ARTISTS TALKING

# 73 [4 October 2011]

Its all over...... MA show in the bag & new exciting drawing show starting tonight...........

http://www.karinjanssen.com/hungdrawnaltered.html

# 72 [2 July 2011]

CAPITALIST REALISM is there no alternative by mark Fisher

This is a great book. It explains contemporary malaise in terms of the structures/ systems of capitalism rendering us impotent due to a pervasive cynicism that this is it, that since 1989 there is no alternative. He discusses work, culture, education and mental health and describes and explains a disinterested sick society due to the neoliberal ideological agenda of subordinating culture to the imperatives of business. He suggests that we can imagine an alternative that is not just past discredited models of state control. he suggests that capitalism will distroy our planet and that the green movement might suggest a possible alternative. He says on his blog

"“It would be best, perhaps, to think of an alternate world - better to say the alternate world, our alternate world - as one contiguous with ours but without any connections or access to it. Then, from time to time, like a diseased eyeball in which disturbing flashes of light are perceived or like those baroque sunbursts in which rays from another world suddenly break into this one, we are reminded that Utopia exists and that other systems, other spaces, are still possible.” (Fredric Jameson, ‘Valences of the Dialectic’)

In his 2009 book ‘Capitalist Realism’, Mark Fisher started to explore some of the affective, psychological and political consequences of the deeply entrenched belief that there is no alternative to capitalism. After 1989, capital seemed to enjoy full spectrum dominance of both global space and the unconscious. Every imaginable future was capitalist. What has been mistaken for post-political apathy, Fisher argued, was a pervasive sense of reflexive impotence in the face of a neoliberal ideological program which sought to subordinate all of culture to the imperatives of business. The subject of post-Fordist capitalism is no passive dupe; this subject actively participates in an ‘interpassive’ corporate culture which solicits our involvement and encourages us to ‘join the debate’. As Fisher argues in the book, education has been at the forefront of this process, with teachers and lecturers locked into managerialist self-surveillance, and students induced into the role of consumers.

In the eighteen months since ‘Capitalist Realism’ was published, the neoliberal program has been seriously compromised, but capitalist realism has intensified - with austerity programs pushed through on the basis that it is unthinkable that capitalism should be allowed to fail. At the same time, this new, more desperate form of capitalist realism has also faced unexpected challenges from a militancy growing in Europe, the Middle East and even in the heartlands of neoliberalism such as the UK and the US. Now that history has started up again, and Jameson’s “baroque sunbursts” flare brighter than they have for a generation, we can begin to pose questions that had receded into the unimaginable during the high pomp of neoliberal triumphalism: what might a post-capitalism look like, and how can we get there?

Fisher will argue that the Left will only succeed if it can reclaim modernity from a neoliberal Right that has lost control of it. This entails understanding how the current possibilites for agency are contoured and constrained by the machinery of what Deleuze and Foucault called the Control Society, including cyberspace, the media landscape, psychic pathologies and pharmacology - failures to act are not failures of will, and all the will in the world will not eliminate capitalism. It also entails recognising that neoliberalism’s global hegemony arose from capturing desires which it could not satisfy. A genuinely new Left must be shaped by those desires, and not be lulled, once again, by the logics of failed revolts."

http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/

Slavoj Zizek “the best diagnosis of our predicament that we have”

Stephen Shaviro “he surveys the symptoms of our current cultural malaise…………..the pervasive cynicism in which we seam to be mired”

# 71 [2 July 2011]

EXAM by ED PEARMAN

I am now at the stage that I should be writing my thesis, so as a starting point I will update my blog.........been to see a few shows and read a couple of good texts, so here goes. What sticks in my mind most is the recent show 'Exam' at transition gallery curated by Ed Pearman, a really great show. They say: "Exam. is a study of externalised anti-social existentialism.  An exhibition of art, which operates outside of, or discusses accepted communal norms and customs. Unorthodox relationships, death and superstition, sociological confusion, and stereotypes are exposed through the media of painting, sculpture, collage and print.  If society is collaborative then these artists are practicing in isolation.  Their intent: to bring themes of unrest, obsession and morbidity to the fore."  http://www.transitiongallery.co.uk/htmlpages/Exam/...

An important concern in Adam Dix's work is the contradiction between the wish to communicate using technology and the physical isolation induced through this technology. Also the idea that the more isolated we become through use of communicative technology, the more obedient and dependent we are destined to be. One can also reference Stockholm syndrome (where we become attached to our kidnappers), with ideas of the shamen (the captor).

REVIEW: http://www.transitiongallery.co.uk/documents/a-n_apr_2011.pdf

I am dealing with similar issues thinking of the choice and control we have in life, how much is controlled by the system? and how much choice do we really have? when delving into the systems that we live within, we see that many accepted norms and customs are actually damaging or unhelpful in some way and actually were set up due to unknown agendas. Off the top of my head I am thinking about health care, the hidden agendas are the pharmaceutical companies profits - delve a bit deeper and you find fraud and incompetence. see http://www.mercola.com website for research on health matters.

Also the loans given to Asia to supposedly support their economy, where really to allow westerners to remove their investments and the whole economy crashed. see 'All watched over by machines of loving grace' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uz2j3BhL47c&feature...

