Week 4: 042608

We will be meeting in Sem II E4115

And viewing a number of video works by a range of artists including

Fischli & Weiss
Sam Taylor-Wood
Yoko Ono
Bruce Naumann
William Wegman
David Claerbout
Francis Alys
Gary Hill
and
Bas Jan Ader, among others

also, please bring both the clothing-based pieces you've been developing as well as any documentation you've done. Most likely, we'll break up the videos with some discussion on the projects, some in-class drawing, and some coffee drinkin'.

image:
FISCHLI, Peter
WEISS, David
Beetle,
Object from The Way Things Go
Aluminium water-jug mounted with wires on roller skates, bundles of wire, coal 280 x 230 x 230 mm
Alfred Richterich Collection
from here

Week 3: 041908

For outside work (homework for this week), I asked everyone to consider how they could record their experience walking through the Lab 2 building (we met briefly in the building to look around). Rubbings, writing, photographs, moving, feeling.

To begin class, we'll discuss the books that you made, working off of this prompt:

please design a book (the size, materials, and content) that records your experiences in the building (and you may certainly return to the building frequently, the book does not have to record just the time we spent in class). The materials you choose and the scale of the book would ideally reflect the experience. Are there multiple types of books in the book? Are some pages folded (like a map perhaps) while others are bound to show the development of a narrative? What is the story (if any) being told? Are they collected in some type of structure?

The book you make is to be in an edition of 2 (design two works that are nearly identical). One of the books will be traded to another person in class following (or as part of) our discussion.

then

Break, with coffee

Then we'll continue exploring art made with everyday materials, and created through everyday acts. We'll discuss cutting as a procedure and make numerous works that use cutting as their primary operation. Please bring the following to class with you:
scissors (for cutting)
paper and fabric (to be cut)
tape and pins and thread (to put the cut pieces back together)
an article of clothing that you don't mind getting cut. Ideally this would be a garment that you've worn and may already (for you) have some sort of history attached to it. We'll be using these articles of clothing as sculptural objects; taking them apart, performing with them, discussing their history, and documenting their changes.

As frame for this discussion on cutting, I'll be exhibiting some of Lygia Clark's Propositions (specifically focusing on her Caminhando), as well as works by Yoko Ono, Gordon Matta-Clark, Lucio Fontana (his Concetto Spaziale seem especially relevant as early examples), and maybe some other people who cut things apart (Barry Le Va, Robert Morris, Valie Export), depending on how far we get.

The last half of the class will be spent in small groups with each group designing a collaborative sculpture or event integrating the articles of clothing, themselves, and a physical record of the object/experience (through writing or drawing, most likely, although I'm open to other suggestions).

For Week 4, or, work done outside of class:

Return to the set of instructions you made for Week 2 and expand them in some way. Consider the instructions as a visual document of an experience. How do the works you made (text-based, in many cases) function as compositions? How do they look and how does that look effect how they act?

WEEK 4 WE WILL MEET IN SEM II E2124

Image credits:

Gordon Matta Clark
Splitting (still), 1974
Gelatin silver print
Collection SFMOMA
© 2007 Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York


Gordon Matta-Clark (American, 1943–1978)
Splitting, 1974
Chromogenic prints mounted on board; 40 x 30 in. (101.6 x 76.2 cm)
Purchase, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Gift through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 1992 (1992.5067)
Collection: Metropolitan Museum of Art

from their website:

In the decade between receiving his B.A. in architecture from Cornell University and his death in 1978, Matta-Clark was a key member of the New York avant-garde. His work, like that of Dennis Oppenheim and Robert Smithson, was formed outside the parameters of gallery presentation, and as with many artists who matured in the 1960s, his subversive activities were rooted in a critique of bourgeois American culture.

Compelled to focus attention on the dehumanization of the modern world, Matta-Clark developed a personal idiom that combined Minimalism and Surrealism with urban architecture. Using abandoned buildings for his medium and wielding a chainsaw as his instrument, he cut into the structures, creating unexpected apertures and incisions.

In 1974, Matta-Clark operated on a two-story home in New Jersey slated for demolition, effectively splitting it down the middle. The light from the incision invaded the interior and united the rooms with a swath of brilliance. The artist photographed his work and created a collage of prints, the unconventional disposition of which re-creates the disorienting experience of the unprecedented destruction.

