nonsite

April 19, 2009 10:18 am

April 19, 2009: large group exhibitions

It is interesting to consider making work for a large group exhibition that will be over filled with conceptually disparate works. This is complicated by the further fact that there is no real community or comradarie biding the works. We have seen a huge gap in values as played out in the power play around the choosing of the invitation for example, so with nothing holding the work together other than the theme of digital arts- how do I then acknowledge this dilemma, while at the same time making a work with its own formal integrity.

April 18, 2009 4:03 pm

At what point did I start to think of myself as an artist? What makes you an artist? Fundamentally I think it is the belief that you can make something. It is the belief that you know enough about the context- the field, that my can make something, but not just anything, but something- an artwork, that makes sense in relation to other similar things in the field.

April 17, 2009 11:25 pm

April 17, 2008: furtherfield

A friend was telling me about Ruth Catlow and Marc Garrett who run furtherfield in North London. They also run furthernoise and their gallery HTTP: The House of Technology Termed Praxis- smart.

One of the links on the furtherfield site is to the Digital Arts Handbook a project supported by the Arts Council England which is an “up to date, reliable and accessible source of information that introduces you to different tools, resources and ways of working related to digital art” and seems to relate directly to what we are doing in the MA_DA at Camberwell.

April 15, 2009 4:11 pm

April 15, 2009: an open ended yet specific body of knowledge

The great thing about art is that it is so open ended yet specific. We can bring research and ideas from almost any context, discipline and history to bear in our research as artists. Psycho-geography, sexuality, structuralism, post-structuralism, Freud’s notions of the uncanny, auto mechanics, gardening, and hydroponics all can easily be brought into an art context. With a field this open, how do we make sense of it? I think we need to specialize out of necessity. Otherwise how can you make sense of it all- it’s to much.

A body of knowledge and a way of knowing. An attempt to have some measure of control within the larger world that keeps moving so fast around us. Making art is an attempt to say- I am thinking about this. I experienced this. I know this- material knowledge, embodied knowledge, non academic; ways of knowing and bodies of knowledge.

April 14, 2009 4:06 pm

April 14, 2009: artists are outsiders

Artists are outsiders- we are observers. We make things. Things to help us try to make sense of the world. It is an simple as that. It is the ability to reflect, to be in a studio, to have place to go that is set aside from the daily realities of life: eating, shopping for groceries, driving. It is a quest for knowledge- we want to know more. We are curious. We make objects to thank about. We make things because they aren’t there, to try to better understand our own history and the circumstances that led to us being here. Art is about ideas.

April 12, 2009 2:38 pm

April 12, 2009: making assumptions

What really strikes me as interesting as a student from Canada, is how many assumptions there are at Camberwell about how the university does things and how things are done. These are not transparent proceedures. I can see if you have been educated in England and then you are teaching in England- it is what you know and what you’re used to. To some extent I can see how you might assume that this is how things are done elsewhere- everywhere. Obviously, that is not always the case.

Within this course, it seems like we spent a disproportionate amount of time going over what are probably obvious details to students who have grown up and been educated in the British educational system- and I’m not just talking about ‘A levels’ (I’m still trying to figure out that they are).

I have been reading Annette Kuhn’s Family Secrets and her later chapter Passing about her grammar school education in London, in the 1950s and the social class values that were so deeply ingrained in England at that time, including the many ways that she was reminded that ‘you can’t rise out of your class’. It immediately made me wonder how embedded these class values still are, within the various universities and art colleges in London.

I’m wondering how present class values are at Camberwell, how they relate to digital arts. I’m not sure who or how to ask? In Canada these questions have been far from my mind for many years.

April 11, 2009 4:55 pm

April 11, 2009: shadow student

I think a website needs to resonate psychologically to be a place you want to visit and return to. You need a reason to want to go there.

The question at the heart of this nonsite project is: what is Camberwell, for an online student like myself?. The risk of being an online student is that you are invisible. From away it is very hard to get a handle on other student values.

How is my experience of Camberwell different from when I was a student at NSCAD and what made it such a great place? I think there are two things that make a school, college or university great- first is a sense of belonging to a community and the second is believing in common values.

April 5, 2009 4:44 pm

April 5, 1976: Darcy Lange, Work Studies

Darcy Lange makes these amazing black and white videos called Work Studies, where he follows a logger into the forest with his Sony Porta-Pac and records him cutting down a tree in real time.

