When watching Nina Katchadourian explain how she is using book to describe someone personality is nothing less of genius. She uses the stagey of digging through the whole collection and then uses the que card to write the ones she plans on using. I really like when she used the book with a question as a title then follows up with a book to answer the previous book. This method could be used to convey ones thought in different way thus painting a portrait. One of the things that drew me to studio art and pursing it as a career was the passion to work with different hues and texture and mediums.
Ryan Park’s works speak to that by the stacking of coloured books and making a colour pallet. This shows a whole new mean while working with the same medium.
I decided to use to book from my friends’ library as I honestly don’t own many books. I found her collection very interesting. One thing that I found really interesting is that by looking at someone’s library there really is a connection and can tell you a substantial amount of what that person is about. For the first stack of books, I wanted to embody her journey as a woman and how she moves through spaces. I then break down her even further not only being a woman but a black woman.
For the second I decided to mess around with the form of the book. So, I showed the pages and then, flipped one book around that was read and I liked how the words “black” and “Canada” stood out, as most of my experience has been in Canada and many people always say when they see something crazy in the states “that’s the state, and that doesn’t happen in Canada”.
For my third stack, I display where I see think we are moving to, as opposed to where we had started. So, at the top of the stack, I used the book critique of black reasons then I put becoming human because that’s is still a battle that we are fighting today. And yes, it is crazy that we are still treated unfairly and almost feel insane asking to be treated like a human. I ended the stack with “silencing the past” because I feel like we are all started to really wake up as a human race and come together and fight this division we race and move forward as one.
Technically I ended up with two pandemic cakes. The cake from the previous video art I had created made an absolute mess, I could not even attempt to put it back together to be ‘edible’. Rather than tossing it out and letting it go to waste, I ended up making cake pop ‘balls’ out of it, since it was already a mess with icing. Although they turned out very soft, they were thoroughly enjoyed by my roommates 🙂
Week #10: Food in Art
I played around with a few ideas. Traditionally when I think of food in the art world, it is always used as symbolism to mean something else. The Arnolfini Wedding features some small oranges that represent fertility, The Madonna Child depicts apples and gourds to represent the triumph of salvation over damnation in its religious ties, the halved walnut in Virgin and Child represents the holy trinity, and the list continues. Food has always been utilized to convey subtle meanings within art.
In the modern day, advertising also utilizes fruit. It is often over-sexualized as a form of appealing to the public while playing on desire and sexuality to draw attention where food can be capitalized through the instilled state of desire, tapping into the consumers sexual appetite (literally). Certain foods have been gendered as well, where long thin foods represent male genitalia, and round, halved fruits represent the female genitalia. This can even be seen with the use of emojis, where the eggplant is representative of a penis, the peach alluding to an ass, and melons depicting breasts. Even general female figures are given shapes, either is an apple or pear depending on the woman’s bodily shape.
I wanted to play on this sexuality linkage between fruits and genitalia, editing images as if they were NSFW and contained nude content. Featuring the 12 foods, including a banana, ice cream cone, grapefruit, oyster, hotdog, carrot, popsicle, fig, cucumber, peach, and eggplant, the series is subtly blurred and boldly censored. The censoring came down to where I feel on the body the food would be if it were genitalia, and I went from there.
Food Nudes (2021) – Series of fruits that are often seen as phallic or yonic. They have been edited to appear as though they contain nudity or NSFW content, and the ‘sensitive’ content has been censored from the images.
I kind of felt like the above piece was very mundane and did not challenge the boundaries much, so I developed one of my other ideas and created a video as well.
For this piece, I wanted to explore what was considered ‘wrong’ when it came to consuming foods. Immediately I thought of cutting things incorrectly, such as cutting the center slice out of a round pizza or a pie, or eating an ice cream cone with the cone first. These ideas actually made me laugh, because I just pondered who had collectively decided that these methods of eating foods were incorrect? After actually executing the following video, I then understood why.
This was a very challenging video for myself. First of all, it definitely makes a mess when cutting a cake horizontally. I began by making a very standard vanilla cake with buttercream frosting between each of the four layers. The top layer is also lined with strawberries. I found this funny since the person who would be assumed to get the top layer of the cake would get all of the top garnishes. This was a fun video to make, and if I were to recreate it I would have had a more stable film set-up, and I would have frozen the cake prior to cutting to make it more stable for a cross-sectional cutting through. Overall, I wanted to critique the way we eat food, typically to ‘westernized’ standards and methods, and I think this video achieves it. We do not take into consideration how other cultures may eat, if they practice differently or have different manners they follow. Along with a sense of humor, I think this video goes against the rightness of eating cake and critiques the westernized culture.
It would be interesting to take this series even further and think of different ways I can eat other foods ‘incorrectly’.
Week #9: Food in Art
Week #8: The Rise and Fall of Bread
Bread has always been a ‘treat’ to me. As a food that is very carbohydrate dense, and as a science student, the understanding of nutrition on such a detailed level has shaped the way and what I eat. My parents are traditionally very healthy, or ‘clean’ eaters, and bread was never a staple in my house. As a kid, I always wanted the nice white bread, and not the ‘brown bread with the seeds’, as I used to refer to it, whenever we did have bread in the house (I now have a very great appreciation for a classic grilled-cheese sandwich).
A comfort food now would be a nice stir fry over rice. My mom is a very great cook, but I think she gets that all from my grandparents who have owned multiple restaurants over their lifetime. Stir fry is very popular in Asian culture, and I always had it growing up. I believe it is also my mom’s comfort food so we ate it very regularly as kids, and now I am missing it when I am away from home.
After listening to the podcast, and the dive into deeper meanings that are upheld to certain people who eat and share bread, I found it very relatable. I saw eating bread as simply eating bread, but the social aspect makes much sense because that is often how I ate bread. It was typically a shareable portion at Italian restaurants put out on the table. Now, when I do have bread, it is often a shared plate at a restaurant, usually with a side dish of olive oil and balsamic vinegar concoction for dipping (and it is sooo good!) It is kind of sad, now with being in a pandemic and having restrictions when seeing other people, the joy of sharing bread with others is no longer present.
During the beginning of the pandemic, I remember scrolling through Facebook and being bombarded with bread post after bread post of homemade loaves by what seemed like every person on my timeline. With the time and effort and care it takes to make bread, and the abundance of time we had being stuck inside, it made sense.
The bread I made from class on the right. I followed some modified recipe from the internet, did not come out that great so I wanted to do another take using my neighbors grandma’s recipe. I was planning on making a cheese loaf for the second attempt but I first wanted to attempt getting this right – maybe I will post a successful cheese loaf in the future if I get to it 🙂
My one neighbor is Portuguese, and her grandmother makes THE best fresh sourdough bread EVER. When it’s still warm, my family will split the loaf and share some butter and devour it fairly quickly. After my first attempt of making the sourdough bread, I asked her for some guidance and attempted to make it again. I think it tasted much better with some expert guidance (left).
Week #7
Racism is being addressed now more than ever with countless movements, and the prevalence of social media that can spread awareness very quickly. Traditionally, I think Canada has been seen as a subjectively ‘good’ country, and many people believe that racism does not happen here, that it’s below those who live in Canada, and happens only in the neighboring American country below. But that has not been the case.
