Notes for Food Video Project

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Sips & Bites

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkcxaJQWLpw[/embedyt]

Zoom/Grid Video Edits

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNL6P335uKM[/embedyt] [embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zq1oTEmYT6E[/embedyt]

Video Art Notes

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Social Distancing Film Stills

When I was researching Adad Hannah, I was inspired by his painting stills of The Raft of Medusa (St Louis) and A Vulgar Picture based on a series of paintings by William Hogarth. The idea of shifting mediums is key in the works I was focusing on; namely, the painting becoming video performance, and the social distance portraits with photographic elements becoming video performance. I wanted to incorporate this and bend it with my own tastes while still remaining true to Hannah’s style of the still video performance. To do this, I originally asked a few of my friends at Sheridan college if I could take some social distancing portraits of them while they were shooting one of their films, then take the medium of a moving picture (film) and freeze it. Due to the increase in covid cases in Ontario they were no longer able to shoot the film together, so I had to shift my idea. I wanted to stick with altering the medium of film and the unique paradox of a tableau film still, while still being a video performance with obvious intriguing movement from the elements of wind, water, birds, human balance. I carefully selected two films with opposing genres and styles of cinematography that I was able to use on location, the pier. By using the same location for the two stills, I am speaking to our situation in the world right now, we are all in the same physical place we were a year ago, but the angle has changed and we are looking back to the world before the pandemic, which feels very juxtaposed compared to the way we live now. It’s up to the interpreter whether or not the darkness was before or after the pandemic, or perhaps it is a combination of both. 

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elgMAMEAH5U[/embedyt]

Still #1 | inspired by Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6M4LqT_jZA[/embedyt]

Still #2 | inspired by Robert Egger’s The Lighthouse

Notes Week 1

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WRITTEN RESPONSE

Nina Katchadourian used multiple techniques to select books for her books

1. Going in blind and objectively, getting to know the person through their books
2. Looking at every book in the “getting to know you phase” and listing repetitive and interesting titles
3. Categorize the titles that jump out
4. Testing out different combinations with Q cards and finally going to the books and taking into account their mass and sculptural quality

The book stack “RELAX”

• The layout is very compelling, the spines are framed by a yellowish border, with the one green book and the purple spine emphasis good the colour in the word “guilty”
• The composition of colours is truly purposeful and carries your eye to the important words (“relax”, “no”, “guilty”, “yes”) and the book with the simple, dainty type is like a faint voice in the story of the titles or a thought in the back of this person’s mind, a whisper “God Always Says Yes”.
• I believe even apart these books say something about their owner, the repitió of the titles emphasizes this persons possible struggle and internal conflict. The back-and-forthness of the titles is as if the books are fighting with one another and an interesting dialogue reveals itself from within this person’s library and brain

Books Stack “The Junky’s Christmas”

• This assortment of books made me laugh. First off the title “The Junky’s Christmas” is a jarring title and these books truly bring it to life
• without one another these books do not speak all that loud, but together these titles almost read as a comic book, especially with the “SMACK!” Title
• The colours are cohesive and come together well, even thee design of the top book points down encouraging you to keep reading the spines while also mimicking the needle, and book titles turn to red evoking the look of blood dripping down the stack.
• These books tell a different story about the owner than the “relax” stack of self-help books an the story of an internal struggle. I do not believe these books point to the owner as being a junky.
• It is fascinating to me that simply arranging a person’s library can tell such stories and create these narratives, truthful or not, the care and purpose put into these stacks is admirable

Book Assortments from My Family Library

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Notes Week 2

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Text as Art Written Response

After watching the lecture on text as art, two pieces grabbed my attention for very different reasons (1) Fruit and Other Things by Lenka Clayton and John Rubin, and (2) Jenny Holzer’s Truisms. 

In Clayton and Rubin’s piece there was an underlying melancholia and sombreness that is provoked in this exhibition. They carefully write out the title of the rejected painting and display it alphabetically and then give them away. What caught my attention of this work was the very mechanical systematic production of these pieces; from archival records, in alphabetical order, all in the same size, colour and font. But with this systematic nature there is also something beautifully poetic and calming about their choice of medium; the display room is plain, simple, not overpowering or demanding, it’s almost meditative. The works read together in a completely new context, they are no longer categorized by their era, or artist, or genre. These are the mediums that failed the original artist, and now all that exists of their work is the titles, the titles hold a paradox of failure and success not the original material. 

In contrast, Holzer’s Truisms were made for contemplation and questioning, they are blunt, political and hilarious. The broad and loud medium of her truisms is “in your face” and anything but calm and sweet. Her statements have found themselves on billboards, subway posters, t-shirts and hats, LED signs and more, they are more of a public forum in that they are not there to be appreciated they are there to start conversations, make people ask questions and consider their own views. Since they are prominent in public spaces they are likely to be seen by many more people, and people from different walks of life, and when you get all types of people talking, sharing perspectives and listening to one another, you can start to chip away at ignorance. 

Notes Week 3

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until our eyes bleed

‘Until our eyes bleed’ is a relatively horrific statement, and its imagery lends itself to this time of intense technology use. The feeling this phrase gave me was a trapped uneasy one, in which we have a growing dependency on our screens. Our lives can entirely become defined by pixels (zoom. FaceTime, social media, online shopping, streaming services) if we are not self-aware, and carve out time to unplug. I used the plain default Apple font Helvetica Neue in red to signify the ‘bleed’, I used wire to string together the letters, and made the sign rather quaint and un-invasive. This is because the spiral of getting sucked in to the internet and being on a screen happens quite naturally for a lot of people, it is gradual. Secondly the viewer is intended to zoom in to get a better idea of what the sign says; zooming in on a screen within your own screen. The banner may not physically be overtop of your screen but the message is still there inside the pixels, encouraging self awareness and the importance of putting down the technology when you can.

Below is a photo of each member of my immediate family on their screen in their work space, on a program they frequently use, I felt the ‘our’ in ‘until our eyes bleed’ lends itself to a collective.

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Week 10: Food Art

The Colours of Food

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For this project I created a series of photos of fruits and vegetables, with colour as the visual aspect of food. Originally I wanted to focus on the compositions and displays of food. I wanted my photos to look like the photos of food that you see in advertisements such as commercials, or grocery store flyers. When I began this project I photographed my many different meals. I played around with the lighting and camera angles, and ended up with a bunch of photos of food like pasta, chicken, and bread, but none of them really stood out to me. I then took a few photos of blueberries and bananas, and realized that I wanted to focus on the colours of food as one of foods visual aspects. So I decided to only photograph fruits and vegetables as they are the most colourful type of food. I love how vibrant the colours of these foods turned out. I really enjoyed taking these photos, picking out the most colourful fruits and vegetables I could find, and playing around with different camera angles and the positioning of food.

Week 9:

Food Art Ideas:

For this project I really want to focus on the overall look of food, the composition of it. When I think of food photography, I think of the photos of food you see in advertisements, such as commercials, magazines, billboards, and grocery store flyers. You can tell that there is a lot of thought and planning that goes into these type of photographs, from the specific positions and arrangements of each piece of food, to the overall composition, the lighting, and a clean background. This is what I am looking to do for the project. I want to really focus on the specific positioning and placement of food to truly capture the visual aspects of food photography.

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These are a couple of my very rough unedited ideas. I shot these two photos with my phone, however, I plan on using my DSLR camera for this project, and much better lighting. But I find that these photos are still able to capture the idea of the display and composition of food that I am looking to focus on.

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Here are a couple examples of food photography seen in advertisements. With these images you can see that there was a great deal of thought and planning that went into the arrangement of food and the composition. This planning and arranging of food is kind of what I want to base my idea on for this project.

Week 8:

The Rise and Fall of Bread Podcast Notes:

• A companion is someone you break bread with
• There is a social aspect to bread, it is meant to be shared
• Bread teaches us civility, democracy, and who we are
• Bread is life
• The yeast that makes bread rise is a living organism
• We use bread because Jesus was the first to use bread
• Bread is a symbol of God’s generosity
• The art of baking bread is in the feel
• Bread needs the human mind, and is what caused the population to grow
• Is bread our salvation or our damnation?
• Grain has shifted the balance of power
• Bread is money, people used to be paid with bread. “Making dough”
• Bread is about religion, politics, society, language
• Bread gave rise to civilization
• Bread is a connection to the divine, and a symbol of equality
• Flour, water, and time are the three main things to make bread
• The story of bread is every story

I’m not really sure what I would do without bread, it is one of my favourite foods. I eat some sort of bread at least once a day, I have a bagel or toast everyday for breakfast, and I always have a loaf of Villaggio bread and either sesame seed or cinnamon raisin bagels in my house. Bread is also one of my favourite smells, I love the smell of a bakery or the bread section of a grocery store. Whenever I go to my mom’s house there is always a lot of food there, especially bread. She will always have a loaf of bread, a couple things of bagels, english muffins, wraps, and baguettes. I never understood how four people could go through that much bread, but apparently its possible. My mom also has a bread maker, she’s had it for 20 or so years and it doesn’t get used that much, but in April at the beginning of quarantine we used it a lot. She would get my brother and I to make bread to go as a side with dinner. Surprisingly my teenage brother was a lot more interested in making bread than I was. One of my comfort foods is probably grilled cheese. Bread and cheese are two of my favourite foods, its easy to make, and I’m always cold so I love eating food that warms me up. I think the reason why so many people have been making bread throughout the pandemic is that it is a fun and enjoyable way to pass time. It may also help with stress, and there are many different recipes and kinds of bread you can make that it will never get boring. One thing that I found very interesting about the podcast is that bread can have so many different meanings and can be about so many different things.