For greater understanding I have looked up existentialism on my best friend wikipedia  "The early 19th century philosopher Søren Kierkegaard is regarded as the father of existentialism.^[5][6] He maintained that the individual is solely responsible for giving her or his own lifemeaning and for living that life passionately and sincerely,^[7][8] in spite of many existential obstacles and distractions includingdespair, angst, absurdity, alienation, and boredom.^[9]   

^{"Subsequent existentialist philosophers retain the emphasis on the individual, but differ, in varying degrees, on how one achieves and what constitutes a fulfilling life, what obstacles must be overcome, and what external and internal factors are involved, including the potential consequences of the existence[10][11] or non-existence of God.[12][13] Many existentialists have also regarded traditional systematic or academic philosophy, in both style and content, as too abstract and remote from concrete human experience.[14][15] Existentialism became fashionable in the post-World War years as a way to reassert the importance of human individuality and freedom.[16]}

# 70 [9 May 2011]

The one necessary thing: A person must have one or the other: either a disposition that is easygoing by nature, or else a disposition eased by art and knowledge. Fredrich Nietzsche

Misericord at Space Station 65 is showing the artists Jay Cloth & Cathie Pilkington & Susan Hiller is at Tate Britain. They are both very good & interesting shows. Both in some way dealing with slightly odd macabre hidden worlds. Listening to Susan Hillers piece witness, knowing it was stories about ufo's and hearing this constant babble I couldn't help feeling consumed and fascinated by the madness of the world. Interestingly they both had a piece about levitation. Cathie Pilkington has made a fabulous sculpture called levitating doll and Susan Hiller's piece Levitations: Homage to Yves Klein 2008 was inspired by the iconic photograph of Klein (1928-1962) apparently suspended in mid air, Leap in to the Void 1960. 

# 69 [11 April 2011]

I had three tutorials last friday at college, and not suprisingly three different opinions to contend with. 

The tutors at college have insisted that I stop making work in my sketchbook, which finally I did, to be told by visiting lecturer John Vella that he preferred these works as they were less self-conscious. 

My critical practice tutor preferred my photoworks but the other two tutors preferred my drawings. Not for the first time have I thought just do WTF you like. 

# 68 [1 April 2011]

i've also seen a couple of art works in Vyner street lately that have stuck in my mind. I discovered Richard Moon at Madder gallery. He makes work which appears narrative but explains nothing (his words not mine). i loved the etching head under heals very much. There was another painting in another gallery of two people entwined by their hair which was really compelling and linked in with my feelings about my work. I'll have to go back to vyner street to remember the name of the gallery. I've been thinking about people or objects linked in a poetic way.

# 67 [17 March 2011]

GALLERY VISITS

It was nice to get out and about today & explore some lesser known galleries, quite by chance a came across a couple of good shows.

TinType Gallery was showing kaye Anobile 'Simulacra' She had made the most amazing pencil drawings on birch panel, exploring the found photograph and doppelgangers she is interested in provoking questions about identity and the other.

Aubin Gallery was next with the show smoke on the water.....“...we are reduced to an atomized pseudo-community of consumers, our sensibilities dulled by spectacle and repetition.” Grant Kester ‘Conversation Pieces: Community and Community in Modern Art (2004)’

It appears everybody is watching, or being watched, or wants to be watched. Whether it is reality TV, CCTV, YouTube, there is a sense that life, however banal, is increasingly out there, somewhere else, deferred. As Guy Debord states in Society of the Spectacle; ‘this society which eliminates geographical distance reproduces distance internally as spectacular separation.’ Domestically, as this form of escapism becomes increasingly ocular, pleasure has become voyeuristic, while escapism itself is now an aspiration to a state of being, further increasing our sense of displacement and separation.

http://www.aubingallery.com/Exhibition/11

# 66 [19 February 2011]

Martin Arnold

In our lecture today by Franis Summers, which by the way was really interesting but so full of new ideas to me that it made my head spin. He showed us martin Arnold's 'piece touchee'. I loved it, it is one of those rare, clever art films that captivates you and sticks in your mind, up there with Christian Marclay 'The clock' and Guy Sherwin's 'Paper Landscape'. He then presented a paper he had written, which I must read again once its published, on the film. The film is an 18 sec appropriation of a love moment where a man walks into a room to a waiting woman and gives her a kiss. The artist has manipulated the footage forwards and backwards for 16 minutes to produce the most amaizing 'between' moments of a man and a woman, there is a build up to a frenzied pattered action, at once hysterical and ordered, a pull between man and woman, first this way, then that. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9JJc7TEsZI&feature...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6RZi_Nzyho

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8svkK7d7sY

# 65 [19 February 2011]

Emily Allchurch

I went to the Artist Talk by Emily Allchurch and Laura Noble at the Daiwa anglo-japanese Foundation 17 th feb.

Emily Allchurch makes digital photographic paintings using hundreds of photographs to recreate masterpieces for modern times. The talk was fascinating discovering how she'd painstakingly worked on each piece for a month and hearing of the little references that she inserted into the work. Thinking about a lecture we had at college today and the notion from George Agambo of the untimliness of history, i.e. things from the past that can be used contemporarily today. I see this remodeling and juxtaposition of history and present in Emily's work, she is bowing to the past and exposing the present, there is no nostalgia in her work.

http://www.emilyallchurch.com/emily-allchurch.html

# 64 [5 February 2011]

LATEST EXPERIMENT

thinking about colour too......

This work has been chosen by the curator Juan Bolivar for our interim show at the Nunnery. I have developed it slightly and used pure coulour sections for the 'pie chart' effect and i'm thinking of the way we are considered as just a demographic by government and other organisations when working out policy and law change and implication etc. (when googling demographic pie chart I found this funny statistic 'Pie chart of supermarket express line demographic' for people with less than 10 items, where by far the largest pie section was people with 11 items.

 http://www.inquisitr.com/43079/pie-chart-of-supermarket-express-line-demographic/)