Michelle Pearson Clarke draws attention to the racism prevalent in Canada through her artwork. In Suck Teeth Compositions, she introduces the noise made by sucking air through the teeth and pushing the tongue against the backside of the teeth while doing so to make a noise. This noise is used to convey feelings and emotion, often negative, such as distaste, frustration, anger, irritation and disapproval.
Basil AlZeri’s Kitchen Lab is a performative piece that includes him cooking, and his mother played over a video call where she relays instructions for him to follow. In his work he aims to bring light to Palestinian roots through stories of culture incorporated into his recipes.
Both works have a cultural appreciation, although very different. Both pieces almost work towards praising their respective cultures and the traditional aspects about them and how they have changed through generations. By being able to share these experiences through new technology, it is an interesting didactic between new media outlets showing historically traditional cultural practices.
After bouncing my idea off of Diane, while still being able to convey repetition and playing on the slipping sanity I have as the semester slowly melts away, I developed the idea into a multiple video stitched screen of recordings of myself in lectures over the span of a few days. I thought it was interesting in the full version to have the different videos ending at different times, and leaving the screens to fade to black (they all end at the same tie in the shorter version uploaded above).
I think the idea of conveying the online zoom classroom of today speaks a lot about the mental health of students. Despite there being multiple versions of myself in the video, the individuality of each of the videos marked by the frames forces each version of me to feel isolated even within the screen. It reflects how many of us students would be feeling at home when they no longer receive the social interactions with their fellow classmates, now rarely not even seeing them from a computer screen.
Week #6: Zoom Video Art
Zoom meetings, and online meeting platforms in the age of online schooling have become the norm everyday. The strain on mental health and sanity is at stake when we have these faux social interactions without actually socially interacting in the sense we have grown up to know.
As a university student, 5 days a week are spent joining meetings for lectures. The repetition of having the online delivery of lectures for a year now has become the ‘norm’ in the student’s daily routine. Although it may not be the standard ‘trapped at your desk’ at work, this goes hand in hand.
I want to explore repetition in my work. I also want to convey shifting sanity, as well as routine, through the overlay of me ‘attending lectures’. I think this will turn out absolutely chaotic with a couple videos overlapping with different movements and narratives, even different sounds. I will experiment with audio as well as video to try and convey these emotions and feelings we often are unable to pick up through the screens we view every day.
I really pondered the idea regarding what I would want to teach nature – that being trees or simply a houseplant. From the preliminary work of ideas I developed from Week 4, I wanted to boil down and emphasize the bigger message I wanted to convey. In this piece, my goal was to demonstrate and perform with trees how humans show affection. The major gesture was hugging, some light kisses and caresses as well, but in conclusion this work is a compilation of affectionate gestures to the trees.
I considered how I felt; when going on walks the trees provided a calming and gentle ambience where the presence of the trees was looming yet comforting. I wanted this piece to be about returning those affectionate gestures to comfort the trees this time around. I wanted to branch out further than my house plants, finding a more direct lifeline to mother nature herself. I wandered around this area in a small forest and was drawn to the trees that gave me a lonely energy, so I approached the ones who really felt like they needed a hug.
I wanted to have someone else film me during the gestures to distance myself from having overwhelming control of the manipulation of the videos. I did not have a say in how my friend filmed me, and I did not retake the clips; I didn’t even review them to see how they turned out after they were shot, I only saw them once I started editing. I wanted the clips to be raw and unedited, and fairly experimental.
The video is a compilation of clips edited together of myself giving back to the trees. The biggest inspiration for this piece was the guided audio walk Trees are Fags I found a greater connection to the trees I made contact with so I wanted to channel this energy into my work for this project. The idea of Machine Project’s Houseplant Vacation work in providing a space to take your houseplants for a vacation, they intended on giving back to the plants, and I wanted to develop this idea to incorporate into this project as well.
Week #4: Artists Commune with Nature
Notes for the project:
Video Draft – process
Week #3: More Text as Art
Final
This piece aimed to play on the words of the banner created. Typically a banner is a bold statement hung directly in a location with great visibility to make a statement to those who view it. I found it comedic to incorporate the word ambivalently into a banner that is defined as opposing. By pinning the banner to one side of the wall yet allowing the other side to fall and lay across the ground, I feel this choice reflects the ambivalence directly and exploits that. Rather than making a statement with the words presented, this banner makes a statement by oddness and very opposite method of display. The choice to make the words white to blend them slightly with the background also stems from the same idea to be opposing to the bold statements banners usually convey. The letters want to be seen, they are in all capitals, but they are not making an evident statement by being white letters and hung halfway.
Additional:
Additional: This piece I wanted to completely edit. By utilizing the word excerpt “Kiss of death”, I wanted to channel the energy that as developed from being amongst a pandemic for a year. By incorporating two masked figures appearing to be leaning in for a kiss, I wanted to separate them by the words. The idea that being close to someone today could mean risking your health and essentially your life was the message I wanted to strongly convey here.
This piece was edited and created in a photoshop app – I wanted to see what I could create on a strict digital platform rather than a physical banner or completely staged photograph to develop the skills I would be using for editing. I wanted the text to also be continuously one page as a cursive sentence but I did not have paper long enough so the digital option developed.
Week #2: Text as Art
Notes as Text
Following the art as text lecture, I found I was very drawn to two of the works, more so than the others, for similar reasons – Jenny Holzier’s Truisms and Shelley Niro’s The Shirt.
Jenny Holzier’s work is very bold and crass in the best ways. Her ‘one liners’ are comical and blunt and absolutely make a statement. The presentation through formats of billboard’s and large signs, as well as galleries and even clothing apparel, Truism’s acts to be right in your face through multiple means. Her goal was to garner a rise out of the audience, a reaction or a spark towards that start of conversation amongst the viewer’s. When present in such public places, the likelihood of this occurring increases greatly compared to the presentation in just a gallery or museum space. I think every aspect of this work is successful, and the format of the piece only operates to develop her bold content further. Shelley Niro’s The Shirt gave me a similar effect. Aside from both works being printed clothing, they also make very bold and political statements. Niro uses the stereotypical tourist shirt to display her message through dark irony and satire, making an almost too bold statement but does not stray from truth. Her work directly addresses the long-standing effects as a result of colonial settlement on First Nations peoples, creating discourse. In combination with the shirt making a statement, the woman who wears it, and the background, this piece was also very successful in making a statement to start conversation among the viewers.
Week #1: Book stacks
Process of my work
I relied heavily on Nina Katchadourian’s work as inspiration for my stacks. I found the narratives very entertaining and extremely creative, how she could convey and paint portraits of the libraries the books belonged. She enabled clever and I wanted to create short narratives in my work as well.
The number of books I was working with was very limited. Neither my roommates nor I brought enough of a collection to our student house that we would deem it a library, but I worked with the given resources.
It was, at first, difficult to separate the titles and view them not as books as a whole to reinvent them and utilize them for a different narrative purpose. The stacks I created do not explicitly convey me or the owners of the borrowed books, but rather interesting and somewhat ominous and distant narratives giving the viewer space to convey the meaning how they choose. By grouping like titles or meanings, I began to form the stacks below.
In the middle… (2021) Fuel for fire (2021)Life experiencing the human (2021)
I had fun making the cake! I haven’t tried it yet, though. Hopefully it tastes good! The only ingredient that I did not have was chocolate chips.