Week 7:

Notes:

The first video I watched was Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay’s Live to Tell. This work is made up of 16 screens of surveillance camera footage. It consists of 16 men who look similar and are all wearing black clothes, in what appears to be a dance studio. The men are singing a cappella and performing a choreographed dance routine. I found this video to be very interesting because I still can’t quite tell if there are 16 different men or if its the same man wearing different clothes. I also can’t tell if each screen is in the same room because the walls and floors look very similar, but the camera angles are different. I think that this video was well thought out and choreographed because the dancing and movements were perfectly lined up for where each of the 16 screens were placed within the video. I also really like how some of the men were facing the surveillance cameras while others had their backs to it. The artist chose to use multiple camera angles, multiple screens, and had each person standing or dancing in a different position or doing different movements. I think that these choices made watching the video visually interesting. However, with 16 screens I found it a little difficult to watch because I couldn’t just watch one screen, I would have to jump back and forth between all of the 16 screens.

The second video I watched was Michelle Pearson Clark’s Suck Teeth Compositions. This work consists of multiple people standing in front of a white background performing the act of sucking their teeth. This video stood out to me because at first I thought it was such a weird and simple task for random people to perform. Then it seemed as though the artist was trying to make some sort of beat out of the different sounds of sucking teeth, and I found that to be quite interesting. I like how the artist decided to use three people on the same screen, whether it was three shots of the same person or three different people. I feel as though when explaining the instructions the artist simply told the performers to suck on their teeth, and thats why it looks as if the people are kind of judging her and look a little confused.

My video:

I ended up changing my video a bit from my video art proposal. I still went with the idea to do a zoom call while playing just dance on the wii, but instead of having three screens and three people, I decided to use two screens and two people. We originally tried using three screens but I found there wasn’t enough space in the living room for three people because we kept getting in each others screen, and there was a lot more random sounds with three people that the song we were dancing to wasn’t picking up in the video at all. The problem of getting in each others screens lead me to decide on a song that my roommate and I have played maybe once or twice that also involved a lot of side to side movements where we could jump back a forth between screens. I think that jumping between the two screens made the video more visually intriguing. I also like that even though my roommate and I were standing next to each other, it looks as though we are in different rooms because the lighting is different on the two screens. I was really interested in making and capturing a fun, energetic video that shows how my roommate and I have been spending our time during the pandemic doing something that we both enjoy.

Week 6:

Zoom Video Art Proposal

My first idea is for my two roommates and I to do a zoom call in the living room playing just dance on the wii. I was thinking we could each set up our laptop and angle them so that there would only be one person in front of each laptop. I thought of this idea because my roommates and I play just dance pretty much everyday. I’m leaning more towards this idea because I think it would be a lot of fun to try, it would be a very interesting video, and my roommates have already both agreed to it. Some of my thoughts on this idea are that I’m not too sure how the sound will work with three laptops being in the same room. I’m also not sure if we should pick one song to dance to or a couple and keep recording the zoom call in between songs. If I try this idea I would want to pick a more upbeat song with lots of movement, and one that my roommates and I know pretty well. If I were to record a couple of dances, I could choose one song the three of us know well and one song that none of us have ever played. Below are some images of how I would set up this idea. The laptops are angled so that there would only be one person on each screen and in a way that we would all be able to still see the tv.

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For my second idea I was thinking about using my instrumental ensemble group and playing our piece over zoom. One of the courses I’m in this semester is an instrumental chamber ensemble. I play the flute, and in my group there is another flute player, a violin player, and my instructor also plays the violin. It’s been very different this semester, we record ourselves playing the piece and then talk about our recordings over zoom every week. Sometimes we all try playing over zoom. It’s not always that easy as it’s difficult to listen for the other parts over zoom, but I think that if all four of us played the piece over zoom it would make for an interesting video.

Week 4:

Liam: “Not thankful for covid on thanksgiving.”

Erynn: “Stressed but happy he’s in my bubble.”

This video is of my brother and his girlfriend at an apple orchard and pumpkin patch in Stouffville. I took this video over the thanksgiving weekend. They wanted me to come to the apple orchard with them only so I could take photos of them. It was very awkward and I felt like the biggest third wheel, so I said to them if I’m taking photos of you then you get to be a part of my project. In this video I wanted them to stand 6 feet apart because thats what I think of when I think of social distancing. I also thought it was a bit ironic to make them stand that far apart because they are always close together. I noticed that in Adad Hannah’s videos, the people in them are close to the camera, most of them are looking directly at the camera, and the videos are shot from eye level. I wanted to change it up and kind of make it my own, so I decided to place the camera on the ground for a different perspective. I got my brother and his girlfriend to back away from the camera until they were six feet apart and in the frame. I also wanted them to look at each other as if they were having a conversation while social distancing.

Paul: “The pandemic allowed for more time to get into shape.”

This video is of my dad right before he left for his bike ride. Adad Hannah’s videos seem to be of normal people out in the world simply living their lives, and doing everyday activities. So I asked my dad what is the one thing that you enjoy doing everyday, and he said biking. That’s why I decided to take the video of him on his bike. I also wanted to include the mask because I think that with it on it shows that we are living in different times, where a mask is one of the most important things you need, and is something you can’t leave the house without.

Week 1:

The strategies that Katchadourian uses to select and order books is sorting the books by titles that she finds interesting. She then orders and stacks the books so that the titles are readable and almost tell a story from the top to the bottom of the stack. Dyment orders books chronologically. In his one book stack, the books are ordered chronologically over the span of one billion years. Park orders books by the colour of the book covers. The books are colour coordinated, and they are all opened up about half way through each book within the stack.

In Nina Katchadourian’s A Day at the Beach, the final composition of the seven book titles tell a story. Each one of the books need to be where they are in the stack in order to understand the story. If one or two of the books were not in the stack, the final composition would have a completely different meaning, and tell a much different story.

In Dave Dyment’s One Billion Years, the final composition is ordered in chronological order, with the books dating over the span of one billion years. If a few of the books were switched around, it would change the meaning of the work entirely as it would no longer have order. I really like how the books are stacked in a way that the centre or the middles of each book are all lined up.

My Book Stacks:

This first book stack consists of all of my philosophy books. They are stacked in alphabetical order by the last name of each philosopher. I tried to line up all of the last names on each book so that they were right in the middle of the photo. As you can see they are kind of tipping, so it’s not perfectly centred, but I do like how the top three look like they’re about to fall over. I chose to use my philosophy books because I liked that they were all one genre or theme, and these were the majority of books that I had in my house.

This second book stack consists of all of my books that I could find. They are also stacked in alphabetical order, but by the titles instead of last names of the authors. I personally love when things are organized or are in some sort of order, and alphabetical order is one of my favourite types of order because it makes sense to me and is visually pleasing. With this book stack I wanted to stack it kind of like Dyment’s One Billion years. I really like how he centred all the books directly in the middle.

With this third book stack, I kind of wanted to use Katchadourian’s strategy of sorting books by titles that I find interesting, and then stacking them so that they are readable and almost tell a story. In this stack I used a couple of my roommates books, who is in criminal justice, and a couple of my philosophy books. I liked how these book titles gave the overall composition a kind of dark philosophical feeling.

Week 2:

The first artwork I chose to write about is by Yoko Ono titled Fly. This work is the word “Fly” on a giant billboard, in black text on a white background. The work is so simple, yet it is so bold with its large, noticeable letters. The medium that is used is a billboard, and the message simply says “fly”. The medium is relevant to the message because in order to view the message you must look up in the sky where things fly. I think it would be very ironic if a bird were to sit on top of this billboard. The viewer can interpret this word in different ways, and it can have many meanings based on who is looking at it. The first thing that I thought of when I looked at this work was freedom.

The second artwork I chose to write about is Barbara Kruger’s Untitled (Your Body is a Battleground). Barbara Kruger uses found photographs and then places bold white text on a red background on top of them. I think that in this image the message comes off as strong, bold, and intense. Just like Yoko Ono’s Fly, Kruger’s work is mainly noticeable billboard sized images. At first look you can already tell that the image portrays a very feminist theme. The medium used in this work is a black and white found photograph of a woman. This medium is relevant to the message as the message is clearly about a woman’s body. The small text on this image reads “support legal abortion birth control and women’s rights”. The large text that reads “your body is a battleground” is a metaphor for women not having much of a say in what happens to their body.

