Value-Shmalue

Marisa Olsen disagrees with Walter Benjamin's assessment that photography(and other similar media) take away "auratic value" from artwork, and she puts forth a wonderful argument filled with wonderful artists. She makes mention of the SCP, who perform to city cameras, as saying that their audience, while directed at the cameras on the streets of New York, changes to the audience that pass by on the street. It's auratic value comes from people's reactions and seeing on the video that is was done in public with people around. It is even displayed in museum settings from the viewpoint of onlookers using recording devices.

Auratic value, in my opinion, is going to occur with any physical object, or even a digital or projected image. Everything you look at elicits a reaction, no matter it's impact. A photograph has a different aura than a painting, but it still has one of it's own. Cindy Sherman's photographs conger feelings even without brush strokes... Just as 'The Scream' by Edward Munch makes people uneasy, a film like Dali's "Un chien andalou" makes people just as uneasy(if not more) when they cut open an eyeball. There is still a sense of physicality in both, still a sense of humanity.

Does Ken Goldberg's machine at the award show not hold any auratic value to the people on the computers? They see their actions being played out... they are part of the experience. They may not experience in the same way as the people at the show, but are definitely a part of the experience on a whole.

Digital media, as well as painted media, contains an aura. It may not have the smell of dried paint... but it does have the hiss of the computer fan, or even the glow of the screen(if that metaphor makes any sense). The same can be said for photography... while it may not have a defining characteristic such as dried paint or glowing, it has its own characteristics which create its own aura.

It seems a little ridiculous to say that something like Cindy Sherman's photo series have no auratic value just because of their ability to be reproduced. Isn't Cindy Sherman dressing up as different feminine roles in itself a ritual? Isn't setting up a still life of fruit in order to take a picture of it transform the fruit into something more than they are? The action of taking a snapshot may not be as intensive as painting, but it seems to me to be just as ritualized, which creates its own aura.

James

A Mechanical Reproduction of My Thoughts on Mechanical Reproduction

"Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be."

I think this is important. Ripping something out of it's context, and showing it elsewhere completely changes everything about the work. For example, Duchamp's Fountain has been completely out of context ever since it was first (not) displayed. At the time, the culture would not allow for something as 'grotesque' as a urinal to be displayed, and thus, Art. But now, seen in a museum or in a textbook, it can now only be used as a historical marker... a turning point in the fight over Art vs Not-Art. It is no longer risqué, and is only interesting as a point to make in a classroom.

He talks about the aura of an actor being lost on film, and quotes Rudolf Arnheim as saying the actor should be "[treated] as a stage prop chosen for its characteristics and inserted at the proper place." This made me think of how Reality TV is such a successful thing, and why. It occurred that, possibly, since they are not acting, in the traditional sense anyway, their personality shows some of their aura. It also explains why actors get typecast, their personal aura and the character's are so similar that they can be mistaken as one. I guess that seems obvious, though.

It's interesting what he says about the change in relationship between reader and writer. He says, "the distinction between author and public is about to lose its basic character," which I think is very interesting, because I think that that has happened already. With the advent of the internet, anyone who wanted could become an author, with the rise in popularity of blogging, everyone can be an author and have an audience with relative ease. The evolution of the author is very interesting... over the past millennium, it went from being a select handful of people being literate, to the majority of the population being able to read and write, and with advances in technology, and the mass amounts of text found on the internet, being an author is almost expected of you. Almost more interesting, right now I am an author, and you a reader. What happens when that situation is reversed? What happens when I become the reader of something you authored? Are we so insensitive to that situation in this age of mass-author-ism that nothing happens? Should something happen?

I completely agree with what he says in regards to a mass opinion influencing a individual opinion. Something like Star Wars is so critically and publicly lauded that it is almost impossible not to find some sort of enjoyment from it. Or things like Fountain or Jackson Pollock paintings are held in such high regard in the art world that an artist cannot help but respect the ideas behind it. The easy reproduction of art makes it very difficult to get a individual response.

