“Public, Private, Secret” show

 “ We share intimacies with the air as thought unconcerned about who can hear us or the details of our physical surroundings”.  Sherry Turkle

     The exhibition “Public, Private, Secret”, at the International Center of Photography, addresses the current paradigms of self-identity and the role that digital photography and videography play in the social environment and on the personal privacy. Moreover, images and time-based works, which use social media sources like YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook highlights on social issues and the implications that digital images have on our current society and culture.

A good example of that is Testament, (2009/16), a two-channels video installation created by the artist Natalie Bookchin.  This installation consists of a series of videos, for example, I Am Not, Laid Off and My Meds, which focuses themes such as, sexual identity, unemployment and pharmacotherapy addictions. These videos, resulting from the montages of hundreds of online self-portraits clips, are presented as a narrative that blurs the borders between public and private life. The videos are displayed on two facing walls, which allows an overlapping of people’s images and voices that make evident today dual social network relationships of connectivity and isolation.

Another example of online re-appropriation and re-configuration is Doug Rickard’s N.A (2013): A sequence of low-resolution videos, voices and sounds edited from YouTube that depict American street scenes of violence, and frustration occurring in areas of social and economic deprivation. These videos’ sequences are the result of three year of the artist’s YouTube research. Firstly, Rickard started his online research using American cities’ names.  Secondly, he looked into words that helped him to explore the American culture landscape. Finally, he expanded his inquiries by using keywords like “Crackheads,” “Gone Wild,” “Passed Out White Girl,” “Gangstalking,” “Racial Profiling,” “Illegal Search,” or “Police Brutality,” which resulted in thousands of videos that depict American violence and social inequality.

An impressive work is the video installation, Lessons I-LXVIII, 2014/16 by Martine Syms, a performer and, media artist based in Los Angeles. Her 10 min video is a compilation of 30 seconds clips selected randomly from online videos, blogs, homemade movies, video diaries, advertisements and police webcams that focuses mainly on the everyday life of African American peoples, their cultural and their underestimated American society’s role.

Additionally, the work of the Swiss artist Kurt Caviezel, Pass De Deux, (2015). Pass De Deux is a series of 72 photographs printed on format 10 x 8 taken from the video of a publicly accessible webcam, of a man dancing naked. He is imitating a professional dancer on TV. Caviezel is a photographer who has been monitoring publicly accessible webcams for nearly 2 decades and has accumulated and archived more than 3 million screen shots focusing on image quality.

Next and almost overlapping to Kurt Caviezel’s work is a sound installation by the American artist Ann Hirsch. Her (2013), installation, YouTube Whispers, is a compilation of low male voices’ reaction to the artist’s webcam dancing, under the name of Caroline, on YouTube.

In addition, Andrews Hammer’s The New Town, (2004/5), is a compilation of images from a mid-western, CCTV surveillance church’s camera, the artist manipulates the camera’s position to give the impression that people are followed after they left the church. On the one hand, the camera’s perspective produces a very interesting photographic viewpoint. On the other hand, it forces us to question citizen surveillance, and in particular, NSC surveillance of American people.

Lastly, What I am Looking For, (2004), Shelley Silver, a New York-based artist, working with still and moving images, present a 15-minute HD documentary, which tells the story of a woman who uses an Internet dating site to post an announcement that invites people to get photographed in public spaces, while they reveal and intimate side of themselves. This work presents a strong visual narrative that explores the limits between private, virtual and public domains.

The works described above, even if they are only a part of the whole exhibition, embody the main themes of the show, because they use Internet sources as the main artistic material and medium to address public and private domains, and to discuss the current network of society’s cultural, political and social issues.

The Creative Act

Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) was one of the few artists of the 20^th century to renew the postulates and possibilities of visual arts. His ideas, explained on the Creative Act, provides the basis for today’s contemporary art creative freedom, and introduces the concept that the act of creation is the result of the artist and the spectator.

For instance, Duchamp considers that the artist creates out of a state of consciousness, like a medium that elucidates and connects with time and space. A human being who creates based on intuition, in opposition to a rational, self-controlled state of mind.  To illustrate his idea, Duchamp cites TS Eliot’s essay: “The more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and the mind which creates”.