March 29, 2009 4:35 pm

March 29, 1976: Jeff Spalding

Jeff Spalding is exhibiting these beautiful, two foot square, black paintings in the Anna Leonowens Gallery. They are ‘process paintings’ made by painting many thin coats of two transparent colours- opposites like orange and green, until optically the painting appears black.

The only indication of his specific colour choices is evident through the drips on the side of the stretchers which also accounts for the subtle differences of the hue of the black.

March 29, 2009 4:17 pm

March 29, 1976: Krzysztof Wodiczko

Krzysztof Wodiczko arrived at school to give a presentation on his work. It wasn’t clear to us how he got here, but he had arrived from Warsaw and seemed to be trying to emigrate to Canada. Though a little worn, he dresses very formally, wearing a dark suit jacket and white shirt.

We had just opened a small gallery called The Shooting Gallery, in a basement space we renovated on Duke Street to the left of the library. He exhibited drawings for a walking machine that he had designed, a treadmill with bicycle wheels. It appeared that as you walked on it, it moved forward.

March 29, 2009 12:42 pm

March 29, 2008: the promise of a better tomorrow

I’ve been thinking a great deal about the importance of making artworks that relate to good citizenship, that are responsible and that embrace values that indicate the promise of a better tomorrow. I’ve also been thinking more about a self-defined communities of like minded individuals with common interests and other values that I feel are important- like collaboration and co-creation and a refined sense of quality and craft. Bicycles, as a subculture with the potential for a high degree of customizability that also relates to my own personal interests.

Last spring I made my first single speed bicycle. It was a hybrid, rebuilt from a Giant 23″ road bike. I didn’t know that much about the maker- Giant, but I bought it used from Our Community Bikes on Main Street, here in Vancouver. They stripped it down, replaced the tires and rims and converted it to a single speed. Every since then I’ve been thinking more and more about bike culture. What’s great about bicycles is that they’re everywhere, and while they’ve been around for years and are generally the same, there are big regional and national differences. The bicycles in Amsterdam, for example are very different from Vancouver.

In any large city there is a huge market for a great variety of used bicycles. Last summer I decided to see if I could find another used road bike to refurbish as a new bicycle. I started by looking on Craigs List and I found a used Nishiki that a student at UBC was selling. I bought it and took it apart. I am now getting it airstripped and powdercoated. I have chosen a beautiful bright green- it’s a little bright, but instantly recognizable. I wanted to choose a colour that was optimistic and distinctive.

March 25, 2009 1:13 pm

March 25, 2009: turbulence

I’ve been reflecting on the ideas and discussion that have been posted on the course wiki and am concerned that we are settling for something that is democratic but not very dynamic. I have just posted a turbulent water image, to extend the discussion towards the kind of imagery that I think would work better visually for any publicity that we are planning.

turbulence
I am looking for an image that makes me curious, and want to find out more. Something perhaps more mysterious and enigmatic.

Perhaps it needs a title- turbulence works for me.

March 24, 2009 1:14 pm

March 24, 2009: Monday’s chat

We had a very informative chat Monday. The second half focused on assessment which is always interesting. What became apparent is how closely this MA_Digital Arts course, and I assume by extension, all Camberwell MA pathways, follow the course handbook and the published learning outcomes and assessment evidence.

We started with a great deal of discussion of the MA summer exhibition in July and how the publicity for the exhibition is organized and the relationship between the university marketing and the student initiated publicity. In an attempt to make the means of production more transparent I have been asking for an overview of the overall budget for the exhibition, which I imagine serve two functions- to display the research and outputs of the students graduating, but also to promote Camberwell College of Arts to the broader public and prospective students. It is in that context that there is a symbiotic relationship between the university and its graduates- it is in both of their interests to present a professional exhibition. The real budget for the exhibition is still a mystery, but what is now clear is that the college will be doing their own marketing- which most people seem to think is ‘rubbish’ and each pathway is responsible for their own publicity.

What has been playing out on the MA_DA wiki has been a lot of opinionated discussion around the design of a flyer, a brochure and a poster. The various pathways do not seem to be able to take advantage of the designers who are colleagues and in fact there is no apparent interaction between the various pathways as far as I can tell and so what we have been debating at the discussion level of the wiki is a design by committee which is not the best way to come up with something interesting.

