Monday, May 24, 2010

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Last Seminar / the path of recent work development + influences

Butoh:


January






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March - May :






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choosing / deciding / trying:
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after initially thinking about a grand sized photographic composition resembling a National Gallery classical painting (thinking of Gericault's Raft of the Medusa and Ribera & Zurbaran's use of shadow and contrast (al la Caravagio) as reference;
I moved on to considering wallpaper for a possible installation also utilizing sound (human-animal, gutteral, breathing, out of breath, dark type sound):
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I decided that I have very strong images and a lot of strong options with correctable flaws, so I am re-staging several poses for the project. I have 2 more photo studio appointments that are in time for preparations and 2 more in June which I don't want to use for creating work for the show but rather tie up loose ends as from June 26th or so the photo studio will close.

May:



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and I was especially happy with this one:

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purgatorial = Dante's Divine Comedy






Juiseppe Ribera:

'Apollo flaying Marsayas': In the contest between Apollo and Marsyas, the terms stated that the winner could treat the defeated party any way he wanted. Since the contest was judged by theMuses,[7] Marsyas naturally lost and was flayed alive in a cave near Celaenae for his hubristo challenge a god. Apollo then nailed Marsyas' skin to a pine tree,[8] near Lake Aulocrene (the Turkish Karakuyu Gölü), which Strabo noted was full of the reeds from which the pipes were fashioned (info)


St Francis of Assissi / Zurbaran

Francisco de Zurbarán (November 7, 1598 – August 27, 1664) was a Spanish painter. He is known primarily for his religious paintings depicting monks, nuns, and martyrs, and for his still-lifes.

Chiaroscuro (kiːˈɑːrə.ˈskʊroʊ, –ˈskjʊroʊ, Italian for light-dark) in art is characterized by strong contrasts between light and dark, usually bold contrasts affecting a whole composition. It is also a technical term used by artists and art historians for using contrasts of light to achieve a sense of volume in modeling three-dimensional objects such as the human body.







Gericault - the Raft of the Medusa


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notes to self:
Charon (ferrying the dead)

on a different note: Vishvamitra



some fragments of notes:

Butoh
link to Butoh images (from this blog)

Human / De-human
human as human commoditiy
human waste
non-identity / identity as priviledge
Zygmunt Bauman: Wasted Lives, Modernity and its Outcasts

human condition

beauty / non beauty - currently in conflict with impulse to beautify when actually addressing the non-beautiful ...

security as priviledge, withdrawn at will
State of Exemption (Giorgio Agamben)

woman = object of desire = object
personal experience when I became the 'object', object of desire in equal measures to object of despise and object of all and no value; ownable commodity, the devil's accomplice, despised object, the object that should comply and aid relief, object that should obey, should not have the right to choose.

islam (+ other orthodox faiths) = reduction of woman from human to woman

my speculation: women's rights & equality = a temporary allowance mostly bestowed upon the wealthy, to be revoked first of the poor

purgatory existence of humans who feed the consumer lifestyle which feeds itself, which expels growing numbers of humans into the human waste category...
Concerns with societal issues ranging from civil liberty rights losses to 1984 Orwellian Present rather than Future, human as commodity and expelled as waste. (I.e. violations of human rights, human rights in themselves no longer of interest as not complying with consumer culture. globalization does not profit from rights and I speculate it is about to collapse in it's present form)
abolition of slavery = myth = slavery a contemporary reality and western society, consumerism relies on this condition.

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

New Project

I am still working on this project, this is the first completed image.



I am working on several solutions: an installation,
a large composition as well as individual images.


Sunday, May 9, 2010

Wangechi Mutus

"Es geht nicht darum, Dinge auf eine originelle oder ungewöhnliche Weise in etwas Neues zu verwandeln", hat Wangechi Mutu in einem Interview für das Deutsche Guggenheim Magazine erklärt. "Es geht darum, keine Wahl zu haben, darum, ein halbwegs menschliches Leben zu führen, während einem die Menschlichkeit ständig abgesprochen wird.
Es geht darum, sich ein behagliches Heim einzurichten, während die Welt da draußen dir signalisiert, dass du eigentlich ein Krimineller oder ein Tier sein sollst. Ich versuche deshalb auch nicht, einfach so aus Spaß die Dinge nach 'Ghetto' aussehen zu lassen. Ich versuche vielmehr herauszufinden, was an diesem Impuls menschlich zu bleiben auch für diejenigen interessant ist, die nicht in dieser Armut leben müssen. Tatsächlich bin ich überzeugt, dass wir von dieser Denkweise lernen können."

Saturday, May 8, 2010

Take me to Mongolia



a record of another trip through HIghlands, Lowlands, the Taklamakan and jungles, maybe even a transformation from random to certain. (who'd want such a thing!?)

You will probably find accounts of escapism

You are likely to witness my fumbling for and re-defining THAT elusive sense of purpose as a human and lover and artist.

Thursday, May 6, 2010

The yellow Wallpaper

...Firstly, to the story itself. The narrative voice is a repressed woman of the late 19th century, locked in a room with horrid yellow wallpaper, expected by her husband to recover from a mysterious sickness. The more time she spends in this prison, desperate to write, the more disturbed she becomes, until she begins to see a woman crawling within the wallpaper. This is both a study of psychology and a look into the position of women of the period. ...