Jun Yang; China. "Camouflage. LOOK like them - TALK like them" and the series "X-Guide"

Camouflage. LOOK like them - TALK like them
Jun Yang. /04, 16:33 min









Jun yang, who was four years old when his family emigrated from China to Vienna, makes videos and installations focusing on cultural and personal identity and the effects of migration and relocation. Filmed in the wake of 9/11, "Camouflage. LOOK like them - TALK like them" reflects the conditions of everyday life in the West for migrants - legal and illegal. - in a climate of paranoia. Migrant X was smuggled from China into Austria, where he is designated a person of 'suspicious appearance and behaviour'. The story of X's failed attempts to blend in with the crowd - and his eventual imprisonment as an illegal immigrant - is told against a background of newspaper headlines reporting extraordinary police measures, false alarms and wrongful arrests. As advice to others in the same predicament, Yang describes the camouflage tactics necessary in order to survive. Though the tales is not remotely funny, its reducio ad adsurdissimum points to the ridiculous situation where we will all have to look and behave exactly alike in order to be above suspicion.
The "X-Guide" pictograms reinforce the messages of the 'Camouflage' video in simple visual language, illustrating appropriate codes of Western behaviour for foreigners. But at the same time there are deeper ironies at play: while designed to enable us to communicate regardless of nationality, race and age, pictograms used as public information symbols are highly culture-specific and can often be misunderstood. Here, in order to make everything absolutely clear, the pictograms are accompanied by captions in English, though English-speakers presumably should not need these pictograms instructions.

*KATAOKA, Mami. "Laughing in a Foreign Language", The Hayward, London, UK, 25 January - 14 April 2008. Southbank Centre.
X-Guide: get a formal hair-cut Alucubon, vinyl, three-part approx. 116 x 160 cm .2004


"X-Guide: learn the local language." Alucubon, vinyl, three-part approx. 116 x 160 cm 2004

Artur Zmijewski, Them @ Documenta 12, Kassel, German. 2007

(Artur Zmijewski Them, 2007. Courtesy of Foksall Gallery Foundation)

Them documents a social experiment devised by Zmijewski in which representatives from conflicting social groups (conservatives, patriotic Catholics, nationalist Polish youth, leftist socialists, democrats and freedom fighters) are brought together through a series of workshops. Each group is asked to construct a symbolic centre and then to comment and react to the others. Forcing participants to interact: to negotiate, to fight, or to withdraw.

***

“Though we often ostensibly apply actual labels to fictive things, we
can hardly apply fictive labels; for a label used exists.”
-Nelson Goodman, Languages of Art

‘I’m starting’ says an old lady in her modest but excited voice. Nobody anticipates the beginning of a battle. She draws a black line, then another, and more.
Four different teams illustrate their four diverse views in simple drawings. A catholic church, a word ‘’ in Hebrew framed in the contour of , Chrobry’s Sword, and the word ‘Freedom’ (in Polish) again framed in the contour of .
Each team’s members come from a different ideological background. As groups supposed to appear representative of the ideology they become stereotypical in themselves. Moreover – they use stereotypes to express their beliefs.
Their illustrations serve as emblems, also in a literal meaning, as they are printed on t-shirts that each group will wear. During the second meeting, dressed in their new outfits they become easily identifiable. Simple rules are set – there are no rules.
Teams begin to correct each other’s expressions, removing or adding elements until the message is in compliance with their own views. They each represent some type of an extreme, not one being a so-called typical Pole. However, it is the very use of stereotypes in which lays the strength of Them.
Their actions are a battle of representations, a war of images, symbols and gestures, which gain their intensity from being simple, direct and most importantly – not always adequate. The extremity escalates as the exchange of fire takes place.
None of the participants are artists; it is only for the sake of the video that they agreed to use visuals. The conflict is spectacular, almost thrilling as the actions develop.
If one ever asks the question whether art can be harmful, this video provides a particularly interesting answer. Only the elderly catholic ladies notice that the tumult is not leading the discussion anywhere. They decide to leave the room. The remaining three groups consisting of much younger people seem too excited to notice that their actions are destructive. The reason for that is as simple as it is peculiar. They have to invent ways of expression that are new to them and that will prove what they consider to be the strength of their argument.
There is no single attempt to explain any belief or the reason behind it. Nobody tries to reach an agreement. Nonetheless, members of each group seem to be satisfied with their doings. Perhaps it is because they are stubborn. But it may also be due to the fact, that they are engaged in a creative process, the most fulfilling act any human can undertake. The godly act of creating easily becomes opium for the brain.