I first proposed naming our MA Digital Arts course Basement 18 as I have discovered that we will be exhibiting our research outputs in the basement. I next tried to suggest we move away from a proposed grid, with a thumbnail image of each student’s work which I though looked pretty lame.

I posted an image of turbulent water which I thought was appropriately beauitful and enigmatic, but that seems to have been overruled as looking like too much like a ’stock photograph’ which I can understand. The debate continues on the MA_DA wiki.

March 21, 2009 1:12 pm

March 21, 2009: redwall

redwall

This red wall is a placeholder image for my nonsite project until I figure out what would be the most appropriate way to represent my project- which is basically written text within a website and not that interesting visually.

There seems to be a great urgency to make a number of decisions for this exhibition MA Digital Arts 2009 at Camberwell’s Wilson Road building in July 2009. I can understand some of the urgency, and the sooner the space details are resolved, the more time there is for completing the work itself. For me the challenge is what to present as the output of my research within a large group exhibition, that I feel would carry the appropriate weight in relation to other works being shown.

March 20, 2009 5:10 pm

March 20, 1975: Bart Robbett Two Rooms. Camera Obscura

Bart Robbett is only here for a semester. He has set up a beautiful interior camera obscura with two lights. Entering the dark room, it takes your eyes a while get accustomed to how dark it is and slowly the image of the other ‘light’ room appears reflected on the wall.

March 20, 2009 2:23 pm

March 20, 2009: Wilson Road

How do Camberwell students get to Wilson Road? I have no real idea.

Last week I saw a reference to the #12 bus being late. Do they drive? Where would they park? Ride bikes? Is it near a tube station? How far away is it from Peckham Road? Is there circulation between the two campuses? Wilson Road seems to be a building without an address, no street number. I know it is made of brick. I know it has at least two floors, maybe three, a courtyard and a basement.

Where are the students studios? I know Digital Arts has a room of computers in the basement. I think they are Macs. Maybe there’s also storage down there.

March 16, 2009 1:10 pm

March 16, 2009: memory work

Busy week. I’ve started reading Annette Kuhn’s Family Secrets: Acts of Memory and Imagination (1995). It took me a while to find it, but my library finally found a used copy from a bookseller in Montreal. It is a compelling thesis. She uses a close read of family photographs to reflect on her memories of growing up in 1950s London.

Her introduction is a thoughtful read on the theories of memory work and the difference between “those who comment on the production of culture and those who do the producing”.

She writes: “Memory work makes it possible to explore connections between’public’ historical events, structures of feeling, family dramas, relations of class, national identity and gender, and personal memory” and even more importantly for me, she writes about the abstract qualities of how we remember: “memory it turns out, has its own modes of expression: those are characterized by the fragmentary, non-linear quality of moments recalled out of time”.

I’m trying to make sense of the urgency around planning for this Camberwell Summer 2009 exhibition. Planning seems to be moving full steam ahead with little room for any discussion reflecting on the purpose. I tried asking some questions last week, but have had little response. I’ll try to follow up more this week.

March 15, 2009 4:15 pm

March 15, 1976: Patterson Ewen

Patterson Ewen is such a lovely guy and so painfully shy. He came to give a presentation on his paintings it feels like it is his first talk about his work. He’s getting a bit older. He’s been painting since the 1950s when he lived in Montreal, but now he’s making these amazing plywood paintings which he uses a router to draw with and then paints with a 6″ roller like the ones that printmakers use to ink plates.

March 15, 2009 2:33 pm

March 15, 2009: Quality Assurance

A big difference between universities in England and in North America is the concept of ‘quality assurance’. In North America it is all internal. Each University prides itself on the quality of their graduates. In England there is an elaborate process of quality assurance through external evaluators. What’s weird is that the students don’t benefit from the external evaluator’s assessment of their work. We don’t get any feedback. Instead what I now understand is that it is the programme that is being evaluated.

At Emily Carr University we bring in external evaluators to give students feedback on their graduate research and to comment on their thesis.

March 12, 2009 3:54 pm

March 12, 2008: uniforms and dress

The artist dress code hasn’t changed much since I was a student in the 70s. Functional distress: jeans, and t-shirt, black jacket. No overt preoccupation with fashion- it is understated and understood. No brands. We are democratic levellers, anyone can assume the outfit and look like an artist, but that doesn’t make you an artist. So what makes you an artist?

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