Art Research Reading Group at New Museum

I went to the inaugural meeting of the Art Research Reading Group at the New Museum on Thursday. The reading group is led by Sabrina Locks, and is part of the Museum as Hub program. Texts for the series are drawn from a published collection of essays: Artistic Research (Lier en Boog: Series of Philosophy of Art and Art Theory, vol. 18), eds. Annette W. Balkema and Henk Slager. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2004.) Available online here.

While I was at Goldsmiths College, they renamed their woodshop the "Woodwork Research Laboratory." I asked a staff member how a woodshop is a research laboratory, and he explained that the rebranding was part of a broader effort to raise the college's research profile, in turn to help with fundraising. I wonder if "artistic research" is another kind of branding effort. More in a followup post...

I raised some of my concerns during the Art Research Reading Group, and was pleasantly surprised by the conversation that followed. One attendee (still getting names straight) suggested that art is being framed as "research" partly because aesthetic accounts for art no longer make sense. I agree with this. The implosion of Modernism and the collapse of the radical left created a vacuum. Art research can be seen as an alternative narrative to fill this vacuum, one that is not directly linked to aesthetics or critical theory, but which skirts the social practice / relational aesthetics debate.

Update: I just read this interview with Jörg Heiser, where he is asked "to what extent ... do debates on ‘artistic research’ count among the ‘things that matter’ in contemporary art?". Jörg replied:

It’s a little tricky. Research as such is not an achievement, and artists impersonating scientists, ethnologists or sociologists have to be careful not to a) underestimate the discourse in these respective fields they are tapping into, and b) keep in mind what they do their research for. Like one could get carried away with self-referential questions of the specificities of a medium – ‘New Media Art’ that becomes techy-nerdy in an unproductive, or even oppressive way; or abstract painting that becomes merely tautological and plainly dull – it is equally problematic to be absorbed by the mere aura, or political gravitas, of the material one encounters in the course of one’s research. You can see the effect of that in press releases that highlight that an artist explored this social context or did research on that obscure 1950s phenomenon, without bothering to argue whether the artist then managed to do anything productive with that artistically. If an artist did great research, say, on a case of corruption, why don’t they – to put it very bluntly – do a good reportage rather than a crappy installation, i.e. chose the appropriate context and method to communicate? A productive methodology would be then to remember what really mattered, which I think (in generalising terms) is to remember what art can bring to that research; a sense of form, of perceptive qualities, and conceptual reflection – which would be precisely its political stake in this.

To give a recent example: Duncan Campbell has made a fantastic film, Bernadette (2008), about Irish dissident Bernadette Devlin. The material he did four years of research on, ploughing through the archives of film stations around the world, is in itself fascinating. Devlin – who was the youngest Member of Parliament at Westminster at the age of 21 – was an amazingly self-confident and charismatic activist. One wonders immediately, however, what the artistic ‘surplus’ is in terms of the way he treated the material, as opposed to just feeding off its aura. In the end, Campbell succeeds because he refrains from the well-trodden ground of the conventional biopic, and – as one would expect of a good, auteur film essay for that matter – instead opts for surprising juxtapositions of uncommented material, amazing footage - like a journalist rehearsing the questions he wants to ask Devlin. It is, again, method and contextualization that make the difference, not just research as such relying on biography and medium.

This idea of artistic 'surplus' seems crucial here. Artistic research only makes sense if it is not about research, but about something in addition, the surplus, which transcends the research and offers new insights and perspectives. However, the term "surplus" may not be the best word for this other thing that is art. As we have seen in the economy, in difficult years the first thing that is cut is the surplus.

Cory Arcangel at New Museum

Here's the blurb:

According to the artist: “This performance is going to be about ‘Continuous Partial Awareness’—a phrase that was first described to me as meaning ‘you know, like, when you have three IM windows open, two e-mail in boxes dinging away, are texting five different people, and also have five tabs open on your browser, each with updated content.’ It is about paying attention to everything all the time, but not really concentrating on anything. It is different from multitasking, because with multitasking, one actually is expected to concentrate on tasks at some point, even if in small doses. ‘Continuous Partial Awareness’ is the eroded degenerate modern version of multitasking. I still don’t know how this performance will take shape, it might be a lecture, a music show, a broadcast, a chess game, etc., but what I do know is that the feeling of ‘non-concentration’ that has seeped into today’s life through our flat-screen displays and Wi-Fi will be its starting point." -- New Museum website

And here's what happened:

Cory gave a fast-paced lecture, fifty PowerPoint slides in 40 minutes. Each slide presented an idea. Most slides had pictures, many also contained video or audio snippets to explain the idea. Some ideas were things Cory had done, others he was thinking about. As he flicked through the slides quickly, he gave a running commentary, including jokes and stories.

