Mendieta vs. Smithson: Land Art in the 1970's

While reading about Ana Mendieta, I realized that the male-dominated, “dematerialization” trend in art that started in the 1960’s is something that I am interested in further exploring and analyzing through the art of Ana Mendieta and Robert Smithson. I will focus on how Mendieta’s use of negative space and her body in land art has left her in the shadow of Smithson’s aggressive manipulation and fabrication of the earth in art history.

As Blocker mentions in her text, “Where Is Ana Mendieta?” the post 1960’s trend amongst artists was to eliminate the art object and redefine the “art experience” for a variety of different reasons.

“…artists, inflamed over the economic involvement of art institutions in the Vietnam War, distrustful of the commodification of art, or angered by the racism, sexism, and elitism of gallery and museum exhibitions, tested a variety of ways to democratize and disseminate the art experience. Conceptual art, earthworks, installations, video, body art, and performance all worked actively to redefine the spaces in which art was viewed and to integrate the audience into the process of artistic production.” (pg. 5).

In this way, the artists of this time period were critiquing the art world itself, attempting to redefine what art was traditionally known as; the commoditized object. Mendieta’s work was especially engaging to read about in this article, since her work was about the absence of her human form imprinted in the earth, something that could not be removed from it’s site specific location and sold as a commodity. Other artists were interested in this subversion of the art as “object” as well, taking the exhibition of artwork out of the traditional gallery or museum and creating art experiences elsewhere.


While I was reading about this historical account of the 1970’s anti-commodity “earth art” movement, I realized that in the past, Mendieta was only vaguely discussed as a contributing artist to this movement in my various art history classes. When I first learned about earth art, I studied Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty, Robert Morris’ Observatory in the Netherlands, and Andy Goldsworthy’s handmade walkways and flower sculptures. While I think all of these artists have made interesting work that should be discussed and studied, I find it somewhat offensive that Ana Mendieta was mostly left out of this dialogue, especially since she was making equally important and engaging work as her male colleagues. Although there was this movement to eliminate the sexism and racism in the art world, the traditionally white, male-dominated practice still seems to take precedent. I think this realization lends itself well to the title of Blocker’s article, “Where is Ana Mendieta?” Why do I not remember learning about Ana Mendita? Why do I remember the endless hours I spent watching the Spiral Jetty film in both art history and film classes, but do not remember looking at any film documentation or slides of Mendieta’s work?

Perhaps the answer lies in the two different ways in which the two artists were making their art. While Mendieta certainly manipulated the earth to make her work (carving out an impression of her silhouette in the ground, setting the earth ablaze, etc), the finality of the piece focused more on the negative space that her body took up within the earth, creating an interesting union between herself and the land. As Blocker states, Mendieta influenced a kind of anthropomorphism with the earth. “To anthropomorphize the earth is to endow it with sentience, desire, and identity; it is to think of earth more than merely a sculptural material.” (pg. 18). While Mendieta worked with the earth in a somewhat spiritual exchange, Smithson was using the earth solely as sculptural material. His piece Spiral Jetty is less about the union of the artist and the earth and more about the power struggle between man and nature: man builds structure by manipulating the earth and, over time, the earth changes that structure through erosion and natural decay.

Posner reflects on the exchange between the self and world in her text, “The Self and The World: Negotiating Boundaries in the Art of Yayoi Kusama, Ana Mendieta, and Francesca Woodman.”

“As the projected site of heterosexual male desire, women Surrealists had to struggle to liberate themselves from the passive object position and assume the role of active subject. To reclaim their own image, unlike their male counterparts, these artists explored their inner life and external reality through frequent recourse to the self-portrait or self-representation.” (pg. 159).

This exploration of the self in female artists’ work perhaps seemed less intellectual and more emotional in the eyes of critics. While perhaps Smithson represented the “powerful-yet-humble” artist working with the earth, Mendieta potentially represented the female artist exploring the earth and her connection to it, a notion that could be seen as flighty or unstable.

Both artists were working in a time when the larger community of artists were working against the traditional modes of art-making and both were certainly influential in their contribution to the anti-commodity movement. While I do appreciate Smithson’s work, I am somewhat resentful of the fact that women like Mendieta can still be overlooked in the art history classroom as important contributors to this specific art movement of the 1970’s.

*Mendieta photo taken from http://reconstruction.eserver.org
*Smithson photo taken from http://www2.warwick.ac.uk

Response to Berger: Picturing Whiteness: Nikki S. Lee’s The Yuppie Project

After reading this short article about Nikki S Lee’s work The Yuppie Project, I thought about the similarities between Lee and William Pope.L, an artist we talked about in class several weeks ago. In Pope.L’s piece, The Great White Way and in Lee’s work, The Yuppie Project, the two artists execute their work in different but equally interesting ways by challenging their audiences to recognize whiteness.