* text by Bartek Kraciuk from the whitehotmagazine.

“Borderlines: Digital art to produce social statements.”

Is it possible to produce an artwork that engages the society? Which are the tools, the techniques and the correct terms to represent the society today trough the well-know technological speed development?


Abstract:
This paper intents to analyze the work “borderlines”(a collaboration between artist using digital technology to represent immigrants aspects and conditions in London). The current essay use different concepts - related to the digital technology in the art field - to translate and illustrate the context about the work and also to create questions about the terminology ‘digital art’. What is produced today that we could call digital art? How we can identify this term in our contemporary production and how this technological evolution in the art field help to develop the society? Looking in the process of this art production the technology is inserted “as a tool” to engage social statements in different contexts, and at the same time, to represent and analyse the today’s society searching for further paradigms and aesthetics.

Keywords: digital art; social art; contemporary art; ‘work-in-process’; New British Art, Joseph Beuys.


*click here for download the paper.

Joseph Beuys at TATE collection

The German artist Joseph Beuys was highly charismatic figure whose sculptures, made from substances such as fat, felt, wax, honey, copper and bronze has distinctive symbolic associations that he derived from science, anthropology and identified with animals such as the stag, which Beuys associated with the power to move freely between the physical world and spirit realism. One of his last and most dramatic works, Lightning with Stag in its Glare 1958-85 brings together, in an apocalyptic flash of lightning many of the themes that had obsessed him throughout his life.

'In the massive installation Lightning with Stag in its Glare (1958-85), the suspended, bronze triangle embodies the energy of a powerful flash of lightning, which illuminates a group of half-formed creatures. The ‘stag’ of the title was originally made from an ironing board and then cast in bright aluminium to suggest the glare of the lightning. The cart represents a goat, and the clods of bronze on the floor are primordial creatures. A small compass, mounted on top of a box, is another reference, with the lightning flash itself, to the natural energies of the earth.'

Francesca Woodman at TATE Modern.

This week I went to the TATE Modern to check the exhibition about Duchamp, Man Ray and Picabia, but what really make my mind was 2 works from the Tate Collection exhibition from the American Artist Francesca Woodman (1958-1981) and the German Joseph Beuys (1921-1986).

***

In the Woodman room a series of videos and photographs.

"Selected Video Works 1975 - 1978"
Influenced by Surrealist photography, Woodman's self portraits possess a remarkable psychological intensity. She produced a series of videos in the mid-1970s after borrowing a camera from the Rhode Island School of design. Recently discovered and restored, they include a sequence in which Woodman is obscured by a sheet of paper which she gradually tears until her naked form emerges through the ruptures surface.


"Poetry and Dream"
Woodman's ethereal photographs appear to explore and dissolve the boundaries of the human body. Many of her self-portraits present her in otherwise deserted interior spaces, where her body almost merges with its surroundings, covered by sections of peeling wallpaper, half hidden behind the flat plane of a door, or crouching over a mirror. Often using slow exposures that blur her moving figure into a ghostly presence, Woodman seems to combine performance with self-exposure, suggesting the exploration of extreme psychological states.
Born into a family of artists, Woodman grew up in Boulder, Colorado but regularly spent her summers in Italy. She began taking photography at the age of 13, and her work reflects her absorption of range of visual material from Surrealist and fashion photography to Baroque painting. She sometimes included fetishistic found objects and phallic props which are seen in relation to her own body, or to the bodies of her models. Many of the photographs suggest a spirit of playful experimentation at odds with their sense of claustrophobia. Most of the photographs were given by the artist to her boyfriend, who appears alongside her in a double portrait. Although she was only 22 when she took her own life, Woodman left behind a significant body of work of more than 800 images.

