Adam Schreiber

Work from his oeuvre.

“Adam Schreiber draws much of his imagery and inspiration from the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin, a library and museum dedicated to the humanities. There, he has photographed cultural artifacts ranging from the first known photograph taken in 1826 to a variety of other industrial and historical oddities.” – via CAMH

via Adam Bell

Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin

Work from Afterlife.

“Afterlife is a re-reading of a controversial photograph taken in Iran on 6 August 1979. This remarkable image, taken just months after the revolution, records the execution of 11 blindfolded Kurdish prisoners by firing squad. The image, which captures the decisive moment the guns were fired, was immediately reproduced in newspapers and magazines across the world. The following year it was awarded a Pulitzer Prize and for the next 30 years its author was simply known as “Anonymous.” Only recently has the photographer’s identity been revealed as Jahangir Razmi, a commercial studio photographer working in the suburbs of Tehran.

The artists sought out and interviewed Razmi, and based on these discussions along with an examination of the 26 neglected images on the roll of film Razmi produced that day, they present a series of collages–an iconoclastic breakdown or dissection of the original image – that interrupts our relationship as spectators to images of distant suffering.” – Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin

Lisa Oppenheim

Work from Killed Negatives, After Walker Evans.

“Lisa Oppenheim’s work constitutes an archaeology of visual culture. She brings the hidden, under-appreciated and repressed into view, and in the process reveals an ordering of things that goes beyond our commonplace responses. Her work ranges from damaged negatives from early 20th century news stories, personal photographs posted on ‘Flicker’ by soldiers serving in Iraq through to the constellation of the day and location of famous historical media stories.

Her show at STORE, titled ‘The Making of Americans’, nods towards Gertrude Stein’s novel of the same name. In the opening paragraph, Stein writes: ‘Sometime there will be an ordered history of everyone.’ This notion, although somewhat conspiracy laden, points towards Lisa’s interest in pulling apart and reconstructing visual languages to understand how aspects of visual cultures and histories are produced.

With this in mind, the exhibition is divided into three parts, each providing a visual representation of something distinctly American. In ‘Killed Negatives, After Walker Evans’ (2007), Oppenheim uses Walker Evans’ unpublished photographs from 1938 found in the National Library of Congress. Evans was commissioned by the Farm Security Administration to document depression era rural America. These negatives are ‘killed’ because they had holes punched through them to prevent publication. Oppenheim printed them and conceptualises the holes as a space of potential contemporary interpretation.

In a second series of works, ‘Multicultural Crayon Displacements’ (2007-8), Oppenheim visually deconstructs a set of colours produced by Crayola termed ‘Crayola Multicultural Crayons’. Crayola’s ‘Flesh’ colour was re-named ‘Peach’ in 1963 in response to the Civil Rights Movement, and similarly ‘Indian Red’ was changed to ‘Chestnut’ in 1999. This photographic series playfully underlines the way the notion of ‘colour’ is culturally constructed – both through the physical process of early colour photography and through the almost invisible social shifts that shape the consumer’s view of the world.

The final work is a 16mm film of what looks like the moon disintegrating into abstraction. Oppenheim repeatedly photocopied an image of the moon taken from the earth at the time of the first Apollo landing. With each photocopy the image becomes ever more degraded. She then filmed each image in series and we see the eventual dissolution of an image that always signifies both more and less than on first sight, a move that is essential to Oppenheim’s working strategy. As the artist herself notes. ‘My interests lie in the tell tale expressions of contemporary life which are often overlooked…not from the moment itself, but rather the gestures and remainders of the forgotten.’” – via STORE Gallery

Talia Chetrit

Work from Reading.

“Photography records optical space. Its basic elements are light and time. I reduce my subject to these elements to investigate photography’s inherent properties and how we perceive and categorize this medium. Some of my subjects are created through the act of photographing. Others are illusions of or metaphors for light and time. How can the basic tools of light and space move us? How can we encounter them in new ways?

The title of my series Reading refers to the act of interpreting visual stimuli. These photographs are about seeing an image and understanding it—its formal complexity or the manner in which it was made. Reading uses experimentations with perception and abstraction to look at photography itself—its ability to transform that which already exists or to create new existence.” – Talia Chetrit

Michael Demers

Work from Color Field Paintings (Browser), Date Paintings, and Every Despot I’ve Ever Known.

Generate a color field painting here.