In Pope.L’s piece The Great White Way, the black artist crawls across Broadway in Manhattan over the course of several years. Nick Stillman notes in his text, “Artseen: The Great White Way, Fulton Street to Reade Street, Manhattan,” that when Pope.L crawled through the Financial District, he was, “a man battling not just nature, but outcast status among his own species as he crawls pathetically along the dirty, heavily populated street.” Many reactions to his work include laughing and indifference. To a more receptive viewer, however, a black man crawling through the historically symbolic epitome of white privilege brings up questions of racial identity, status, and the exclusion from whiteness.

Nikki S. Lee’s piece, The Yuppie Project, also brings up issues of race and exclusion and one of her locations of choice is Wall Street as well. As Berger mentions in his text, “Picturing Whiteness: Nikki S. Lee’s Yuppie Project,” Lee is bringing to light the complexities and “fluidity of human identity.” While she seems to “fit in” with other groups of people, Berger notes that she never quite fits into the yuppie world. “Though she masquerades in the fashions, make-up, and body language of white yuppies, her Asianness and her visceral discomfort read as distinctly as their whiteness.” (pg. 56). Lee is drawing attention to the distinct difference between blending in with other racial minority groups as a minority herself and trying to blend in with “white privilege.” By locating herself within these different racial groups and by drawing attention to the difference of fitting in with the white power culture, Lee challenges her audience to recognize this whiteness as part of a larger dialogue about racism.

I think both of these artists make important and interesting work that comments on whiteness and exclusion in America. When artists like William Pope.L and Nikki S. Lee comment on such race relations in complex and engaging ways, it complicates the definitive identity, both racially and socially, of the viewer as well as the artist.

*Lee photograph is The Yuppie Project (17.) Taken from www.albrightknox.org
*William Pope.L photograph is The Great White Way: 22 Miles, 5 years, 1 street. Taken from www.tenbyten.net

Connecting Different Worlds: Response to Althea Thauberger

Duke brought up several interesting points in her text, “Althea Thauberger: Experimentalism is Dead. Long Live The Internet.” What resonated with me the most about Duke’s analysis of Thauberger’s work is best articulated at the end of the article:

In all the works I’ve described here, the viewer gains access through identification with Thauberger’s characters or subjects. But these girls and women are not fearsomely glamorous or talented. They do not intimidate. They are ordinary…if we can be moved, we must acknowledge that we, too, have the power to move. (Duke 4).

Duke investigates this idea of Thauberger using unconventional ways of making art by discussing her use of narrative and by using unconventional, or “untrained” women in her work. By using these “ordinary” women, the audience can better connect or empathize with the narratives that are being told, and, potentially, identify with these performers in some way.
I am very interested in the idea having an “untrained” or “ordinary” subject in my work. I want to use this blog as an opportunity to connect my own projects and ideas for future projects with Thauberger’s work that joins different or detached worlds (such as the art community and military families that had common ground in Thauberger’s piece Murphy Canyon Choir).
I recently performed at the Milwaukee Art Museum in an attempt to “build a resume” to send to the New York based choreographer (see above photo). Tere O’Connor. My character performed at the museum to prove that she is a dancer who is worthy enough to even perform at a prestigious art institution like the MAM. Although an illusion of glamour and talent was indicated, it was far from a glamorous or talented dance performance. In fact, it was quite the opposite: my untrained “dancer” body and ordinary self dressed up in sequins and dancing at the MAM is not intimidating. While I didn’t quite connect two different worlds in the same way Thauberger made connections, I did connect myself to a world that I am not necessarily a part of.
The performance at the MAM has inspired me to make more performance pieces where my “untrained” self performs at various, inappropriate venues. Part of the Tere O’Connor piece was focused on the disillusionment of the character thinking she can dance in his dance company and become as “famous” as he is. I want to further investigate this kind of disillusionment. I want to start interacting with other artist’s artwork in museums and galleries. By documenting, or “legitimizing” my performances at the various art venues, I will continue to fulfill this disillusionment of becoming famous by “getting my foot in the door,” connecting myself to a world that I am not a part of.

Facebook: Identity Performance. A response to Merchant and Volkart

The world of online social networking provides an interesting and complicated arena to view performances. I want to examine this idea of the multiple and semi-fictive portrayed self on Facebook, a popular social networking website, and how this widespread, familiar, and accepted practice of self-expression is both a private and public performance.