My first viewings of Duchamp, Picasso, Dali were all in books or on a computer screen. Imagine my surprise when I actually saw "Persistence of Memory" in a museum to find that it was actually the size of, if not smaller than, a textbook. The ability to reproduce things is changing, or has changed, how we perceive art on a daily basis. The bombardment of images that we see on a daily basis has desensitized us to them. This is why nudity and sex are such prominent subjects that have such a profound effect on us, because they are what we don't see, what we are not desensitized to, what elicit a reaction.

Performing and Reading.

Soooooo last monday was part two in a three part series, "The Justin, James, and Kat" show. We painted with tampons. I was lying in bed one night, thinking about tampons(like all normal 20 year old men do), and was like "LET'S PAINT WITH THEM!" So I shot out of bed and wrote it down, and then went to sleep, thinking about how outrageous that was, and how to expand.

Only when I got to class did I realize the full implications of actually holding a tampon.

So, I would say that I think we had a nice idea/concept/whatevs... we didnt really have an end point though, which I guess showed. We actually did talk about how to end it prior, and it was more of a "just end it when you're done," which sorta worked and sorta didn't. Maybe next time we could've waited for all of us to finish individually... each turning around with our canvas when we concluded.

I was really embarassed when talking about it though lol... menstruation is not something I'm used to talking about hahah, which is sorta what it was all about. Men and tampons.

About the reading... it made me laugh right away with “A bunch of weirdoes who love to get naked and scream about leftist politics.” (Yuppie in a bar) I think jokes about liberals are funny. But yea, anyway, it kinda sucks that Performance Art even needs an essay to defend it. But I guess all new ideas get that treatment. *shrugs* I think new art forms should just be accepted... I think all of that should've been broken down after Duchamp displayed a urinal. It is sorta just a tsupid idea to discriminate against something because it's not normal or w/e... If it's interesting, or conceptually viable... then who's to say it's not art? The critics, I guess... well, to that I say, in the great words of the rap collective Niggaz With Attitude(or NWA), "Fuck tha Police." Tha Police, in this instance, being a metaphor for a greater sense of "authority." And the police literally too... because it's the hip thing at this college to hate the po-po. And I LOVE being hip. /sarcasm

I liked when he said "We are what others aren’t, we say what others don't..." I think that's a pretty good idea about what Performance Art tries to get at. Or at least what I think it should be... it should be trying to break down social norms, or as he says later in the essay "questioning imposed structures and dogmatic behavior wherever I find it."

We interrupt this program to bring you some break news. My hair is 8 inches long. I just measured for the first time ever. I think that's pretty groovy. Now back to our main story...

"Our bodies are also occupied territories. Perhaps the ultimate goal of performance, especially if you are a woman, gay or a person "of color," is to decolonize our bodies and make these decolonizing mechanisms apparent to our audience in the hope that they will get inspired to do the same with their own."

Oh my god, I hate that stupid race card. Just let it gooooooo. It's so annoying that everything gets drawn back to race. I mean, I know he's saying that the ultimate goal is to make it so they are "not colonized," but the average white male is not out to get you. I'm sorry, we just don't care. You're not being oppressed ... If anything, we're being oppressed now, with Affirmative Action, and all the negative energy directed towards us. Hmm... preference to one race over another? Sounds strangely familiar. The phrase "back of the bus" comes to mind. I remember stressing out my senior year of high school because I thought I was going to have a terribly hard time getting into a college because I had no defining racial aspects... I had to simply check the "Caucasian" box. How messed up is that? Like seriously... why does it matter? Especially in art.... like, let's say you are a woman, black, or w/e artist... shouldn't you want to distance yourself from that so you don't become a gimmick? Like, if you're broadcasting the fact that you're "a Woman Artist" or "a Black Artist" or "a Woman Native American Artist with a father who married a black woman" then that's all anyone is going to see... your race or gender, you become a gimmick. Why would anyone want that?