Week 3:

The words I decided to choose from the article were “Accumulating Endlessly”. I’m not exactly sure why, but the word accumulating really stuck out to me. It made me think of earlier that day when I went to get into my car and it was covered in leaves that had fallen from the tree hanging over the driveway. The leaves had accumulated on top of my car. I looked up and could see that the tree had many more leaves left on it, so I decided to park in the garage so that the leaves would stop accumulating endlessly on top of my car. This story is why I chose to use a floral, leafy looking paper to cut the letters out of. It is also why I hung the banner outside in my backyard with trees and leaves present in the background.

Week 11

Food Piece

Food Piece Notes:

• Use the food left in my old studio mini fridge 
  • Mouldy Potato Soup
  • 1 can of Bubly carbonated water
  • 1 can of Christmas Canada Dry gingerale
  • 2 containers of ranch veggie dip 
• Approach it materially and sculpturally
• Want to freeze all the food and take them out of their containers and set them out 
  • thinking about Rachel Whiteread and her casts of objects, specifically her series of resin chairs 
    • noticed how the chair casts which show the negative space beneath a chair between the legs are functionally still chair looking, like small stools 
    • the food in my piece is still food, but they are more casts of the inside of their container since all conventional functionality of consuming them is gone 
  • the foods become their container removing any functionality or way of eating or drinking 
  • this removal of function speaks to the fact that they are abandoned food, food waste 
    • they are really now just physical space takers in the fridge with no intention by anyone to consume them 
    • this displays them as exactly that, stripped of the veil of their containers which suggest some sort of intention to store keep or preserve

Week 8 : Zoom Video Piece

Week 7

Pipolotti Rist 

Be Nice To Me (Flatten 4)

• This piece communicates the medium so effectively, as Diane said in class if this was played in a gallery space on a CRT television it would look like she is somehow inside the box of the television pressing against the glass of the screen
• It could also communicate the opposite, that she is witnessing us on a screen and we are looking out towards her
• After watching the full Be Nice To Me piece the moments of her against the glass with makeup were by far the most captivating
  • you can follow the trace of the colour and intended shape on her face to be pressed onto the glass and warped and then picked up again and printed back on the skin 
  • the patterns the colours made that were indicative of her movement and which stayed on her face and the glass
  • and then when the video plays in reverse being able to almost predict where she goes through the smears of makeup and spit 
    • such a cool way to engage the viewer
• I think possible prompts for this piece would be to engage the viewer in as visceral as possible through the medium of a screen, using the divide to create intimacy with the viewer
  • im assuming the performer is Pipilotti herself

Week 6

Week 6 Notes

The Case for Video Art

What sets apart video art from other video media?

Early cinema was inherently experimental because there was no standard for creation yet. 

Sony porta-pak- changed everything for video art 

• portable 

Nam June Paik 

Zen for Film 1964

Minimal, focus on the process and mechanism of video 

Shigego Kubota

expanded cinema

when films exited theatres 

sculptural videos 

playing with projection and light and the viewers’ involvement

Had Video- Art Prepared us Enough for Zoom Meeting 

Vivian Castro 

• iconologically the face occupying the whole frame of an image was rare in painting
  • “video is the first medium that is used to being so focused on the face, differently from film” 
    • interesting distinction, also what about still images
  • artists using the “potency” of the smaller camera
    • referring to the intimacy ascribed to it
    • physical closeness = intimate experience my be simplifying it a bit or maybe I have too narrow a definition of intimate experience 
      • intimately unnerving? 
      • intimately unattractive?
    • the narcissism of the medium, the longing for absolute video feedback to become like a recorded mirror

On Boomerang (1974)

• anxious energy so much of it 
• drawing lines between Holts experienced distance between thoughts and the slowing down of connecting thoughts and words. “Do we have trouble making connections between thoughts? Are we expressing everything we want to?”
• frustrations more to do with the medium than the content.

• but is it also then the context, I don’t feel frustrated or tired when I’m on calls with friends, but school it can be mind-numbingly annoying 
• Why is that?
• “impulse for participants to talk all the time” 
• this this this this
• it is either silence or a monologue, so difficult to keep a social rhythm 
• being “surrounded by ourselves” on the screen 
• “online meetings are the ultimate modern life’s immobility.” 
  • to Castro, this social isolation of the self on the screen through video art was precursory to what technology like this would do to us in real life, outside of an art context 

Candice Breitz 

Legend (A Portrait of Bob Marley) 2005 

Queen (A Portrait of Madonna) 2005

• Loved the moments between tracks the waiting, or when people are feeling it and start talking to the recording 
• I viewed the videos before reading and it’s funny I didn’t pick up on a geographic specificity in the sample of people shown, I don’t know if I imagined it as just indicative of the fanbase demography or what. 
• It does feel like a study of a group of people, almost like interviews of a specific demographic like you would see for a documentary around a single person or a community of people or experience. 
• their artist is their shared experience, their community, so it makes sense that the manner of the interview would be their music
• I don’t know if I ever picked up on the critical aspects of mainstream entertainment itself but rather the culture it inadvertently creates
•  something so streamlined in its production to be shown from the other side, in an infinitely diverse way, is an interesting point of tension 

Factum Trembley, 2009

• so so so impactful on me
• the narrative form of their answers is almost too perfect, speaking too their twinhood 
  • Albeit Breitz makes many cuts to communicate her perspective through her subjects (repeating a phrase of one of them later in the video, almost responding as a third connecting member of the “conversation”(?))
  • she draws attention to contradictions between the two separate accounts or differing opinions on single events, its fascinating to see the spectrum of experience so clearly on such a minute scale

Video Piece Notes

• obstructing the webcam 
  • with wax paper or plastic wrap
  • created a fuzzy or crystalline effect 
• I kind of want to formally and visually play with two obstructed (abstracted) laptop cameras back to back, walking around them  
• thinking about Bruce Nauman’s walking pieces
• maybe play with the audio freaking out when the two microphones pick up the same audio and reproduce it  
  • audio of me talking? 

Week 4

Notes:

Adad Hannah

• Mainly photographic practice 
  • Interested in tableaux vivant, the french practice historically to get live actors and performers to pose in recreations of famous paintings 
  • Focus on the bodies movement while being still, 
  • Moment of the pose, when the subject freezes
    • tableaux vivant spreads that moment out 
    • watching a video of someone standing still while they themselves stand still prompts the viewer to examine their bodies more carefully
    • almost like a Foucault mirroring 
  • Movement in stillness
  • Even in his still photographic work like The Screen, there is a focus on one’s own bodily awareness, the skin beneath the exterior skin 
    • I wish that one model wasn’t looking at the camera, breaks from the shape trying to be created 

Vancouver Sun Article

• Hannah goes deeper into his process of capturing these covid portraits 
• Used long lens and went to public spaces and asked people if they wanted their photo taken 
  • Having a blown-out background associating with “deep conversation” feels like a stretch. I think there is no emotional intimacy given in these portraits but rather bodily vulnerability
  • He are being given access to these people in a way even they themselves are not aware of 
    • How the body moves in this moment of posed tension
  • The videos expose how people think one ought to look while being photographed, especially in the ones of people playing a sport it is revealing how much sports media effects the posing of “what people playing sports” looks like 
• Hannah asks questions about the pandemic to each of his models and their words are quoted beneath each portrait 
  • I don’t know how I feel about the necessity of these quotes in the work, while yes they do feel heartfelt and play into exclusively present sentiments surrounding the fear, stress and adaptive nature of our current lives, I think the videos could stand alone, or just names could be given. The quotes are too similar to “Humans of New York” for my liking.

Self Portrait a la Adad Hanna: Party

The thing I miss most at this moment in time, self-indulgent as it may be, are my friends. On the screen behind me is one of the many recordings I made at a friend’s birthday party two summers ago. This documentation of that night was more impactful to me viewing it now than I probably ever had imagined it to be when I made it. This work feels like documentation in response to that video; responding to a record of an experience that feels so far away at this moment.

Formally, I wish to experiment with tableaux vivant-ish things more, especially with this camera (a very old digital Pentax) which gives away quite quickly that the viewer is watching a video, through the pulsating of the camera refocusing and shivering of the horizontal grain. I like how the edges of my figure are fuzzy, I look even more still than if the video quality was better and my movement instead seems now to be caused by the grain itself.