Some sample ideas:

• Make a music video that sets U2 to video images of the Berlin wall coming down
• Create an art audio tour using time scaling so the narration goes really slowly
• Give an lecture with a laptop whose battery is about to run out
• Give an artists lecture using a voice box effect
• Auto-tune a song so that it shifts pitch ever so slightly
• Make a blog that collects posts with "sorry I haven't posted in a while" in 'em
• Create a fake structuralist film
• Create some pretentious CMYK prints
• Make two computers email each other "Out of office" emails all day long

The last three are included in his current show at Team Gallery. (Cory said he would post the 50 ideas, I haven't found that link yet)

If my description sounds cavalier, I doubt Cory minds. His attitude these days is all shoot-from-the-hip. From his press release:

Arcangel states: "Imagine me buying some video equipment off of eBay, turning it on, pressing some random buttons, and then calling whatever comes out my 'work.' This mind-set is the spirit of "Adult Contemporary". In contrast to some of my older work, which exercised a somewhat subversive use of modern digital tools, the pieces in this show are inspired by the idea of using technology exactly as it was designed, although in a manner best described as "non-expert." What if the possibility of using a system poorly in an uneducated manner were celebrated? What if I, as an artist, attached my name to the aesthetics of different eras of technology without really bothering to do my homework or even reading the manual (so to speak)?"

I have no gripes with this. I enjoyed the talk immensely. Cory is an excellent presenter with a good sense of comic timing. Towards the end, Cory noted that the first question he usually gets is "How do I get away with this." When an audience member dutifully asked "how do you get away with this?" Cory replied "Look in the mirror, you are the ones letting me get away with this, you tell me."

Cory's humor, jokes and self-deprecation are a strength, a way to avoid falling into the trap of over-intellectualizing the work.

One thing puzzles me, however. When Cory talks about his art, it is all very lighthearted, jokes and puns and fun. But when you see the work at the Team Gallery show (see here for more images), the objects themselves are sincere, even austere.

Cory Arcangel, courtesy Team Gallery.

The two computers emailing each other "Out of office" emails are two Apple computers on separate desks, running Microsoft Entourage. The CMYK prints are serious looking prints in frames. The films are abstract and provoke a certain distance.

In other words, although Cory's presentations rely on affect and pop entertainment, his art objects do the opposite. They appear cool and conceptual. Where's the fun gone? The "wink wink" is not in the art, it happens outside.

Looking at his structuralist film, for example, Cory stated his intention was to make a fake structuralist film, almost as a joke. But did he end up making a structuralist film? The only way a viewer could know the difference is if she knew how it was made, if she had inside knowledge about the fact that the piece used digital technology to simulate a film effect.

So, my questions are - does it matter if the way an art practice is talked about and the way it appears are so different? And is it an effective strategy to create works that appear Modernist or Structuralist, but that differ only in intention?

One final observation. Cory relies heavily on pop culture in his work, which appeals because it is accessible to all. Yet understanding Cory's work requires a lot of arcane inside (often technical) knowledge about how the work is made and how that is significant - an elitist tactic. I think there is something in this clash between populism and elitism, I just haven't figured out what yet.

Government 2.0

Every street in Manhattan is watched by a dozen computerized surveillance cameras. Meanwhile, in a city not so far away, the president works in an office devoid of laptops, Blackberry's and iPhones. He relies on printed documents and verbal communications. The president has the power to avoid surveillance. But to do so he must also give up using Internet toys.

The abstinence of technology in the oval office may be about to change. Obama is reported to be quite fond of his Blackberry, and may look for ways to introduce a laptop to the Oval office.

The topic was recently raised on Slashdot, which asked its readers how to build a web 2.0 government?

InKubus gave one insightful response:

I would like to see some good version control. If you look at the congressional record, it's full of crap like "Strike out the sixth sentence of chapter 12, paragraph 348, replacing with: 'b. except where already addressed under USC 90.01.23'"

WTF? I would like something like Trac where you can click on ANY statement in the US Code and see instantly:

• What changes have been made, over time
• Who sponsored the changes
• Who voted for, against, present
• Links to related code, as needed
• Public opinion related to the law
• Press releases by public offices/personel about the law

All with a nice Google timeline kindof interface.

