Dissertation

This has been such a busy week, I haven't been able to stop for a second. The biggest thing I guess was handing in my dissertation on Monday. Its such a relief to have it out of the way, and to be able to focus on my studio work & preparation for the degree show.


My subject was:

American and Viennese Actionism: A Case Study of Trangressive Performance Art and Critical Responses to its Emergence

What is American Actionism I hear you ask. Its performance art like Paul McCarthy & Chris Burden, whose practice is shocking and disturbing. Because of its superficial similarity to the work of the Viennese Actionists, I coined the term American Actionism to describe their work. The differences are that the Viennese group were reacting to the political structure in Austria, which was never de-Nazified after the Second World War, and saw the same political, bureaucrats & police officials remain in power after the war, whereas McCarthy, Burden, Mike Kelley, were reacting to American culture, especially the denial and sanitisation of violence in the media, and the crass consumerism which has become so much a part of American life.


A large part of my argument was that Paul McCarthy is no longer a transgressive artist in the sense of Georges Battaile's thoughts on transgression, but is today very much part of the art market; his practice having been successfully recuperated by the market forces of capitalism. Today, McCarthy produces shock & spectacle, not transgression & subversion, Rabelaisian spectacle rather than Battailean transgression.



Chris Burden's work is an example of extreme body art, which is highly transgressive, [in other words breaching societal norms and taboos]. For his MA thesis he confined himself to a gym locker for five days, he had a friend shoot him with a .22 rifle, and had himself crucified to the roof of a Volkswagen Beetle, which was then pushed into the middle of an LA street.

How do the oeuvres of McCarthy and Burden relate to my studio practice, considering they are working within performance, and I am a painter/collagist/animator? Their work, although in a different media involves using shock, disgust as well as humour to critique cultural icons and mainstream media. Thus they inform me of the conceptual ideas which I want to make use of in my practice. They are an important contextual element in my work.

Paul McCarthy, Bossy Burger, 1991

Paul McCarthy, Pinocchio Pipenose Householddilemma, 1994

Herman Nitsc

Chris Burden, Transfixed, 1974

Sequencing Animations

I've begun building a continuous loop of my Flash animations in one single file. I'm placing each one on the timeline, with a single cell between them, and using the Flash code, [ActionScript 3.0] to control the movement of the playhead through the sequence.
Its complex & time consuming. I have to work out the exact length of the musical score for each animation, and in some cases I have to edit the music clip as well so that I don't have one animation that plays for too long.

The result though is one single file which plays each animation for twenty seconds or so, then has a two second break on a blank black screen, [or in some cases I 'tween a bright yellow oblong across the screen in this cell just to show off my Flash skills!], then moves on the next animation. Once I get every animation I create on a single loop, I can edit it by removing the fiirst cell and placing it at the end of the sequence, so that this one starts at a different place to the original, save it as sequence_2, then edit that one in the same way, so it starts at a new place, saving it as sequence_3, and so on, until I've got ten or so loops which all begin in a different place.

The advantage of this is that when it comes to the final show, I will only need ten computers to play the animations, rather than a computer for each single animation -which if I build fifty would be impossible.

Its a really complex procedure to get this right. I'm having to build a big chart which shows each loop in a line, then I can decide which score plays when, so that in the beginning the music from the animations are distinct, until one after the other each score begins to play, and the sound rises to a din, and then one by one each score is removed until the sound is clear again.....and then the process begins again, over and over.

Its a really complex task I have set myself, but I know that if I manage to sequence every animation so that the sound layers on top of each other until its a din, then fades away until the music is audible, and repeats this over and over, it will be very effective towards creating a sense of disharmony and shock to accompany my work.

Thinking About Installation

Had an excellent tutorial with Mel this afternoon, and as a result of it I have made a major decision regarding the work I intend to exhibit at the degree show. Although my practice has been based in painting for the last eighteen months, a whole new area has opened up since I started mediating the same ideas through electronic media; initially with Photoshop collages, and then taking them further by animating them & adding sound.