“Color Field Painting (‘Where,’ after Morris Louis) consists of a series of vertical browser windows that appear consecutively across the screen from left to right. Each browser is set to 800 pixels high, 100 pixels wide, making each window a broad stripe of color. Each stripe is filled with a different color. JavaScript is set to randomly determine which color will be loaded, but the set of possible colors is determined by the artist. The piece plays on the codification of online color in the context of art history. Morris Louis’ painting “Where” (1960), also consists of a series of multicolored bands that run vertically on the composition, and all of Demers’ color are digitally sampled from this palette. However, where Louis’s composition consists of hand-painted lines, and fluid and continuous brush strokes that gently converge at the bottom, Demers’s color bars are all formed according to the same rectangular dimensions and orientation. They are also animated in time; after all of the bars have appeared, they disappear after ten seconds, making his appropriation of the original a commentary on the grid-like structure of HTML code, and the ephemeral character of internet art.” – Carolyn Kane, Rhizome Curatorial Fellow

_________________

“The conceptual artist On Kawara has produced an ongoing series of “date paintings” (the Today series), which consist entirely of the date on which the painting was executed in simple lettering set against a solid background. If the painting could not be completed on the day it was begun, it was destroyed.

Date Paintings (Twitter) differs in that the creation of the actual date painting relies on the dynamic time stamp of the tweet. Once the tweet is 24 hours old the time stamp becomes static, and at that point the painting is destroyed” – Michael Demers

Nikolaus Gansterer

Work from The Bureau of Found Appropriations.

“”The Bureau of Found Appropriations / Département des Sourires” is a work which is part of a long-term study on strategies of appropriation and forms of production (and reproduction) in Asia. My main attention is directed towards differences, misinterpretation and errors committed in the process of translating and copying cultural commodities. How can an image be read, used, interpreted, unterstood without knowing its cultural context?

In 2008 I stayed with Matthias Meinharter for three months in southern China working on the art/film project Chinese Whispers in Dafen – the copy capital of art. There, approximately up to 10,000 painters live, work and are specialized in copying work in specific styles by a wide range of masters of historical and contemporary oil-painting. Annually, more than five million paintings are produced at assembly lines, usually copies of masterpieces.

The reason why this use of imitations strikes western societies as a serious cultural difference has to do with a strong historical correlation between painting and calligraphy: in China a good copy is often considered as a reward and honour to the technical and compositional skills of the initial inventor and master. Memorization is taught as the manually repeated imitation of an original; hence gaining knowledge is based on a culture of transcription. Therefore the terms of originality and authorship are culturally coded. By regarding these gaps with their potential shifts of meaning as a source of inspiration I started compiling a growing collection of images reflecting on cultural practices, identities and authenticities.”

Tom Smith

Work from CocoaGL film stills.

“CocoaGL is a bespoke computer program designed to break down a film into its constituent frames. If a short film is made up of 100 frames, CocoaGL will split the screen into 100 vertical/horizontal lines or 100 concentric squares. As the film plays the 1st 100th of the 1st frame will be frozen, then the 2nd 100th of the 2nd frame will be frozen and so on until all 100 100ths have been frozen and the entire film turned into a still image. ” – Tom Smith

Linda Kostowski and Sascha Pohflepp

Work from Export to World.

“The success of multi-player environments has meant the advent of economic forces in the world of online gaming and the threshold separating playful simulation and the real world has been lowered a notch. Phenomena like sweatshops and shady transactions that once manifested themselves only in the black-market economy of role-playing games like those by Blizzard Entertainment might increasingly take the center stage in the game experience.

In Linden Lab’s Second Life, interaction with merchandise is part of the design of the simulated world. Every object created can be assigned a value and can be traded in. Every user is thus automatically also a producer of virtual wares, and, in contrast to the social web, this added value is much less abstract here: after all Linden’s game currency is directly linked to the real US dollar. Perhaps this is also one of the reasons why Second Life is perceived less as a game and more as unexplored territory, and has been a much-discussed topic over recent months in the mass media. Many observers have identified this as the beginnings of a new internet and wasted no time setting up branches of their companies in this world. Perhaps it’s the three-dimensionality and its proximity to the original promises of virtual reality that make this so attractive, or simply the possibility of producing value–that is merchandise–according to classic patterns.

What is certain, though, is that these wares are digital artifacts too and, as such, can also be copied and manipulated–indeed, to a far greater extent even than some users would wish. Bottom line: there’s no escape from the world of MP3. The general outcry of about the so-called Copybot–the software that allowed someone to copy any object in Second Life–illustrates how the system still reacts so sensitively to issues like this.

Export to World seeks to comment ironically on the design and production of merchandise in virtual worlds. At Ars Electronica in Linz, retail space on Marienstrasse was temporarily converted into a shop like those found in Second Life. Large scale display ads showed what’s for sale: custom-made or purchased virtual objects that shoppers could buy at a price determined daily by the current Linden dollar/euro exchange rate. Instead of the acquired object suddenly appearing in the purchaser’s inventory, though, the proud owner received a a two-dimensional paper representation of it which he/she could manually fit together into a three-dimensional object on site. The final results are paper representations of digital representations of real objects, including all the flaws that copying entails.” – via Ars Electronica Catalog

Kristen Lucas

Work from her oeuvre.