Version control is one of the secret sauces of the software industry. It tracks every change to a codebase, and lets programmers see who made which changes, and to easily compare different versions of a document.

So far, very few people outside the code world have heard of tools like SVN, a powerful version control application. I agree with InKubus that adopting such a tool in congress would be a major shift in governance, and one I would welcome. Obama, you said you would bring change. How about tools to track those changes too?

Change.gov

A few days back I found myself wishing Obama would apply the grassroots techniques he adopted so successfully in his campaign to the office of the Whitehouse.

Now, with the release of Change.gov, Obama has made it clear he intends to do this. That is exciting.

I was struck by how Change.gov has a notice at the bottom indicating it is a "501C(4) Organization." The office of President Elect is a non-profit? In that case, shouldn't that be "Change.org"? How can a branch of the government declare itself tax exempt? Aren't they the folks that collect the taxes?

It reminded me of something I saw earlier this summer:

Why do the Marines use a ".com" suffix? They get the ".gov" suffix, but the office of the president elect could?

Who is your favorite artist?

The other day, a friend said to me "yes Jon, but who is an artist you actually like? Who is your favorite artist?" The remark came after I had spent five minutes deriding Air-Port-City, a work by Tomas Saraceno in the Psycho Buildings show at the Hayward (link).

Talking about art, it is easy to focus on the negative, the problems with a work or process. It is always safe to critique, complain, dismiss a work as too simplistic, too didactic, too utopian, too instrumental ... take your pick. Saying you actually like something is putting your head above the parapet - it is an invitation for someone to say "you like that? Isn't it too..."

Of course, my first response to my friends question was to say I don't believe in favorites and top-ten lists. That's all pop culture stuff.

At the same time, the question made me think back to a lecture by Pil and Galia at Goldsmiths.

The Goldsmiths MFA program has a weekly lecture series. In '07 Pil and Galia gave a memorable first lecture of the academic year. They decided to do a "top ten" list, going through a series of contemporary artists - ten they loved, ten they hated - and explaining why in each case. What started out as a serious academic survey of contemporary art practices quickly descended into farce. I remember at one point towards the end of the lecture, one of them clicked the next button on their slideshow, glanced at the image, said "too german," and clicked next again.

In the pub afterwards, many of the freshers looked quite confused - they came to a graduate art program and this was the level of discourse? A satire more biased than Fox News? What about all that criticality Goldsmiths is known for?

But the lecture was very considered. Through producing a moment of top-ten populism, Pil and Galia highlighted the entertainment aspect of art discourse, and showed there are no real authorities in art. Although there is a difference between an extended academic treatise and the simple phrase "too german", neither explains art. Don't come to an art degree program expecting answers.

Ooo, go on then. Francis Alÿs.

End of New Media at ICA

Ekow Eshun, Artistic Director of London's Institute of Contemporary Arts, announced last week that he plans to close the institution's "Live and Media Arts" department.

The ICA was a key center for early computer-based art, with its pioneering 1968 presentation Cybernetic Serendipity curated by Jasia Reichardt.

Eshun wrote an internal email about the closure that has since become widely circulated. It was the subject of this Blog post in the Guardian by Lyn Gardner. Gardner quoted Eshun's inflammatory remark that "it's my consideration that, in the main, the art form lacks depth and cultural urgency." Eshun was targeting new media, but Gardner suggested his comment was aimed at live and performance art as well. Eshun tried to qualify his statement with a followup comment, but too late. All are offended.

Eshun did display a lack of tact in his email. But I find myself sympathizing with his decision to close the department, though for different reasons.

Media-based categorization is less than helpful in art today. All too often these categories constuct walls rather than dismantle them. Medium-specificity was a modernist ideal, one of Greenberg's tenets. With all the changes in production methods, media categories have become increasingly blurred. Many artists have hybrid practices. There has also been an expansion of the forms and methods of art practice. As the curators of the Whitney 2008 Biennial write, "Today there are more artists working in more genres, using more varieties of material, and moving among more geographic locations than ever before." In other words, everything is more messy.