WEEK TEN:
For my final product, I ended up with a video of me preparing the “soup” that is a bit over four minutes long. Initially, I thought I was going to do a voice over explaining what I was doing, but I preferred it without this. It almost seems like some sort of weird ASMR, except it is not very satisfying. The sound of me cutting into the wood is very squeaky and unpleasant, and there are a lot of cringe-inducing scraping noises as I stir the bowl. This year, I have focused a lot on making very absurd artworks. I really like the concept of making food with things that are not food. I like the sense of discomfort that I feel when watching this. The thought of someone eating this freaks me out a bit.
Another thing that I have been focusing on in my art is feelings of nostalgia and childhood memories. It is so interesting to recreate something as an adult that you used to do as a child.
I used
Grass
Flowers
Rocks
Burnt Piece of Wood
Pinecone
Water
WEEK NINE:
This may sound like it is completely unrelated, but what made me think of my idea was the bread podcast we listened to. It made me think about how bread means something to everyone, and everyone has at least one memory surrounding bread. For me, some of my fondest memories of bread come from my childhood. That made me start to think about what other food-related memories I had from my childhood. One thing that came to mind was this one Easter when I was probably around seven or eight years old, my grandparents gave me this huge chocolate bunny and I ate the whole thing when my Dad was busy giving my brother a bath. I thought about recreating that moment for a video, but I knew that would make me feel very sick and I wasn’t up for that. So then I thought of other memories of food I had when I was a child.
When I was a kid I used to make “soups” out of everything that I could find outside. My grandfather owned this nice little piece of land in the country that we called “Grandpa’s Garden.” There were two huge fields that were part of his garden that he grew many types of vegetables in. Because of how big the fields were, he had this bathtub in the middle of one of those fields that would collect rainwater that he would use to fill his watering can. One day, I was with a couple other kids and we decided to make a “soup” in that bathtub. We put in dirt, rocks, leaves, and some of the crops to really make it interesting. I really like the concept of nostalgia and reliving some entertaining childhood memories, so this memory really inspired my idea for this assignment.
I want to make a video of myself making a “soup” out of stuff that I find in my backyard. There’s branches, leaves, apples, walnuts, and many other interesting ingredients. I want to make a video of myself preparing, scooping, and presenting the “soup.” I also want to write down and post the recipe of what I make.
WEEK EIGHT:
Bread is something that is very important to me. It is a comfort and is something that I have probably a couple times every week.
Bread is something that was very important to me growing up. Some of my fondest memories of my childhood involved bread. I remember being very young and waking up on Saturday mornings to my dad baking a fresh loaf of bread for my brother and I to have for lunch for the next few days. We had a very small house, so the whole place would smell like freshly baked bread when he made it. I would always be so excited at school when it was time to eat and I would open my lunchbox to find some of my dad’s bread. So much has changed since I was a child. My dad’s bread maker broke and life became more complicated as I grew older, but to this day, baking bread reminds me of the point in my life when I was the happiest. Making bread as a class reminded me of that time.
Bread is a staple in my family. I am currently back home living in Barrie with my mom and my brother. We get local grocery deliveries every week, and recently, we have been getting a loaf of sourdough bread every week. In my house, there is nothing more exciting than having a loaf of bread. It creates more possibilities and options for meals, or you can just have it plain, but no matter what, it always tastes good.
I think that one reason why people started to bake bread during the pandemic was that we all collectively attempted to learn a new skill or become more resourceful when we were staying home. This might sound weird, but I felt so accomplished after making bread from scratch in our class. In my twenty years of being alive, I have accomplished many amazing things, but for some reason I was especially proud of myself for this. Bread is just such an important everyday food, so for me to finally make it by myself felt very impressive.
Something that I really liked about the podcast was an observation that it made close to the beginning. It talked about how bread is important in pretty much every culture in some way. Not only is bread consumed by so many different cultures, but the form and meaning behind bread differs between cultures. Bread is significant in christianity, for example. But ultimately, bread is the one food that brings us all together. What especially shocked me was how the term “companionship” comes from eating bread together. Bread has always been a big part of my life, but this podcast made me realize how many different conversations we can have related to bread. The podcast described bread as a foundation. It was easy to transport and easy to make throughout the years. Bread was a very significant part of human development. Although, it also claims how bread was the worst mistake that humans have ever made. Storing grain equaled storing wealth, which meant that some people had more power over others. Poorer people usually farmed for wealthier people in order to make bread. Bread was also used as a currency throughout time to pay workers. Bread can also be kind of controversial because it can be rather unhealthy for you if not eaten in moderation. I have encountered many people in my life who do not eat bread because they are trying to be healthy. The podcast stated that the idea of bread itself is political, which I find very interesting and true.
I forgot to take a picture of my bread, but I do have a photo of the dough.
The bread turned out so much better than I thought it would. I was just about to start another class so I was a bit distracted when I made the dough. I was worried that I might have done something wrong, but it turned out amazing and my mom and brother loved it.
WEEK SEVEN:
Suck Teeth Compositions:
I really enjoyed this piece. It describes how the act of sucking in your teeth is often done as an act of disapproval, disgust, or disappointment. This action is performed by a group of Black people. Additionally, each time a person is shown, it typically shows them three times on the screen, or shows them with two other people on the screen at the same time. The frame is relatively close to the person’s face, but we can still see enough of their body to see their corresponding body language. The audio is clean and crisp, and it is easy to understand what the noise they are making is. The use of media and visual technology creates a very interactive experience with this piece. The individuals in the video are responding to both global and personal issues that they have experienced with race. The understanding of racism by many white people is that they believe that they are not racist and that Canada does not have not have a racism issue because they say we are “not as bad as the United States.” I have met racist people who get offended when they are called racist because they don’t want to be associated with that word, even though it perfectly describes them.
Something that truly angers me is how often I have heard people say something along the lines of “racism doesn’t exist in Canada.” I attended a primarily white elementary school, and the way that many of the non-white students were treated was disgusting, and I do not understand how people think that racism is not an issue in Canada.
I think that this piece would not have as much as an impact if it was not shown as a video. This piece could have been done as a series of photos, but I do not think that photos alone can capture the emotion that is held in the video. I think that part of the instructions were likely something along the lines of “think of your experience living in Canada as a Black person,” or a response to someone saying “racism in Canada isn’t that big of an issue.” Everyone looks upset and like there is so much on their minds. I think that the use of technology in this video piece is perfectly used and I think that the style of the video is absolutely essential to portraying this message.
This is the only video that worked for me. The other two links did not work when I pressed them, but I did try to do some additional research on “The Mobile Kitchen Lab.” I think that this project shares a similar theme as the previous one.
I found some great information on this site. This piece is inspired by systemized violence, similar to the previous piece. Based on this website, it appears that this piece is the artist, Basil AlZeri, cooking meals that his mother would cook for him and then teaching his audience to make those meals.
What strikes me the most is the familiar and comforting use of video calls as a part of his art. In the photos I found, it shows him cooking while on a video call with his mother. I have family living in many places around North America, so video calls have been a big part of my life for the past decade or so. My aunt and cousin live in Mexico, so we video call them every few months to catch up. I think that video calls and technology are a great way to celebrate one’s culture or their relationship with other cultures in ways that are more easily accessible to do now. It is easier to communicate with your friends and family who live in another country than you do.
My cousin is half Mexican and has always lived in Mexico, so I’ve only been able to see him in person maybe three times. I think that the act of video calling a family member and sharing memories or information is so wonderful. When my family and I talk to each other, it is interesting to see how different our lives are because of where we live. In Canada we have snow and cold winters that my cousin doesn’t get to experience in Mexico. We share our very different experiences and stories over video calls.
