piece is called Postscript / The passenger (OV) 1996-2010.

POSTSCRIPT / THE PASSENGER (OV) 1996-2010

http://www.macba.cat/en/pierre-bismuth-postscript-the-passenger

Taken from the leaflet....The text projected on this work is the vetro-writing of the dialogue and atmosphere of the film by Michealangelo Antonioni The Passenger, 1975, by a women about whom all we know is that she is listening to the soundtrack of the film. Busmuth transforms the cinematic experience into a literary one, in a tension caused by the non-cinematic space, and reveals the fragility of image reading codes, the independence of the eye from the ear, and the redundancy of the ear in a world conditioned by the visual experience.