Exhibitions/Lectures-Reflections

Artist Lecture: Scott Tsuchitani is an interesting interventionist and quite humorous about his serious feelings on Asian culture portrayed in America. While watching his lecture, I couldn't help but notice how comfortable and comedic he is with a crowd and it shows up in his artworks too. I believe that he serves as a performer in his career of being an interventionist. I like how he presents a genre of appropriated artworks to convey his message of cultural illiteracy. His trademark of branding his works to look identical of the Asian Art Museum's brand was pure parody. Under the look alike brand is a slogan "Where Asian still means Oriental" and that alone resonated loudly and directed toward an audience to make them aware that this difference in culture has to be acknowledged. The common Asian and the Hollywood manifestation of what the common Asian is, happens to be a total hypocrisy and insults the Asian culture deeply. In his work, "Lord It's the Samurai: Myth + Militarism + Man-Boy Love", he throws Mickey Mouse ears on top of the supposed Samurai's helmet to achieve humor, easy public relation, and parody while again, throwing his signature appropriated Brand under the image to make his statement. Since the opening of the exhibit, "Lords of the Samurai", people went in viewing it as a remarkable piece of work about the life of Samurai, but truely it strayed so far away from the gruesome reality of the history of Samurai, which is what gave Scott his motivation to inform the public of reality undercover. Other works of his shed the same direct light on the imaginative traits that artists seem to conjure up such as Memoirs of a Sansei Geisha: Snapshots of Cultural Resistance and "Foreigners", a designed t-shirt. His works are very amusing and fulfilling in meaning. They are very political and sensible in presentation.

Artist(s) Exhibition: I visited the Justin Quinn and Dada Local collaborative exhibition and it is very interesting that they both explain and portray the history of "Dada" as a movement, but both parties had different intentions in doing so. Justin Quinn's transcription of Moby Dick was piece that grabbed my attention, not that it was directly in the entrance to the left of the exhibition, but because he chose the letter "E", capitalized, to transcribe it. My mind went totally off into deep curiosity of why he chose such a complex letter (compared to the rest of the alphabet capitalized) and why he created a series of them in moving patterns. There was absolutely no correlation of these choices, except the movement the letter in size and pattern, with the plot of the story. I am at a strong opinion of this piece being about language, loss of language, or a letter being the significance in place of the missing language. My eye moved through the piece and not chaotically on the entirety of it. His pieces were intended for the "Dada" movement, but as for "Dada Local", they were chosen artworks that were featured in the show for their unintended relevance to the "Dada" movement. These student works demonstrated traits of "Dada" through their collage (mixed media)-like construction, and lack of a significant subject/meaning. Their presentation of works were very organized and positively siteful.  

   

Reading Responses/Reflections

In Maria Lind's article on "Socially Engaged Art", I approached it as more of an informative piece rather than a reflective passage. She listed many projects that were memorable to her and included their significance, relationship with society, and correlation with the world/politics. This piece within itself was a form of art as she went deeper into the minds of the audience, other than herself. She feels that participation and collaboration of  society with art resonates louder than other forms of art. I totally agree with her and respect the idea of getting others involved because it creates sort of a memorable awareness to an audience and it even promotes activeness. She also classifies social practices to be a minor aesthetic. It is not to be mainstream and governed within a major popular space.


In Guy-Ernest Debord's "Perspectives for Conscious Alterations in Everyday Life", I seem to become puzzled. I viewed it as being a mystery for the reader to solve. He attempts to clarify what "Everyday Life" is, but only uses the terms "every day" and "life" to do so which brings us to question what exactly is it? He diminishes it from being generally what it says and dissects the different aspects of what he has opinionated it to be. I do agree with him when he states that  "There is in this an evident will to hide behind a development of thought based on the separation of artificial, fragmentary domains so as to reject the useless, vulgar and disturbing concept of "everyday life." What I don't agree with is when he says, "To be sure, everyone agrees that certain gestures repeated every day, such as opening doors or filling glasses, are quite real; but these gestures are at such a trivial level of reality that it is rightly objected that they are not of sufficient interest to justify a new specialized branch of sociological research," because he is actually trying to remove reality and consciously persuade his audience that since they lack interest/need for attention, that it doesn't belong in the everyday life group of research. His definitions are quite clear, yet unclear in repetition.