In Guy Merchant’s text, “Identity, Social Networks and Online Communication,” he raises interesting ideas and questions about social identities that are performed and exhibited online. Merchant acknowledges that through the study of adult e-communication, “much online interaction is interwoven with identity performance.” (Merchant 235). Merchant goes on to state that because there is an absence of physical presence when communicating with others online, we work much harder to produce our identity in this “communicative medium.”

Yvonne Volkart also suggests that we work in such ways to produce an identity. Volkart takes this notion further by noting that these identities are often semi-fictive and can be “multiple.” She goes on to describe various new media artists and their works that comment on these fictitious, multiple, technologically-dwelling personas that live in cyber-space.

While reading these two texts, I also kept thinking about Marvin Carlson’s text, “What is Performance.” He suggests that, “all human activity could potentially be considered as “performance,” or at least all activity carried out with a consciousness of itself.” (Carlson 70). Carlson goes on to explain that in the awareness, or consciousness, of carrying out certain actions, a quality of performance is given to the action. The functions available on Facebook can be interpreted as extremely performative acts. When one publishes their “status” on Facebook, one is consciously aware of publishing their emotional existence on the site for others to see and potentially identify with. Sometimes these statuses seem over exaggerated, thus raising the question as to whether or not the person posting the status is trying to communicate or trying to perform. The question is raised: Is this status true or is this status partially fiction?

With the function of making several photo albums of various life events, e.g. weddings, parties, family gatherings, etc., one portrays themselves as having several identities. For example, one of my friends has various photo albums in her Facebook profile that define her as having various identities: She is a bride/wife in a wedding photo, a classmate among her friends in a photo taken at her graduate school, and a photographer who exhibits her images in one album titled “ ‘999.”

The public and private performances displayed on Facebook are fluid among themselves. Friends can post on each other’s “walls,” making the communication between two people very public. This act is extremely performative, in that when one communicates on a friend’s wall, one is inherently making a spectacle of the communication for many to witness. The private performances come from the actual user. By posting various photos, general interests and favorite quotes, one does perform, to an extent, by carefully choosing what to say and how to portray themselves to others.

I am interested in the performativity surrounding these social networking sites. When I was thinking about what kind of photo I wanted to post in this blog, I remembered that I have two dramatically different photos in my Myspace album (Myspace is another prime example of a performative-social networking site). The black and white photograph was taken by a friend of mine many years ago, and I always thought I looked mysterious in it, what with its film noir feeling. In the Polaroid picture, I am still posing for the camera, but my expression is more humorous, which is more conducive to my real personality. Posting these two very different photos were extremely performative acts and I was, in hindsight, trying to project my various identities to others by having these and other photos available for the public to view. The performativity of oneself in social networking sites is a topic I wish to develop and comment on through my next photography project. I have been “studying” the various facial expressions people have in their photos posted on Facebook and Myspace, especially young women, and create my own version of these facial expressions. The experiment is sure to be a performative one.

Adrian Piper and Jen Davis

In chapter 5 of Jayne Wark’s book Radical Gestures, titled ‘Roles and Transformations,’ Wark describes Adrian Piper’s work as both subjective and objective, as defined by Piper herself. Piper indicates that her work is objective by “inhering in the reflective consciousness of an external audience or subject… and my own consciousness of me as an object, as the object of my self-consciousness.” (Wark 142). After attending Jen Davis’ presentation at the Milwaukee Art Museum and seeing her photographs for the first time, I was amazed at the similarities I found between Piper and Davis’ work, albeit the two artists approach what they represent in very different ways. I will examine the similarities between Piper and Davis and how the artists represent their work on both subjective and objective platforms.

In Piper’s first Catalysis performance she walked around a “hang-out” space for artists in New York wearing a blindfold, earplugs, nose plug and gloves. Wark notes that, “her self-objectification also turned her into a spectacle; yet, paradoxically, this enabled her to function as a subjective agency capable of affecting change in others.” (Wark 140). Davis, an overweight woman, addresses the normative ideal of beauty by turning the camera on herself and photographing her “non-normative” body, creating in herself both the spectacle and the agency capable of affecting change in others, by forcing the viewer to reflect on what the normative ideal of beauty actually means.

Wark notes that the merging of personal and social politics is central to Piper’s work, particularly to The Mythic Being, a piece about the antagonistic “other” who represents the “hostility and alienation… that represented the alien in all of us.” (Wark 144). Piper reflects on her work and the relationship between herself and the viewer, stating that, “My purpose is to transform the viewer psychologically, by presenting him or her with an unavoidable concrete reality that cuts through the defensive rationalizations by which we insulate ourselves against the facts of our political responsibility.” (Wark 144).

Davis is representing the “other” in her work as well. Her alienation as an overweight woman is portrayed in her single-subject self-portraits, forcing the viewer to look at her body and to break down their own preconceptions that the viewer might have about her weight. Davis makes her work socially political by challenging the viewer to deconstruct assumptions they make about normative beauty.

