Witold Gombrowicz, Polish Memories - 2004

Turns out to be a book, not a visual artwork, but was brought up in reference to the "man" controlling culture and the viewing of the Mona Lisa.

Bertrand Lavier, Walt Disney Productions [1947-1990], n.9, 1990

A user of "interforms"

Subodh Gupta, Line of Control, 2008

An "interculturalist artist"

Kim Soo-Ja, A Mirror Woman, 2002

An "interculturalist artist"

John Armleder, Don't Do It! (Readymades of the 20th Century), 1997-2000

An impersonator artist

1.) There was an example of two artists buying the rights to a Manga character and supposed to be asking what does it mean to have multiple ownership of a sign. So, what does it mean? I thought I could answer that but I waited too long and everyone is home and I can’t concentrate.

2.) “The idea then, is to use forms,” but how? We, as artists know what’s up, we know the cultural map of global capitalism and have it in our toolbox. We also (I suppose only if we’re smart or non-delusional modernists) know that art has neither origin nor destination, so even though we don’t know where the proverbial train has been or is going we just get the fuck on for the ride, that’s what we do!

3.) So yes, the artist is a semionaut, navigating the treacherous waters of mass information and global culture – but to what end? Oh wait - there is no end, because that implies ideology. But is there a purpose at least? Well, “art [is] an activity that enables people to navigate and orient themselves in an increasingly digitized world.” So the artist is a semionautical cartographer, enabling everyone to know where he or she are in space and time in this crazy world of ours. Hmm, okay I can buy that function of an artist, but now where does the history of Art come into play? Is that still a valid tool in the box? There’s lots of talk about appropriation from art history, but I wonder if this is really all that effective to helping a person orient himself in the digitized world…

4.) “How can we avoid calling contemporary art only contemporary with the economy surrounding it?” But why do you want to do that, B? Wouldn’t that imply an ideology? The ideology where there’s an existing translation between all cultures and viewers and makers of art? Ha! The ideal is the Art Train on no track that is not going to an end or coming from an origin. Also the train keeps gaining cars from other random places magically, all kinds of inspiration and things to appropriate flying in from all angles!

5.) On the topic of appropriation, again, “the act of re-displaying is indistinguishable from that of re-making.” I got to wondering if this idea, expressed in the context of contemporary artists using copies of existing works or actually copying existing works, can be applied in the same way of re-displaying say the Mona Lisa in a different context from its current position at the Louvre. This might not be what was meant by the original comment, but could re-displaying the original historical work of Art in another setting, not just a copy mind you, have a profound effect on the meaning that work? Well, when I phrase it like that, yes, obviously it does. If I took the Mona Lisa out of its protective case and displayed it on a city street in front of some graffiti, that would give the viewer some pause and bring up obvious contradictions that comment on the status of Art over the centuries and today. I think the reason I keep thinking of this stuff is that I still want to hold on to the authority that Art used to have – it’s my belief that making a statement like I described with an Original has more potency than what would happen if a copy were used, even though in this day and age all that exists is copies and digital versions of culture.

1. Cady Noland, Mutated Pipe, 1989

2. Gabriel Orozco, Yielding Stone, 2005

3. Maurizio Cattelan, Errotiale Vrai Lapin, 1994

4. Kelley Walker, Black Star Press, 2006

5. Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla, from Landmark, 2001

Radicant Chapter 2

1. I'm curious what people will think about a paradox described on page 81 - that though the world is becoming increasingly mutable, we're operating under the sense that the systems in place (like captialism and democracy) that created the mutable world are somehow insurmountable - there's no alternative to them. I'm inclined to agree - there seems no way of escaping capitalism. Maybe when we're able to go to Mars and establish colonies we'll do better. In the meantime, the artist reacts by making the mutable waste into something substantial, but making it Art.

2. So many artists were brought up like Jason Rhoades who use a lot of found objects and create a chaotic installation that defies order and structure and pretty much any conventional ways of decoding the work into meaning for the viewer. Before my formal artistic eduaction, I was inclinded to view work like this as massive piles of junk that were not expressing anything of value to me. Even B. admitted that he struggled at first to understand the point of Rhoades's work, but then he formed this theory of creating meaning through defining negative space. I suppose I was one of those with a more "stationary gaze," seeing only chaos. I would say that I see so much chaos every day that I've been conditioned to ignore that I don't want to pay any special attention to this pile of junk and bombardment of neon lights, no offense Mr. Rhoades.

3. It was an important point brought up around page 110, that amidst all the art being created by journeys, there needs to be some sort of starting point or something towards which to journey, like pickles, apparently. Though the journeys wander through boundaries, there is still a system in place for them to be conducted. This is an act of the artwork creating its own context.

4. Topology = geometry that measures nothing and no quantities are compared. Instead one examines the figure's qualitative invariants by deforming it to see what happens, like folding a piece of paper. Art topology = perhaps the meaning derived from a Koons work is found in the invariants left behind when he blows up a toy to the size of a building.

5. Revocable aesthetics - an interesting phrase. It implies that the authority a work of Art has can be yanked at any time. I'm trying to imagine this situation happening with a classic, like a Picasso... It's hard to imagine that all of a sudden people will reject the merit of Starry Night, probably because this is a contemporary problem. Okay, how about a Damien Hirst... Well that's easier, many people wouldn't consider a shark in a glass case very aesthetic in the first place. The job of an artwork now is to create its own authority, its own context, that can stand up when the rest of the world has become entirely skeptical. That's a huge job to do - no wonder grad school is so stressful!