I didn’t want the image on the screen to be clear to the viewer, as that would be obviously distracting but also personalizes the video to me, which is not my intention. I want the viewer to see that it is a video of some sort of party playing in contrast to the dark monotone stillness of the scene. A video of such abundant joy and energy within one that has seemingly none. Perhaps a metaphor for our current situation. 😉

Week 3

Notes:

Hiba Abdallah Artist Interview: McMaster Museum of Art

• projects embedded in social practice, text exploring locality and civic agency 

 We remain profoundly and infinitely connected

• human connectivity as an interconnected feedback loop 
• visual art and human biochemistry

Practice – Communities 

• social engagement 
• most works are collaborative projects
  • projects are led by the people Abdallah works with 
  • back and forth, a feedback loop 
  • results often  in a text work (book, billboard) 
• interested in the intersections of art and civic responsibility 
• drew connections between Windsor and hamilton as post-industrial cities 
  • “Two tales of City” (2012) revealed hamiltons often looked over the historical textile industry 

COVID’s effect on work:

• how languages intersect and how words change from day to day 
• how language shifts over time 
• covid changed the context of of her work as other present contexts will change it in the future

Banner Candidates: 

I wanted to take an ironic approach to the placement of my banner, at first picturing putting it around the car metal scrap yards that are near my studio. But then I found this spot on my search for scrap and thought it would be perfect. The covered-up graffiti, the bland colour pallet, the lack of seemingly any of the “cultural material” as the article probably intended to mean.

However, the scene is simultaneously superficially absent yet internally filled with cultural material regardless. All of these small elements on the periphery of our considered world are reflective of our culture. The North American romanticization of the highway. What motivates the censoring of graffiti on a highway underpass? The fence to obstruct people or animals (?) from crossing the highway. Im doing a poor job articulating it but basically, I liked that the placement of this statement (almost an exclamation) here in a place where the definition of cultural material is shifted to encourage a closer examination of the everyday and banal.

Week 2

Notes:

“The Optics of the Language: How Joi T. Arcand Looks with Words” Canadian Art 

• Native misery apparent in everyday aesthetics 
  • the Optic of the murderer of an Indigenous woman 
    • “optic” is the lens or filter by which one looks and from this looking ropes what is seen into an encounter humming with all sorts of potential”
    • Bushby’s optic is a part of “settler horror” 
    • This optic ropes indigenous people “the ante-Canada… into a representational field where all things… can be put to violent use.” 
    • “I got one” phrase when Bushby murdered Barbara Kentner
• The second paragraph is wildly confusing, super flowery 
  • “modes of enfleshment” 
  • in summary, words encapsulate simultaneous danger and pride by creating worlds around them
    • like how “one” in terms of Bushby’s “optic” creates “death worlds” for indigenous people, violence in everything 
    • the “double-bind of enunciation” ??? 
  • “savage call to being with a more spacious one (word world?)”
    • is Arcand answering this call? 
• Arcand’s using words as “emotional architectures” which “change the visual landscape” 
  • Arcand titles her new word world “Future Earth”
• References Maggie Nelson (American Writer) speaking of words being able to “incite “the outline of a becoming””
  • Is Arcand inciting “a becoming” through her commandeering of Cree syllabics into everyday aesthetics? 
  • In an aside reminder to self to read “Something Bright Then Holes” 
• Bushby’s use of “one” as a “refusal of a name and the humanity that comes with it” shows the “terrible mechanics of language” 
  • Arcand is subverting these mechanics through presenting language in a native futuristic way 
• Arcand is “mourning language loss” of the Cree syllabics but through a method that signifies a “world-to-come”

Onto the Work

Here on Future Earth

• “where Arcands photo-based practice and interest in textuality synched”
• These images are to thought about as an “alternative present” 
• digitally manipulated signs and replaced original text with Cree syllabics
  • shows us a present parallel to our own allows us to “loop into a new mode of perception”
  • shows us “the rogue possibilities bubbling up in the thick ordinariness of everyday life” where they weren’t before. 
    • the power in the mundane language around us once changed becomes clear 
  • Using signifiers of nostalgia Arcand orients the viewer to “think back on a future past” not “a Utopian Elsewhere” 
  • “The mise-en-scene of settlement”: interesting
    • Her new world portrays deep meanings separate from “terra nullius” and “myths of Indian savagery and degeneracy” 
      • the bucolic untamed wilderness, the stillness (stagnancy) in that false landscape
    • instead, “a future (built) atop the decayed remains of coloniality”

Week 2 Assignment: 

Both of these artists are repurposing textual media to fit their own created purposes, however the scale of both the mediums and the message could not be more different.

In Germaine Koh’s Dear Mercer (2006) she utilizes a practically obsolete and banal media; the telegram, as a way of conveying her disinterest in participating in fundraising events. The telegram is simple, always stating “I AM SORRY TO SAY I CANNOT PARTICIPATE, GERMAINE KOH”. The repeated use of this text along with the unorthodox medium turns what could be an banal emailed message into an artist’s multiple which the gallery oftentimes frames and auctions off at the fundraiser event. This piece utilizes double meanings and methods in every aspect of its appearance and function. It is simultaneously a rejection of the acquisition while still providing a “work”. It is also simultaneously a piece of ephemera and a printed work that is now privy to formal examination (ie. the placing of the text, the way the telegram is cut, the texture of the paper.). These double meanings confront the viewer, at first belying its complexity and depth through its seemingly banal, almost bureaucratic appearance. 

Joi T. Arcand’s Sweetgrass Store (2009) along with all her images from the “Here on Future Earth” series utilize different text in much different ways. She digitally replaces texts from storefronts and other building signage with Cree syllabics in a way to stake out a parallel present future that asserts indigenous presence and prosperity taking over the remnants of a colonial prairie landscape. Instead of repurposing the text of communication, she commandeers the text of place, ownership and power within the landscape. The scale of this textual shift is much larger than Kohs’ it is far more charged than the wit and cynicism of Kohs’ telegraphs.

Week 1

FOOD ART FINAL VIDEO:

Student Dining: Mind Full vs. Mindful was inspired by Christian Jankowski’s The Hunt (1997) in which modern advancements are contrasted to primitive ways getting food. So, I asked myself where there was a similar interplay in life involving food. I realized that my eating habits change when I am under stress, especially as a university student during COVID-19 and final exam season. But there was another culprit—the over reliance one of society’s greatest advancement: the smart phone, an innovative modern tool providing instant volumes of information whether it is history, news, or social media. This work shows the addiction to modern technology and how when eat when our mind is full. Eating when in a “mind full” state is to be unaware of the food and variety of utensils in front. We eat with the same frenzy speed as we live our lives, unable to disconnect from our phones as it is our priority. Although I want to eat the soup, I do not use my rational thinking when under stress in this case. Instead, I become primitive like in Jankowski’s work when in a “mind full” state. The “mindful” state in this video is demonstrated when I am calm and centered and surrounded by plants and my cats. Although a spoon (correct utensil) is not used to eat the soup in the final clip, slow and mindful eating is the correct tool and hints to choosing whether to use it or not. Moreover, our state of mind is important for approaching food.

Creative Process:

• Go beyond just improper use of food utensils like fork used to eat soup…Add a context!
• Main things at time of creation: Final exam season, COVID-19 Pandemic…translates to major stress and lack of focus and connection towards food

WEEK IX: FOOD ART

IDEA 1: Combination proper and improper food eating techniques

Source of inspiration: Christian Jankowski, The Hunt (1997)

• This work featured primitive food hunting techniques from the hunter gatherer era set in a supermarket during the present day
• This represents rebelling against present day innovations

• This work would be similar to The Hunt, but involves eating food on plates instead of hunting in public indoor settings
• This would also feature and unusual/improper eating techniques (e.g. eating spaghetti and meatballs with hands, eating a sandwich with a knife)

IDEA 2: Play on Words

• E.g. Strawberry: straw connected to a berry
• E.g. To “butter up”: knife putting butter onto a slice of bread

Bread Making Activity

• 

• 

WEEK VIII

This video consists of two contrasting ways of spending time during isolation amid the pandemic. The left half features reading and flipping through pages, while the right is playing a video game through the clicking on the controller.

WEEK VIII: “BREAD THE RISE AND FALL” PODCAST

Bread is well known for its captivating aroma and delicious flavour, the foundation of daily meals, and for being one of the key sources of food in the “wheat and grains” category of the food guide. Bread is also viewed as a symbol of companionship as it is meant to be shared within others as a loaf. The simplicity of bread ingredients is parallel to an easy way of building society, as it teaches us civility such as democracy and who we are. Bread is also associated with religion as it is used in church because Jesus first used bread; the combination of yeast with water and grain is compared to process of creation. On a scientific level, bread does not grow from the earth, but through a miraculous process over the 10 000 years of nature and human labours and skills, from hunter gathering to farming—Neolithic revolution.

However, enlightenment thinker John Jacques Rosseau also stated that the growth of agricultural correlates with the growth of inequality. Although this revolution reduces the physical labour needed, it is also known accelerating global warming and the depletion of the oceans; agriculture depends on suppressing biodiversity, humanity’s largest footprint on the earth. also root to diabetes, obesity etc. Some also believe that bread has shifted the balance of power as the wealthy wear able to store grains and wealth, and power over people and could lead to slavery. Although bread has brought rise to the negative aspects civilization including war, tyranny, and slavery, it is also symbol of equality: no matter who you are, everyone needs a source of sustenance of recently good quality, sufficient quantity, and accessible pricing.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many have been baking bread to limit the contact with other people when outside of their houses. It is also possible that those struggling economically have also been baking instead of constantly buying bread from the stores.

