5/30/2009

SwanSong (Deleuze)

Gilles Deleuze (November 4th, 1995)
Paris, France

His last book was Essays Critical and Clinical (1993).

5/26/2009

SwanSong (Pope Joan)

Pope Joan (Easter, sometime between 853 - 855AD)
Papal processional route, Rome 

Social and cultural  concerns - public figures, and how each act as a social conscience, a social voice of the times.  Pope Johannes, offered a voice for those without voices, (the poor, the dispossessed, and women).  Her swan song:  she died in labour - act of creation - bled out or killed by crowd.

5/25/2009

SwanSong (Benjamin)

Walter Benjamin (September 27, 1940)
Portbou, Catalonia 

un-followed swan songs

Arthur Cravan (Mexico swansong)
Dark Spring - Hans Bellmer's partner
Tessling - apple story

SwanSong (Schumann)

Robert Schumann (29 July 1856)
Endenich, Germany


Spirit Variations - Schumann's last work
Schumann's lost symphony (a one time performance)
Research composer:  Murray Schafer (honorary doc, composer) 

5/24/2009

Pilgrimage

The act of seeking - a quest, homage, journey, revelation, hardship, challenges, multidimensional - new myths require new pilgrimages. What is being sought? A journey reveals that the act of journeying itself is goal - not a means to an end.

5/01/2009

Guggenheim Haunted Exhibition

Andy Warhol, Orange Disaster

Sally Mann, Motherland 

Sophie Calle, Father/Mother (memorial)

Ori Gersht, Unknown Land

Hiroshi Sugimoto. Ocean. 1990

Indris Khan, Homage to Bernd Beehe (Bromide Print)

Rosangela Renno (Brazil), Untitled Hangman (Red Series)

Mapple Thorpe, 1998 Self-Portrait. One year before he dies.

Zhang Huan, 12 Square Meters 1994 (performance)

Ana Mendieta 1978 Silveta Series [shadows]

Markus Hansen, Curtain 2004 (dust, varnish, breath)

photo/documentary

Martin Parr (1970's) The Last Resort

Hogarth (1800 conversation pieces / social critic / elicite topics)

Beuys, Cosmos & Damien (social commentary and construction)

Thomas Demand, 2001, Poll (trompe l'oeil)

Joanne Kane, Portrait of a Man, 2007 (historical)

Muybridge: self portraits (man/animal in motion, sciences, animal in locomotion)

Ernest Eugene Appart, Firing Squad Commune, 1871, (illusion)

Simon Roberts "We English" (doc. satire)

Anon, 49th parallel (government / function)

encounters

Lynn's story: preparing consciousness to move out of body - journey prior to bodies death - let go - a journey in which you do not return to body, field of consciousness - a cord of consciousness.

A journey characterized by almost arriving, destination in sight but never achieved.... Unclear as it maybe - to document the sites of last utterances, the ambiguity, or uncertainty sets in, when one questions the last utterance, was it a final work, a last breath, a final ode... where were these marks made, and what is the importance of recording them? A connection to place, desire to mark things... ' look here, this sign post tells us where the wall once stood', we preserve pieces of it too remember. In this project I travel to the often unmarked sites,  to record the shadows.

Writing oneself to death: George Orwell (tuburculosis) went to the remote isle of Jura (Scotland) against all doctors advice, to complete what would become his final work, 1984. Far from medical aid, and anything else for that matter, accept the calling to complete the work, and the necessary conditions to do so. worth his life. What is it that drives this spark? To complete the master work that will outlive the creator. Hemmingway shot himself when he was no longer felt able to write, lie for one's work and one's work only.  The tension of death, the knowledge of its proximity, produces a need.

Romantic conceptualism

In 2006, Jörg Hiser curated an exhibition entitled Romantic Conceptualism, which aimed to point towards a group of artists who, since the sixties, express an evident element of romanticism in a conceptual practice.

The Now:
Excerpt from a conversation between Mladen Stilinović and Ariane Daoust, Zagreb, June 2009
 
AD: You make a distinction between your practice and that of Western Conceptual art. Boris Groys has coined the term “Romantic Conceptualism” to describe this kind of art in your part of the world. What do you think of it?

MS: It’s just another approach to art. Conceptual art in the West references reason and philosophy, whereas here it also references literature, poetry, everyday language, emotions and many other things besides. This difference is cultural, and is explained by a different attitude or state of mind. You can’t say that Conceptual art pertains to the Romantic spirit or to poetry in the West. In fact, these words are hated because Conceptual artists are cold, rigid and innocent.

http://www.voxphoto.com/english/expositions/stilinovic_mladen/stilinovic_mladen.html 


The Past

As Walter Benjamin suggests of the Romantic sensibility, “the thoroughgoing mystic must not merely leave in suspense the communicability of all knowing, but must directly deny it … a depth greater than ordinary logic can attain.”  
(Benjamin, Walter. “The Concept of Criticism in German Romanticism” In: Selected writings, Volume 1.  Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University; 2004. p. 139.)

Sol Lewitt proposes, “Conceptual artists are mystics rather than rationalists.  They leap to conclusions that logic cannot reach." (
Lewitt, Sol. Sentences on Conceptual Art, 1969)

Pedagogy

research-creation

Sophie Calle and detection

The Locked Room Method
http://www.tate.org.uk/tateetc/issue9/yearlockedroom.htm