Curatorial Project: Anthropology

     For my final assignment in the class, the curatorial project, I have decided to choose the theme "Anthropology". I have always been more excited about fantasy art, but seeing as how Rothrocks' primary example of an exhibit was fantasy-based, I chose a topic that differs drastically visually, but also maintains whimsical elements.

     To come up with this theme, I started by picking my favorite artist we have discussed this semester; Ursula Von Rydingsvard. I think her sculptures are so fascinating, her ingenuity with abstract forms really impresses me. When I thought about what her art means to me, I felt that it can be perceived as how man has shaped the environment into unnatural forms, weather that is for the better or worse.

(Below: Ursula Von Rydingsvard, Storm King)

     From this, I knew I wanted to go in an ecological direction.I  re-affirmed in my head that the only reason Ursula's pieces were "abstract" was because they were forms that don't really exist in our world. It is then I realized that these sculptures could represent how we've manipulated the world while estranging us from the images of sky scrapers, machinery, and mining plants that we are used to. The thought of "estranging" the viewer from the things he or she might have seen before gave me the idea to do an exhibit focused around how species or races not of our own would view human tendencies and ways of life.

     I then selected the artist Mark Dion for his installations. He creates these creepy little scenes of life that are also quite quirky and beautiful. I felt that this calls attention to the main theme of the exhibit, which is the re-examination of human tendencies. Finally, I searched out the artist John Morton for his ceramic pieces. Seeking deceased animals as inspiration, he creates beautiful textured and colored surfaces on grotesque animal carcasses, almost like "sugar coating" or "Lying to the public". 

     I came up with the title "Anthropology", because anthropology is defined as the study of human kind. I also thought of the term "anthropology" due to the visuals of the collection. I incorporated a lot of worn out looking browns and grays, and some of Mark Dions' work even looks like its collecting dust. These traits make me think of anthropology excavation sites.

     I wanted the exhibit to make viewers question what is important to themselves, and also think about what future generations would think of us if they only had our remains to look at.

ANTHROPOLOGY

Poster Project

     This project was to create a poster discussing issues that bother us as individuals. I'm a pretty open minded and considerate person, so not a whole lot bothers me. This made it difficult when thinking of ideas.
     I eventually came up with this poster. It reads, "why not equality? Because gender discrimination is not a one sided issue." In the backgrounds, there is a list of other equality issues. I chose to divide the other issues into blue and pink, symbolizing that they effect both males and females. I chose to do the word feminism in all pink, showing that many people today consider females as THE ONLY victimized gender. I also wanted to call attention to the fact that being a strong feminist only carries the individual farther away from true equality.
     While I agree that feminism in other places where women are still barely considered humans is a vital part of the development of society, I feel a lot of Americans, women in particular, over analyze what it means to be a feminist. They go from fighting for their own rights to being man-haters, from pushing for higher wages for women to scrutinizing the male taste in the female body (ex; look at this video game character! So just because she is a princess she has to be skinny?! Not all women are skinny!).
     I have personally been involved in situations where men have been taken advantage of, because women know that they have the ability in this country to come off as weak and defenseless in the eyes of the public. Men are very easy to be framed or blamed for domestic violence issues, pregnancy and sexual contact, or harassment and physical assault when in fact it was equally both genders fault. On a smaller scale, I've been friends with girls who think that every guy who wishes them a good day must be lusting after them.
     I just wish more people would focus on equality, rather than seeing a vicious thug and an abused little angel every time a man and woman walk into a court room for domestic violence. That is stereotyping, not equality.

Some things I looked at....
     http://joyfulheartfoundation.org/learn/domestic-violence/effects-domestic-violence
          This website has good information on how to get involved in stopping domestic violence and similar          issues, but again, information is mostly focused on women and children as victims.
     http://www.safehorizon.org/page/domestic-violence-and-abuse--182.html
          Stories from people who have been in domestic violence situations.
     http://www.ncadv.org/files/MaleVictims.pdf
          Very interesting information on this page, clearly focused on men.
          - 1 out of every 14 men have been physically assaulted by a former or current spouse.
          - It is difficult to predict accurate counts of male victims, as males are less likely to report being                     attacked or raped.
     http://www.articlesbase.com/relationships-articles/male-victims-of-domestic-violence-when-he-is-the-victim-1157342.html?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=ab_paid_12&gclid=CjwKEAiAv7ajBRCIldS7rp7wzFkSJAAA1n4Dnkbcwv3woVxBfUm17n4e5ixDthhjP70mTisFIhVn9hoCnTPw_wcB
          - 400,000 annually-reported incidents of domestic violence, about 40 percent include male           victims of domestic violence
             