Recap, Week 2 (with supply list)

images above:
Erwin Wurm
Looking for a Bomb 3, 2003

Inspection, 2002 (both works from the series Instructions on how to be politically incorrect)

Bas Jan Ader
On the road to a new Neoplasticism, 1971 (detail)
One of four color photographs

*****
In the attempt of charting our progress, I'm going to try keeping a week-by-week journal (also
in the hopes that if someone misses a class, they can catch up), so

On Saturday, April 12 we did a number of inter-related works:

First we looked at the instructions that you brought in that recorded an act you do (did?) everyday. What were the different mediums being utilized? Why do certain acts lend themselves to writing or drawing versus photography or video?

Then we made books (a Japanese sewn binding--modified and simplified), and I presented a few folded structures.

For outside work, I asked everyone to consider how they could record their experience walking through the Lab 2 building (we met briefly in the building to look around). Rubbings, writing, photographs, moving, feeling.

For our next class, please design a book (the size, materials, and content) that records your experiences in the building (and you may certainly return to the building frequently, the book does not have to record just the time we spent in class). The materials you choose and the scale of the book would ideally reflect the experience. Are there multiple types of books in the book? Are some pages folded (like a map perhaps) while others are bound to show the development of a narrative? What is the story (if any) being told? Are they collected in some type of structure?

The book you make is to be in an edition of 2 (design two works that are nearly identical). One of the books will be traded to another person in class on Saturday.

For next week we'll continue exploring art made with everyday materials, and created through everyday acts. We'll discuss cutting as a procedure and make numerous works that use cutting as their primary operation. Please bring the following to class with you:
scissors (for cutting)
paper and fabric (to be cut)
tape and pins and thread (to put the cut pieces back together)
an article of clothing that you don't mind getting cut. Ideally this would be a garment that you've worn and may already (for you) have some sort of history attached to it. We'll be using these articles of clothing as sculptural objects; taking them apart, performing with them, discussing their history, and documenting their changes.

***
Here is the supply list I gave out on the syllabus:
*container to hold all of your supplies
*process book
*assortment of pens, pencils, erasers
*x-acto knife with replacement blades
*scissors
*drawing pad, at least 100 sheets, at least 11" x 14"
*bookmaking supplies-- 1/16" hole punch, sewing needles, embroidery floss, bone folder, selection of papers (plain, printed, found)
*ADDITIONAL MATERIALS SPECIFIC TO OUR PROJECTS WILL BE ADDED THROUGHOUT THE QUARTER

Art: Process & Theory

Welcome Evergreeners!
Thanks to everyone who participated in Saturday's class, working your way through Richard Serra's Verb List (1967). The entire list is here (thanks to ubuweb.com, their link is at the right) and we'll be referring to it periodically throughout the course.

Approaching the idea of making art by exploring the process-- how the work is made AS the reason it's made-- may be very different than how many people have worked in the past. Serra's Verb List pointed to this in 1967 and was a new way of exploring sculptural practices. Rather than focusing on an object (or drawing, or painting), Serra is attempting to consider sculpture as a series of actions or, more pointedly, as a verb. Sculpture is not something made, but something done. While it frequently results in an object, sculpture can be (for Serra and us) considered as an activity. Works from this period (and some before) focus on this question. Nauman, Serra, Wegman, and others sought to understand their relationship to their environment. Their work attempted to open up questions of the body-- frequently their bodies-- relative to an object or space (or environment). Painters such as Hermann Nitsch, Jackson Pollack, Yves Klien, Niki de St. Phalle and others also ask these questions with their works (or their works can be seen more clearly through this frame).

In fact, what I hope to show with the class is that for the last half century (and further), this focus on process HAS and IS crucial in making and understanding how we use art in our culture. This focus is going to be difficult, and I will be providing a ton of support-- writings, videos, audio, discussion, examples (exhibitions, movements, specific works), but most of all experiments. We'll try making things and look deeply at trends that may appear between and in those things.

In asking the class to *document* an everyday occurrence-- toothbrushing, making coffee-- you may find it useful to try many different ways of recording the action(s). How do you depict these things in drawing or photographs? What is the vantage point? Lighting? Time of day? How quickly do you need to draw to get a sense of the activity? Is it a series of gesture drawings perhaps? Snapshots? Perhaps a set of written directions? All of the above?