If you look at nothing else today, look at Refresh (and read the transcript).

“In my mind, I am in a shopping mall parking lot. I am framing a scene that I will fill with a cast of zombies. People and family vehicles move through the space of my palms. I am psyched. The temperature is ideal. There is no breeze, so it feels like indoors. It will be a night scene set in daylight. The location is any small or medium-sized city in the US or Canada. The location is a shopping mall parking lot. The location is the space between my palms. The location is the illusionary landscape of my mind.

She pulls back from the shot, the lot, the city, in her mind, tucks away her palm camera and calls it a night. The day is young. She is modest about her day’s ac-complishments, which comes easy because they don’t amount to much, at least not in the tangible sense. In the pursuit of locating her subject, she yields that form is not what she is looking for. She must sacrifice form for experience. Loss of form, in a tangible sense, is a necessary condition.

“Out of sight!” she broadcasts with approval. What she witnessed in the frame, before pulling back, was never exactly in the shot.

She looks through the frame, past the shot until she sees potential everywhere, in everything, all at once around her, like a radioactive material. To devise a method for its capture is preposterous. It has no fixed location. It emanates from no particular source as far as eyes can perceive, even with the aid of a special framing device like a palm camera. She unloads her daypack and begins swiping its contents through the air: a comb, a credit card, a protein bar, a pre-paid tran-sit pass. She has no idea what to expect. And, although the test amuses her, she finds that she can only experience what she imagines.

The act of framing is an indispensable tool in my practice. I am framing experi-ence. I am framing the space of discourse. The act of framing can give rise to a situation, an experience or a set of relations. I once used a vegetable steamer to scan the electromagnetic spectrum of a city block. I assumed the role of a spe-cialist, taking measurements and jotting down notes. By way of framing this situation, my performance not only created new entry points for conversation with my environment and with my audience, but it also activated the potential for col-lective experience and the transference of energy. It was like a magic trick, full of possibility. To perform with recognizable tools would not have produced these re-sults. To engage the public imagination, my performance had to appear effortless and the task had to seem impossible at the same time…” – Kristin Lucas

The Jogging (Brad Troemel)

Work from The Jogging.

