Duane Michals

TITLE: Alice's Mirror

ARTIST: Duane Michals

WORK DATE: 1974

CATEGORY: Photographs

MATERIALS: Sequence of 7 photographs

SIZE: h: 5 x w: 7 in / h: 12.7 x w: 17.8 cm

Le Cirque de Calder, 1961

Homestretch!

We've got two classes left! Here's a breakdown of our final weeks:

This coming Saturday we'll look at projects from Haley, Dylan, Julia, Eliot, Dan, Christine, and Celia, and while most of our time last week was devoted to discussion, I'd like to propose that following these presentations, we utilize the rest of this class time for your own studio work. As many of you have been bringing in works in progress, revisions/drafts of previous works, and projects that are experimental, my hope is that you bring the tools you need to continue working in class. The classroom is your studio space.


For our Final Meeting on Saturday, June 7, we'll look at projects from Jenny, Cole, Blake, Aileen, Jasper, and Jackson.

Following (or during this), I'd also like to propose a Breakfast Potluck Party-- I'll bring (more) coffee, some berries, and whatever else I can get my hands on, you all bring anything to share (Monique, you don't need to bring anything else unless you really want to).

Following this, I'd like to propose an In-class, Process-based Trading Project. Similar to the book trade we did near the beginning of the course, my proposal is for you to bring in materials you've been using in your own work and design a piece (responding to your project, perhaps) that will be given to another class member. We can discuss the specifics of this further in class. Approximate time: 1 hour.

As closure, I'd like to spend the rest of the class time looking at the development of any works you would like to share or receive feedback on, perhaps building off of discussion we have had in previous weeks. Most likely (and most helpfully), this can be done in small focus groups. For some of you, we have not had the chance to see your projects for nearly three weeks, so this might be a great opportunity to share all of the work you have done. Some of you have also expressed desire in receiving deeper feedback on your work, and my hope is that a forum of this nature can provide that sort of opportunity.

IMPORTANT
As we will not be convening during Evaluation Week, please also bring both your Self- and Faculty-Evaluations* (see note below) to class on our last class, Saturday, June 7. In line with this, and as the course has been focused on the identification of your own approaches to studio-based work, your self-evaluation is a vital document and source of information as I write my evaluation of your work. If you have any questions on the process of writing your narrative, please feel free to email me.

Evergreen's policies on Evaluations can been seen here

Here is the college policy regarding evaluations of faculty:

"Students are expected to submit written evaluations of their primary faculty members at the end of a program. Some faculty require a student evaluation of them as one of the terms for the award of credit; this is to be made clear in the program covenant at the outset of the program of study. Because Evergreen wishes to encourage mutual and thoughtful evaluations, the student's evaluation of the faculty will normally be given to the faculty member at the final conference of the program. The evaluation will then be discussed during that conference, after the faculty evaluation of the student and the student's self-evaluation have been discussed and agreed upon.

*However, if the student prefers, s/he may turn in the evaluation of the faculty to the program secretary before the evaluation conference. The secretary will so inform the faculty, but will not give the evaluation to the faculty until the final evaluations of the student are submitted to Registration and Records."

Biggest Drawing in the World

more here

Some of the things I talked about yesterday, and some that I didn't

Barry Le Va (who I didn't mention yesterday, but should have) is REALLY relevant to both Ryan and Drew-- here's a good link to some of his work/ retrospective at ICA-- and check out his drawings!!!!

Some of Paul's videos can be seen here

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

Cornelia Parker
Mass (Colder Darker Matter), 1997
charcoal retrieved from a church struck by lightning
courtesy D'Amelio Terras


bottom images, from the Tate:
Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View, 1991
Mixed media
Tate. Presented by the Patrons of New Art (Special Purchase Fund)
through the Tate Gallery Foundation 1995
© Cornelia Parker

And this description of the piece comes from the Tate:

Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View was once an ordinary garden shed. Then Cornelia Parker filled it with junk, bought from car-boot sales, and asked the British army to blow it up. She collected the wreckage and reassembled it as this constellation of suspended fragments, frozen as if at the moment of detonation. The smallest elements, such as plastic hair curlers, toy cars, and a crushed tin can are nearest the centre. Larger pieces - shattered planks of wood, a bicycle wheel - are at the edges. A single 200-watt light bulb in the middle of the orbiting debris throws shadows onto the surrounding walls. 'Cold dark matter is the material within the universe that we cannot see and we cannot quantify. We know it exists but we can't measure it. It's immeasurable, unfathomable', says Parker. From the shed's hoarded odds and ends, the kind of everyday flotsam accrued in a life, she has conjured her own sculptural Big Bang.

In Parker's hands, nothing is stable. Solid objects fall apart, collide, combust and are crushed, only to re-emerge from these acts of violence in new and surprising forms. 'I like to take man-made objects and push them to the point where they almost lose their reference', she says, 'so that they become something else, take on other alliances'.

Sometimes the act of transformation is spectacularly destructive, as when she flattened a pile of silver plate with a steamroller. At other times, in her photograms of feathers for instance, it is gentle and fugitive. Parker rearranges the physical world on her own singular terms, finding poetry in the most prosaic of objects.

