It's been a fairly mild, contemplative sort of a week. There's been a good amount of time spent in the library looking at more of Dennis Oppenheim's work. Nothing too revelatory but it was get some more information on Oppenheim and see how his practice has evolved over time.
From presence to the performative
Late on Friday i cracked open Where is the photograph? by David Campany (ed) and read from presence to the performative: rethinking photographic indexicality by David Green and Joanna Lowry. Bit of a mouthful but a fascinating piece of writing. All sorts of interesting ideas came and many of these will surely be discussed here at various points.
But for the moment what really struck me were the comments made regarding the aesthetic qualities of photograph. Green and Lowery suggest that images that are purposefully poor in quality (possibly out of focus or badly exposed) testify to the bodily presence of the photographer. Where as images that are immaculately executed emphasise the role of the camera over the photographer.
The reason this struck me is that many of the images i have been looking at by Smithson, Long and Oppenheim often seem a little poorly taken. But the significance of this aesthetic strategy suddenly became clear to me. By making the image poorly the human element of the process is emphasised. It becomes clear that a person once stood in front of this outdoor work and pressed a shutter. So when viewed in the gallery these images are clearly referencing a site outside of the place in which the image is seen. This corresponds to these artists desire to take art out of the traditional contexts and broaden our ideas of what art could be. Although this style of production may not explicitly make this point the photograph again is being used in a very specific if subtle way.
To the south
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Marce Duchamp the apprentice in the sun 1914 |
In a sudden departure from theoretical work i'll be on road this sunday having a practice run at a project i've been meaning to do for sometime. Simply put this will involve me riding from Marylebone Station, London to my home in Brighton and taking photographs along the 60 mile journey. Each image will be taken at 3 mile intervals with the camera facing South.
This is very much an experiment but ties into my investigations into the process of documentation. Should be interesting and hopefully not too tiring!
I have been meaning to post a response here for the last week, but reading your post today really made me want mention the work of Francis Alys who currently has a show at Tate Modern till 5th September. If you have not already seen this show I thoroughly recommended it as I think it will touch on many of the issues you seem to be looking at in terms of work which are about 'actions' and their documentation. Like Richard Long, walking figures prominently in Alys's work, be this walking sheep around a square in Mexico City, walking an armistice border in Jerusalem called 'the green line' while dribbling a tin of green paint, or pushing a block of melting ice around a city centre, for example.
ReplyDeleteHowever, the work that came to mind today when thinking about how the 'poor' image could be suggested as a testament to the presence of the artist was Tornado a terrifying piece of work that documents Alys' action of attempting to run into the eye of a tornado. In fact not just one tornado, but Alys has continued this project for the last 10 years, running into countless dust storms which for him represent the imminent collapse of a political order. The work that is displayed in the Tate is a 55min video which documents many of these attempts. Sometimes in the film we see a small figure (Alys) running across a open landscape towards a towering tornado spinning out of control, but mainly the film takes the viewer right to the centre of Alys' endeavour and into the heart of the storm where we see (but of course without the physical experience-thankfully) what he sees via the handheld camcorder he is carrying. The result for each of those 30 seconds or so of being in the centre is something that feels out of control, chaotic and far from predictable. The video image starts to breakdown and becomes pixelated, the lens of the camera is obscured by dust and scratches - the images we see, sitting comfortably in a darken room of the gallery are far from technically perfect, the camera is not in control, though I doubt really if the artist is either. But these poor images do seem to testify to the bodily presence (an index) of the artist outside of the gallery undertaking actions that could never be commodified in the same way as the Rothko's that hung on the same walls just last year.
By the way there are some great Tate podcasts relating to the Francis Alys show. You might find the one that includes a paper by Anna Dezeuze on the art precariousness relevant.