There is no doubt in my mind that both the collages and the animations are powerful pieces, [and this was proven in the recent cross-crit with Pil & Galia's group]; even when they were being shown directly from my computer desktop they got a really positive reception from my audience. However, saying that, [and its been a difficult conclusion to reach], their effectiveness would be diluted in a show if they were to be installed alongside paintings. Obviously, ideally, if I this were a solo show, I would have one room of paintings, and another dedicated to an installation for my time-based media work. But I don't. The degree show is, in essence, a group show, and as such, I have to take my best and most powerful work, and show it off to its best advantage.

In which case it means that I need to drop the paintings to one side, and focus solely on how to install the animations in such a way as [1], they are shown off to their best advantage, and [2], the installation clearly communicates the context of my work. This is what I discussed with Mel this afternoon. Initially I was thinking of having a row of screens across a black wall, which would each show several animations, with breaks in between. In order to contextualise the work, my initial idea was to have a separate speaker which would play a continuous loop of indistinct speech, which would in turn be drowned out by the music whenever one of the animations played. The idea behind this was that the crowd sound represented the mass of humanity, and each of the animations playing, and drowning out the crowd would indicate individuality. To further convey this point I also thought of leaving a few items on the floor in front of the row of screens -a can of Coca-Cola, a dirty plate & cutlery, which are again items common to all of humanity, as well as some highly individual & personal items, -a family photo or an identity document.

However, after speaking with Mel, I decided that this was not the best way of showing the work off, and would make the animations appear too cinematic, which they are not. They are animated collages to which minimalist scores, ripped from 1980's video games, have been added. Therefore its essential that the installation reflects their temporary & disposable nature, as well

Cross-Crit Decisions

Hada cross-crit with Pil & Galia Kollectiv's group in which my work was selected for crit. I showed Skin Flick, 3 Wounds, along with A3 prints of my collages, some animated .gifs & a couple of finished Flash animations. Opinion in the group was divided as to which media was the most effective in getting across my ideas, with a majority coming down in favour of the collages & animations as being the more powerful.

This confirms what I have already been thinking, and is the reason why I have devoted my time to making the collages & animations rather than painting. Following Marshal McLuhan's theory of "the media is the message", using digital and time-based media is a far more appropriate way of conveying the ideas I am trying to mediate in my work. I'm focussing in on consumption & identity, and how that relates to the human body in today's globalised and digital world, therefore using the medium of today's world, which is digital & time-based, to communicate ideas about today's world will through its form alone, be a more effective piece of work.

In my practice one of the things which I refer back to constantly, which informs and affects the work I make is the slick, but ultimately wholly empty, promises of the ad-men, beckoning us all to buy more, consume more, and ultimately to be product. In trying to rip the veil away from their deception & expose its hollow interior, I know that by turning their communication tools back upon them I will reach far more people than I ever would by painting.

"Alea jacta est", as Caesar said. I will put away my brushes and paint for now, and focus solely on digital and time based pieces for the degree show. However it leaves a sad hole in my heart, as I love to paint. I love the texture of paint, its greasy malleable feel. I love the physicality of paint. My challenge for the future, after my graduation, is to find a way that my practice can incorporate both digital time-based pieces and painting.

Writing Code Again

After three year I find myself writing ActionScript 3.0 code for my degree show. Since beginning this degree I haven't written a single line of AS, and its really rusty now, [not that it was brilliant before, but I managed, as you can see if you go here http://wallace.mezoka.com/#

Below are views of the splash screen in Flash, and the coding window, wherein I add the code which controls the advance through the sequence of animations on the reel.
 

Paul McCarthy Black & White Tapes @ [ SPACE ]

Went to see the Paul McCarthy Black & White Tapes show at [ SPACE ]. Below is a copy of the press release from the [ SPACE ] website. Paul McCarthy has been an influential artist on my own practice, and I used his practice extensively in my dissertation. His early work, [prior to joining Hauser & Wirth in 1995], is some of the most transgressive pieces of performance/video art of that period. Deeply disturbing to watch, especially Bossy Burger, and Pinnochio Pipenose, they play on issues of abjection, abuse, while at the same time using humour and irreverence to challenge our preconceived notions about bodily functions, art, acceptable behaviour. Below is the YouTube film of a portion of the Black & White Tapes.