PRESS

I should have posted this much, much, much sooner, but check out PRESS: A Cross-cultural literary conference (May 24-25) at their website HERE

Folding, all over

Here's a review from Suzanne Hudson (from artforum.com), on this exhibition:

"Falling Right into Place: The Fold in Contemporary Art" KUNSTMUSEEN KREFELD: KAISER WILHELM MUSEUM KREFELD, GERMANY Through May 25
Taking a cue from Gilles Deleuze's invocation of the fold as a basic ordering unit—in turn borrowed from Leibniz's theory of the monad—"Falling Right into Place" will bring together twenty videos, photographs, installations, and sculptures that riff on this theme. More exploratory than didactic, the two-venue show intends to function as a "basic research" effort into the idea of folding and its related, Serra-esque processes: e.g., wrapping, stripping, appearing, postponing. Gareth James's architectural models and Pierre Huyghe's origami sculptures will be shown alongside works by eighteen other artists, including Doug Aitken, John Baldessari, Eva Hesse, Wolfgang Tillmans, and Janaina Tschäpe, and read against a hefty and appropriately interdisciplinary catalogue—with essays by Antje von Graevenitz, curator Sylvia Martin, and others.

image: Wolfgang Tillmans, Lighter II, 2005, unique color print, 24 x 20".

Works in progress, 051008-051708

I didn't get a chance to photograph the folded drawings from Aldo (as I was pretty busy folding), but I'll try and photograph works in progress throughout the next couple of weeks.

Documentary on spectacle?

Here is a 22 minute documentary that gives a comprehensive (?) look at The Situationist International, 1957-1972

Bruce Nauman at Turbine Hall: Unilever

The full article is here

and audio samples are here
the Tate links will also give you video of the installation, to see how visitors explored the work!

Carl Andre

in Portland, 1973

here

Robin Rhode

Thank you Aldo

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

This is a project from Blu, a group based in Argentina. Their website (awesome) is linked on the right.

Week 7: 051708

For this Saturday, we'll look deeper into the mapping projects you've been developing (either independently or jointly), and discuss specific places and projects that you may develop within the route you've designed. Where can your work respond to the location, or people that pass through the area?

Here's a selection of projects that may help inform this approach--
C'etait un rendez-vous is a 1976 film that is about 8 minutes long (but you gotta see the ending!)

C'était un rendez-vous
here

Urban Archives is a project begun and maintained by University of Washington

and this, well, just check it out
Sweet Juniper!

AND

special thanks to Jenny for this link to an Intervention in Pittsburgh

AND

Stanley Brouwn
Portrait, 2005, here

image: Stanley Brouwn, This Way Brouwn, February 25th and 26th, 1961. This Way Brouwn consists of drawings made by passer-bys, directions given to the artist to assist him in getting from one place to another.

Week 5: 050308

images above: Janet Cardiff. Detail from Her Long Black Hair. 35-minute audio walk. 2005. Audio samples from some of Janet's projects can be heard on her website here and linked at right.

***
As the projects in the class are developing in such individual ways, here's an interpretation of the syllabus I am proposing we adopt for the rest of the quarter:

For each week from here on out, the format will essentially be the same: I'll introduce some new works at the beginning of class, and we'll then look at portfolios/projects from 5-6 people in the class, and then spend the remainder of the time on studio-based projects and reflection on those works.

I'm proposing this rather than the format that I've used in the past (which has always been a series of prompted works/projects/assignments, followed by a final critique where we briefly discuss/present works by everyone in the class). Some benefits I see to this new format: knowing that your work will be the focus of a discussion on a certain week could potentially allow you the opportunity to direct that discussion as you see fit. You could provide the class with relevant readings or videos or audio or images. In line with this, it would also allow you time to delve considerably deeper into a discussion of someone's work (or your own).

In many ways, this proposal is not a refutation of the syllabus as it exists, but rather a clarification that should give us more room to explore your processes. As I wrote previously in the syllabus,

Initially, I’ll offer some prompts for the things we make, and some broad, fluid topics will guide us: we’ll look at your processes in terms of everyday actions (what do you do repeatedly, and why?), mapping and surveillance (moving through spaces, responding to our movements in diverse environments), interventions (where can these actions occur, for how long, with what audience), and exchange (where does the work go?)

These frames (or filter, pehaps) will still be guiding principles, providing a series of markers for the works we'll discuss, the writings we'll read, and discussions on your works. Okay? Okay!
Here's the tentative schedule of porfolio presentations. Remember, the portfolio of work you will be showing is not a finished work (this isn't a final), but rather the works IN PROGRESS-- what are you making now, how does it (potentially) relate to other projects you're developing, and where do you see your works going in this course?

Week 6
1 Kyle
2 Kelley
3 Marge
4 Brittany
5

Week 7
1 Ben
2 Drew
3 Celia
4 Haley
5 Aldo

Week 8
1 Caleb
2 Ryan
3 Christine
4 Monique
5 Erik

Week 9
1 Dylan
2 Julia
3 Eliot
4 Dan
5

Week 10
1 Jackson
2 Aileen
3 Blake
4
5