Alright, I'm sick and my brain's half-dead but I'll give it a shot.

Alright, I'm sick and my brain's half-dead but I'll give it a shot.

Reading Response 7: Due TUESDAY November 23

Please note due date, not due before class this week but by Tuesday of next week (to compensate for the late posting).

1. First, as requested earlier, post your response to Peggy Awhesh's Martina's Playhouse.

I was a little confounded by Awesh's film, because it was hard to shake the feeling that I was watching a perfectly adorable yet not quite "artistic" home video. It seemed to me that I could give the film more credit as a documentary capturing a character (specifically Martina) than an experimental film playing with different forms. I did enjoy the other scenes involving the young woman more, and felt like I was on more familiar ground there, as she set up an engaging dialogue that sort of distorted the distance between subject and filmmaker. That was interesting to me, the part where Martina read the dense reading material to the associative imagery was interesting to me, Martina being adorable was just Martina being adorable. I'll have to watch it again to see if I feel differently/notice a greater complexity there (which there probably is).

Keller and Ward, "Matthew Barney and the Paradox of the Neo-Avant-Garde Blockbuster"

2. What has changed in the gallery art world that allows Barney to describe his work as “sculpture”? In other words, how has the definition of sculpture changed since the 1960s, and why?

The authors state that "the category of 'sculpture' has become unstable. It has moved away from the object based defining elements to a more expanded approach that includes "a whole range of practices that may have little in common, from site specific and media-based works, to performances, to architecture". Essentially, the act of sculpting art has expanded past the tangible. Under these new conditions, sculpture could be expressed through a film, or even by constructing a giant trench in the desert (Michael Heizer's "Rift"). The why is similar to why film had been pushed past modernism in the 60s. People were reaching past the constrictions of the art-form in its pure state, questioning the role of art, watching the lines between artistic mediums blur.

3. Tricky but important question: Why was minimalist sculpture seen as a reaction against the “modernist hymns to the purity and specificity of aesthetic experience”? In other words: Why do they say that minimalist sculpture is post-modernist?

Sculpture "outran both traditional and modernist notions of the relations between viewers and sculptural objects", much the way that Snow's Wavelength impacted the purist modernism of film. The authors state that "[minimalism]...issued a call to understand the expereince of art as public, in the sense that viewers were to discover the meaning of the object in their interactions". Minimalism was taken to the extreme (eg gray painted plywood), to the point where audiences were forced to relate to the art as something they were inherently connected to, and accept and/or question the process of art, which is a predominant trait of post-modernism.

4. Describe the role of the body in the works of Vito Acconci and Chris Burden. You may wish to consult the following links to supplement the descriptions in the readings:

If I'm understanding this right, and god knows if I am... The idea is that Acconci is substituting his own body as the object which the audience interacts with and thereby helps to create the sculpture, the work of art. Through the collaboration, in this case Acconci masturbating to the erotic cues of an unwitting audience, we see a work of art established through this connection, where the performance is shaped by how the audience acts. With Burden, on the other hand, they seem to suggest that he is questioning the idea of whether the body can be viewed as an object of sculpture, almost using his works of art to see if the theory holds water (to use a well worn phrase). Most notably with "Bed Piece", Burden lies in a bed in a museum for 22 days, without giving instructions to the staff, letting the myth of the body as sculptural subject be broken down (specifically how the staff deals with him, forcing them to treat him as an object though he cannot be, thereby forcing a moral dilemma). The article goes on to suggest his work was trying to question the myth of the artist as well.

http://www.ubu.com/film/acconci.html

http://www.ubu.com/film/burden.html

5. In the opinion of the authors, what are the key differences between performance art of the 1960s/1970s and Barney’s Cremaster cycle? What do they mean by the term "blockbuster" in relation to the gallery art world?

They state that performance art of the 60s/70s "set up a tension between presence and absence, between an event and its dispersal through time, the effect of which was to invite us to consider the relations between body and the ways in which it is mediated". They say the authenticity of the initial performance, the 'realness' is integral to how it is processed. What Cremasters does is turn a genuine performance into something of a spectacle, where the body is mythologized, given an abstract representation that lacks the grounded realism of performance art. The word blockbuster hints to the spectacle nature of Barney's films, where the lavishness of the production (read: the cost) along with its self-imposed scarcity of the DVD prints lead to a sort of ironic status for Cremasters: the film is a self-enforced rarefied commodity that comments on the idea that art cannot be seen as a commodity. The film "eschew[s] the last step of the blockbuster formula--in which it makes tons of money at the box office". The idea is that Barney has offered a critique of the blockbuster culture, only he undermines this by using the film to sell "products" associated with the films production, not to mention charging a great deal of money for the rare DVD prints of his work.

Walley, "Modes of Film Practice in the Avant-Garde"

6. What is meant by “mode of film practice”? Give two well known examples of non-experimental modes of film practice. Why does Walley argue that the concept of the mode of film practice can help distinguish between the experimental film and gallery art worlds?

The article states that the term "refers to the cluster of historically bound institutions, practices, and concepts that form a context within which cinematic media are used". In other words, how the film is made, how it is distributed and exhibited, shapes the experience of the film and thereby what mode of film it is. The experimental forms discussed in the article are "avant-garde cinema " and "artist film". However it goes on to state that there are other modes to consider, such as Art House Cinema which has "a set of formal conventions" that are "distinct from classical Hollywood cinema" (Hollywood being the second well known example). This distinction can help define the mode by its "norms of production, distribution, exhibition, and reception". Using these categories, one can emphasize the disparate qualities of experimental film and gallery art, and how each world uses the medium of film.

7. What are some of the key differences between the experimental and gallery art worlds in terms of production and distribution?

-Experimental production has an emphasis on personal projects, the work of one specific author, with limited collaboration. The process of production is headed up largely by the filmmaker, who often stars in the film, shoots the film, edits the film, and so on.

-Artists' Film is far more collaborative, at times approaching the same structural scale of the mainstream filmmaking process (eg Cremaster series). There are often separate individuals responsible for cinematography, editing, sound, composing, costume, set, etc. However, there is still a specific "author" at work.

-Experimental distribution has adopted a small-scale version of mainstream film distribution (set rental costs, share of ticket sales, etc). While this is not profitable enough to allow much financial success, it does help sustain future projects.

-Whereas Experimental distribution is scarce based on a lack of funds, Artists' Film capitalizes on the set conventions of the art world where the scarcity of a product is seen as a contingent element that raises their value in the art world. Therefore, the prints are purposefully limited in order to garner the most money from the product as possible.