For the week of 10/27

Reading; Daniel Joseph Martinez
     A Los Angeles based American artist who focuses on using text in many forms of media including instillation, sculpture, and prints. His work is almost always political, or focused on asking controversial questions.
     I respect his work as activism, and I enjoy his exhibits as a whole more than his individual pieces. The collection of prints in his exhibits combined with his instillation's create interesting spaces. many of his pieces by themselves though seem boring, and I feel like many other artists who work with text create more visual interest using text.

Art 21; Krzysztof Wodiczko, Jenny Holzer

      Krzysztof Wodiczko was born in Warsaw, Poland, in 1943. He later moved to the US, and resides in NY and Massachusetts. He is known for his instillation/performance pieces where he projects recordings of people telling personal stories on large monuments. Often times the stories involve gang violence or the loss of loved ones due to political situations. Wodiczko wants his art to remind people that the great and powerful monuments we see on a daily basis are somewhat hiding the gritty underbelly of society.

     I find Wodiczko's work to be extremely interesting, because I've never seen anything like it. Granted, some of his pieces are a little dated, but the concept is very cool. I bet with modern day projectors we can create incredibly life like holograms onto his selection of monuments, deepening the effect of an imposing creature formed by society. 

     Jenny Holzer was born in Gallipolis, Ohio, in 1950. Her work, like Wodiczko's, displays the perspective of others on large monuments. Rather than actual video, Jenny uses texts, but all text has been anonymously written about political and social issues.

     At first I found that the text seemed a little cliche, but after learning that all the text had been written by every day people and submitted, I feel a strong sympathy towards it. The opinions and statements projected on large buildings literally illustrate citizens screaming their concerns at government and big business. Not only are the words powerful, but they are visually pleasing. The way that the projected text can wrap and en capture large structures is really incredible.

(Below; Instillations by Jenny Holzer)

Final Fantasy

     For our final fantasy project, I had chosen to create an abstract gathering bird/hag costume. I wanted the costume to not only be visually appealing, but to be some what of a fantasy of my own. While they might have been to small to be noticed by the audience, necklace, bottles, and trinkets were strung into my clothes to not only enhance the sound, but to emphasize my adventurous or "treasure hunting" spirit. I feel like this could be seen as both a symbol for my desire to collect memories and experiences, but also my tendencies towards dwelling over negative memories. I feel like this costume is successful, because while the bird represents something more adventurous, the hag is something more shy and illusive; some of my class mates had guessed both while looking at my costume.                                           While the meaning was some what of an after thought, I enjoyed making and performing in this costume. Having a little acting experience from several classes in high school gave me the power to turn my uneasiness into pure bold energy. I think these classes, which also features extensive units on improvisation, gave me the creativity to make a small story out of my randomized group; A baby, a woman in a painting, and me. In which story the bird finds a baby, attempts to pacify it and leave, but ends up feeling too much guilt to leave it in the woods and returns to it. The picture frame-costume acted primarily as a space-making piece and a "story teller" character, leaving the baby and I to create the story. I really enjoyed the way it came together. I thought it was very artful.

Reflection
     I enjoyed this project the most so far, and I was pleased with the way a lot of the costumes came out. I was unfortunately disappointed with a lot of the gestures people made. I think a lot of people were nervous about performing, and subconsciously chose to do expected gestures to avoid attention.
     While I understand the "magic" that could happen upon spontaneous interaction, most of the class did not have the audacity or improvisational creativity to create a balanced scene. While there were some moments; like the large, stiff moving robot, and the small, fluid crow-ballerina dancing together, most of the skits were just mosh pits. I also noticed, out of nerves perhaps, many people lost their character entirely when around other characters; in other words, there was usually the strongest character per skit, and many of the other characters around that character would pick up the strongest characters gestures.
     To resolve this, I feel this project would be better in groups, or maybe make picking a group optional. This would not only help a lot of students handle their nerves, but it also lends to more dynamic costumes, since you know who you are going to be performing with. The costumes would also probably be more visually appealing, since they would most likely be made in uniform, or as a matching "collection".
     For example, group costumes could include duets like Love and Hate, or Big and Little. Groups can create abstract North, South, East, and West costumes. Age group costumes, like baby, infant, teen, adult, and elderly. Elemental costumes like land, air, sea, and fire. There are an infinite possibilities with planned groups, and I feel for the classroom environment, these would be more artfully executed.