The comparison of bread to civilization and religion were striking for me because although I always knew how popular and essential bread has always been, until now I never knew about the profound impact on social and economic classes, as well as greater acceleration of global warming and depletion through agriculture.

LINK FOR INSPIRATION OF THE FIRST IDEA:

Canadian artists come together in ‘Lean on Me’ cover for coronavirus relief

LINK FOR INSPIRATION OF THE SECOND IDEA:

http://abcnewsradioonline.com/music-news/2020/3/17/sales-of-rems-its-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it-other-s.html

WEEK IV: SOCIAL DISTANCING PORTRAITS

CLIP 1:

Nathan Kasprzyk-Heuff, Oceans Apart, 2020

The phrase “oceans apart” fits perfectly with COVID-19 as many of us are isolated, far away from each other. The spread apart figures were glued into their phones to make it seem like at first they just captured an insta-worthy moment and are uploading it, but no, there is much more to that. As part of the current “new normal”, electronic devices have become a significantly more normal part of our everyday lives from doing work, entertainment, to communication including playing games through iMessage’s GamePigeon. Filmed at a beach on the shores of Lake Ontario, no background music needed since the waves already did the job!

CLIP 2:

Nathan Kasprzyk-Heuff, Is Anybody There?, 2020

There is no music in the background, but the captured sounds include the activity in the parks including the tennis courts and kids having fun, and the large echoing perfect for representing the loneliness and emptiness. Although playgrounds have reopened in July as part of Stage 3 of reopening, activities like swinging close together are still more likely to be impacted than with others like tennis.

ADAD HANNAH:

In his clips, the figures are centered within the frame and show the entire body. All figures included were centered within the frame ranging from one person, to multiple people close together whether within an immediate household close together or from separate households and wearing masks. Captures the everyday moments of life and is set in various settings within a city that can be related to the pandemic, whether it is a crowded downtown environment, or a wide open but sometimes populated park. Ambient music is also added to the background of some of the videos and sound surprisingly realistic like it was added during the post-production stage.

My favourite clip was the man in boxing gloves. Although it makes it seem like he is waiting for the opponent in order to practice, it this clip still reminds us to continue doing whatever excites you, as long as the safety measures are followed.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF MY CLIPS:

CLIP 1:

• A park setting where the two figures are maintaining physical distancing on benches and glued into their phones?…Yes, but how also about a windy lake to represent the phrase “oceans apart”? BINGO!
• The dark and cloudy weather during the day the clip was shot perfectly matches the lonely and grim tone of COVID-19.
• Okay, the figures were not centered, but the space in between is. Both figures were not from the same immediate house, so physical distancing was maintained instead.

CLIP 2:

• Inspired by Adad Hannah’s Social Distancing Portrait 17-Dimas
• Use a playground setting when not many people are using those places despite the reopening…try a slide…aha! Do that but at a swing by occupying the right and leaving the left one vacant!

PHOTO I:

Nathan Kasprzyk-Heuff, Daring, 2020

The first book stack is constructed like stair steps and represents an evolution and final product from combination of going from being daring and creative, to being rebellious and ‘badass’, to being even more rebellious and creative—in this case creative cursing. Getting creative and ‘badass’ starts with you…daring greatly. Cursing is a common form of being offensive and breaking rules, but many also use it in a humorous way.  It is important to bend the rules at times, think outside of the box, let the creativity flourish, and embrace the wild and rebellious part within you.

PHOTO II:

Nathan Kasprzyk-Heuff, Up, Up, and Away, 2020

This second collection of books is another evolution style like the first image, but involves the progression from learning how to fly, to the voyage through outer space. The transition from the Flight Training Manual to the book about Helicopters was chosen because helicopters fly differently from conventional airplanes, but if you learn to fly an airplane, you can then easily learn to fly other types of aircraft. The Voyage Through Space book is the largest of the four books and is positioned at the top not only because the outer space is infinite in size compared to the finite Earth, but also because the concepts of space exploration and potential colonization on other planets are highly fascinating and discussed topics nowadays.

PHOTO III:

Nathan Kasprzyk-Heuff, Links, 2020

The third collection of books involves a combination of titles involving music and art from both history and digital technology, along with a book about how computers work. Unlike the evolution style in the previous two, this work was organized in a sandwich style to represent the interconnection between music, art, and computers. The art and music history (Art History and A History of Music in Western Culture) books are at the opposite ends from each other, with the two digital technology books (A Short Course in Photography Digital and Music Technology) still at the opposite ends but closer towards the center. How Computers Work was placed in the center to indicate that computers are used virtually everywhere and are essential in the 21^st century; computers and the evolution of technology is also noticeable and crucial in both music and art. Although computers may seem to take center stage in the musical and arts fields, the history of the arts from the past few centuries and millenniums are equally important and there would be no digital music nor art without this history.

WEEK II: USING TEXT AS ART

1. LOOK AT: Artists who use text in their work including: Yoko Ono, Jenny Holzer, John Baldessari, Barbara Krueger, Geurilla Girls, and Shelly Niro. And more contemporary examples including: Nadia Myre, Joi T. Arcand, Jon Rubin, Eleanor King, Micah Lexier, Lenka Clayton, Alisha Wormsley and Germaine Koh.

John Balderssari:

• I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art, 1971
• Tips for Artists Who Want to Sell, 1966-1968

Lenka Clayton:

• Fruit and Other Things, 2018

Germaine Koh:

– Dear Mercer, 2006

Yoko Ono:

–        Grapefruit, 1964

–        Billboards since 1960s, e.g. Fly, 1996; War is Over, 2008

Jenny Holzer, 

–        Truisms, since 1980

–        Survival Series, 1986

Barbara Kruger, 

–        Untitled (Your body is a battleground), 1989

–        BELIEF+DOUBT, since 2012

Guerrilla Girls, 

–        Guerrilla Girls Definition Of A Hypocrite, 1990

Shelley Niro,

–        The Shirt (detail), 2003

Joi T. Arcand, 

–        Northern Pawn, South Vietnam, 2009

–        Amber Motors, 2009

Nadia Myre, 

–        Indian Act, 2002

Eleanor King, 

–        No Justice No Peace, 2015

Jon Rubin:

–        The Last Billboard, 2010-2018

 

• WRITE: Select TWO artworks from above to write about. Compare and contrast the different ways the artists use media (materials, platform, format) to express their message. How is the medium relevant to the message in each case? How are viewers expected to relate to the text in each case? (Write approx. 250 words).

Shelley Niro, The Shirt (detail), 2003

The first work that I chose was The Shirt by Shelley Niro. This is a photograph-based artwork from the lens of First Nations people criticizing European colonialism in America and consequences in the present day by parodying tourist souvenir tee-shirts and photographs . An Aboriginal woman is in the center of the work facing the camera, wearing a bandana with the American flag graphic, and wearing the tee-shirt with the texts. An American landscape is in the background of the work, adhering to the takeover and destruction of the land of Aboriginals. Rather than stating where the one or multiple people were visited, it states the impact of colonialism, in this case violence, annihilation, massacring, and that the next generations of the ancestors do not get as much as what the white European backgrounds get. No post-production effects were applied to this image and the materials used in this work already effectively communicate the issues.

Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Your body is a battleground), 1989

Untitled (Your body is a battleground) by Barbara Kruger is the second work that I chose to write about. This is another photograph medium like many of her other works as it features an appropriated close-up of a woman’s face portraying feminism. However, unlike Shelley Niro’s The Shirt featuring a landscape in the background, this work only features pure black and white images with a regular and inverted half, allowing the focus on the woman’s face and texts. This work is also larger than The Shirt as it was created to emulate a poster for the April 9, 1989 Women’s March in Washington for supporting legal abortion, birth control and women’s rights. It also differed from The Shirt as effects were applied to image after it was taken. The key titles within this work are in bold white on red background and hence the march, the small title says “support legal abortion birth control and women’s rights”, while the largest and central title is “Your Body is a Battleground.” Kruger states that pictures and words both work together for rallying and there is a combination of photographs and assertive texts that challenge the viewers.

WEEK III: BANNERS

The Three Movements, 2020. By Nathan Kasprzyk-Heuff

This banner was created to represent three major movements that are still prevalent in the 21st century. The bold stencil font was chosen in order to stand out visually and fight against domination, violence, and oppression.

Media: Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, printer paper, string, shot on an iPhone 11 camera

Stylistic Features, 2020. By Nathan Kasprzyk-Heuff

The second banner uses the phrase “stylistic features” with fonts using detailed features including serifs and slabs, italics, red and yellow colours, distortion effects, shrinking and increasing sizes, as well as outlines. A string with party cup lights was chosen to create an illumination effect, shining the light on the text.

