For (the other) Rachel

Failed? movie making


Failed music sharing

Is this, like this?

For the past couple of weeks I have been working in the sculpture studios trying to finish a piece for a show we put together that opened last Friday. During this time I pretty much spent all of my time working; I did nothing that wasn’t absolutely necessary and towards the end I found that I could even cut out sleeping at least for a little while. I basically sacrificed my entire life to this one pursuit for a while and as stressful and unpleasant this may sound it was actually kind of enjoyable. There were a lot of other people who were doing the same thing as me, so we all went a little crazy and spent all our time in the studios together working, and it was all by our own choice. We could have gotten away with spending less time making our respective objects, but we wanted to be there working on them, and when we were away from the studios even for a little while we were anxious to get back. I haven’t decided yet if this kind of totally obsessive behavior is a good thing or not. I happen to be lucky enough to be majoring in the thing that I obsess over, so I have a little bit more freedom to spend so much time on it. I think that idea of being totally immersed in one thing, spending all you time on it is really interesting. I love finding people who have totally dedicated their lives to something. A lot of the collectors that we have looked at in class have done that, and I think that collectors and artists have a similar sort of obsessive devotion to something which I’m sure is very idiosyncratic and may not be understood by many others who are not equally obsessed with their own projects.

Chocolate and Peanut Butter

I’ve already written a couple times about artists who use unusual materials to create their artwork. Vic Muniz is another artist who uses materials not usually associated with art making to create his pieces. He’s used everything from chocolate, sugar, and peanut butter to dirt, and even clouds to make his images.
For an exhibition called Cloud Cloud, Muniz had a pilot sky write line drawings of clouds onto the sky above Manhattan and Miami. Muniz was on the ground as the clouds were being made photographing the cartoon like artificial drawings in clouds of clouds. So the image he was trying to recreate became the actual object.


Muniz has also made a series called Equivalents where he manipulated cotton balls to make them look like animals or praying hands and then photographed them in a way that makes them look like old photos of clouds. His work has so many steps and elements involved that it becomes impossible to categorize him as strictly a sculptor, painter or photographer. Just as Muniz is impossible to identify a lot of his work has the same type if identity conflicts. Is it a cloud, a cat, cotton the lines between the differences blur. There's a really video of Vic Muniz called Worst Possible Illusion on his website under the section for Pictures of Clouds where he talks a lot about his work and his thought process.

Muniz’s work has a great since of humor and irreverence. He looks at everything in his life as a source of inspiration and allows his ideas for work evolve from what he encounters. In his TED talk Muniz tells a story about how he became an artist and it began with the fact that he was born in Brazil included an awards ceremony, a job at an add agency and a fight among other seemingly unrelated non art experiences. I like the idea that events in your life can have totally unforeseen consequences way down the road, but they were still working together to get you the point you are at now. In my philosophy class we learned that the world is deterministic which basically means that while we can make choices in our daily lives it is predetermined how everything will work out. I kind of like this idea because it can allow you to believe that everything happens for a reason. You cannot say, “well what if I had done this instead” because you couldn’t have done anything differently. I am an extremely indecisive person and I find it takes a little of the pressure off the decision making process.

Choices

I recently listened to an episode of Radiolab about choice. As the would has developed the number of choices available to us in a daily basis has increased exponentially. This seems like it would be a positive development, but it may not be. Sometimes there are so many possibilities it becomes overwhelming and inhibits our ability to make an informed decision. In the program they spoke about George Miller’s paper “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two,” which states that the average human is only able to hold on to about seven pieces of information plus or minus two in their working memory at any given time. This is why so many of the numbers we have to remember are 9 digits or less. If we have to try and deal rationally with more then 7 factors we are unable to focus and use our good judgment is easily overridden.

Researcher Baba Shiv did a test where he asked participants to remember a set of numbers and then walk across the hall and recite the numbers. Some subjects were given only 2 or 3 numbers to remember and some were given 7. As they walked down the hall they were stopped and offered two options for snacks, either a fruit cup or a piece of chocolate cake. In a overwhelming majority those who were remembering 7 digits chose the cake while those who were only dealing with 2 chose the fruit cups. Baba Shiv believes this is because our rational brain can only deal with so much at one time. If it is totally occupied remembering a series of numbers the emotional side is able to take over and the subjects choose their emotional choice over the best rational choice. Its a little scary that our logical decision making skills can be so easily overridden with only 7 items, just think about how many different things we try and keep in mind even when we are making small decisions.