TEXT & IMAGE, Wilson Rd gallery, Camberwell

In this project my position is the artist as the mediator between , technology and the social environment.
The conceptual investigation created in the collaboration between me and the partners in the art production, using their own artist techniques in a digital context, such as: drawing, painting, and acting .
The result is an artworks selection made with digital technologies as a tool- creating an artistically representation about 4 different nationalities researched in the London context. (Brazil, German, Italy and Shout Africa).
In the work is identified the concepts of identity, belonging, environment and language as an input for each artwork in the collaboration.

Adriano Casanova (Brazil): denying identity, belonging and environment.
'invisiveis,07', digital photography (painting?),
-SESC gallery, Janurary 2008, Curitiba, Brazil.
-Newspace Center for Photography, February, 2008 Portland, OR, USA
'immigrants objects', digital photography.
-'mostra catálogo 2ptos', December 2007, Pernambuco, Brazil.
from the series: "keywords", digital video
-'Wilson Rd gallery, Camberweel College of Arts, 2008, London, UK.
'looking for the 'non-space', digital video
'looking for the 'non-space II', digital video
'Portuguese and Magyarország ', digital drawing
Emma Thomas gallery, September, 2007, São Paulo, Brazil.
'rabiscos de caderno', digital drawing

- Lana Lasagna (South Africa): investigating identity
'offering', digital video - narrative - 3'05"
'writing', digital video - document - 6'02"
'big projection' - digital video, damage

- Francesco Beneamato (Italy): investigating environment
'park-city', digital video - looping - 0'37"
'city-park', digital video - narrative I - 0'34
'park-city', digital video - narrative II, notebook- 2'09"
'city-park-city', digital video - all footage, 18'07"

- Aline Der Assem (German): investigating belonging.
'my house is my castles', digital photography, drawing

www.thamesandhudson.com/digitalart

"Rather than being the sole 'creator' of a work of art, the artist often plays the role of a mediator or facilitator for audiences' interaction with and contribution to the artwork" (PAUL, Christiane. "Digital Art". 2003. Thames and Hudson Ltd, London. p21/22)

"Altered Landscapes" Portland, USA. Newspace Center for Photography

Socially Engaged Art, Critics and Discontents: An Interview with Claire Bishop

By Jennifer Roche

What criteria should we use to evaluate socially engaged art?
In socially engaged art, critic Claire Bishop believes the aesthetic is being sacrificed on the altar of social change.
click here to see the interview

Joseph Beuys: social production in a contemporary and technological art context.

Can we produce social networks throw a contemporary artwork? And where are the limits for this kind of art productions?


Abstract:
This paper intent to analyze two of the most important works from the German artist Joseph Beuys, “I Like America and America likes me”, 1974; and “7000 oaks”, 1982 at Documenta VII Kassel, in a contemporary and technological context.
Throw the perspective of social environment and social networks the paper research how the contemporary art could be related to social issues? And how the technological environment can support the ‘art of engagement’ into the art history thinking art and science as tool?
Using the concept of ‘social sculpture’, created by Beuys, the idea of real social changing and art productions with digital technologies is the aim of this paper, translating these subjects into new media artworks and different art experiments.
The methods of the research is based in the production from the sixties/seventies and how the vanguard artists is using the social issues to create networks related to concept social body.
Creating a narrative with the Beuys’ works and what is produced today in an ecological, social and artistically environment the paper intent to answers contemporary issues and to introduce aspects of how the contemporary art is going to develop in the next century?
The paper compare the scientist research in an art production using references from articles and books and contemporary contents resourced in online art magazine and specialized websites.

Keywords: Joseph Beuys; technological and contemporary art; social sculpture; art of engagement, art and science.

*click here for download the paper.

"invisible Polaroids" exhibition - invisiveis,07

A picture from this project is being part of the group exhibition "invisible Polaroids " at the SESC gallery - Curitiba, Brazil, curated by Tom Lisboa.
click here to see the exhibition website

Hyper-Border: The Contemporary U.S.-Mexico Border and Its Future

click on the image to read the text
book review by architect Fernando Romero (Amazon USA and UK.)

exhibition: 'Catálogo', Pernambuco, Brazil

Some of the pictures from this project is on the parallel exhibition 'Catálogo', from the Brazilian contemporary art magazine 2ptos.
>>click on the image for the exhibition.