Media: Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, printer paper, string with party cup lights, shot on an iPhone 11 camera

PROOF THAT THESE PHRASES CAME FROM DIRTY WORDS INTERESTING:

SELECT ARTISTS FROM BLOG READING:

Micah Lexier:

• Ampersand
• Two Equal Texts
• Notes-to-Self (2007)

Laurel Woodcock:

• wish you were here (2003)
• on a clear day (2010)

Hiba Abdullah

FOOD ART

What I’m Saying:

I used to hate eating, It made me sad, Because I felt like it would lead to me looking the way I dreaded looking. I am mad at how much time I have been concerned about things that do not matter, Hanging on to mean things people have said, Calling me a slut, a whore, ugly, And I actually let myself be upset by it, And wasted my time being upset about it, Upset that people found me ugly. I am mad that female beauty standards are rooted in pedophilia, At one point in my life i wouldn’t let myself eat because I wanted to look like that, All of the time I have wasted removing my body hair, Making myself look younger than I am, Like I looked like when I was a child, To be beautiful the way I’m told I should be,I am mad at how much energy being afraid of people who didn’t like me, People who thought I’d somehow done something to wrong them, Kissed their ex boyfriend, Didn’t give them enough attention, Lied to them, And when I wonder why I did these things, It was to make other people like me, The endless journey to be perfect. I’m mad about all the times someone has made me not be myself, My parents telling me i couldn’t wear something, Dye my hair a colour, I can’t pierce my nose if I want to work there, People judge me by how I would look on the outside, Don’t get tattoos that you can’t hide, What is the point of being yourself, Being authentic, if you have to hide that to be professional, That my clothing can tell more things about myself than my mouth can, Can looking like I want to because I want to look like an art piece Will take away from me ever being taken seriously, From everyone thinking I am beautiful. I am mad that I have to pay to be alive, That I have to work tirelessly only to give it all to someone Who was fortunate enough to have the money to own a house, And make me live there And to pay to get an education, To have a good job, To make enough money, To one day live in a place that belongs to me, We all go through the motions, And in the end, We all get to the same place, We die. And then what? I imagine as I am dying I will feel regret for trying too hard to please other people, I will regret wasting the energy and wasting the time, And mostly I will regret all the food I didn’t eat, And all the things I never tried, And it is because I want to be beautiful to people who see me, And that it’s never really mattered if I’ve felt beautiful to myself, As I am dying I will regret the food I never ate, Because then I will be dead, And that will be the end. 

This performance was very much inspired by Marina Abramovic, specifically her work ‘Art must be beautiful, Artist must be beautiful’, as well as her work ‘The Onion’. I chose to eat fruit in my video because there is a cliche eroticism of women eating fruit, however, I did it in a way there is very messy and off putting, while talking about how much validation I feel I need from other people. In Abromavic’s piece ‘The Onion’, she i eating an onion by biting it like an apple, and complaining, while crying. My dialogue was heavily influenced by the voice over in ‘The Onion’, instead of complaining about things, I decided to talk about how frustrated I am with myself.

FOOD ASSIGNMENT NOTES

• video 
• me eating really colourful food with my hands  
• similar to cherry video 
• talking with my mouth full
• complaining  
  • Complaining about people who were mean to me 
  • Complaining about how I am 20 and just found out I have ADHD 
  • Talking back to all of the mean things people have said to me
  • Ask if I can record a therapy session and then use its dialogue 
  • making people uncomfortable by my words but laugh by my demeanour 
  • Nihilistic but not in the sense of giving up, but in the sense that nothing matters except for how I feel about myself 
• orange slices 
• juice in wine glass
• grapes 
• cherries
• pomegranate 
• apple
• fruit spread 
• play on eroticism of women eating fruits

PODCAST REFLECTION – THE RISE AND FALL OF BREAD

Unlike many people currently, the act of baking bread holds a very special place in my heart. Not because it is a comfort food, or because one of the most intense pleasures to exist is cracking open a fresh loaf right after removing it from the oven, but because baking bread has actually connected me with the most important people in my life.

Before I was born, my grandmother, my dads mother, had a brain aneurysm and was left in a wheel chair, with very poor memory, and very little of who she was left of her. As I grew up, I always heard from my relatives, that I reminded them of her. She was an incredibly strong woman, she had four kids, not very much money, a farm, 18 siblings, and was an artist. To this day, I wish I could’ve met her when she was still herself, I have so many things I wish I could ask her. When I was young, my family and I would visit Tignish, PEI, the town where she grew up. Her sister Lois, my great aunt, taught me how to bake my first loaf of bread, and biscuits, and pastry. I realized it was so much more than just baking bread, because these recipes that Lois had, the ones that were her mother’s, and her mother’s mother’s, were so important to her, that the act of teaching me to make them with her, was somewhat of the ultimate form of her expressing her love for me. I have carried this with me for my entire life, and it has lead me so many places I probably would not have gotten to if it weren’t for bread.

In my second year of university, I was at a bar, and talking to this girl, who I would later call my best friend, about how I bake bread. She asked me if I wanted to come over later that week, and teach her. I obviously said yes. When I got there, there were way more people than I thought there would be, all anticipating a three course meal of various breads I had planned to make. First course: plain white bread, crust softened with olive oil, baked in a cast iron pan, paired with a dip of olive oil, black currant jam, and balsamic vinegar. Second course: white bread filled with pieces of red onion, and olive, paired with hummus, and cream cheese. Third course: cinnamon and brown sugar bread, with peanut butter and banana, or honey one top. I taught everyone how to bake them, and everyone loved the outcome so much. This would later be a monthly reoccurrence we called ‘Bread Night’, and this moment, is when I began to construct many of my most valuable relationships. I rode my bike home, and thought about how I had done exactly what Lois had done for me all those years ago.

Growing up, my dad never let us buy bread. He would always make it. Which I never understood why people just didn’t always do. It tastes so much better when it is home made and fresh. Free of preservatives, and catered to exactly what you expect out of your perfect loaf of bread. I think that many people are baking bread during the pandemic, because they have been given more time, to figure out how to enjoy life. Prior to this, many people would have believed they did not have enough time in the day to bake bread, so instead they would buy it, and make quick meals out of a pre-sliced loaf of bread. Most likely not thinking about the things that would change if they took the time to bake instead. Or maybe they believed they didn’t have time to learn, or that it would be too hard. then, everyone is stuck at home for weeks, being encouraged to not do anything, and are suddenly gifted with many more hours of the day, so they bake bread, and they realize it isn’t just a loaf of bread. It is love, and pleasure, and enjoyment, and happiness, and delicious, and put together and baked, and then consumed. And without knowing, they bring these things into their lives, and think it’s just a hobby to bake my own bread, but really, unknowingly, it is so much more than that.

In the very beginning of the podcast, they explore the roots of the word companion, and how it relates back to the breaking of bread with your companions. My entire view of the importance of bread in my life is based on this, and having no idea that this was the root of the word, it was very striking to me, and could not be more true.

ZOOM ART

VIDEO NOTES

For each of the videos we were instructed to watch, they seem to have a similar levels of choreography, in the sense where the performer seems to have been given conceptual instruction, but not so much to the extent where what they are doing seems like an action that is orchestrated by someone else. Additionally, the videos containing more than one person doing the action, such as ‘Suck Teeth Compositions’, the performers preform individually, yet their actions contrast the other performers actions harmoniously, but still seem very natural to each person. This makes the video very easy to watch, and get lost in, because the flow of it grabs, and holds on the to attention of the viewers so effectively.

ZOOM ART PROPOSAL

When thinking about what I miss the most about my friends, it isn’t so much that I miss talking to them, but I miss just being in their presence and having their energy around me. My idea for the zoom art is to just coexist with someone I really miss, and haven’t seen in a very long time, because of the pandemic, the concept is to try to transfer friendly energy and friendly presence over zoom in a way that feels almost like they are here with me, and being alone physically, not so lonely. Similar to Factum Tremblay, shown in class, the idea is to have two people, connected over the internet, who also have a strong bond in real life. Unlike Factum Tremblay, the communication isn’t verbal, but instead, it is through someone’s energy, and just feeling close to that person, even though you are far away.

SOCIAL DISTANCING SELF PORTRAIT

Nevan

—

“The pandemic has been really awful for my brain. As someone who struggles with my mental health regularly, having to stay indoors, and not see people has been a very intense struggle for me. The amount of people I have seen since this all started, I can count on one hand. As someone who uses going out as a coping mechanism, the results of having to stay inside, and in my own space, in my own head, have been less than good.”

—

For this assignment, I decided to take a Social Distance Self Portrait. I chose to be very honest with how it is going for me. Since the beginning of the pandemic, I have watched my mental health decline. More than I would like to admit, I am like this for the majority of the day. I find it very empowering to create art about my mental state and be very honest about it, because it makes something I despise and find exhausting about myself, into something I can appreciate.

NOTES WEEK 5:

• Most videos go along with a blurb that seems somewhat optimistic about the pandemic
• Still person, background movies – maybe have TV in back?
• Neutral music or background noise
• Self portrait?

BANNER

Minimalism: The first banner I made reads ‘MINIMALISM’ in very small, simple letting and is displayed on a large empty wall on its own.