Some of the other pieces we discussed include Steve Reich's Pendulum Music (1968). His description of the project is linked on the right, and I'm still looking for an online audio sample of the work...

William Wegman's is a multimedia artist, and some of his videos are available as quicktime movies here

FOR SATURDAY, APRIL 12
Remember, this coming Saturday will be dedicated to making your process book(s), and I would highly recommend bringing a range of papers, cardboard, chipboard, a ruler (I forgot to mention this in class, but it would be REALLY helpful), a 1/16" hole punch, some sewing needles, embroidery floss (or binding thread), and a pencil. I'll be demonstrating
a number of structures (folded and sewn), and you will have ample time to experiment.

In thinking about the size of the book you will be making, consider what you typically record, where you typically record it, and how you are going to carry this book around with you. And check back here frequently as I'll be adding a series of links on the right hand side that will reference back to earlier postings that you may find useful. Oh wait, I just did this. But there will be more in the future.

Nancy Zastudil is awesome

And wrote this insightful review of Zoe Crosher's exhibition in Texas. I've also added a link (on your right) to ...might be good, the online journal. Don't mess with Texas,

Steve Reich

Thanks to furious.com for this reprint of Steve's notes on his Pendulum Music,

STEVE REICH on "Pendulum Music"
(April 2000)

I was spending the summer in New Mexico, living and working out there in '68. I went up to Boulder to collaborate with a friend of mine, William Wylie, who's a painter. We were trying to put together a 'happening' with sculpture, black light. While we were working on that, Bruce Nauman, who was a student of Wylie, stopped by. The three of us were in this room and I had one of these Wollensack tape recorders- they're these funky 1950's models with a cheap electric microphone. It was an old machine by then. I had holding the microphone, which was plugged into the back of the machine so it could record. The speaker was turned up. Being out West, I let it swing back and forth like a lasso. As it passed by the speaker of the machine, it went 'whoop!' and then it went away.

We were all laughing at this and the idea popped into my mind that if you had two or three of these machines, you would have this audible sculpture phase piece.

The event that Wylie and I did was the first use of this piece, done with two machines. When it was done as a concert piece at the Whitney Museum in 1969, during an event of my music, it was 'performed' by Bruce Neuman, Michael Snow, Richard Sierra, James Tenney and myself. They pulled back their measured microphones and I counted off 4-4 and on the downbeat, they all let it go and sat down, including me. Then the microphones begin to 'whoop!' as they pass in front of the speaker because the microphones had been preset to be loud enough to give feedback when it's in front of the speaker but not when it swings to the left and the right. Over a period of ten minutes, which was a little too long for my taste, and as the pendulums come to rest, you entered a pulsing drone. Once it hit the drone, I would pull the plug on the machine and the whole thing ended.

It's the ultimate process piece. It's me making my peace with Cage. It's audible sculpture. If it's done right, it's kind of funny.

In my earlier days, I was involved with a lot of visual artists and the context for my work was art galleries and museums. This was definitely such a piece. The work of Richard Sierra was like that where he would have sheets of lead propped up against the wall by other sheets of lead. What you see is what you get. This piece does that and hopefully, it's effect is kind of funny at the same time.

Conceptually, it fits hand-in-glove with my other work. It's a phase piece, a process piece. It's the idea of a piece that runs on its own once you set it up and load it and you can walk away. In terms of what I've done from '65 to the present, it's a totally oddball piece. Bang On A Can did a 60th birthday for me at Lincoln Center (1996) where they performed "Pendulum Music." It's a very provacative piece because it's not something you usually hear at concerts. So, it sits there as kind of a loner.

It's not a piece that needs to be done very often. I was not interested in recording (it). The Avant Garde Ensemble recording is very good- the pitch content becomes kind of a phase piece. They wisely did several versions and presented them all- it's the only piece of mine that doesn't have a sonic outcome. I never have been close to John Cage but this piece was a way of saying "OK, here it is but it isn't!"

I just heard about the Sonic Youth version and now I have to hear it! Here's a piece that's been unrecorded for 30 years and now I've got two recordings of it!