Seeing. Looking. Watching

5/10/20 First week's essential reading: What is Contemporary Art? by Terry Smith
My answer? Watch this space and don't hold your breath.

The Politics of Art by Hito Steyerl. Watched her  witty and thought provoking film; "How not to be Seen" and an interiew with Ontario Art Gallery. Quote: Look at what art does not what it shows. 

Artists referenced in lecture - Yoko Ono Cut Piece 1964 and 2003; Bruce Nauman Live and Let Die 1986; Lee Mingwei Sleeping Project 2003-2015; YBA - key moments 1988-1997 including Gavin Turk Sid v Elvis, Gillian Wearing - Signs that say what you want them to Say; Marcus Harvey portrait of Myra Hindley, Sarah Lucas, Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst. Rachel Whiteread

My own reading: Art Objects Jeannette Winterson 1997 - Art Ob-jects. If truth is that which lasts then art proved truer than any other artistic endeavour.
John Berger: About Looking (1980)
Andrew Marr A Small Book About Painting 2017
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Artists I look at more closely this week are the painted collaged mixed media works of David Tress which I came across in Fishguard on my Road Trip this summer (pictured) and the installations of Ibrahim Mahama (live interview from Ghana via White Cube. Wow to the wonder of the web to be able to watch and talk to him as he seeks out shade in Ghana and I'm wearing at least three layers of everything.
 
​Humanities Topic: Vision and Visuality
‘Vision is what the human eye is physiologically capable of seeing. Visuality, on the other hand, refers to [the] way[s]  in which vision is constructed …: ‘how we see, how we are able, allowed, or made to see, and how we see this seeing and the unseeing therein;’
(Foster, 1988a: ix; quoted Gillian Rose, Visual Methodologies, p. 6)

Feeling a little boggle-eyed? There's more to come. 

Three Moments in Paris, Mina Loy (1892-1966). The first Moment is called One o'Clock at Night and begins with a wowser of an opening line: Though you have never possessed me I have belonged to you since the beginning of time...   Half asleep, she is watching and listening to two men (Futurists) debate (boom and roar) and likens their discussion to  'cerebral gymnastics' 

The mind's eye is referred to in this week's essential reading - Mr Romance himself,  William Wordsworth in Lines Composed A Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey : ...an eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and the deep power of joy, We see into the life of things.
And ...the mighty world of eye, and ear,—both what they half create, And what perceive;

Had to watch Red Road, 2006, Scottish film and Cannes winner, Raises questions about who is watching us and why, when do we as watchers become colluders. We watch the main protagonist whose job is to watch the steets of Glasgow on CCTV but she breaks the rules and ethical boundaries...

Article on Surveillance Capitalism (Hoshana Zuboff, 2019) Defines and questions privacy, boundaries and right to sanctuary.

​Privacy comes up in another discussion I join which is hosted by a UK arts centre,  Derby Quad in relation to its current exhibition  How We Make Meaning  The discussion is about Artificial Intelligence and What is Data? One of the artists, Memo Atken, commented that "the notion of privacy would disappear." 
​Maybe it has already started to...



Read on for discussion on Role of the Artist

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