This piece focuses on the importance of embracing your family and culture despite the violence against Palestinian people. After a call with his mother, he holds workshops to teach his audience how to make the food, which celebrates his culture and his relationship with his mother. I think that food is something that brings so many people together, and also creates a sense of comfort in this work.
I think that the initial presence of his mother on a video call is essential to this piece. I don’t think that this work would have affected me so much if there was not this use of technology that I can relate to so much.
For my zoom video, it didn’t turn out how I thought it would. I asked about 40 people to help me but no one was available except for my brother so we just rolled with it. I was originally going to edit it and just make it a compilation of our animal noises, but I actually preferred the unedited version. It was really messy and we laughed a lot, and my brother kept coughing for some reason. It reminded me of how in our online classes, we cannot edit out our mistakes. I like how raw and cringeworthy it is. My idea is something that I think could have been so fun and interesting with a large amount of people, but since it was just the two of us I felt like it could be less formal and more like we’re trying to communicate and have a conversation.
WEEK SIX:
For my idea, I would like to make a “Zoom Zoo.” I want to have a large group of people together on a zoom call, and have everyone imitate an animal. I had a lot of fun when we made a video in class with all the different reactions at inappropriate times. I realized that I really love videos like that which are entertaining and often weird. I had a lot of initial ideas, with some being:
Everyone screaming together
A physical fight over a zoom call
A staring contest
Someone leaving their mic on, which records an awkward situation or conversation
Everyone breaking proper zoom etiquette
Having a conversation with myself on the different days of the week
Although I had many ideas, I became very interested in my concept of a Zoom Zoo.
Other than the video we made in class, my biggest inspiration was the video of the people singing Bob Marley songs. I like the idea of many people together on one screen, working as one, but also independently. Each person plays a significant part of the whole piece, and it’s so wonderful. I want to try and do this, but in a very different way.
When coming up with this idea, I was spending a lot of my time thinking about zoom calls and the new problems and situations that have surfaced because of them. I googled a couple words related to zoom calls to see what google would suggest for me to look up.
A primary thing that often came up in these searches was that zoom calls make people uncomfortable, or they make people feel very bored. I have had a fair share of awkward zoom moments. A couple weeks ago in sculpture I accidentally unmuted my mic and I was aggressively shaking a bottle of vitamins to try and get one out and everyone heard that and had no idea what I was doing. I have also heard countless of my classmates speaking when they thought they were muted. These are all new issues to us, so of course there are some rather funny mishaps sometimes.
I am a very quiet person and more often than not I will be in zoom calls with my mic and camera turned off. With my idea of a Zoom Zoo, I wanted to acknowledge and tackle the idea that zoom calls can be boring, awkward, or even chaotic and overwhelming by creating a purposely intense and uncomfortable situation.
WEEK FIVE
Here is my finished video. I ended up only doing indoor plants because I couldn’t get footage that easily distinguished between the outdoor plants because they were all dead or bare because of the weather. There may be a few editing errors that I missed in this final video. Premiere kept crashing on me and I had to keep restarting everything so I might not have caught everything.
WEEK FOUR
Many of these artworks made me think about plants in ways that I usually would not. I found “Houseplant vacation,” to be especially interesting. Most of our houseplants stay put, and are not usually moved around too much. The idea of taking your plants from your home and taking them on a “vacation” is a very interesting concept that I really enjoy. Another concept I really like comes from “Trees are fags.” In this audio walk, it is discussed how trees have been around for so long and have had so many experiences.
My brother recently told me about a conversation girls in his class were having about plants. They were saying how there is something wrong with you if you do not regularly talk to your plants. I wouldn’t say that I often talk to my plants, but I do sometimes make comments about how they’re doing when I water them. This comment made by his classmates made me wonder something: if plants could talk, what would they say?
Moving forward with this concept, I started thinking about what each one of plants would talk about. All of my houseplants came from somewhere, and they eventually ended up at the grocery store where I bought them. Some I bought in Barrie and others in Guelph. My small collection of plants have been in places that I probably haven’t been before. They have interacted with people before I got them. It is possible that someone else almost bought them before I did but decided against it. Then, I thought about outdoor plants. They have also seen many interesting things and people. The trees in my backyard have seen me grow up over the past eleven years. They have experienced harsh snow and rain storms that my indoor plants would have been inside for. Looking at these contrasting experiences, I thought: if indoor and outdoor plants could talk to each other, what would they say to each other? And how do their own memories differ from plant to plant? And most importantly, what would these plants say about myself. Throughout my whole life, I have been surrounded by plants. Each plant has a memory of me. Plants have seen me at my best and at my worst.
My idea for this assignment is to have each plant tell a memory of me. The memories of each plant will vary depending on when I got the plant and whether it is an indoor or outdoor plant. The following images are a few examples of plants and how they relate to me. An autobiography, but told through the perspective of significant plants.
Here’s a couple examples of plants and memories or moments that I associate them with.
WEEK THREE
Some of the sentences that I was looking at:
meaningless way to describe art
the lone image of a glass of milk
Simplicity
anxieties about death
minimal aesthetic
deeply conflicted
While reading the article, I wrote down every sentence that stuck out to me. Some I thought sounded very deep and meaningful out of context, and others I found sounded quite strange. Then I kind of made it my goal to find the best sentence that could be looked at out of context and perplex the viewer. I ended up going in a weird direction for this assignment. The words I chose to isolate were “The lone image of a glass of milk.” I thought it was funny and kind of ominous. I made the banner out of blue paper and a blue marker. I was hoping to use a blank wall as the background and just have a glass of milk in front of it, but the banner was too big to be hung inside my house. I went outside in my backyard and chose our pergola to hang the banner. I put the glass of milk on the step and hung the banner above it. I like how it turned out. It’s very weird.
WEEK TWO
Both artists use text in very interesting ways. In the first example, Myre uses an existing text: The Indian Act, and beads over the writing. In Niro’s work, she writes her own text on the shirt. To begin, I’m going to talk about both pieces and how the medium is relevant to each message.
Nadia Myre, Indian Act, 2002
I learned about this piece in an Indigenous art history course that I took last semester. In this class, I learned about how significant beading is. To take the Indian Act and cover it with beads is very powerful. It is a message of holding onto one’s culture even when it was trying to be destroyed. The materials used in this piece are especially significant, because of how important the art of beadwork is in Indigenous communities throughout time. The Indian Act has caused so many horrible things to happen.
Shelley Niro, The Shirt (detail), 2003
Just like the previous piece, Shelley Niro’s “The Shirt” is also very powerful and the materials in combination with the text are very strong. Indigenous people have been treated in horrible ways for so long. They have been looked at as some sort of rare object to be observed by Europeans, almost like some sort of tourist attraction, which I can see portrayed in Niro’s piece. I also learned in my art history class last semester that countless precious artworks and ceremonial masks or other objects were stolen and displayed in museums by Europeans, which is an example of my previous point.
I think the main message is that Indigenous people have been through so many terrible things, and nothing has been done to resolve it, shown in the “and all’s I get is this shirt.” As I’m sure you know, getting a t-shirt as a gift from someone who travelled somewhere exciting is considered very underwhelming and disappointing. So to say that her ancestors went through all that trauma that continues to affect people to this day and then say that all she gets out of this all is a shirt says a lot about how Indigenous people feel about the lack of compassion and continuing mistreatment that exists to this day. I think that using a shirt with this text is a perfect way to portray her message.