Ellis Island Photographs,Commissioner of Immigration, 1902-1913

Image: Sherman, Augustus Francis , 1865-1925. [Slovak woman and children.] Digital ID: 418048
Ellis Island Photographs from the Collection of William Williams, Commissioner of Immigration, 1902-1913

Photographs (gelatin silver prints) relating to Ellis Island and immigration into the United States in the early 20th century, ranging from portraits of individual immigrants by Augustus Francis Sherman to views of the Ellis Island facility and its grounds by Edwin Levick and others.

Antoni Muntadas, on translation

>>ON TRANSLATION
>>click here for the project website
is a series of works
exploring issues of
transcription, interpretation,
and translation.
from language to codes
from science to technology
from subjectivity to objectivity
from agreement to war
from private to public
from semiology to cryptology
The role of translation/translators as a visible/invisible fact.

Edition: 6 + PA, Formato 16:9 / DVD projection loop; 16:9 format, Duração / Duration: 7’ 39’’, Dimensões variáveis / Variable dimensions. Cortesia / Courtesy Galeria Filomena Soares, Lisboa

borderlines, personal stories and experiences from the border countries

>>Borderlines: Personal Stories and Experiences from the Border Countries
15 October – 23 November 2007
BORDERLINES’ is a cross border touring photographic exhibition, archive and hardback publication. The significant collection of recordings and photographs gives voice to people with experience of life along the border. The project includes contributions from Fermanagh, Tyrone, Cavan, Leitrim, Monaghan, Sligo, Donegal, Derry/Londonderry, Armagh, Down and Louth.
‘BORDERLINES’ is part of a wider project examining how we should remember the events connected with the conflict on the island of Ireland. It is a Gallery of Photography project organised in collaboration with Dara Training and Consultancy.

borderlines, visual arts

http://www.borderlines-fr.com
Borderlines consists in the coordination of a series of exhibitions providing emerging artists with the opportunity to meet in various European cities between October 2005 to June 2006. Each exhibition will display together French and foreign artists. At the end of May 2006, the 20 artists will be invited in Strasbourg for working together on the scenography and the setting of the final exhibition.

Borderlines associates different artistic approaches under a common theme, that of the frontier, with a view to laying down the necessary conditions for the broadening of the possibilities of creation and interpretation of art works.

The established collaborations map out a new cross-border cultural network composed of artists, theoreticians, and cultural managers from either institutions, or for-profit and non-profit organizations.

We devised and implemented Borderlines in order to invite young artists as us, to accept a challenge on the European scale, and have a go at our differences. We will call it a success if, thanks to our visual production, we enter into a true dialogue.

keywords

letter with information send to the partners in the project collaboration.

Borderlines: Immigrant’s Environments in Social and Technological Art Context.
Keywords:
New media, immigrants, representation, contemporary art, collaborative artwork


Thanks to be part of this project!
I hope we could exchange knowledge, experiences and works during our art experiment.

Aims:
The project aims’ to research artwork that utilises’ digital technology for social and collaborative productions.
In the project I will discuss; how does our new media environment help to develop the production of social art?
I intend to work with a group of immigrants who live in London. And through audiovisual experiments I want to document their own perspective of the city, their “borderline environment”.
For the exhibition, I am looking to create a parallel exhibition in the big show. Using the material produced throw the experiments I will select and edit what will be showed in the ‘parallel exhibition’ with different platforms for translate the project aspect.

You have to:
-Build a blog, and use like a virtual diary for report your own experiences during the project. (You can use image, text, sound, drawing, etc..)
-In the project website you will have your own page with: personal details, link to your blog and videos interviews. In the section “virtual galley” I will post some of the works produced during the project.
- Using your own life and personal experiences in London you have to create an idea about the work that we’re going to produce together. (Equipments? Theme? Media? (digital photography? Painting? Video? Video Installation? Website? Etc.)
Keywords for you can guide your artwork:
Belonging \ Place and/or Space \ Personal geography \ your identity \ your language \ your home \ your social environment \ your country social environment \ etc.
- At January and February I’m going to work with you, during a week, for we can produce our artwork. (*If you want to create during another time or space fell free to put your idea)

Thanks to be part of this new community!
Adriano Casanova.