Disturbance: The second banner reads ‘DISTURBANCE’. It is hung in two places, and the end is strung but not hung. This implies that the banner has been disturbed, and is no longer hung in three places, as initially implied.

NOTES WEEK 3:

Possible banners:

• boring art

• minimalism- really small, on big empty wall

• letters

• passage of time- like a birthday banner

• like a birthday banner 

• taken for granted 

• settler colonial violence 

• dematerialization – gradually becomes harder to see 

• not here

• create a space 

• discrete colours

• anxieties about death-rainbow coloured like happy birthday, a star at the beginning and end

• dont be shy

• black and white-black side white, white side black

• moral obstacles 

• disturbance -half hanging, half falling, black 

• flowery

NOTES WEEK 3

Word art displayed on billboards in public is such an interesting, and effective way to make simple words have such a big meaning, and having it displayed so large really just throws all the meaning and thoughts behind it right into the faces of the public. Expanding on this, the public display of such an artwork, reaches a much more broad audience, because it includes a large amount of people who may not wander into a an art gallery, or come into contact with much art in their daily lives. One of my favourite pieces we explored was ‘The Last Billboard’. I found this to be one of the most intriguing pieces, because of its power, as well as its simplicity. I think this method of displaying art does exactly what it is supposed to, and really gets the message through to people, who may be ignorant to exploring the deeper meaning of other installations.

BOOK STACKS

Katchadorian specifically with their work on the series ‘Sorted Books’, gives new perspective and meaning to books, without any kind of description with the content inside them. Additionally, the series tells a story with multiple books, making the viewer almost no longer consider their individual contents anymore. Dymants work with his piece ‘One Billion Years’ used a similar approach, where the meaning of the work was not found in each individual book, but in the collection as a whole. Although the concept of both these works is very similar, as well as the execution being very similar, they give off completely different conclusions to each piece. Katchadorian uses the titles to write very short, poetic stories, that are worded in a somewhat choppy way, but still make sense, and flow nicely. Whereas Dymants tells a continuous, less poetic story over the past as well as the future, using book titles which are seemingly unrelated, but somehow connected and relevant, and keep track of time.

I took an approach similar to that of Katchadorian’s book stacks, making the title of the books create somewhat of a narrative between the books. To create this, I took all of the books I could find in my house and laid them out on the floor so I could see all of the titles. My library consisted of books I have used for classes over the past three years, as well as books I moved out of my childhood home with because I have an emotional connection to them, as well as books that I use for personal reference.

NOTES WEEK 2

Books Stacks:

• Poetic stack – have a common theme
• Story telling stack
• Stacked to read level – not lines up along the side
• stacked vertically

Week 10:

Regrettably, this super cool project came at a time when food was the last thing on my mind. For two weeks, I was in bed with fever and hardly any appetite. The next week after that, I was in the hospital, recovering, hooked up to an IV, gaining some appetite but being fed a healthy arrangement of hospital food three times a day. It was like being on an airplane for a week straight. With every meal came these funny little slips of paper. I saved a few, but not one for every meal I was there. Below are examples of breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

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I found these papers quite charming and I hoped to do something with them, which is why I suppose I kept them. My initial idea was to use them as some kind of recipe/menu for my meals for a few days. But aside from it being hard to go out and obtain all these little snacks, I thought it would be a horrible waste, since now that I’m out of the hospital I’m quite enjoying eating whatever I choose.

So, I took inspiration from Aislinn Thomas’ Pancakes, and stacked them:

In doing this, I stumbled on a fairly good representation of what the last few weeks looked like to me: an overlay of semi-transparent days and meals all congealing into a hardly legible single piece of paper.

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Week 9:

Aislinn Thomas’ A Stack of Pancakes to hold up the Ceiling (2015)

I think a lot of the best artworks fall into the section of art which some people complain about that “that’s not art, I could have done that”. Thomas’ pancakes definitely falls in that category. Her pancake tower is simple, and exists without reasoning. I find it funny that she did not even consider her reason for doing the work until her partner asked her if she did it because her ceiling had previously caved in, at which point she said maybe I did do it because of that… It speaks to the magic of art, and the way it seems to reach in past your conscious mind to bring you things you didn’t even know you were thinking about. Yeah, I could have made so many pancakes that I stacked them to my ceiling and let them start rotting, but I wouldn’t have and I didn’t.

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Week 8:

Bread for me has always been a breakfast food, and meal in its own. For whatever reason, if given a slice of bread on the side of a meal, say for lunch or dinner, I never quite got into the habit of eating them together; using the bread to wipe off the leftover sauces on the plate the way I saw my mom do. When I was a younger, picky eater, bread was the only thing I would eat on vacation. We would be in the Dominican Republic, with a full buffet of delicious cooked food, and I would grab a bun and some butter.

A more meaningful relationship I and my family have to bread is to a sweet Romanian bread called Cozonac. My mom makes it twice a year: on her late father’s birthday, and for the holidays. Making cozonac takes a full day of work of mixing and flattening and rising, then my mom braids three strands of dough and puts them into a pan to bake. Normally if she’s making it, she’ll make enough dough for 3 loaves. The result is a sweet bread with cocoa, nut, and raisin swirls throughout. I grew up eating cozonac and look forward to it every year.

Bread has never been an addition to my meals, but something I would eat alone or not at all, so I wouldn’t consider it a comfort food nor the center of a meal. I think my comfort food is spaghetti, with butter and feta cheese, which I suppose is similar to bread in composition.

I think baking, like knitting, is an old hobby that appealed to people in the pandemic for several reasons. For one, it is a skill, and something you can work to improve on, which sets up a sort of psychological ‘ladder’ for one to climb. Next, it takes up a lot of time, which is important since we all have nothing but time on our hands. And lastly, when you’re done, you have something to show from it: something you can tangibly grab and consume as part of your day. In short, pandemic baking seems to have become so popular because of the way it takes up so much time, without feeling like that time was wasted.

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Week 7:

Video link: https://youtu.be/M8cLKxICzDU

For the video art, I was inspired in reading Castro’s article and the way they spoke on how Zoom affects our days. Making another appearance this semester, I asked my partner to stay on Zoom with me for the first few hours of our day, despite us being in the same room. We stayed muted and I told him to close the tab so he could focus on doing his work, and I did the same. Castro speaks about having this ‘immediate’ or sometimes laggy feedback of ourselves over Zoom – we can sometimes hear our voices bounce back, and we can always see ourselves in the little square at the bottom. In meetings, our attention, already so weirdly divided, is also in part taken up by our own mirror-image which looks back at us through the screen.

My original plan was to create two videos following the exact same format, but to see what happens if we kept the tabs open rather than closing them. The video posted was around 2-3 hours, sped up and condensed into a 12 minute video (arbitrarily chosen, as I played with the playback speed to find something not too slow but not too fast). I meant for the subject to be mine/my partner’s attention; which you can see through darting eyes across screens, or times when the screen gets no attention at all. Unfortunately, I got sick shortly after filming this video so the second iteration didn’t come to be.

I had hoped to see a difference between the two, noticeable only to those who have been immersed in Zoom for the past few months. I wondered if, while having an image of myself on the screen, the little changes in behaviour (i.e. looking often at myself, adjustment of hair/clothes) would read on the video as purposeful, or if it wouldn’t even change the outcome.

NOTES:

1. Pipilloti Rist – Be Nice To Me (Flatten 04) 2008: The insistent, almost literal “in your face” way in which the video is filmed is hard not to immediately notice. It’s gross, uncomfortable, and weirdly real. By using the glass in front of the camera, Rist affects the viewers by making us feel as though it is our own eyeballs that she’s rubbing against. We all know the feeling of pushing, pulling skin; so Rist puts us in a space where we are viewers of the act but also know exactly how it feels to be in her situation.
2. Suck Teeth Compositions: What strikes me is the semi-musical compositions that the artist probably spent a long time considering and editing in succession. I believe as a viewer these videos affect you in one of two ways, and it is extremely dependent on your race and upbringing. On one hand, as you watch you feel as if you’re on the receiving end of the sounds. Even though you know you’re watching a video of strangers, you can’t help but take it personally. On the other, (I imagine, if you are part of the black community) the videos are like a dictionary of sounds: you may be able to dissect each sound and place it as ‘disdain’ or ‘annoyance’ and so on, with each sound being different to the “trained ear”. The videos present a form of language that doesn’t need words to be understood.

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Week 6:

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Week 4:

I’ve been staying with my boyfriend for the past two months and a bit. We only leave the house to go grocery shopping, or to walk around the neighbourhood when we find time. Everyday, we wake up to the alarm ringing at 8:00 AM, then it’s head underwater until our work for the day is done. Write some notes, take a small break. Finish that assignment, cause the next one is due soon. Is it already 2:00? We should probably eat. Then back to work. Suddenly it’s 8:00 PM, 12 hours have passed, so we start to power down. Shower, climb into bed, “goodnight”, “goodnight”, and we start over again the next day.