Jerry Saltz seems to go on a rumbling rant was is known as the New Cacophony. In "The Clusterfuck Estthetics" Saltz touches bases heavily on Mike Kelly's works of art. He describes them as being unorganized and compiled chaotically. This idea of art is very inadmissible because it draws in an audience, but it doesn't successfully convey its message as it clouds attention making it difficult to focus on the art itself. It loses its significance with each medium added to the installation. It's very unnecessary and unpleasing to the eye. Some debate whether art should be made for an audience or one's self, because the art world can be quick to reject things at times. Either way, whether the work was intended to please an audience or the artist, he lost site of meaning vs presentation. 

Moyra Davey presented more of an analysis of quoted material on intentional perspectives of photography and accidents. She analyzed actual photographed work as well,but she created a philosophy of what constructs successful photography and how the accidents can actually have beautiful outcomes, as common art is known to do sometimes. One thing I paid close attention to throughout her essay is the intention of the photographer. Was the photographer trying to capture the moment or were they capturing what may look good on camera. Sometimes its the trial shots that hold the most content. She compares the each perspective using the quoted material to help her explain what falls in and out of a category of accidental photography. I agree with her, but not on terms of her included quotation of Sontag stating that images are like quotations. Yes, photographs make a statement, hold a life's moment, and signify a common subject, just as quotations do, but photographs don't just end there. They continue telling a story and one can seek out a new object, key signifier, or detail when revisiting it. Photographs hold more than just words, but a memorial stories and imagination. 

Perfomance Art Piece-Project 2

My piece was solely based on stability (perspectives, focus, dimension, movement, and consistency). Instead of answering the question of Stability by stating what it is, I created what stability would NOT be and what it would not look like which caused an opposition of the audience through the piece and the title. My intention was to create a bit of stress, illusion, and displacement. I came up with the idea by reevaluating my life at this point in time. I am currently juggling two jobs while being full time in school. The feeling of being overwhelmed is an absolute constituent of stress. Stress tends to destroy my focus, stay consistent in inhibiting my mood, create a smaller dimension of hope, and alter my vision and health. This is what I tried to convey by hanging my phone on the dashboard unfixed, spinning my phone on the ground, chopped transitions, glitchyness, dark colors/lighting, closed zoom-in's, and repetition of scenes. I left the mouse cursor in plain view to show that one is responsible for one's own life and that I am in complete control of these happenings. It's just a matter of proper response to it. The reason I used my phone is because my phone seems to be everywhere with me and even suffers the struggle with me as I drop it, bump against it, and scrape it in the midst of running around. It also creates such a low quality view, almost blurred. I'm glad I did it in this way!

Photo Collage in Thrift Store-Project 1 pt. 2

When placing my Photo collage back in the thrift store, no one seemed to notice. The cashier was so busy that she didn't realize that I had went back into the  arts/antique section. Most customers were in the clothing section which is another reason why I didn't receive much attention from returning my artwork. After working a short shift I made time to go back into the Thrift store and take my artwork back out, again without being noticed. After, I went in again to put it back in its place and things were moved around, covering up the space where I first placed my artwork. I ended up moving a few glass pieces to make room for my artwork and this time I left it with no intention of returning for it. In the process, I happened to knock off a piece of the glass that was fixed to my collage, which gave me the idea to not return for it. I was a little bummed that no one happened to notice my peculiar activity within the store any of the times that I visited, but then again,

I'm not sure if it would've been a good result had I been spotted.

Photo Collage-Project 1

For my photo collage, I bought a portrait of a boat. Apparently, it was a symbol of membership in a boat organization as there was a letter attached to it congratulating those members for joining. I also bought an old LIFE magazine (antique) and I used images in the magazine to incorporate into my collage. The before and after magazine cutouts of the bear and the boy came from a Campbell's soup advertisement. Instead I changed the reactor to be a marijuana plant instead of a can of Campbell's soup. I also broke an elaborate gold trimmed plate and created an explosion of the boat and a cutout plane with charred glass charred glass. I sketched a few other images so that I didn't create the typically layered collage. Everything in this piece was meant to be unrelated and pointless as I wanted it to be an influence of the "Dada" movement. Learning about the "Dada" movement was very inciteful, but I wish I could've done more to show its influence.