Sadly, as is often the way in the art world, the market has successfully managed to recuperate McCarthy's practice, and his work today is a big-budget Rabelaisian spectacle than Battailean transgression.

Paul McCarthy: Black and White Tapes

GALLERY: SPACE is proud to present a multi-screen installation of thirteen black and white performance video tapes by Los Angeles based artist, Paul McCarthy (b.1945).

Made between 1971 and 1975, these recordings offer unique insight into the formative practice of an artist who today counts as one of the most visible on the international stage.

While McCarthy's earliest work explored and disrupted the formal properties of minimalist art, in the early 70s, having borrowed equipment from the video technician of the dentistry school at The University of Southern California, he began to document himself executing swift, psychologically taut performances.

In contrast to the spectacular ambition of his later installations and public sculptures, the Black and White Tapes (as these performances came to be known) feature the artist alone or lightly accompanied in his studio. Making use of whatever materials are in the room - oil left over from a previous body of monochrome works, emulsion paint, rags, a phone book, cotton wool and, most crucially, his own body - McCarthy undertakes single, repetitive or punitive acts for the camera.

In a sequence of grainy black and white video images we encounter the artist in action: drawing an emulsion line along the studio floor using only his face, tugging urgently at his testicles, whipping and swinging at the studio walls with a paint soaked rag and spitting directly into the lense of the fixed frame camera.

Adopting a crazed, witch-like persona, making use of uncanny fluids and props, ritualistically repeating certain actions or refrains, using his body to act out dysfunctional movements and traumatic, fractured narratives: the Black and White Tapes contain in nascence much of what would come to be articulated by McCarthy in his later work. Psychodramas of the rawest nature, they represent a vital document in the evolution of the artist's practice.

Set up individually on period video monitors, each of the thirteen tapes will play consecutively in the main gallery at SPACE for the duration of the exhibition. The result will be an immersive and cacophonous outlay of these seminal early works, presented in this fashion in the UK for the very first time.

Paul McCarthy was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1945. After attending the University of Utah, he received his B.F.A. from the San Francisco Art Institute, and his M.F.A. from the University of Southern California. In the summer of 2013, McCarthy installed a large-scale, film-and-sculpture environment, WS, at the Park Avenue Armory, New York. WS ran in conjunction with three solo shows of McCarthy's work at both Hauser & Wirth locations in New York City.

Solo exhibitions of McCarthy's work have been organized by Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, Poland; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Aarhus, Denmark; Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Denmark; Middelheim Sculpture Museum, Antwerp, Belgium; Tate Modern, London; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Museum of Contemporary Art, Oslo, Norway; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Hamburg Kunsthalle, Germany; New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; Air de Paris, Nice; and at major galleries worldwide.

McCarthy lives and works in Los Angeles, California.

 

Animated .Gif Process, [ironing out kinks]

Facing some problems when creating the animated .gifs, [which is the third stage in producing the eventual Flash animation]. The process is to initially create a collage in Photoshop, then through use of filters and warp effects, distort the original collage through a series of stages, which act as the image source for each of the individual frames in the animated .gif.

When enough frames have been created, [bearing in mind that the initial distortion might only be half of the effect, as it is necessary to create the reverse and gradually return the image back to its original state], I import them into Adobe Fireworks, and place each one in a separate "state", which is the individual frame of the eventual animation.

Below is a screenshot of the Adobe Fireworks workspace. If you look over to the right, you can see a panel labelled "states". This was taken at the end of the building of the animated .gif. Originally there is only one state, but as you paste in each image, you click a button to create a new state, and import the next image. Eventually all the images are saved within one single file, and displayed one after the other, which gives the effect of animation. An animated .gif file is very much like the digital equivalent of a "flick-book".