Piper and Davis both execute their work in very different ways. Piper, a conceptual performance artist, executes her work in sometimes aggressive, physically direct ways. Davis, a photographer, presents her work in a more physically indirect way by presenting her body through the still image. Although they both have different ways of presenting their work, the impact of their objective/subjective message is powerful.

*Adrian Piper photograph, Catalysis IV, taken from “The Postmodern Body” website on departments.risd.edu
*Jen Davis photograph, Untitled, taken from “Yale MFA Photographers” on flickr.com

Response to Judith Butler: Cindy Sherman and Gender Roles

Cindy Sherman has once again proven to me that she is, indeed, an amazingly complex artist. While I was reading Butler’s ‘Performative Acts and Gender Constitution,’ I thought about Cindy Sherman’s photographs and how she represents gender and the femininity. Butler states that gender is not pre-determined by sex, but is created by a reproduction of pre-existing, historical, repetitive acts. Butler also states that, “one ought to consider the futility of a political program which seeks radically to transform the social situation of women without first determining whether the category of woman is socially constructed in such a way that to be woman is, by definition, to be in an oppressed situation.” (Butler 158). This can be deconstructed to mean that by radically transforming the social situation of women is to re-legitimize the idea that women are socially oppressed or different in the first place. I propose that Cindy Sherman’s photographs defy this re-legitimization of the woman being oppressed by portraying the woman in these historically defined gender roles, while also criticizing these gender roles. Sherman is calling attention to the fact that these roles do exist and, by “recreating” film stills (please note that I am not stating that Sherman recreates any one film in particular), she is addressing the fact that gender roles are a product of history.

In Sherman’s Untitled Film Still #35 (as shown above), one can assume that the woman in the photograph is fulfilling a typical female gender role by wearing an apron over her dress, signifying that she is cooking. Yet this woman in the photograph has a menacing stare, directed at someone or something not seen in the frame. Her hand on her hip could signify a triumphant defeat, or it could be seen as an angry gesture towards that undefined subject outside of the frame. What is most disturbing about this photograph is the dirt, or blood, smeared across the bottom, right-hand side of the door. A black coat is draped over the adjacent wall of the door, perhaps covering up something that this woman wants to hide.

When I was first looking through Sherman’s photographs to use as an example for this blog post, I was drawn to this photograph because she was wearing an apron and I immediately assumed she would be portraying a gender-specific role. My emotional reaction to this photograph stems from the blood streaked door and the menacing stare, not from the fact that she is wearing an apron. This performance by Sherman is put on me, forcing me to evaluate my assumptions of gender roles. Sherman could have been wearing an apron, smiling and offering a plate of cookies, but instead, this woman appears threatening, thus complicating my reaction to her. Sherman forces me, the viewer, to question my reaction to this woman in the apron, not fulfilling her historical “duties” as the woman in the kitchen. Thus, Sherman defies the re-legitimization of the oppressed woman by both representing the historically conditioned woman and by giving this woman non-traditional authority, both within the frame and over the viewer.

*Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Still #35 taken from MoMA.org

Cindy Sherman: Multiple Interpretations

 

While reading about Williamson’s and Krauss’ interpretations of Cindy Sherman’s photographic work, it came to my attention that Sherman’s work perpetuates the ideology that the self-portrait can be changeable and does not necessarily contain one, true “essence” of the artist or “subject” in the photograph. In Sherman’s work, there are multiple layers of meaning that a viewer can interpret and, along the same lines as there not being one true essence of the artist, there is not one, true or right interpretation of Sherman’s work. I believe that all interpretations or readings of Sherman’s work are justifiable and, in fact, the interpretations help create the work itself.

I will first refer back to Amelia Jones’ text, “Beneath This Mask Another Mask.” Jones examines various self-portraits created by women who make work that correlates with this ideology of the self-portrait never fully capturing the one, true essence of the artist or subject or “character” represented within the photograph.

"Through an exaggerated performativity, which makes it clear that we can never “know” the subject behind or in the
image (and correlatively that we can never “know” the subject at all), these works expose the apparently seamless
conflation of intentionality with meaningful visible appearance in the self-portrait as an illusion." (Jones 44)

Jones indicates that by creating an “illusion” of the subject through the performativity of these specific self-portraits, the viewer can never “know” the subject in the photograph at all (as much as one could never fully “know” another person solely through an image). I find this to be an interesting parallel to Sherman’s self-portrait work. Because Sherman does not literally pronounce the meaning behind her self-portraits, the viewer must interpret their own essence of the subject in the photograph and create for themselves their own narrative behind the mask of the character displayed.

