Lecture: with visiting curator Yutaka Inagawa

It’s interesting to hear Yutaka saying that as a curator, he didn’t want to know too much about artists’ intentions for their artwork, but to read the artwork himself to install the work. It has always been a challenge for me to read artwork without reading the annotation. I understand it’s very important to develop my own critical thinking but I just have a hard time understanding artwork or extracting an idea/reason from it. Sometimes even after reading the explanation, I can’t build the connections. I think it has a lot to do with my knowledge of art history or other artists’ work and also my experience in practice.

I’m also very impressed by his collaborations and organizations of exhibitions with other artists, which he said was a good strategy of surviving as artists. I found it difficult to work with others as well during the first two projects. But curating is different from creating. There’s more space, flexibility and openness for curating I think. I’m also thinking about the connections with other artists. I’m really bad at building interpersonal connections in every way but it just seems really important in every way in life and career. But it’s just not my habit and I’m not motivated to do that. I don’t why but I always have an impression of artists being away from crowds.

ADAS Drop in

It is really frustrating to hear Nathan saying that my second draft not more successful than my first draft. He thought I deleted too much of my depth of reading to take care of the structure and the lens. And I should add different points of views to compare and evaluate. I think I have to review the content in my first draft and reevaluate its relevance to the lens I set. It feels so bad when I spend time on making something better but it turns out not better or even worse.

Showed my 5 videos on TV all together.

• Olivia pointed out that most videos were around nourishment for surviving and asked how about using a non-necessity as a source. Weiwei also suggested me to have more different content. It’s true that I was looking at daily activities in the house because emptiness for me didn’t come from certain specific events/activities but just daily life without concrete specific causes. But I would think further about it.
• Chalkie said she felt sense of frustration from doing things over and over again. The combination and rhythm of the sound could also be thought about. I’m happy that she has felt the frustration because frustration of attempts is the point I want to express. It’s not my intention to mix the sound. The way I play them together on one screen is because it’s the only equipment I could use at the moment. I didn’t pay much attention to sound and I just recorded it with my actions. I’m not sure about it because I don’t actually know anything about it. And it’s not quite the area I want to focus on to be honest, although it’s part of the videos.
• A few people mentioned that all were quite clean and Olivia mentioned feeling of absence – ghost like trance. Chalkie said it could be more human – flesh and bones, blood and tears. I responded that because emptiness is like no trace, no evidence of being, and unstable ego without a strong sense of being. Elodie brought up that sometimes she felt empty at a club. Someone also said that emptiness could be portrayed without visual emptiness. I agree with emptiness can be felt in a crowd, which I have had many experiences with. To go to people to me is also a futile attempt against emptiness. But these videos are just one way of showing the futility of attempts through the interaction with daily objects. I just haven’t come up with another way of expressing that yet. I don’t know about Chalkie’s suggestion because emptiness or futility to me isn’t a solid or strong feeling. It’s more flowing. The sense of human is just too vivid and lively.
• MC saw absurdity and thought of the book The Unbearable Lightness of Being. She also shared Meret Oppenhiem’s fur cup. Though absurdity isn’t what I want to show, I think it’s a bit related to the repetition of the futile attempts. I’m glad that the videos reminded her of the book, which I know but haven’t read, because it is the feeling of emptiness, which is the context of the videos. Lightness is a part I want to cover. It’s also good to have an artist to look at as I haven’t got many practical references for this project but many books.
• Yash felt loneliness and depression, and the dark edges in the videos is like a layer of unhappiness projected on same scenes. Though loneliness and depression are not the point I want to show, I think they’re symptoms of emptiness, which are closely related. I’m surprised by her reading of the darkness because I didn’t really think this way but I like it. The original videos are quite dark and I just added lighting effects centered on the objects.
• Clare said it’s nice when videos went off one by one unexpectedly. It’s like some bits are lost. It’s not my intention but I think I like the sense of inconsistency of the presentation because I think it goes with the sense of incompletion of the videos or the unstable ego fragments.
• Ekua suggested me to develop a narrative by bringing the videos together in one piece. I responded that the reason why I shot them separately was that there’s no storyline among the videos. Someone mentioned I could use empty cuts/shots in between. Elodie and Weiwei preferred the separation as viewers could choose which to watch with the effect of lots going on at the same time. Ekua said one piece made more sense if it’s displayed on one screen. Then I mentioned that I was thinking about using monitors for the ideal presentation because it’s like the activities were contained in the monitors as they were contained in the house.
• Joe told me not to have emptiness constrain my experimentation and maybe I hadn’t found what I was really thinking. I understand his point because I do have found my thoughts and practice are largely constrained by my idea/theme. But to be honest, my practice just serves my ideas. I just don’t really see a point of practice without an idea. I think it can be very beneficial of just doing without much thinking or reasoning, but with the tight deadlines, I really don’t think I’m able to work that way. I always have to have a reason for my action, which I have mentioned multiple times in the blog I believe.