According to Duchamp, there is no artist discourse or rational explanation of his/her oeuvre, which will validate it. The importance of a creative act will remain within the public recognition of the artist as a social and cultural producer and his ulterior inclusion into the Art History.

He also makes a distinction among Art, described as a bad or good, Art Coefficient as the non-conscious, subjective, steps and struggles that an artist must overcome to produce raw art, and personal Art Coefficient, which is the difference between the artist’s intentions and the final product.  Moreover, the Art Coefficient is a raw, personal expression of art that must be processed and completed by the spectator. There is the spectator, who decides the esthetic importance of the artwork.

To conclude, Duchamp was mainly concerned with the intellectual aspects of art and not with the physicality of an artwork. He believed that art was an intellectual process, free from traditional constrains and predominant rules. His anti-art objects and intellectual ideas established the basis for future art movements, for example, abstract expressionism, pop art, happenings and conceptual art, as well as participative art.

Coa Fei Show

Coa Fei Show

On Thursday, August 25^th we went to MOMA PS1 to see Cao Fei’s first solo American museum show.

Cao Fei is a well-known Chinese, young artist from the industrial city of Guangzhou, who is currently, living in Beijing. In 2001, she received a BFA from Guangzhou Academy of Art. Her father, a famous Chinese realist sculptor has greatly influenced her work and introduced Fei to video as a medium.

Through media like video, animation and Second life Internet VR, Cao’s recurring themes are the effects that the rapidly growing Chinese economy and globalization have on the life of the young Chinese generations. Moreover, she portrays the alienation, desires and illusions that they have, by mixing fantasy and reality.

The show at PS1 comprises the artist’s first works, a series of videos, produced from 1998 to 2003 that analyzes Chinese culture and its rejection to its own traditions. These videos are also characterized by the absence of global references.

In 2004, Cao released COSplayers a video that focuses on teenagers dressed as Japanese characters. The use of foreign references marks a change in the way that she approached her recurring topics. Her oeuvre acquires global dimensions, which are reaffirmed by works such as RMB city and iMirror. These projects were developed on Second Life, a popular western Internet Virtual Reality program.

 After that, she produced Haze and Fog, a fictional 46 min Art film that used tango music and Zombie culture to explore modern Chinese global culture. This work focuses on the confusion, alienation and desires of Chinese youths.

In 2014, she created La Town, a post-apocalyptic fictional video that contains many western elements, for example, a German Supermarket, a MacDonald and a French dialogue based on the French film Hiroshima.

In conclusion, the use of Internet culture as a medium and the fact that most of Cao Fei’s works are primarily relisted abroad, have called her to have for a more global approach into her oeuvre.

Participant Sheila Broser

Art meets art. It is difficult for me to destroy art. I will try my best to use your
beautiful soap!!!

participant Barbara Goldin

Wanted you to see my new piece of sculpture in its new home!!!

Participant Elizabeth Evans

First Pic of Elizabeth sculpture with contract of participation

Participant: Michael Gellatly

Participant Patricia from Rio de Janeiro

Phase III

Art Soap from Berlin

Dear Silvana,

It has been almost a year that I visited your studio space in the Bakehouse complex and received a beautiful little soap sculpture as part of a project. I realize that I am somewhat delayed in getting back to you, but I can report that the little sculpture has lived with me for almost a year in Berlin/Germany. I enclose two pictures (MiamiSoap1 and MiamiSoap2), which show where it started its Berlin life on my sink, all shiny and full of expectations. I have not had the courage to use it more than once or twice, because of fear of damaging its shape too much. Instead, I moved the sculpture to the side of my bathtub, from where it has been watching my daily procedures. I can confirm that the little soap fellow has been extremely discrete about what it saw. But the year has not gone unnoticed. It has grown a somewhat opaque whitish surface, probably the sign of older age with soaps (they do not know how to develop wrinkles). I enclose a picture recently taken, which shows the somewhat opaque surface.

The next plan is that it will be keeping me company in my shower and will actually be used, at least to the extent of making it shiny again. I will report on the progress and hope this first report still reaches you in time for your project.

Best regards, Ulrich