I chose to take my two videos portraits of us in our everyday spots. The concept of Adad Hannah’s video portrait fit in quite nicely with this moment, since we’re stuck in this moment; for now. Like a lot of his distance portraits of strangers reflect, society as a whole is stuck holding its breath until the ‘video’ is over and we can move again, but we don’t know when that’ll be. My partner and I are stuck in the same way as everyone else is right now, and as students, we’re stuck in our daily schedule as well. Not much changes from day-to-day, maybe the clothes and the content of the work, but suddenly it’s nearing the end of October when we could’ve sworn we only just hit September.

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For my banner, I found that a lot of the phrases/words I put together from the article related to our current situation, so I decided to go with one of those. The words I found play off at least two meaning of “here”. Firstly – not that we do it much in university anymore, but – is the use of “here” as an answer for role call in school. Second is the physical use of the word. We are present in classes, but we are not in classes.

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Nadia Myre’s Indian Act (2002) used traditional Native American techniques of beading to erase all 56 pages of the Federal Government’s Indian Act. The pages were mounted onto cloth to facilitate the beading process. The page is beaded in red and any “words” appear as white beads, leaving behind a facsimile of a document, where words are just lines of colour.

Lenka Clayton’s (collab. with Jon Rubin) Fruit and Other Things (2018) project took the written records of rejected artworks from the Carnegie International (10,632 artworks) and turned each into a hand-lettered text painting. Each painting was exhibited for a day, then given away to visitors.

In both cases, Clayton and Myre are using documents as the basis of their art. In Clayton’s case, the documents seem to be a serendipitous discovery of titles with a certain history; whereas for Myre, the Indian Act holds a great amount of weight and importance to her and her community.

Clayton’s method of work takes the idea of an image, shortened into a title, and transformed so that the words themselves become the artwork. To viewers (or readers), the imagery behind the title can only be imagined; bringing to mind questions of the visual importance of art. What are we missing when we read this title without an image to accompany it? Would it have been better with its image? Does that even matter?

Myre goes the opposite direction. In her case, these words that have been written so long ago, about her people, and have caused so much destruction to their way of living, need to be erased. Using traditional beading, the Indian Act is transformed into a piece of Native American art. Myre utilizes irony as part of her message, and allows (or hopes) for a sort of healing process to begin, whether within herself or within her community.

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Weekly Assignment 1:

I have a handful of books in my student house in Guelph, which I use for various reasons. There are many picture/encyclopedia-type books, art books, poetry books, and fiction books which I’ve read so many time their spines are cracked. I found it hard to look for titles to string together into coherent messages, so rather than look for “inconsistencies”, as Katchadourian did, I found a consistency. Nearly all my books start with the word “The” (which I doubt is uncommon among book collections), so I arranged them so each “the” lines up down the middle. Taking inspiration from Dyment, I decided to block out the background with black.

The titles of my rather small collection of books did not bring me much further inspiration, so I stacked all paperback books and lined them up flush left to create this image, which ended up being a nice composition of the various horizontal topographies of my books.

Trying to go in another direction again with my third image, I wanted to make use of space/emptiness. Ripped straight from google, Existentialism “explores the nature of existence by emphasizing experience of the human subject.” In this image, the book is a placeholder for the human subject; metaphorically alone on the shelf, and all meaning must be created by itself.

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My Chocolate Cake and Bread From The Semester

The 5 Day Lifespan of a Piece of Tomato.

For this piece, I decided to document a slice of tomato every day for five days to see how it changed. The tomato stayed unbothered on a styrofoam plate in my kitchen. It was interesting to watch the changes each day, and I wonder what would have happened if I didn’t have to get rid of it.

Food That Reminds Me of My Family (One with illustrations, and one without).

Food That Reminds Me of My Family, 2020. Victoria Abballe

Here is a conceptual food portrait of the members of my immediate family. These were the first food items that came to mind when I thought of each family member.

A dozen of butter tarts for my mom because she bakes these every other week – I swear

A single shot of espresso for my dad because he has at least one a day.

A gluten-free loaf of bread for my sister Laura because she has a gluten intolerance.

A steamed head of broccoli for my sister Abbey because she loves broccoli and I had a vivid memory of her once cooking me some in her apartment.

And lastly, a cup of coffee for my oldest sister Emilee, but it has to have a bunch of cream and sugar in it.

Notes from Bread Podcast/ Week 8

Morning Routines on Zoom with Sydney

https://vimeo.com/user108364993/review/476986209/df0cbfbee6

Apple Eating on Zoom- Video Art

https://vimeo.com/user108364993/review/476102220/37aec21dfd

https://vimeo.com/user108364993/review/476102220/37aec21dfd

IDEA 2) 5-10 people Miming each other. One person will start to make a movement, then the next person will copy the movement, then it will be passed on to the next person, etcetera. This will go on until the leader stops their gestures. OR it can be like broken telephone and the leader will make gestures to reference a sentence/ short story.

IDEA 3) Using the tiny zoom screen to put on makeup instead of looking in a mirror.

IDEA 4) Throwing an object (like a ball) to one person back and fourth. To make this work, there should be one person with each artist in real life throwing the ball to the artist so it looks like the ball is passing between two screens.

IDEA 5) 5 people playing different songs on different instruments.

IDEA 6) 5 people taking their computer for a walk around their house. (This may become too chaotic)

IDEA 7) Reading a section of a book with someone. (Aloud or silently)

Adad Hannah & Social Distancing Portraits

Here are my three social distancing portraits I have created in the style of Adad Hannah. I shot my subjects for one minute straight as if they were posing for a photograph. Similar to Hannah’s, my videos were all shot outside on a DSLR camera, about 5-10 meters away. (I have updated my videos and taken out the distracting music)

Social Distancing Video Portrait 01. Eileen (gardening edition).

“Quarantine has given me the opprotunity to spend time in the garden and take care of my plants.”

Social Distancing Video Portrait 02. Max (photography edition).

“I picked up a new hobby that I have grown to love over quarantine. Photography. It got me outside in the fresh air instead of staying cooped up inside.”

Social Distancing Video Portrait 03. Victoria (an extra edition).

“Here’s me posing for a photograph for one minute straight. Nothing too special about it except my eyes wouldn’t stop watering.”

These books (some of which were generously lent to me by my roommate) come together to create a sense of an imaginative starry sky at night.

These book titles together pretty much sum up my existence. I can’t live if there’s no sketching involved.

These books looked very aesthetically pleasing together so I thought I’d add them here. Inspired by Ryan Park.

Here is my banner with words taken from the “Interesting” article. I took the words “Identifying Patterns” and placed two different patterns in my banner for the viewer to recognize and identify.

Media: Colourful letters printed on printer paper, string, and shot on a DSLR camera.

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Here is another banner I made from a word from the “Interesting” article. I made it as simple as possible.

Media: Marker on printer paper, string, and shot on a DSLR camera.

NOTES:

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Exercises by Artists: Abramovic, Fluxus, Learning to Love You More, Do it, Erwin Wurm, Jen de Los Reyes, Academie X, photos of you holding hands with a stranger

Intervention assignments – cross a boundary, go somewhere you shouldn’t

Colour Sculpture/Intervention:

Text As Art: Make a Sign for a Fictional event, Make a BIG BANNER in public, Site specific didactic intervention, Laurel Woodcock, Micah Lexier, Dave Dyment, Lawrence Weiner, Jenny Holzer, Bruce Nauman, Artists who use text

reading on Text as Art

Tattoos as Art

Spacious Quiet assignment (Acoustic ecology podcast from On Being, and artists who use silence –  or Walking as Art – reading/response/exercise

Videos -collage, montage and sound, Daniel Cockburne, Arthur Jaffa, Christian Marclay,

Videos – After Gillian Wearing

Walking as Art: Richard Long, Francis Alys, Tim Knowles,

Some prompts, scores, assignments and exercises by artists:

Yoko Ono

George Macunias, 1931-78 Founding member of FLUXUS in 1960 – wanted to “promote living art, anti-art, promote NON-ART reality, to be grasped by all peoples, not only critics, dilettantes, and professionals”

“When asked to define exactly what Fluxus was, Maciunas would often respond by playing samples of dogs barking or geese honking, rooting the movement firmly in the absurd tradition that had grown up out of dadaism and surrealism. Fluxus activities ranged from public performances and street theatre, to lo-fi sculptures. Maciunas was anti-ownership and refused to allow any of the Fluxus works to be signed, making it difficult for dealers to value their worth. He was also instrumental in transforming Soho from a run-down, unfashionable district of New York city into an artists colony; when a warehouse shut, Maciunas moved in, using it as an art space for his collegues and friends. Those enticed by the movement included Joseph Beuys, who was drawn to the group because of its inclusive philosophy – echoing as it did, Beuys’s own beliefs that everyone was an artist. Yoko Ono was also a member and her bed-in with John Lennon is a classic example of Fluxus performance. “

Text from: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2009/jan/28/artist-george-maciunas

Marina Abramovic:

Learning to Love you More: Harrell Fletcher and Miranda July

Jen de Los Reyes

Diane Borsato and Amish Morrell: Outdoor School