Schools and institutions need to adapt and shift their programs reflect this. Many are. For example, Goldsmiths last year folded its textiles program in with fine art, and renamed the department, from "Department of Visual Arts" to simply the "Department of Art". These kinds of changes are always disruptive. Hopefully, the new arrangement is also more open.

theanyspacewhatever

I just read a review by Kathryn Shattuck in the New York Times, Shining a Light On a Movement That Maybe Isn't, about a show opening at the Guggenheim (now through Jan 7) with work by the following artists:

• Angela Bulloch
• Maurizio Cattelan
• Liam Gillick
• Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster
• Douglas Gordan
• Carsten Höller
• Pierre Huyghe
• Jorge Pardo
• Phillippe Parreno
• Rikrit Tiravanija

The reviewer suggests that the show brings together a group of disparate artists. Shattuck quotes Mr Gordan, one of the artists, saying "none of us felt we were a group until the Guggenheim identified as a group." She writes that the "group identification took hold when Nancy Spector invited the artists to formulate a vision for an exhibition..."

The list of artists seemed vaguely familiar to me. So I cracked open Wikipedia, and read the entry for Relational art.

What these artists have in common is that they have all been curated together in group shows by the influential theorist Nicolas Bourriaud, under the label "relational art". The first such show was the Traffic show, in 1996, which presented Liam Gillick, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Philippe Parreno, Pierre Huyghe, Carsten Höller, Christine Hill, Vanessa Beecroft, Maurizio Cattelan and Jorge Pardo. Bourriaud has also written several books on relational art, including the widely read book Relational Aesthetics. The full list of artists mentioned on the Relational Art page are:

• Vanessa Beecroft
• Henry Bond
• Angela Bulloch
• Maurizio Cattelan
• Liam Gillick
• Felix Gonzalez-Torres
• Douglas Gordon
• Jens Haaning
• Christine Hill
• Carsten Höller
• Pierre Huyghe
• Jorge Pardo
• Philippe Parreno
• Rirkrit Tiravanija
• Gillian Wearing
• Andrea Zittel

Although Shattuck does mention that the artists had been involved in group shows together, there is no mention of relational aesthetics, or Bourriaud. This strikes me as revisionist. Are we to assume that appearing in group shows and being written about by Bourriaud for ten years under the label "relational art" was not enough to foster a group identity? But a group show at the Guggenheim changed that? I'm curious to find out more.

I must admit, I was also a tiny bit amused that artists who have been described as making "relational art", all about fostering relations between people, would, in the end, decide to make work as individuals for the show. Tiravanija is quoted as saying "It’s a kind of reluctant group show, because of the group itself." And Shattuck writes that Mr Gillick created "S-shaped benches that he sees as yet another metaphor, a glib one, for the show: people sitting together but facing in different directions, thereby eliminating the requirement to interact." Relational art might redefine the role between viewer and art, or between art and institution, but artists remain will always be artists!

Reductive art at P.S.1

Minus Space opening at P.S.1

Last weekend I attended the opening of Minus Space, curated by Phong Bui, at the P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in Long Island City (October 19 - January 19). I had conversations there with artists Linda Francis, Billy Gruner and Simon Ingram.

It was my first encounter with Minus Space, a curatorial project based on the premise of reductive art. Minus Space was founded by Matthew Deleget and Rossana Martinez in 2003 (See www.minusspace.com for more). The show at P.S.1 is a collection of works by artists who are members of the Minus Space community.

Minus Space grew partly on the web, with artists submitting their work to the Minus Space website. Today Minus Space has a large number of members and they have now closed their online submission process. Many members run spaces or curate shows, and often work with each other. It is an amazing example of artists coming together and organizing through the web.

The work in the show resonated strongly with me. My own work takes up the themes of minimalism, and I felt a visceral connection to much of the work in the show.

However, I was left wondering about the organizing principles behind the show. What makes a "minus space" artist? If Minus Space were a club, would I want to be a member?

Matthew Deleget, in an interview reproduced in the P.S.1 newsletter (link), says Minus Space is a presentation of reductive art:

"Reductive art is generally characterized by its use of plainspoken materials, monochromatic or limited color, geometry and pattern, repetition and seriality, precise craftsmanship, and intellectual rigor."

I find this a puzzling way to characterize an art movement. Of the listed qualities, only "intellectual rigor" escapes being about what an object looks like or how it is made. I could as well start a collective for Pinkish art, characterized by smooth materials, pink color, circles and paisley, hand-made craftsmanship, and intellectual rigor - all but the last of these describes my shirt. My point being that it is futile to define a mode of art by talking primarily about what it looks like.

What Matthew's characterization leaves out is any mention of intent. Why use plainspoken materials, or limited color? What is important about repetition or seriality? In the interview, Matthew stresses that reductive art is, without question, still relevant and legitimate today. But he leaves it for the reader to guess any of the goals or intentions behind reductive art.