________________

Melissa Paget interviews Brad Troemel

Melissa Paget:
What are you influenced by? Can you tell me about your work? What materials are you interested in working with?
Brad Troemel:
On Jogging we classify works as being sculptures, installations, etc. but all of the works on it are ultimately digital images.
The works themselves (in their physical form) are never seen by anyone but me and my collaborators, and many things I post never exist physically in the first place (proposals, some installations, images).
Because the objects we use are re-purposed as art, not purchased or originally intended that way (a canvas bought at Blick), their being art is just a brief part of their life that ultimately ends by being recycled (naturally or synthetically).
The point of re-functioning them is to show their fragility, their ability to be manipulated or changed, their ability to have their function removed with the flick of a wrist.
Historically, our sculpture falls in line with the readymade tendency.
I use photoshop to re-function images the same way, to show how easily an image’s existence can be altered.
I don’t like the things I make existing in real life because of all the baggage associated with physical spaces and the problems of perception with the viewer.
I’m never in control of what a gallery looks like.
On the internet, I’m able to present every work in the same context.
I don’t have to worry about scale, or about the viewer’s likeliness to disregard a 1:34 video for an installation the size of their body.
Everything I make is equal on the internet.
If someone wanted to exhibit a piece from Jogging I would send them a .jpeg file to project.
Artists have a hard time accepting that images aren’t objects.
Old American people grew up in a world of objects- making them, trading them, working in stores touching them as they sell them.
It’s not surprising that they think images are essentially real things, they’ve dealt with real objects their whole lives.
To them images are billboards, advertisements in magazines, pictures in newspapers, and photographs are prints- these are tangible things.
To me images are pop ups ads or .gifs on the side of Gawker- my digital news source that uses .jpegs to convey its stories, and whenever someone wants to show me photographs I go to their website.
Images are not objects for my generation.
If we really follow the Pictures Generation’s ideas to their logical conclusion we see that images as objects are just a bastardization of a bastardization.
If we can agree that photographs are constructions not to be trusted, the most preposterous thing of all would be to try to assign a photograph the semi-permanence of physicality.
I see this as a problem in the real world and in the art world, that Cindy Sherman’s criticisms on identity construction are contradicted by their being objects in metal frames screwed in to a wall.
It makes more sense to present something that revolves around the idea of a visual illusion in a transient way.
Just as a photograph starts as light projected on a sensor, that is the way I want my images to be seen- transient and intangible, never given the validity of a physical state an image never truly has in the first place.
I also don’t believe objects will be objects for long.
9-11 taught us about fragility- how the economic system we trusted could be brought to its knees and how the steel structures we thought were permanent could fall like dust.
We’ve seen entire mountains in the American east bull dozed and dynamited down to flat planes.
Our cement bridges collapse and our levees disintegrate when confronted with what they’re designed to combat.
Glaciers miles thick have melted away.
Every bit of new technology around me is made obsolete in months.
The looming threat of global warming is a physical one that threatens the permanence of the ground we stand on.
We’ve learned all of this during the 21 years I’ve been alive.
All of this and people still want to press paint on a canvas that can be ripped, or stitch fibers millimeters wide.
These types of art making art futile.
Objects don’t stand a chance.
But in the mean time, in the brief historical period before objects are permanently annihilated, they serve as our greatest inconvenience and take up all of our space.
One day we’ll run out of space for everything- for our collections of Furbies, for our families of 12, for our 3 ton $2 million dollar reflective egg sculptures and everything else.
These apocalyptic ideas about the fate of objects contribute to my mistrust of them (and the assumed permanence of their existence in places like museums), but the greatest problem I see for objects in the art world are their tendency to be the vessels through which artists are controlled by those more powerful than themselves.
Since industrialization, we’ve understood that art can be reproduced infinitely.
From that point artists’ intentions split in half- one group still believing in originality, objecthood, the hand, craft, etc.
The other group saw the end of originality, viewed the artist themself as the artwork, and believed that thought was the most powerful artistic creation.
I associate myself with the second group.
Industrialization was a freeing movement for artists, it allowed them to make even more of their works and sell them to more people, eliminating the intense dependence on single collectors that many artists faced.
This freedom was false, however, and only served to broaden an even larger problem – private ownership of art through manufactured scarcity.
Before industrialization, the scarcity of art was a real thing- you could truly only make one thing because you were making it with your hands.
After industrialization, scarcity became a charade played by artists as a means to maintain the value of their own work.
This is where we get “edition of 5” below the title in the museum placard and other forms of false scarcity.
Now not only is the collector content to limit those who can enjoy an artwork, but the artist becomes a willing participant as well.
Art that cannot be seen is pointless.
Information that cannot be accessed is not information.
This is a problem, but its solution requires an unlikely shift in the way art is distributed to being open editions for whoever wants to buy it (can you imagine every city that wants a work of art getting it? Especially in the case of art that is very expensive to manufacture like Richard Serra or Jeff Koons?)
Or it requires a shift in our perception of how to see art and learn from it.
The internet might offer us this opportunity, it being a place all can access for no money.
There are still problems with all having access to a computer but they are far less than all having access to the Venice Biennale.
I don’t hold any distinction between seeing art in person and seeing it on the internet because I don’t believe in aura or other types of ghost importance and magic.
Aura is an idea used to validate limited ownership of art in the object form, that we must go to the museum and pay our entrance fee and that the museum must pay millions of dollars to own “the real thing”.
You can see how “aura” makes quite a bit of money for a few.
When your art takes no object form and is available on the internet for all, there is no more false scarcity for you.
If, after this point, someone pays you to create new work or pays you out of admiration for work you’ve already created I see no problem with that because they are paying for merit, not ownership.
This is the place where the artist creates an idea and the collector pays for the idea for its worth to them out of charity and respect, not control.
I think this is a noble way to live your life.
We saw this in what Radiohead did with their last album, to an extent.
I want to create memories for people instead of objects, I think they’re worth more and will be all we’re eventually left with.
Everything art related will soon be classified according to its relationship to the viewer.
For example, we’re seeing people increasingly unwilling to pay for MP3s.
Recorded and mass distributed music is a kind of passive participation in music.
The experience is uniform for every person who downloads the song.
I see no problem in paying money to go see a band live, though.
Live experiences are worth paying a premium for because they are unique and memorable, they require active participation.
Relational aesthetics has something to do with this idea of the value of human interaction and being a potential medium itself.
Besides, most of art is an end point.
The artist buys a canvas and some paint, spends some labor depicting something on the canvas, hangs in in the gallery and sells it.
Beginning, middle and end completed in a gallery by one person.
That control seems a little tyrannical.
I want to set up conditions for the end point to be created on its own in real life by the viewer (or, now, participant).
Recently, I anonymously left a six pack of beer in a skate park as a project.
I’m not sure what happened to it afterwards.
Maybe a cop from the neighboring police department found it and poured them out in a trash can.
Maybe a bunch of kids had their first beer.
Maybe they’re still there because everyone thinks they’re someone elses.
I like all of these possible endings, any one of them satisfy me.
I don’t need to see what happened, because I know whatever happened created a narrative I’m interested in.
This is what I mean- creating beginnings and allowing other people to finish the project on their own, create their own experiences.
This is the direction I want to go in the future.