Or maybe thats the point, that they shouldn't have to distance themselves. But I'm just saying, I wouldn't want to label myself as "White Male Artist James Giblin," I just want it as "Artist James Giblin."

That's why I respect someone like Laurie Anderson. From what I know and read about her art, she doesn't base it around the fact that she is a female. It's about concepts and it's about art. She doesn't make it a gimmick, and she doesn't make me feel bad for being a white male.(Not to mention that Lou Reed is awesome.) While I like and respect the work of someone like Cindy Sherman... it kinda bugs me that it's all about her being the misrepresented female in a world filled with males.

Or whatever, maybe what I just said is just what happens when you grow up in the burbs. Lot's of tangents today... back to our story...

the paragraph entitled "I Dreamt I was a Pop Celebrity" was entertaining. Although a dream, it definitely seems like something that would happen... where a mistake becomes genius... It reminds me of an episode of Doug, where he was painting in the park one day on a canvas, when it got knocked onto the ground and Porkchop(his dog) and a raccoon ran into the paint and all over the canvas, and Doug became a famous artist for the rest of the episode until he showed his real work and was then dropped.

Anyway, I feel like I've written too much... so I'll conclude with saying that I really enjoyed the article, even though I don't think I really talked much about what he said about performance art. I liked his ideas about performance art(and i guess art in general) as a vehicle to make people think, and his ultimate goal to change someone's life, or whatever. Maybe I'll end with this quote from the interview at the end, which sorta struck a chord, just because the limits of our freedom is something I think about a lot...

Journalist: I don't get it. What is the function of performance art? Does it have any?

GP: (Long pause) Performance artists are a constant reminder to society of the possibilities of other artistic, political, sexual or spiritual behaviors, and this, I must say, is an extremely important function.

Journalist: Why?

GP: It helps others to re-connect with the forbidden zones of their psyches and bodies, and acknowledge the possibilities of their own freedoms.

James

So this weekend, I went home because a bunch of my friends from high school were going home as well. My one friend has a recording studio in his basement, and we decided it would be awesome to make a rap song, so we found a beat, wrote our verses, and recorded it.

The result is here... I promise you that it's absolutely hillarious.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=BTE1TEHD

There are four rappers, in case you care, their names are Ev, Eric, Danny, and then me. I'm the last rapper, in case you couldn't tell. I think I steal the show.

Sincerely,
Grand Govna Gibs

I'm so excited for Monday's performance. Hahaha... I really can't wait.

On the Do it Yourself website... I found a bunch of ones that I liked alot...

One, entitled "The possibilities of trust as a sculpture and the question of value for each participant" by Ben Kinmont, simply says "Invite a stranger into your home for breakfast," which I think would be terribly awkward. It's definitely an interesting idea for a performance, with a variety of uninteresting as well as possibly dangerous results.

But one that I really enjoyed was Shere Hite's "Untitled" where he instructs...

"Embrace an important friend in a full-length hug for 31 minutes.

Contact should be frontal, body to body, full length, with legs, chests, pelvises and heads touching.
Speak a maximum of twenty words each to each other. Do not proceed to other activities or to " sex."The room should be silent, without music.
Alternately, videotape your embrace. There should not be a third party present videotaping; the camera should be set on a tripod with no operator.
After, write your sensations on a large paper or blackboard. Read them out loud.
Name the activity you have just engaged in, using just one word. Mail this word to me..."

I think that would be quite an intense experience. After a while it would probably start to hurt, just from standing and doing nothing for so long. You would have to have quite a close connection with someone to do that, and your friendship might not even be the same afterwards!

That one reminds me of the record for the Worlds Longest Kiss. I would think after 5 minutes it wouldn't even be romantic anymore, just weird. Endurance contests like that are too much for my tastes... I'd rather have a cheeseburger.(OH! PUN!(maybe someone should punch me.))