The medium is very important in this piece because it creates a commentary on the issues that I have mentioned, like treating Indigenous people and objects as tourist attractions throughout the years, and also, shows how Indigenous people are left with nothing.
In both examples, the viewers are supposed to use their historical understanding of Indigenous issues and connect the text to that. The first example shows a feeling of overpowering the horrible contents of the Indian Act with beadwork. The second shows the frustration and disappointment experienced by Indigenous people. I think that both of these artworks create an emotional response in the viewers. I found both pieces very powerful.
WEEK ONE NOTES
I had a lot of fun creating book stacks. I was most inspired by Nina Katchadourian’s narrative compositions. I made it my goal to make really absurd stacks that tell weird stories or say strange points. My house has so many books in it, so I had a lot to work with. I went through every bookshelf in my house, trying to find titles that I thought sounded interesting. At first, I used books with similar themes or genres. I grouped books for children together, and textbooks together, but nothing sounded good to me. I went through my mom’s bookshelves, and I found books with more interesting titles. I combined different types of books and ended up with some pretty interesting narratives.
To me, my examples feel like they’re trying to make a point, but that point is unclear and you’re not too sure what to take away from it. They feel kind of ominous and overall very odd, and I really enjoy that.
My cake. Single-layer chocolate with icingEating it during class
My “pandemic” cake is basically the same cake I always make. It’s my go-to chocolate cake recipe:
1 ¼ cup flour
1 cup sugar
⅓ cup cocoa powder
1 tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
1 cup warm water
1 tsp vanilla extract
⅓ cup vegetable oil
1 tsp vinegar
Bake at 350 degrees F for approx. 30 mins. Check with toothpick.
For icing I just mix icing sugar, cocoa powder, vanilla extract, vegan margarine, and either water or soy milk together.
For actual occasions I make two batches of this recipe and layer them with icing in-between.
Week 10: Food Art
Patience (excerpt)
The original video is 13 minutes long, but I could only upload this 2-minute version unfortunately.
The original begins with me looking into the camera and then picking up my chopsticks before beginning to eat the rice one grain at a time. It ends with me placing the back down and looking into the camera again.
Week 8: Bread
My family doesn’t have a particularly close relationship to bread. However, growing up, I would eat papo secos (a Portuguese bread) with food when we would go to my Açorean Vovo’s (grandmother’s) house for special occasions and knäckebröd (Swedish rye crispbread) when I visited my grandma and grandpa (my grandma’s heritage is Swedish Finn; the Swedish-speaking population in Finland).
The podcast infuriated me. The claim that bread has resulted in the epidemic of chronic disease racking the industrialized world is scientifically inaccurate. It doesn’t even make common sense. Even Canada’s Food Guide, which has been historically atrocious, is finally seeing the light. People who eat increasing amounts of animal products are at greater risk of cancer, diabetes, heart disease, strokes, obesity, and many other diseases. The science shows this in droves, but the meat, dairy, and egg industries are multi-billion dollar industries with a lot of influence and corruption. On top of that, people don’t like to be told to stop eating animal products for any reason, wether that be their health, the environment, or animals. People living in areas of the world where they eat mainly plant foods have next to no chronic disease, but those living in places that are becoming more industrialized and wealthy are starting to eat more meat, etc. and are increasingly approaching the levels of chronic disease we see in the West. The podcast also presented the idea that insulin resistance is caused by carbohydrates being converted to sugar in our bodies, which is a blatant inaccuracy by omission. By this logic, every single food causes insulin resistance. Insulin resistance and diabetes are when our muscles cannot take in the sugar from food (which they need for energy) from our bloodstream, resulting in a buildup in the blood. Excess sugar in the blood is not caused by sugar; it is caused by saturated fat, which prevents our muscles from taking in the sugar and using it. This podcast is perpetuating a dangerous myth that demonized carbohydrates (which are no more that 1 of 3 macronutrients that all food is made up of and which we need for survival: fat, protein, and carbohydrates). It also ignores the true cause of the “diseases of civilization”, which is animal products, that, unlike plants, contain cholesterol and trans fats, in addition to far more saturated fat. This might seem like an overreaction, but I don’t think people realize how serious the state of human health is in the world. We’re living in an age where children in the US are expected to have shorter lifespans than their parents. If you have influence, you have the moral obligation to do your research and accurately portray science, not spread and perpetuate dangerous misinformation that literally costs millions of lives (not including trillions of animal lives) every year. I know this is already over 500 words, but it really made me upset. For the record, the whole grains in whole grain bread protect against chronic disease and white bread isn’t great, but it also isn’t a killer. If you have to choose between eating the bun or the burger, please eat the bun. But yes, of course, eat the lettuce, tomato, and onion too, and order a whole wheat bun if you can- with a veggie burger! If anyone’s reading this, please get your dietary and health info from sources that use multiple sources, site all sources, and check studies for conflicts of interest. Not the news, random blogs, or sites that look reputable, yet only site one or two studies. NutritionFacts.org is amazing.
The critique of bread and grains from an environmental standpoint was also pointless. ~70-90% of all grains go to feeding animals for food, depending on the type of grain. So, if you’re going to critique agriculture in any practical manner, you need to first look at animal agriculture. It makes no sense to even suggest that bread is bad when vegans literally consume less plants than meat eaters and vegetarians (due to the amount of plants needed to produce the same amount of meat, dairy, or eggs). If you ate only bread, you’d have a vastly smaller environmental footprint than the average Canadian.
As an anthropology major, my final critique of the podcast is that the talk of “civilization” and “bread is life” was a bit ethnocentric, as they didn’t mean humanity so much as agricultural societies. It neglected to make clear that not all cultures have bread, or even grains for that matter. I just think the way they went about discussing bread was a bit too all-encompassing and seemed to suggest a universality where there isn’t.
What I was excited to hear from the podcast was the owner of Banjara, because I grew up going to that restaurant near Christie Pits and it’s the best Indian food I’ve ever had. Very nostalgic, warm memories.
I love making art, cooking, and baking. I often think about how it makes sense that I like all these things, because at the core of it, I enjoy creating things. I love making things myself and often get inspired to try making food stuffs that I’d never thought to make myself before. It gets me excited when I realize that I can make (or at least try to make) something I’d previously taken for granted as something to get at the store. For me, art and cooking are almost one and the same and, indeed, I sometimes mix the two. I love the feeling of creating something myself, wether it be a painting, a gift for someone, a cake, or a dinner I’m proud of. I love the satisfaction of completing a project and am often motivated by creating for others, be it any of the things I mentioned previously. I also enjoy experimenting in both areas. I can see why a bunch more people might be making bread during the pandemic, as many people have had more time on their hands and more time at home. More people are trying new things they previously hadn’t had time for (or weren’t bored enough to try haha).
My in-class white breadIt was fluffy and I was pleased to discover it tasted like a baguette. Next time I want to try a baguette shape or otherwise pan-less loaves or bunsSubsequent loaves I made (whole wheat and 1/2 whole wheat)
Week 7: Zoom Video Art
Notes
I ended up using all 12 of the ideas I came up with originally and luckily they fit into a perfect arrangement. I wish I had done a video using a cell phone. I thought of that idea after-the-fact.