Fantasy Week

Art 21; Jeff Koons, Cao Fei, Nick Cave
     The first artist we discussed this week was Jeff Coons. I don't want to talk about his work that much, I am not a fan. I don't really have much to say. He is famous for making larger than life versions of regular objects, and tends to use metallic or sparkly materials. I will say his work is definitely involving fantasy; the bright and reflective materials evoke memories of the circus, childhood toys, and those old creepy "Eye Spy" books.
     Next we looked at Cao Fei. Cao's art uses video and photography to directly document and study the idea of fantasy worlds. She has always been into anime and cos-playing, but eventually developed an interest in the secret lives of those people when they aren't "supposed to be" in character. She also did a lot of work involving the online game "Second Life". While I find most of the work visually unappealing, I do find this topic interesting. My favorite piece of hers we looked at was  Whose Utopia. I feel this video successfully asked questions and posed ideas about the oppression and restrictions placed on people in "real life", and did it in a beautiful and interesting way.
     Nick cave was my favorite artist this week. Nick Cave, having a background in both dance and fibers, creates large, wild costumes that usually involve the creation of noise. While Nick thought he was originally just making sculptures, this interest grew until he began making many suits, and putting on mass performances. The suits are magical, colorful, fun, exciting, and most importantly, they let the wearer escape into a fantasy. The wearers create jesters and sounds based on how the suit makes them feel, which allows for a huge amount of self expression. Some of his pieces are shown below. Seriously, his work is mad cool.

Reading; Lorna Simpson
     Lorna Simpson is an African American photographer and artist. She grew up in Brooklyn, NY, and in the 1980's and 1990's developed a name for herself by studying racial divisions in her work. Often times her work features a simple photograph, and then overlying controversial text, as in her piece The Water Bearer. I find her work pleasant to look at. It feels historical, and very documentary like. The photos appear to be in good quality, and while the use of text and its ability to put an idea in the viewers mind can be dangerous, I feel her use of text only makes the viewer think more about the picture. In many cases, a great picture is ruined by text because the text will tell the viewer what to think about, unintentionally of course. I think Lorna avoids this by using both vague imagery and vague text. The final product is almost like stylized poetry, giving the viewer just enough direction so that the artist makes her point, but then also leaving the piece open for interpretation and debate.

Class Notes
     One thing we did this week was that we went outside and did some exorcises to give us ideas on movement for our fantasy project. I feel like this helped me understand the project better, especially with the example gestures we did with Rothrock. I also enjoyed "loosening up" with the class; I feel it helped us get used to performing in front of each other, especially since much of the class has never done performance art.

Reflection on Ecology Projects

     I think people struggled with the ecology projects. I know I did. After my finished collection of photos were all bundled up neatly on my computer, I noticed the interesting trend; several photos appearing to be from the perspective of an animal, a concept I would someday like to further explore. But there lies the problem; I didn't start out with a particular goal or theme. Granted, I'm so clever I thought of one after the fact, but I noticed a lot of other people didn't. Most of the projects were just pictures of generic nature-esque things; plants, bugs, nature scenes, etc. Even the city scenes were just bland ol' pictures of the city. No one had a goal or concept, for example...

"To inspire sympathy from the viewer by displaying pathetic, trampled, but persevering nature in the urban environment." 

     or even...

"To show the figurative connection between man and nature, by comparing the physical human form to forms found in nature."

     I think this problem came from the fact that we all wanted to go out into nature and start messin around with sticks. Then we hear the part where we have to have 20 pictures, and it throws our game off. This project was unlike the other projects, we weren't just making a piece of art with meaning any more. It had to be at least several pieces of art, and we were limited to photography or photo documentation. The fact that we had limited time meant not many people could find good locations or gather materials, so that aspect basically limited most of us to photography. I just think none of us were in the mind set after the other projects this semester to make correlations on a deeper level of photographs of only things that were already in existence before we started this project.

Ecology Project

     For my final ecology project I ended up simply going out into the nature around my home and taking photographs of wildlife interacting with man made structures. I struggled with understanding the concept of this project, but I feel my end project meets the requirements.

     I didn't really have any inspiration for this project other than nature. I was really fascinated by Andy Goldworthy's art, but due to my time issues, I couldnt do anything that large scale.

Slideshow