Judith Williamson states in her text, “A Piece of the Action: Images of “Woman” in the Photography of Cindy Sherman” that Sherman’s work pushes the viewer to interpret the work as having a certain kind of style or meaning that the viewer themselves defines through cultural knowledge.

"Because the viewer is forced into complicity with the way these “women” are constructed: you recognize the styles, the
“films,” the “stars,” and at that moment when you recognize the picture, your reading is the picture. In a way, “it” is
innocent: you are guilty, you supply the femininity simply through social and cultural knowledge." (Williamson 40)

In this way, what Williamson refers to as the “obsessive drive” of the viewer to find the identity within Sherman’s self-portraits is crucial to my point that Sherman’s photographs do not contain one, true meaning, but the work contains many different meanings. Since Sherman’s work elicits an inherently gendered response from the viewer and if the crux of the artwork hinges on that interpretation of the work from the viewer, then the overall meaning or content of the work cannot be pinned down to one meaning. Sherman’s photographs are interpreted by a large audience, and what one image means to one viewer could mean something completely different to another, especially if her work is exhibited internationally where “cultural knowledge” is different from one culture to another. These multiple meanings not only exist in this dialogue, but also help to create the work itself by engaging in the dialogue at all.

In Rosalind Krauss’ text, “Cindy Sherman: Untitled,” the concept of the “myth consumer” is introduced. A “myth consumer” is someone who views Sherman’s photographs on only one, conceptual level, thus deconstructing the complexity and deeper meaning of the work. Krauss presents two examples where a “myth consumption” has occurred in interpreting Sherman’s work. In her first example, Krauss examines Peter Schjeldahl’s writing, and she problematizes his claim that the artist is “becoming the vehicle through which the fullness of humanity might be both projected and embraced in all its aspects“ (Krauss 104). The myth consumption of Sherman’s work in this example would mean that Sherman is solely focused on representing herself as some sort of divine medium. In the second example, Krauss examines Arthur Danto’s writing which claims that the “character” within Sherman’s work is the static focal point (while the character herself changes roles from portrait to portrait). It seems as though Krauss finds these types of approaches to Sherman’s work limiting and reductive to the overall meaning of the self-portraits.

Although these two “myth consumers” may have only one, static reading of Sherman’s work, I think that their readings or interpretations are justifiable. They support my earlier point that Sherman’s photographs are complex because of these various interpretations. Williamson, Krauss, Schjeldahl and Danto’s theoretical discourse surrounding Sherman’s work is what perpetuates such complex dialogue about her self-portraits.


*Photograph is Untitled Film Still #3 by Cindy Sherman, taken from MoMA.org

Sarah Lucas: Crossing Wires

Carlson proposes in his article, “What is Performance,” that the act of performance has expanded from what was traditionally known as a theatrical manifestation to include a complex range of cultural, social, and intellectual concerns exhibited in and outside of the conventional theater, relating to the issues of race, gender, and power. I thought Carlson’s article of performance was an appropriate introduction to Jones’ article, “Beneath This Mask Another Mask,” for Jones exemplifies this “quest” of the postmodern artist that Carlson refers to by examining the work of several self-portrait photographs by predominantly female artists who are, indeed, addressing these various social and cultural concerns.

I would like to extend this examination by investigating the work of the London-based artist Sarah Lucas in light of these two authors’ concepts of performance and the self-portrait. Sarah Lucas is widely known for her “aggressive” social commentary on the female (but perhaps not “feminine”) body, sexuality and the “economy of the readymade.” (Tate Online). I first encountered Lucas’ work while studying in London, where I saw her visual pun-inspired bed sculpture, Au Naturel , a provocative and humorous commentary on sex and the body.

Lucas has also created several self-portraits that comment on similar issues pertaining to the body and gender identification (two of which are posted above in this blog). In Self Portraits 1990-1998, Eating A Banana, Lucas stares directly at the camera, an androgynous persona taking a bite out of a banana, the most symbolically phallic fruit symbol. Referring to Wilke and Sherman’s photographs, Jones states that they  “…fatally cross the wires that conventionally power the male gaze, confusing the domains of spectatorial desire and authorial/female self assertion and so short-circuiting its effects.” (Jones 52). Lucas is certainly crossing these “wires” that conventionally empower the male gaze. By seducing the male with her seductive action, the male could feel threatened by an androgynous looking female by experiencing a homoerotic connection with the artist through this self-portrait. 

In another Lucas self-portrait (part of the same series entitled Self-Portraits 1990-1998), the viewer is confronted with Lucas, sitting in an armchair, legs splayed out with two fried eggs over her breasts. Again, Lucas represents an androgynous persona, who almost dares the male gaze to look at her body, if not directly at her breasts. In this aggressive way of confronting the viewer, Lucas again challenges or “crosses” the wires of the conventional male gaze, taking authority with her self-assertion.