I had intended for the video to cut in the “Zoom call”, with everything still going on, but when I watched through the video for the first time after throwing all the clips together in the editor, I liked how they all ended at different times and how this emulated people leaving a Zoom call. It was unintentional, but because many of my clips were different lengths, it happened that way. I then edited the lengths more to fit better, as originally the longest ones were way to long and undermined the effectiveness of the piece.
Final Video
Rude
Week 4: Nature Video Art
I enjoyed the Tree are Fags walk, found it relaxing, and felt that it did bring me closer to the trees. I went to the little forest near my house (we’d had deep snow the last couple days and it was beautiful, peaceful, and bright). At the end, once I’d found “my tree” and after asking it if I could touch it (as instructed) in Korean (my choice), I ended up standing there with it for a little while longer, appreciating the bark. Then I took a photo of it and went home feeling refreshed.
The forest near my house“my” tree
I thought to do a sort of reverse of the Trees are Fags concept. Whereas the the walk has you follow the directions of a person, I wanted to follow the trees’ directions.
I decided to go back to forest and walk for 5 minutes. I would start walking in a straight line until I met a tree. Then, I would look at the tree and interpret the direction it seemed to be leaning. I would then follow the tree’s direction and walk again in a straight line until I met another tree, repeating the process.
I did four attempts to get the final video. The first take was good except for the fact that I accidentally filmed it in portrait orientation (to be fair, I think this fits the trees’ perspective better). The next two takes were failures terminated part way through, but the last one ended up being the final. The first and last takes (the ones I completed) were perfect walks. By the end of 5 minutes, the trees had had fun messing with me, sending me through messes of branches, across a little valley, and through bushes, but both times the trees directed me back onto the path I had started on by the 5 minute mark.
Final Video
Directions
Week 3: Banner
Notes
I began by putting the article into a document and highlighting phrases of interest as I read.
The phrases I liked most:
Narrowing it down further…
I drew the letters free-hand on paper and cut them out, leaving tabs on the tops so that I could hang them from a string.
Final Banner
Awkward (Self-conscious Banner)
Week 2: Text Art
I chose to compare Shelly Niro’s piece, The Shirt (2003) and Nadia Myre’s Indian Act (2002) (I will only be commenting on the two photos from The Shirt on the Week 2 page, though I’m aware that the full piece includes more images as I’ve seen it in person).
Although both pieces are comments on colonization by Indigenous Artists in North America, they make use of text very differently. The Shirt consists of photos of the artist wearing a white shirt with text saying different things in each photo. In the first photo, the shirt says, “My ancestors were annihilated, exterminated, murdered and massacred” and in the second photo says, “And all’s I get is this shirt”. Indian Act consists of the printed Indian Act with red and while glass beads sewn overtop so that white beads replace the words and red beads take up the space surrounding the words.
The Shirt evokes the idea of the banal, mass-produced souvenir shirt which tells the reader that someone the wearer knows visited a particular country, but all the wearer got was the shirt. The Shirt contrasts this image with the meaning of the words on the other shirt, which are painful and highly distressing, but make the viewer uncomfortable in the context of what is typically a humorous shirt.
The Indian Act appropriates and uses beading to replace the words of a document which enshrines colonization and serves as a reminder of it’s effects. In this way, the artist erases the Indian Act with a traditional craft which has survived colonization.
Week 1: Book Stacks
Notes
Book titles 1Book titles 2Experimenting with combinations 1Experimenting with combinations 2
Artist Nina Katchadourian often makes book stacks from private and public collections, constructing a kind of portrait of the owner or place using sequences of titles. She begins by looking through the books and writing down titles of interest. She then transfers the titles onto cue cards and experiments with arranging them into different sequences. Her final step is to collect the books and arrange them into the final stacks.
Katchadourian often creates narratives out of the book title sequences. They may be abstract, humorous, or thought-provoking. My personal favourites are A Day at the Beach and Primitive Art:
A Day at the Beach, 2001Primitive Art, 2001
These two stacks perfectly capture the humorous aspect to Katchadourian’s work which I love. The narratives are well constructed for easy reading and comprehension and the book tiles create such a deadpan humour when read. In my own stacks, I attempted to bring some of Katchadourian’s narrative style to my own stacks.
Final Stacks
I Like YouMen, Beasts, and GodsAmerica, but Better
Complete Food and Art assignment and post your final work/images/videos on the blog with a title and description of the work.
We will discuss your finished projects in our final class, Tuesday April 6, 2021. And we will celebrate making it through the term together by sharing and discussing our final exercise, a PANDEMIC CAKE.
Final Exercise:
Complete a version of this recipe before our class meeting (you can do it the night before, or the same day):
An image promoting the rationing of food from the second world war in Canada, that accompanies a recipe for War Cake, or Poor Man’s Cake. See the article describing this historical moment, when things like butter, eggs and milk were rationed and hard to come by – but people still needed the comfort, pleasure and calories from cake. See the article here:http://activehistory.ca/2019/08/eating-history-canada-war-cake/
From Sophie Hicks:
“The lack of eggs, milk, and butter in this recipe is indicative of a conservational period that spanned from the early 1910s to the mid-1940s. World War I, the Great Depression, and World War II all put a similar strain on food, but had varying degrees of effect. Unlike the Depression years, the World Wars cast a shadow over Canada that affected every economic class. During the 1930s, middle and upper class that retained employment and cash flow were not required to make the drastic lifestyle changes necessary for the lower class. However, when Canada became involved in World War II, food conservation was no longer a result of financial means, but patriotic motives.
The prevalence of similarly conservational recipes conveys a broader importance than the cake alone. It’s representative of a national sentiment in an era of uncertainty. As Ian Mosby said in “We are what we ate: Canada’s history in cuisines,” Canada War Cake was a “potent, if not slightly chewy, symbol of the mobilization of the entire home front for total war.”
See the recipe for War Cake from “This Week’s Best War-Time Recipes,” Windsor Daily Star, 14 March, 1942.
PANDEMIC CAKE:
Everyone will make a quick cake – WITH WHATEVER YOU HAPPEN TO HAVE ON HAND IN YOUR KITCHEN. Use substitutions liberally or intentionally – make do – even if all you have are olives and relish, sugar and water. It might be something accidentally delicious, or awful, or something in between – but it will be a portrait of a moment, in this world, in this country, in your home, in your life. If you hate this assignment for whatever reason, solve it conceptually – and talk about it.
Post a snapshot and a description of your cake too – for the record. You may even include the recipe for others.
I will also be baking a pandemic cake for the occasion – a super easy one pot recipe. You mix all the ingredients right in the pan and stick it in the oven! Start it up at lunch time and eat cake together with us!
Use this recipe, or the original War Cake recipe above as a starting point to make your own PANDEMIC CAKE:
Create your Food assignment based on feedback from the professor and the class.
Consult Nathan (email him for an appointment or show up for office hours) for technical assistance if needed – and check the resource page for tips and methods in audio, video and photo editing.
Post your completed work with a title and short description for critique in our NEXT class meeting.
Text is sourced from Kaya’s personal encounters with men and their micro-aggressive compliments comparing her skin colour to food, and objectifying her skin colour.
Aislinn Thomas, A Stack of Pancakes to hold up the Ceiling, 2015.