This is surprising, given the clear formal connections between Minus Space's "reductive art" and minimalism. The early minimalists had extremely strong intention claims surrounding their work. Sol LeWitt, for example, talked about being anti-emotionalism, about concept-driven art. In Artforum in 1967 (link) he wrote:

I will refer to the kind of art in which I am involved as conceptual art. In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work. When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes a machine that makes the art. This kind of art is not theoretical or illustrative of theories; it is intuitive, it is involved with all types of mental processes and it is purposeless. It is usually free from the dependence on the skill of the artist as a craftsman. It is the objective of the artist who is concerned with conceptual art to make his work mentally interesting to the spectator, and therefore usually he would want it to become emotionally dry. There is no reason to suppose, however, that the conceptual artist is out to bore the viewer. It is only the expectation of an emotional kick, to which one conditioned to expressionist art is accustomed, that would deter the viewer from perceiving this art.

There is no mention here of the material qualities of the work. LeWitt's intention-based definition is powerful precisely because it defines a method for generating art. It in no way offers a prescription for how to recognize work that is created following this method - there is no visual category for LeWitt's art. What is characterized is process, not output.

The curious omission of intentionality in Minus Space's definition of reductive art could, perhaps, be read as a retreat from the idealism of the sixties, when many believed art could actually do something. After postmodernism we lost this kind of idealistic commitment. Perhaps today, and given the plurality of art practices, there is more of a case to be made for defining art movements in terms of appearance or craft?

I don't accept this. I just started reading Jörg Heiser's "Things that matter in contemporary art". It gets off to a good start when Jörg argues that, "for contemporary art, the emphasis has shifted from biography and medium to method and situation." The focus in the book is on the collision between ideas, attitudes and methods. Like LeWitt, Jörg focuses on the intentions used to generate work, rather than trying to define an ontology based on formal qualities. This makes sense.

In my own work, for example, I sometimes use figurative elements. I recently drew a series of ice cream cones. I view this as blatant figuration: I am less interested in figuration to depict symbolic references than as a way to show that figures, too, are composed of line and shape. At this level, abstract and figurative images are equal. If I draw a squiggle or a chicken, both are products of the hand. Repeating a figure many times emphasizes this common graphism.

Does that mean that, because I use figurative elements, I am not a "reductive artist"? Certainly, none of the artists on the Minus Space website show pictures of chicken or ice creams!

Yet I feel that my own art is very much linked to minimalism. I share an interest in immediacy, in concept and process, and in permutations. Where I move away from minimalism is my sense of the ridiculous. The second chapter in Jörg's book is titled "Pathos versus Ridiculousness: Art with slapstick". I am excited to read this. Last year in an essay I wrote about rubber chicken theory, about the importance of nonsensical elements in art.

Elements of ridiculousness were present at the Minus Space show. The curator Phong Bui had a great sense of humor in the way he juxtaposed certain works. I remember an embroidery pile on the floor and a sculpture of a dustbin by Michael Zahn - both pieces seemed out of place in a funny way, oddly recognizable among the abstract paintings. (The works had no labels, making it hard to determine the artist's names). And several artists picked up on the theme of absurdity. Simon Ingram created a painting machine out of lego. What I liked about this work was the kind of pathos it generated as the lego arm moved chunkily over the canvas. If the machine had emphasized craftsmanship, it would have been too ernest, it would not have captured my attention.

I left the show feeling very grateful that I had been introduced to Minus Space. And afterwards, talking with Linda Francis and Billy Gruner, I realized Minus Space is not a club or a movement to accept or reject. It is a community, a group of artists with diverse backgrounds who have come together to share and discuss and carry forward the dialogue.

Governors Island Art Fair

Self portrait in Shelby Voice's installation at the Governors Island Art Fair

I went to the first annual Governor's Island Art Fair on October 12th. It was the last day of the fair, I'm glad I made it. The event was organized by the artists collective 4heads.

I uploaded some photos on my Flickr stream.

I didn't sense any particular curatorial thrust to the work, it was a bit of a random collection. And the ubiquitous price lists and "For Sales Inquiries Please Ask ..." in every room detracted from the work, giving the show a tag sale atmosphere. I think this was unfortunate - the show could have benefited from a higher level structure.

That said, I thought the range of work was impressive, much better than some "me and my friends" style shows I have seen. It was cool to see an artists-organized fair in the city, rather than some sponsored-to-the-hilt commercial fair. And Governors island is stunning. I plan to go back next year.

Serious about tea

This story by tea shop owner Imen shows how far some people will go for a cuppa!