I have always admired Sarah Lucas’ work. When I was looking back at her self-portrait series, I realized that I have always looked at her self-portraits with such a strong sense that she is not necessarily performing for the camera. Perhaps this is because I have read various texts about her personality, and her self-portraits seem to reflect her humor and “realness” so that I have not questioned the notion that she is, to some extent, performing for the camera.  Carlson mentions in his article that performance art practitioners “…do not base their work upon characters previously created by other artists, but upon their own bodies, their own autobiographies, their own specific experiences in a culture or in the world, made performative by their consciousness of them and the process of displaying them for audiences.” (Carlson 71). Lucas is not basing her work upon other characters created by someone else, but is creating her work from her own experiences as a woman in this world, as dynamically humorous and grotesque as it can be. And while I may or may not be justified in thinking that she is not performing directly for the camera, regardless, I do have to believe that Lucas’ work is made performative by her consciousness and display of herself for an audience to interpret.

Hershman and Newman: Staged Documentation

Lynn Hershman’s performance work reminded me of Hayley Newman’s “Connotations,” and while I was reading about Hershman’s 9 year performance project about Roberta Breitmore, I wondered if the two artists had ever collaborated. I assumed that they must, at least, know about each other’s work. While I couldn’t find any information about the two artists collaborating on any project, I thought about the similarities and differences between these two artists.

 

The most intriguing similarity that I find between Hershman and Newman’s work is that the staged nature of their photographs create an authentic subject. Hershman’s performance character, Roberta, was photographed many times, and as Glenn Kurtz mentioned in his text, “Roberta is “real” because these documents make her seem so” (Kurtz 117). Hershman goes into detail on her website revealing the construction of this fake character by having bank statements and identification all in Roberta’s name. Roberta put an advertisement in the newspaper for a roommate, went to a psychiatrist, and went on various “adventures.” As Kurtz mentions in his text, the photographs that “documented” Roberta’s life were staged, although Roberta did in fact perform these various live events.  “…the staging of Roberta Breitmore was unannounced. These images document real events that were – in a social sense – fictional” (Kurtz 117). In this fashion, Hershman complicates the distinction between the real and staged event.

 

Hayley Newman also draws this indistinct line in her work “Connotations,” by focusing on the performance of staged events. By bringing her unaccomplished performance ideas into existence, Newman stages her performances for the camera, “documenting” what appears to be a “true” performance. In staging and documenting these fake events, Newman is inherently creating a new performance of staged performance.

 

A physical, but perhaps not conceptual, difference between the two artists’ work is the final presentation of the photographs. Hershman manipulated the photos by painting and/or mixing various mediums directly onto the surface of the photograph. Kurtz suggests that, “the image here carries its response inherently in its presentation medium; photography has not been subordinated but incorporated in a mélange that complicates the representational space.” (Kurtz 118). Newman displays her photos along with text, but the text is not written directly onto the photos. Both artists’ images are created with a mixture of practices, including drawing, painting, written text, and, inherently, performance. This “mélange” does not lessen the images as photographs, but perhaps places the work of these two artists in what Kurtz calls a different “representational space,” a space that exceeds the traditional “boundaries” of photography to include these other practices.  

*Photos taken from the artists' website. 

Response to Newman’s “Connotations”

While reading Hayley Newman’s “Connotations,” I became very interested in her usage of photography to construct the “documentation” of staged performance pieces, paying “homage” to her personal notebook of performance ideas. I found a connection to her work in my own work as an artist with a character I have been developing over the past few years. As mentioned in a previous blog, Alice Gorman Vence appeared before me when I was sifting through old photographs at my grandfather’s home a few years ago. When I asked various family members about this woman, no one seemed to know much about her, other than who she married and where she lived. There were no stories that were passed down or memories shared about her life.

I have used Alice in several different ways in my artwork. In an attempt to rectify Alice as a “true” ancestor (one who hasn’t been forgotten about or become lost in the back of family photo albums), I staged various scenes of a woman at her farmhouse in 1923 (the pictures posted in this blog are a few of the photographs from the “Alice” series). I printed the photographs in the darkroom using no filter, thus stripping the photograph of any prominent black and white contrast, trying to emulate an “aged” look. In other variations, I soaked the photograph in tea, staining the paper and creating an antique feel.  

            In attempting to fabricate and stage these scenes and present them as factual family photographs to my audience, I blurred boundaries between the real and fictional. Working in collaboration with another artist, I wrote a letter as Alice and received a letter back addressed to Alice, pursuing this idea of fabricating a family member’s life. By “documenting” Alice’s history, I am bringing her story to life and realizing her existence, much in the same way that Newman was bringing her own project ideas to life. Newman states that,

“Connotations provided the forum for the idea to exist without actually having to execute the piece.” (Newman 170).