“The pancakes were vegan (flax seeds being a cheaper—and more ethical?—binding agent than eggs) and local (because, although it was more expensive, the local flour was in the bin beside the less-expensive, non-local flour and I couldn’t pretend that I hadn’t seen it). The recipe was for extra fluffy pancakes (for obvious reasons). The apartment smelled very good until the pancakes dried up and shrank away from the ceiling. When I composted them I discovered that the pancakes had become colourful with mold in the places where they were pressed together and still moist.
My partner asked me if I made A stack of pancakes to hold up the ceiling because the ceiling fell two years prior. I said no, although the question reminded me of the fact that the ceiling did, indeed fall. So perhaps that is the reason. ” AT from https://aislinnthomas.ca/index.php/portfolio/a-stack-of-pancakes-to-hold-up-the-ceiling/
Rod, Bernie, Peggy, Aislinn
Video, 2009
Rapport Report, a video screening curated by Tejpal Ajji, described this video of narrative vignettes: “Using her kitchen as a set for storytelling, Thomas recounts a family history using recipes representing her father, mother, grandfather, and herself.” Below is an excerpt of the video. Rod, Peggy, Bernie, Aislinn was included in CAFK+A.11 and several screenings.
In Love with Patty Chang:
The Hunt, Christian Jankowski, 1997
Christian Jankowski – Bow hunting in the supermarket
Martha Roslet, Semiotics of the Kitchen
Women With Kitchen Appliances
Women with Kitchen Appliances – band
FOOD ART Assignment:
For next class, propose a way to use food in a short video or photographic series that explores aspects of food other than how it tastes –
This might include actions that explore:
The tactile/material qualities of food and food-related devices
The sounds of food, the smells of food
Memories of food
Food and emotions
Popular representations of food in culture
Relationships of food to the body
Food and gender
Visual aspects of food
How food changes in time
How food connects us to each other
Think of a series of gestures – working with food on hand and create a work that pushes the limits of how we expect to relate to food.
This can be done in your home, with food and related implements, and/or you may also work with found video/images from other sources in your work.
Create a video up to 1 minute (can be for a loop) or a series of 12 images – consider instagram as your final exhibition site for this work – and what works well on that platform. We will discuss this in class.
What does bread mean to you? What is your family’s relationship to bread? What is the centre of your meal – or your comfort food – if it’s rarely bread?
Why do you think so many people have been baking bread during the pandemic? Which aspects of the podcast did you find surprising, or striking and why?
How do cooking and art making intersect? What do the activities have in common, and in what ways are they separate?
Acquire these inexpensive ingredients and prepare your dough for the oven before our next class.
Each step only takes a couple of minutes – get all your ingredients ready, and begin at 12:30 pm to start mixing!
Quick Bread Ingredients:
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 +1/2 tsp. INSTANT yeast (this is equal to about half of one little envelope)
1 tsp sugar (or you can use 2tsp honey, or maple syrup)
1 cup warm water + a little extra if needed to make a wet dough
1 tsp. salt
Butter for greasing pan
Mixing bowl and spoon
One pan for the bread – I use a loaf pans, you can use a pyrex bowl, cassarole dish, or some other smallish oven safe vessel. Watch video for details….
____
METHOD: (Each step only takes a couple of minutes)
12:30 pM on Tuesday: Combine all the dry ingredients in a bowl: the flour, salt, sugar, and instant yeast. Add the warm water and mix to a wet sloppy dough.
Cover with a tea towel and leave to rise in a warm place for 1+ 1/2 hours.
Generously butter your pan.
2:PM on Tuesday: Separate dough from bowl, and scoop into prepared pan. Let rest for 20-30 minutes. Pre-heat oven to 425 degrees F.
2:30 on Tuesday: Show your dough to the class in class, and together we will stick them in the oven! Set timer for 15 minutes.
When the timer goes off, reduce heat to 375, and set timer again to bake another 20 minutes.
When done, take bread out of oven and pan to cool!
Be prepared to discuss the podcast during class, and to eat and share some bread!
Post your final video on the blog with a description that references artworks seen in class.
TECH TIME this week will have Nathan consulting on all your video art ideas throughout class. He will promote his DaVinci Resolve workshop and his resources for sizing videos for the web.
Watch:
Michelle Pearson Clarke
Suck Teeth Compositions (After Rashaad Newsome)
3-channel, HD video installation with sound 16 x 9 format, 9:47 | 2018
In Shade Compositions (2005-present), a series of live performances and videos, the African-American artist Rashaad Newsome explores issues of Black authorship, appropriation, identity and belonging by conducting choirs of women (and sometimes, gay men) of colour who snap their fingers, smack their lips, roll their eyes, and cock their heads, creating expressive linguistic symphonies out of the nonverbal gestures and vocalizations of African-American women. Suck Teeth Compositions (After Rashaad Newsome) is a three-channel video and sound installation that both responds to and extends this inquiry by focusing on sucking teeth, an everyday oral gesture shared by Black people of African and Caribbean origin and their diasporas, including those of us who live here in Canada.
(Stills from Suck Teeth Compositions)
Referred to variously as kiss teeth, chups, steups, and stchoops, to suck teeth is to produce a sound by sucking in air through the teeth, while pressing the tongue against the upper or lower teeth, with the lips pursed or slightly flattened. West African in origin, this verbal gesture is used to signify a wide range of negative affects, including irritation, disapproval, disgust, disrespect, anger and frustration. Given that representations of African-American Blackness dominate and define mainstream understandings of the Black experience, when it comes to anti-black racism, most white Canadians are allowed to feel comfortable and are supported in their comfort by the historical and ongoing narratives of “not me,” “not us,” “only them, down there.” Suck Teeth Compositions (After Rashaad Newsome) is thus a response to the frustrations of living within this denial, and an expression of the anger and pain that many Black people often experience living in Canada, where we are always assumed to be better off, if not completely free of racism. (From https://www.michelepearsonclarke.com/suck-teeth-compositions/)
Michelle Pearson Clark – Suck Teeth Compositions 2018
Installation Photo (Royal Ontario Museum, 2018): Peter Schnobb
Basil AlZeri
Basil AlZeri is a Palestian artist based in Toronto working in performance, video, installation, food, and public art interventions/projects. His work is grounded in his practice as an art educator and community worker. He explores the intersections between the quotidian and art, and strives for interactions with the public, using social interactions and exchanges to create gestures of generosity.
AlZeri’s performance work has been shown across the Americas.
The Mobile Kitchen Lab
With The Mobile Kitchen Lab (2010 – present), AlZeri performs simple and generous gestures, inviting his guests to identify the Palestinian stories of land, resources and labour that are built into his recipes.
Initiated in 2010, his durational performances feature live projected instructions provided by his mother, Suad, via Skype.
Make notes on two of the above videos. What strikes you in each of them? Describe the ways artists use the media of video technologies to create affecting experiences for viewers. How would the works be different if these media were not used? What do you think the conceptual prompts/instructions were for the performers?
EXERCISE:
Record and edit your new work for teleconferencing technologies. You may work together with others from the class. Post your finished work (up to 4 minute excerpt) to the blog with a concise description of the piece.
Get help from Nathan with your editing, and with sizing the video for the web. Nathan’s office hours are Monday and Thursday 1-4, and he is also available by email for appointments. See resources for video on this blog, under Resources.
Watch the videos referenced in the article and the videos below – ,
Create and post a proposal for a ZOOM video-art work and prepare to discuss your proposal with the class. Include images/research in your description.