I feel I’m more and more doubtful about my relationship with photography. I’m not after visual effects but it seems valuable/important hearing about feedback for others’ photography work. I guess I have talked about this in previous posts but what’s the meaning of a beautiful photograph without an idea? It’s true that there’re many professional photographers mainly looking at visual effects, which I think is in need for many fields. But for art, I don’t see the point. But many people want/like beautiful work. Maybe my understanding about art/photography is wrong. I don’t know.

They present the man with gifts, and the man then summons the architect to help him place the gifts in an appropriate manner. The architect becomes irate, claiming that the man should not accept such ‘traces’, that through his design of the interior, he has give the man everything, and has ‘completed’ him. This situation makes the man deeply unhappy, as he comes to the realization that his identity is fixed in place, and is unable to develop further through an ongoing relation to the world of things. The interior spatialize a frozen image of the man, and the actions of his family show at once their exclusion from this image. In Benjamin’s terms, at the moment of its total capture by architecture as art, the interior as a space of inhabitation is liquidated.

Charles Rice

It’s an interesting point that presents flexible identity through the changes of interior.

Then, on the surface of being, in that region where being wants to be both visible and hidden, the movements of opening and closing are so numerous, so frequently inverted, and so charged with hesitation, that we could conclude on the following formula: man is half-open being.

GASTON BACHELARD

Never thought about being in this aspect or compare it with opening and closing but I think it makes sense.

Risk was mentioned a lot in this lecture. For me, the riskiest part in my practice I’ve felt would be doing artwork in front of others or bothering others in the process. For example, when I had to do an installation in the shared studio and when I had to use the shared house to take photos, I was very stressful to disturb others or seen by others in the process, especially when I was working on my own. I think it’s because I’m not confident about my work and others would feel strange about what I’m doing. I guess it’s something I have to get over and I hope I will as I get more experience of practice.

The videos turn out quite dark as I kept ISO 200… Hope I can edit them in Premier. I can’t control the sound all the time as I have housemates. Maybe I’ll reproduce the sound if necessary.

Scene 1: Cooking with empty hob + lid on bed

Scene 2: Washing hands with empty hand wash and water filter

Scene 3: Eating + drinking with empty dishes + teapot + phone on stairs

Scene 4: Plugging with inappropriate plugs

Scene 5: Getting/putting hangers from/to washing machine

Installation View

Had to do it in my bedroom… Was going to just stick prints on the white walls. Then I suddenly thought I could use the frame I used in the photos:

Shooting Plan 3

Still exploring interacting with empty objects in inappropriate environment or with inappropriate pairing:

1. Eating & drinking with empty dishes + teapot + phone on stairs
2. Getting/putting hangers from/to washing machine
3. Washing hands with empty hand wash and water filter
4. Plug with inappropriate plugs
5. Cooking with empty hob + lid on bed

Shoot each scene for 3 min with moments of my absence, long & close shots. Record sound by phone.

The Experience of Architecture

Malleable effects brought about by direct human influence do not lose significance at the end of childhood, but remain vital to adults of every age, for their essential motive, in the words of psychologist Karl Groos, is to find ‘joy in being a cause’, exploring the latent mutation of things plastic with change and revealing that we are producers of those effects. If man ‘experienced himself as entirely passive, a mere object’, echoes Fromm in The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, ‘he would lack a sense of his own will, of his identity. To compensate for this, he must acquire a sense of being able to do something’, Fromm continues, ‘or to use the most adequate English word, to be “effective”… To be able to effect something is the assertion that one is not impotent, but that one is an alive, functioning, human being. To be able to effect means to be active and not only to be affected, to be active and not only passive. It is, in the last analysis, the proof that one is. The principle can be formulated thus: I am, because I effect.’

Henry Plummer

The evidence of existence.

Installation View

I had 13 pages for the first 3 projects in the portfolio and I found I had to have the installation view pages as the first pages for each project as I only have 2-3 pages for each project… I had to retake the installation view for the first project. I could only use the space near the cafe as capture studio is full. So the lighting wasn’t good:

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Academic Tutorial

Showed the 3 series of photos to Clare. She found some photos stronger:

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And others are not obviously strange enough. She suggested me to take videos of my repeated doing and undoing without actual change/effect from the actions. I really have received suggestions of making my images moving many times for multiple projects. I just have never worked on videos and never thought about it myself. I guess the reason why I get these comments is that I tend to tell my ideas through change/movement/action. I just thought the moments captured were enough. Clare said emphasis on actions through video could also tell the futility of the attempts and it’s a way to slow viewers down to think about the purpose.

I think I’ll give it a try but I need to think further about which scenes I want to shoot.

The Experience of Architecture

When we are able to act upon and with the physical world, we overcome not only the modern malaise of feeling alone and isolated, but also the impotence of feeling inept and small, as if we were nothing but a particle of dust at the mercy of external forces.

Henry Plummer

Thinking about the opposite situation.

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