In a similar fashion, I feel as though I am providing the forum for this ancestor’s forgotten story to be told, without actually knowing anything about this woman’s life.

Floating Island Steady Girl: Response to Auslander’s “The Performativity of Performance Documentation.”

On September 24^th, 2005, New-York based performance artist Kimberly Brandt raced Robert Smithson’s Floating Island to Travel Around Manhattan Island along the Manhattan coastline between Pier 46 at Charles Street and East River Park at E. Houston Street in New York, NY (Brandt, www.kimberlybrandt.com). The race lasted three and a half hours and she claims to have beaten the island by approximately four minutes. There was no audience, except one photographer who documented the race. The photographer traveled by cab from one location to another, capturing still frames of her individual feat.

While reading Auslander’s “The Performativity of Performance Documentation,” I recalled this performance piece my sister created when I read about Vito Acconci’s performance Photo-Piece. Although Brandt’s performance was not a series of photographs taken by the artist herself, I find an interesting connection between the two artists’ work. Auslander states about Acconci’s work that,

“…there were no bystanders to serve as the audience. More importantly, the only thing bystanders would have seen was a man walking and taking pictures: they would have had no way of understanding they were witnessing a performance.” (Auslander 4).

This is the same circumstance with which Brandt carried out her performance. Any bystanders who had seen Brandt jogging through city parks and streets would have justifiably assumed she was merely getting some exercise. And anyone who witnessed a photographer taking a photograph of a woman looking out at the floating island on the East River would not necessarily assume that he was meticulously documenting a performance that was happening right at that moment. In this essence, both Acconci and Brandt’s work is only available to an audience through this documentation.

What I find most interesting about these and other documentation-based performances is the transferability of the work to an audience. Auslander repeatedly refers to the “initial” audience and the role that the audience plays in a performance piece.

“… when artists decide to document their performances, they assume responsibility to an audience other than the initial one, a gesture that ultimately obviates the need for an initial audience.” (Auslander 7).

The transferability of a documentation-based performance to an audience is highlighted in this quote. Not only does the performance exist as a time-based artwork that an initial audience may or may not witness, it also exists through the documentation of the work, allowing the artwork to be interpreted by a different audience, in a different space and time, potentially obliterating the need for an “initial” audience in the first place.

Response to Rubinstein and Sluis,’ A Life More Photographic

Rubinstein and Sluis offer an interesting take on the digital “revolution” that reflects not only on the development of digital technology as a point of departure from traditional and largely inaccessible darkroom photography, but also on the integration of the Internet and the community, or network, that is created around shared images.

One theme that I found particularly interesting, which was continually referenced throughout the text, was the concept of the image or photograph having a certain “fluidity” throughout this digital revolution, as referenced on page 13: “As Daisuke Okabe has noted, currently the most fluid and immediate sharing of images happens when images are shared directly via the camera’s screen (2, 9).” The idea that images taken by and viewed on a camera speaks to this fluidity or quick “ease” in experiencing the photograph taken. This fluidity reminds me of two photographic processes that could perhaps represent a bridge between traditional darkroom photography and the “instant gratification” of a digital image and being able to immediately view the photographic results: The photo-booth photograph and the Polaroid photo (The photo-booth picture attached in this blog is of myself and three of my closest friends. We took several photographs in that booth, trying to “out-do” previous attempts in capturing a unique photo-booth picture).  I see these two processes as representing the flux between the chemically-processed, darkroom photograph (which one would have to wait at least an hour to view) and the instant ability to see a photograph (which one would only have to wait one or two minutes to view). There were, no doubt, other photographic processes that could be seen as stepping-stones between these two modes of photography, but what interests me about both the Polaroid and the photo-booth photos is that they were, and are somewhat still today, for the common consumer.

The second example relating to the “fluidity” of the contemporary image is highlighted by consumer-friendly computer applications such as iPhoto and Picasa (pg. 15). Rubinstein and Sluis relate the ability to “scroll through” sequences of photographs to the integration of ease and accessibility of the photographic experience to the consumer market.  Personally, I have always appreciated the ease with which to view my digital photographs in iPhoto on my computer. I am also an artist who appreciates, and uses traditional, darkroom photography. Instead of experiencing dissonance between these two “worlds,” I find a broad freedom and an expanded creativity in blending both traditional and digital photography.

