Happy Medium

Final project time, woo! This project is called "Boots", and it deals with either a social phenomenon or the psychic energy we have inside all of us, whatever you believe in or not. I had a really good time acting as the facilitator of this exercise, I basically just got to play with people's psyches for a bit, trying to tease out a more comprehensive image. The exercise went as follows: I set up in a space that was unfamiliar-ish, or at least not a personal space, then I asked the subject to examine the boots for as long as they felt they needed. Then I read out the following script (with a little variation based on their answers): "Close your eyes. Imagine a comforting and familiar space. It can be in your home, at school, or a place that you’ve never been. Please describe this space.  Now, invite the owner of the boots into your space. Take a moment to greet them and look at them. Now describe them to me. How old are they? How tall are they? What are

Douglas Gordon is a multimedia artist who was born in Glasgow in 1966. His work has been featured in dozens of museums around the world, especially the Tate and Gagosian. His work is related to Relational Aesthetics because he is concerned with highlighting the spectator's subjectivity within the work, and exploring themes of collective identity. He does this by utilizing images in popular culture, like Hitchcock's Psycho, and distorting them to such a degree that the meaning they were originally imbued with is completely stripped away to reveal a different meaning. One of his most famous works, 24 Hour Psycho , consists of the projection of Hitchcock's Psycho slowed down so that it takes a full 24 hours to get through the movie. This highlights the constructed nature of film, and the presence of the spectator. Other dynamic examples of his video work include Play Dead; Real Time , Zidane; a 21st Century Portrait , and Phantom . He also does a series of photographs

Kristen Morgin and her artwork were both impressive and offbeat. In her artwork, her hyper-realistic sculptures of mundane objects had the feel of ready-made art, yet it was entirely constructed by clay/dirt. There's something so engaging about exerting unmeasurable effort to create a mundane object like a monopoly board. Though she didn't really talk about antiques, I perceived her art as nostalgic/antique. She did talk quite a bit about her fascination with decay, and her enjoyment in sneakily including macabre scenes into her childlike artwork. For me, her art was mostly about death, decay, and lost childhood or innocence. Kristen's delivery was also quite interesting -- she was a very unassuming person, but a lot of the things she talked about was both personal and somehow removed. I really enjoyed the talk a lot! I think my favorite piece was the first that she showed, of the reimagined Brady Bunch, because of the lighthearted style and cultural association

This was an exceptionally intriguing project, because it definitely highlights the documenter and the power that that person has. For my documentation process, I used my iPhone to record the events (except Noah's for some reason -- I think I messed up and forgot to actually record, much to my infinite frustration), then I decided to alter the color of each event and I edited the actual performance, cutting out down the event to either key moments or simply cutting out parts of the event. In this way, I imposed meaning on each performance piece - an audience member then consumes the art not as a performance piece based on the subjectivity of the performance artist. Rather, the performance artist becomes the object of my subjectivity/camera, which is hella invasive. Here's the video: Again, I wish that I had the video that I took of Noah's piece, but all I had was a single image. Even that has specific implications about how I as the creator of the film felt about the pi

My project, "greeting card event", was just a joy to plan, create, and stage. I set out to explore the relationship that people have with greeting cards and their own image. As I stated in my proposal, when people consume greeting cards, the anonymous subjects tend to take on a universal quality which allows people to connect to them. When I made my friends the subjects of the greeting cards, I had hoped to illicit a response that would be similar to greeting cards, but also change the way in which they consumed the cards. What actually happened had a very different energy which I personally associate more with Christmas. The act of gathering for gift giving (sometimes with cards) is a constructed event with certain unspoken rules or conventions that were very much present during the greeting card event. My process:  I made the greeting cards on Zazzle, an easy-to-use platform that I think most people use to make personalized wedding invitations or other stuff of that

I found Tyanna's pieces to be very engaging and freshly unique in a variety of ways. Frequently, I find myself questioning the utility of "meaningless" art devoid of any human associations. I value art that questions or makes a statement about an issue, or can be utilized for change, or just generally used as a tool. While I can see the value in shifting expectations (like the simple selection of an aesthetically interesting object like the bottle holder in the interview we watched for class), I find that the human connection imbued within a piece is much more meaningful. This is why I found Tyanna's art so engaging, because behind every image and every choice, we can see a rich history that she invites us to experience with her. For example, this image illustrates her desire to re-imagine her relatives: I found this piece incredibly beautiful. Her decision to use mug shots, and then change them into portraits that completely change the way the subject is prese

For this first project, I'd like to focus on this concept of collective consumption versus individual consumption as Bourriaurd discusses in his book. My idea is to make greeting cards using photos of my close friends, then filming their reaction to the cards. When people shop for greeting cards, there is a certain degree of separation that takes place, because the subjects of the cards are usually unknown and therefore take on a universal anonymity which helps people connect to them. By using subjects that are not only known, but personal, I'm interested in seeing how the consumption of their own image affects this universal anonymity (will it still be kind of present since it is a greeting card?), our relationship as friends (will they be surprised with the phrase/saying that I pair with their image?), and how they see themselves. Then, there's another layer with your consumption of the footage of their reaction to their card. I have a feeling that it might isolate the