In Search of the Miraculous

There is one artist that feel comes to mind a lot, dutch artist Bas Jan Ader. I thought of him when we were talking about Allen Lightman's book "Einstein's Dreams" and when we read about Ray Johnson. Bas Jan Ader is a conceptual artist who was a performance artist, photographer and filmmaker and his work became popular during the early 70s. A number of his performances are videos of him slowly allowing himself to fall. He falls from a chair placed on a rooftop, he falls from a tree branch, he falls into the river on a bicycle. The falls are so simple and deliberate they seem very elegant and affecting.





One of his best know pieces is a short film called “I’m too sad to tell you” where Ader cries in front of the camera for a little over 3 minutes. I feel like a lot of his work plays with the line between theatrically and sincerity and leaves you wondering what your response to him should be.



What I find the most fascinating about Bas Jan Ader was what I suppose you could call his final piece. In 1975 he set off on what he called “a very long sailing trip.” The trip was a part of a piece called “In Search of the Miraculous” in which he would attempt to cross the Atlantic by himself in a 12 ft sailboat. He hoped to make the trip in 60 to 90 days, but three weeks after he set off he lost radio contact and was presumed lost at sea. 6 months later his boat was found off the coast of Ireland, but Bas Jan had vanished, and his body has never been found. I feel like this story is a really good example of art and life merging. His disappearance is similar to Ray Johnson’s suicide, but it is less clear what Bas Jan’s intentions were and where circumstances took over. When we were discussing the different time scenarios we talked about being able to choose the moment of your death or at least being able to decide that this would be an acceptable time to go. I think that Bas Jan Ader being lost at sea was a really appropriate ending for him; it almost makes him seem mythical, more like a character from a legend then a real human being.
His website his a lot of his films and more information about the sailing trip.

Walking

Recently we read an excerpt from an interview with Werner Herzog in my sculpture class. Herzog is a German filmmaker who directed Grizzly Man, Fitzcarraldo, Encounters at the End of the World as well as many others. In the interview Herzog is talking about walking and how important traveling on foot is to him. Herzog explains that walking on foot is how we are intended to travel:

For too long now we have been estranged from the essential, which is the nomadic life: traveling on foot. A distinction must be made between hiking and traveling on foot. In today's society - though it would be ridiculous to advocate traveling on foot for everyone to every possible destination - I personally would rather do the existentially essential things in my life on foot. If you live in England and you girlfriend is in Sicily, and it is clear that you want to marry her, then you should walk to Sicily to propose.... The volume and depth and intensity of the world is something that only those on foot will ever experience.

Herzog tells a story about how he refused to fly to Paris to see a dying friend, but instead walked all the way from Munich because he could not accept that she might die. He said he walked against her death and knew that she would be alive when he arrived. She was and she lived into her nineties. I like to think that the faith that Herzog put in the power and efficacy of the act of walking actually imbued his journey with real potency. We have become so reliant on the things we have created to make our lives easier that we have lost touch with the importance of utilizing our given tools. Walking is a very primitive and basic mode of movement as nothing is needed outside of ourselves. We have taken what we were born with, our intellect and ingenuity and invented and produced so much to improve our lives that we don’t even need to make use of our skills anymore. I wonder if at some point we’ll start to slip back down the evolutionary slide because we don’t need to remember how to build, how to shelter ourselves to fend for ourselves or even how to walk to transport ourselves.

Seed Stage

This week I went to a lecture by Corin Hewit a sculptor and photographer. The piece he spoke the most about was a project called Seed Stage which was installed in the Whitney. For Seed Stage Hewitt built a room in the museum and filled it with a vast variety of materials and tools. He had various types of food including a root cellar where he could grow more vegetables as well as an oven, hot plates and all the equipment needed to manipulate the food. He also had drills, a bandsaw, materials for mold making and printers and various other objects and tools.


For three months he just worked in this space manipulating the objects around him in various ways and photographing them. The resulting photos were not manipulated in anyway and were displayed around the gallery.



Some of the photos are deliberately composed and some happened spontaneously in the space. Hewitt emphasized the importance of looking in this project. He spent the majority of his time looking at his surroundings and then working off of what he found. The corners of the room were cut off so the viewer could observe him and be a part of the looking as well. I really love this piece. In my work recently I have been thinking a lot about process and the actual action of creating your work and I really like the idea of just creating a space for yourself with this huge wealth of materials and then just working from what is around you. Manipulating objects purposefully as well as accepting spontaneous compositions and creations.
This video gives a really good sense of the piece.