Later in the text Caterina Flake, Flickr’s founder, is quoted, stating “the nature of photography now is it’s in motion… It doesn’t stop time anymore, and maybe that’s a loss. But there’s a kind of beauty to that, too.” (Harmon). The fluidity, or constant “flow” of the contemporary photograph could be seen as having a negative impact on the practice of photography.  But I agree with Flake—the constant documentation of our lives to be shared, viewed and commented on by others is, in itself, a tie that binds a large community, using this unique “visual speech” (pg. 18) as one of our languages.

Response to Roland Barthes’ Camera Lucida

To begin, I’d like to mention that while reading excerpts from Roland Barthes,’ Camera Lucida, I was struck by the language Barthes used to address the reader. Barthes has a personable voice to explain and define his journey and exploration of the “essence” of a photograph. He eloquently balances both the critical theory surrounding the practice of photography (and other art practices, such as painting) with his own emotional response to the practice or understanding of photography. For example, in chapter three, Barthes states:

What does my body know of Photography? I observed that a photograph can be the object of three practices (or of three emotions, or of three intentions): to do, to undergo, to look.  (Barthes 9)

He goes on to define the Operator as the Photographer, the Spectator as ourselves, or those of us who participate in the act of “looking” at photographs, and the Spectrum  as the target or the “referent.” In these two sentences, Barthes not only defines the three theoretical intentions of the act of taking a photograph, but also places himself within this practice from observing what he understands, from presumably acting at some point in his life as the Operator, the Spectator, and the Referent.

In this same respect, I would like to respond to Camera Lucida with a critical, yet also personal voice.  In the last few chapters, Barthes describes the experience of going through some of his mother’s photographs shortly after she had passed away.  He explains that he wasn’t necessarily looking for the exact, “right” photograph that would portray her essence, but no photograph in the bunch necessarily “spoke” to him directly in this manner, until he found, what he calls, the Winter Garden Photograph. In this photograph he sees his mother at the age of five, standing with her brother outside of the house the two children grew up in. The photograph resonated with Barthes; her expression, gesture, and/or pose reflected her presence, her essence to him as he knew her.

            This particular description of Barthes finding the Winter Garden photograph resonated with me and my own artistic endeavors. A few years ago I was visiting my estranged, paternal grandfather, who I had not seen in seventeen years, to interview him (along with other family members) about the demise and eventual death of my severely alcoholic father. I was also interested in learning more about past ancestors, since I had no relationship with ancestors on my father’s side of the family or “stories” about them. Most of the photographs were interesting enough, but nothing “spoke” to me until I came across a photograph of a woman named Alice Gorman Vence (as pictured in this blog). I was deeply moved by this photograph because I had never seen a photograph of an ancestor within whom I found a resemblance to myself (my mother was adopted, so I have no biological knowledge of my mother’s side of the family).  There is something about Alice’s facial structure (her raised cheekbones, perhaps her eyes) that I found similar to mine.  Her hair was the same color (and amusingly pinned up in the same fashion in which I wore my hair).  Alice, in her own “essence,” also represented an “essence” and connection within me, the viewer.

            Alice became an indirect subject in my film that I was working on at the time, and has continued to be a “character” that I develop and use in various art pieces.  At this point, I’d like to focus on my subject, Alice, with a “critical” eye in relation to Barthes’ ideas about the “effigy.” He describes the photographic ritual as a “social game.” He describes the game as such:

…I pose, I know I am posing, I want you to know that I am posing, but… this additional message must in no way alter the precious essence of my individuality: what I am, apart from any effigy.  (Barthes 11)

            Barthes is willing to play the “social game” of posing for the camera, but does not want the spectator of that photograph to assign an essence to his individual self. For example, perhaps a photograph was taken of him and he was smiling, yet slightly turned away from the camera. One could assume he was acting coy or shy in that moment, but the overall essence of Barthes himself as an individual is certainly not just purposely bashful. That one representation of himself, that one effigy, does not sum up his entire existence or individual essence.

            In terms of creating and developing my “character” named “Alice,” it is essential that I work, in a somewhat backwards sense, from this one “effigy” I have to understand Alice.  Why was she turning slightly away from the camera?  What human condition was she enduring to not “smile for the camera.”  Why did she choose to wear a black dress? Since I know nothing about this woman, I am forced (artistically speaking) to experience her essence through this photographic representation, to imagine and then create what her unique individuality was.  In my film, she was the keeper of memories, and thus the teller of memories, which in reciprocity represented me, the artist.  I continue to develop and create Alice as I hope she would want to be represented.  Unlike Barthes’ notion of not being able to reproduce the Winter Garden Photograph for the reader (because the reader would only interpret it as what he calls an “indifferent” picture),  I find great responsibility to reproducing Alice’s picture in an attempt to justify and honor Alice’s “essence.”  She was a forgotten, vague ancestor whom I am resurrecting.