1. Topology- geometry of translation refers to movement
Definition from Wikipedia.org
“A major area of mathematics concerned with spatial properties that are preserved under continuous deformations of objects, for example, deformations that involve stretching, but no tearing or gluing.”
A Möbius strip, an object with only one surface and one edge. Such shapes are an object of study in topology.
MC Escher,
Translation, Pg.135
Pierre Huyghe explains that it “refers to a process of translation. However, when you translate something, you always lose something that was in the original. In a topological situation, by contrast, you lose nothing; it is a deformation of the same”
Topology is the fold of a situation, taking an amount of information and inventing a new mode of processing for it. Is the lost information removing the aura of the object?
2. Refer to pg 132 Bourriaud & Freud
How do artists create the links that Bourriaud is referring to Freud concept of artist’s expression? Is the only significant link the signs from our subconscious minds, the things that inspire us to make art? Are our true borders now completely internal?
“Art pierces the chain of reality returning it to the precarious nature, unstable mixture of real, imaginary, and symbolic that it contains” Bourriaud
3. Journal Forms
Today the journey is everywhere in contemporary works, whether artist borrow its forms (journey, expeditions, maps) its iconography (virgin territories, jungles, deserts) or its methods (these of the anthropologist, the archaeologist, the explorer
) Why is this idea only referenced to modern art, isn’t it in human nature to be curious and explore the unknown? The caves of at Chauvet can arguably include this ‘journey’ idea of exploration. The cave painters had to go into the ground to these caves, and reference their own culture onto those walls.
Pierre Huyghe A journey that wasn’t (2005)
Melix Ohanian Island of an Island (1998-2001)
Alfred Hitchcock used the term “McGuffin” to describe the elusive objects chased by the characters in his films. Art Travelers view history as their McGuffin
Wandering vs. beginning point and ending point
Pg.113 "Globalization offers a complex image of the world, fragmented by particularism and political borders even as it forms a single economic zone"
4. Consumer and the consumed
Are you willing to relive for all eternity the moments you are experiencing right now? The same consummation of the 20th century to the 21st century. Doesn’t this idea refer to the supermarket to the flea market with contemporary artists?
Bourriaud, “Aesthetic of the flea market, which will become the formal structure commonly employed by artists”
Bourriaud “The political order that governs the chaos has never seemed so solid; everything is constantly changing but within immutable and untouchable global framework to which there no longer seems to be any credible alternative”
Zymut Bauman-sociologist Waste disposal industry = liquid modern society
Among consumer society’s industries waste production is the most massive
5. Chaos and the Jester
Chaplinesque irony-the irony of the vagabond set loose in the universe of power
“Culture is being threatened when all worldly objects and things produced by the present or the past are treated as mere functions for the life process of society. An object is cultural to the extent that it can endure; its durability is the very opposite of functionality”
Are artists merely parody of culture; the jester to the kingdom, pointing out our weaknesses and flaws for the king’s (society) amusement? “Chaos is preexisting and they operate from the midst of it.” Do artists reflect on a civilization of over production to expose or heal the shattered environment of our modern lives?
“The function of the arts museums has less to do with the storage of objects in a physical space than with the maintenance of a database of information”
Karl Marx from his Theses on Feuerbach “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways, the points is to change it”
Contemporary art commits its most serious act of breaking and entering against our perception of social reality.
6. Contradictory Line and Linear
On page 121 Bourriaud sates, “Although the radicant forms a line, it cannot be reduced to a one-dimensional linearity.” I thought the radicant is like a strawberry plant, is the line the connection from one aspect to another and then is created in a timeless form of abstraction? O how contradictory.
The radicant artist now takes on history as well as geography, but could these two dimensions be one in the same? A question for Einstein concerning space and time.
7. Additional Confusion
Pg. 137 Department of Eagles and Rosalind Kraus
A sign of regression in cultural outputs (TV, video, art)
Viewing of art is rooted in the modern art era, no longer relevant to art & today?
NOTE: I want to go into an explanation of this idea in our discussion
Artists Referenced
Jason Rhoades-Installations that seem nomadic and inderminate
Gabriel Orozco, My Hands are My Heart, 1991
"I think about time for art more than about space for art"
Jacques Villegie12 septembre 1987, décollage mounted on canvas
Jennifer Allora & Gillermo Calzadilla Landmark-Footprints, 2001
George Abeagbo
Jeremy Deller- folk culture
Jeff Koons- heaviness, surplus value as a kind of gravity
Maurizio Cattelan
Damien Hirst- protect art against putrefaction
Jacques Lacan-philospher
Bruno Serralongue- an artist who employs the techniques of photojournalism to expose the conditions of contemporary humanity
Bruno Serralongue, La Otra, 2006
Seth Price
Simon Starling, Rescue Rhododendrons 1999, Video Still
John Bock-chooses the form of lectures as artistic medium. He tries to transpose simple structures from life and artistic tasks into abstract formulae and absurd models. Psychological coping strategies for life are analyzed with mathematical methods and transferred into models of society.
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John Bock, Zezziminnegesang, 2006
Phillip Parreno The Boy From Mars 2003, Video Still
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