During Tech Talk time – Nathan will discuss how to download a free copy of Davinci Resolve, and promote Davinci Resolve video editing workshops. All students will need to edit videos for new works soon. See Courselink for dates and times of upcoming workshops, and video workshops on the Resources page in this blog.
Breitz’s experiments in the field of portraiture can cumulatively be described as an ongoing anthropology of the fan. Beginning with ‘Legend (A Portrait of Bob Marley),’ which was shot in Jamaica in 2005, Breitz has subsequently set up temporary portrait studios in Berlin [for ‘King (A Portrait of Michael Jackson)’], Milan [for ‘Queen (A Portrait of Madonna)’] and Newcastle [for ‘Working Class Hero (A Portrait of John Lennon)’]. The portraits have thus far followed the same procedural logic, and have been governed by the same tight conceptual framework. In each case, Breitz first sets out to identify ardent fans of the musical icon to be portrayed, by placing ads in newspapers, magazines and fanzines, as well as on the Internet. Those who respond to this initial call (typically numbering in their hundreds) are then put through a rigorous set of procedures designed to exclude less than authentic fans of the celebrity in question, in order to arrive at the final group of participants.
The individuals who appear in these works have thus stepped forward to identify themselves as fans, and have been included purely on this basis: all other factors – their appearance; their ability to sing, act or dance; their gender and age – are treated as irrelevant for the purpose of selection. Each of the selected fans is offered the opportunity to re-perform a complete album, from the first song to the last, in a professional recording studio. The conditions are thus set for a typological study, as each of the participants steps into the studio, one by one, to offer their version of the same album under the same basic conditions. Having set the parameters of the experience, Breitz then allows the performances to unfold with little directorial interference. It is left up to each fan to decide what to wear, whether to use props, how to address the camera, when and if to dance, whether and how to follow the lead or backing vocals, how to behave between tracks, and whether to mimic the original recording or seek interpretive distance from it. Diverse as they are, the portraits are collectively characterized by a riveting tension between the somewhat inflexible conditions under which each shoot takes place (conditions which both reflect and reflect upon the severe limitations for creativity within the commodified realm of mass entertainment), and the struggle of each fan to register an idiosyncratic performance despite these conditions. In the process of this struggle, the singers generate an a cappella cover version of the album that scripts the work, a re-recording which might best be described as a ‘portrait’ of the original album. Although the portraits stubbornly insist on the exact format and duration of the original albums that they take as their templates, they specifically exclude the auratic voices and familiar musical arrangements from the original version, so that the star in question ultimately remains present in the work only in the unaccompanied voices of his/her fans.
The portraits evoke their mainstream entertainment counterparts (such as American Idol or Pop Idol), but also take significant distance from their reality television cousins: Breitz promises her subjects neither fame nor fortune. What she offers them is an opportunity to record the songs that have come to soundtrack their lives in whatever way they choose. The non-hierarchical grids that she uses to organize the final presentation of the fans in each portrait, allow Breitz to deliberately sidestep the question of who has fared better or worse under the conditions that she has created for these quasi-anthropological visual essays on the culture of the fan. Whether the fans who pay tribute to their icons in her portraits are victims of a coercive culture industry or users of a culture that they creatively absorb and translate according to their needs, is left to the viewer to decide. If the dignity of the portrayed fans remains surprisingly intact, it is because rather than prompting us to laugh at the fans that she lines up, Breitz forces us to reflect on the extent to which pop music has infiltrated our own biographies. From Candace Breitz
FACTUM TREMBLAY, 2009
Left: Natalyn Tremblay (born 3 April, 1980). Right: Jocelyn Tremblay (born 3 April, 1980).
FACTUM TREMBLAY is usually shown as a dual-channel video installation on two vertically-mounted plasma displays hung alongside one another. For exhibition purposes, the footage loops endlessly without beginning or end. For more info on FACTUM and to view other portraits from this series, see Factum
To produce the series of works collectively titled FACTUM (2010), Candice Breitz conducted intensive interviews with seven pairs of identical twins and a single set of identical triplets in and around Toronto during the summer of 2009, footage from which she then edited seven dual-channel video installations (and one tri-channel video installation). Like Robert Rauschenberg’s near-identical paintings FACTUM I and FACTUM II (both 1957), from which the series borrows its title, each interviewee in FACTUM is an imperfect facsimile of their twin: their apparent identicality is soon disrupted by a host of subtle differences.
Breitz chose to work with monozygotic twins (and triplets) who spent their formative lives together and who thus draw on shared memories and experience. Each pair of twins was filmed over the course of one long day in a domestic environment designated by the twins – most chose to shoot in the home of one twin, or in their shared home. In each case, Breitz interviewed Twin A for approximately 5–7 hours in the absence of his/her sibling and then directed the same set of questions separately to Twin B. Designed to give each individual the opportunity to narrate his/her own story as s/he chose, the questions covered intimate areas such as childhood, sibling rivalry and family matters, but also zoomed out to allow each subject to address his/her relationship to the world at large.
Some questions were specifically slanted to shed light on the mysterious terrain of subject formation: the twins were asked to lend comment, for example, on the nature-nurture debate, or to offer their thoughts on evolution versus creation. Other questions invited the twins to share personal anecdotes or key memories. According to their level of comfort before the camera, some individuals were willing to enter into minute and graphic autobiographical detail, while others set distinct boundaries.
Pipilotti Rist: Open my Glade
Each pair of twins was asked to style themselves as identically as possible for the camera, and left to decide how diligently they wished to fulfill the request. For some the superficial sameness that resulted – almost immediately to be undermined by innumerable small differences that manifest themselves throughout the interview – became an apt metaphor for the projections of sameness that they had been subject to all their lives.
Each pair of interviews was later woven together in the editing studio to create a somewhat stereoscopic dual-channel portrait. Breitz’s edits accentuate the push-and-pull relationship between the siblings. As the twins relate their stories, sharp distinctions in their voices, their attitudes, their body language, and their views on the world become apparent. At times they gravitate towards each other, offering almost the same syntax and gestures to describe memory, while at other moments they differ vastly in their conclusions on topics they both consider vital. Breitz’s presence is strongly tangible in each twin portrait – her jagged editing style distances the works from the truth claims of conventional documentary, suggesting that the intertwining forces of fact and fiction are always at play in auto/biography.
FACTUM raises questions not only about twinship per se, but also about the struggle that each individual must negotiate in defining him or herself as distinct, while facing constant reminders of the relative role of others in the process of self-definition.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYDh_D1G0hU&feature=emb_imp_woyt&ab_channel=FACTLiverpool
Excercise:
Post a proposal (with images/research/referenes) for some kind of ZOOM based video artwork you want to make. Play with, and think about this in your notes.
Consider the history of video art – and ways artists have experimented with the medium of video itself right from its early days of mass use. Artists sometimes manipulated the hardware, the software, and used video technologies in ways that were not intended. They found ways to connect video to sculpture, performance, and initiated what we now take for granted as remix culture. They used video to make intimate confessionals, experiment with their own bodies, and explore possibilities for art in public space that was critical of commercialism and conformity.
Explore the platform of ZOOM and consider its intended use for business meetings and class presentations. Experiment and play with the tools to see what other kinds of images, communications, and relationships might happen there. Test its possibilities, and explore how the platforms we learn and socialize and do business on – can lend insight to the medium itself, and to this historical moment we are living in right now.
We will discuss your proposals in class – to refine them and find possible collaborators.
