the study of honey bees

The critique went pretty well. I think I talked too much. I don't think they were going to bring up the gender thing but I was trying to head them off at the pass (if you will) but it was good anyway.

woooo

Specifically on Wednesday the 9th. I am going last. Oh joy of joys.

But anyway, here is a link to my site about all this stuff. It contains the annotated bibliography, which is positively gripping as well as all the other boring so very exciting things that I had to write.

Also, there are pictures of these uncanny bodies finished and out in space. I think they have turned out well. I am satisfied.

( Here are the images if you are too lazy to click the link. )

Ideally, I would like these forms to be sites into which the viewer-participant's subjectiveness can be poured. The most I can hope for is, "I think these are creepy because..." or "I think these are a commentary on sculpture because..." or "This may be a comment on the female body because..."

I do have a meaning that can be read into this. It's not in my intention statement. If I have caused the viewer-participant to have an unheimlich experience, then I am statisfied that my work is complete. However, there are issues I must address. Or just one. That is:

Why are these bodies female?

The simple, easy reason is because I have based them on a cast of my own body. I have set myself to be the standard against these forms are created and against which the viewer-participant compares hirself.

However, not everyone is going to know that they are based off of my own body unless I tell them, or maybe if I just stand next to them. So here I am thinking: these bodies are unheimlich, with connotations of death, monstrousness/hauntedness, and hidden things. Why are female things connected to those things? I have an answer which is probably problematic and not that thought through, but something I can offer. It is as follows:

Western society favors the gender binary (male/female). Because of this emphasis on the dichotomy, symbolically gender has become associated with other dichotomies: positive/negative, rationality/irrationality, thinking/emoting, active/passive, light/dark, night/day, knowledge/secrets. To me, this binary is illustrated quite clearly in the Western divination system of Tarot cards in the figures of the Magician and High Priestess of the Major Arcana. (They are card numbers one and two, respectively.) The Magician represents creation. He actively creates new ideas. The High Priestess is often described as the passive version of the Magician. She is sitting whereas he is standing; quiet whereas he is speaking. The High Priestess is keeper of secrets. The Fool must approach her in order to gain more knowledge, whereas the Magician took the Fool's attention.

In this Western construct of the female gender, "female" is associated with secrets and irrationality, whereas "male" is associated with knowledge and rationality. Otherizing "female" leads to misunderstanding-- we fear what we do not understand. Thus, at certain times, the female becomes monstrous and inhuman. That's where we get myths of things like vagina dentata. (That mysterious "void" has to be filled with something, right? Something that WANTS TO CUT OFF MY PENIS OH GOD, right?)

These bodies are female. They are monstrous but not because they were originally so. It is the constraints of the wrapping that has contorted their bodies. It is the wrapped fabric that keeps them from moving. It is the wrapped fabric that makes them appear dead. It is the wrapped fabric that makes them appear secretive. Wrapping and constraints on the body bring to mind other constraints on the female form: corseting, foot binding, even simple modern-day fashions such as leggings-as-pants.

Thus, it's the patriarchy that makes female bodies appear inhuman.

There it is.

(Also, this answer can be blamed on the fact that I got back into reading the cards again. Whateva.)

I am already thinking about where to go next. Actually, I am thinking more practically about how to keep up this art momentum over winter break. I'd like to work more in photography (ideally analogue film stuff because that shit looks fiiiine) and deal with shadows and silhouettes directly. May this mean... shadow puppets? IT MIGHT
These have implications of:
Jungian Shadow (haha)
body-silhouette, such as in costume history
other stuff too, I guess, but I usually think of things as I am working.

Tangent: I would hate for this blog to become some "official" record that could, like, be read by professors and stuff because then I'd have to censor what I'd say and felt. I think. Maybe if they understood that I have been keeping this up for some time before I "had" to and were cool about me being nonacademic and calling things dumb.

Tangent tangent: I should be writing a paper right now.

Tangent tangent tangent: how are you doing, my few and far between readers? Also, if any of you have read any sort of academic literature about this female-as-monster business, I would be happy to hear of some titles.

Is there a more academic or formal way to express, "I preferred reading Artaud's theories on theater to Brecht's, because Brecht sat me down and directly and didactically explained that he had things he believed in and this is what they are and this is how they play out in reality, whereas Artaud took me by the hand we went on a stroll while he described the plague to me in horrific poetry and I didn't even care when he was going to start talking about theater until he said, oh by the way, the plague and theater are the same and it all made sense! I preferred Artuad's approach because I am a rube who is seduced by imagery and I cannot be moved by a practical sense of urgency."

I don't think soooo

This is not yet annotated, but I am copy+pasting it here for future reference/unlikely yet totally likely computer death.

I always become super nervous when using MLA format (or Chicago style or any other system of citation) simply because when I was taught it in high school every single year they would neurotically take off points for missing periods and commas and now MLA has changed this year! New edition! (The librarian was very excited to tell my class this.) I mean, it hasn't really changed except to add what media format after the citation. But I always have to look at the Perdue University writing help website (which is the first hit on Google) and double check everything. Writing is slow.

( these are the things I have been reading )

I feel like I'm being pretty cagey with all this art stuff. It is true that I don't particularly enjoy talking about things until they are well underway, or finished, or not at all. But that is a habit I need to break.

I know I had that post a few weeks ago with all the things I was going to tell you about that happened over the long break I took. That is not going to happen. I need to move forward. I don't want to tell you about the conclusion of gesture in the air because frankly, I thought that the video that got produced did not match up to the idea of what I had in my head. It was my fault, really, for not specifying what I wanted. (I suppose since I didn't specify that I did not want beginning or end credits, I guess that meant I got them. But I do remember constantly specifying that the piece was going to be silent-- which means don't add a soundtrack, okay?) I'm not going to go over the altered photocopies because I realized that they weren't what I wanted to do as soon as I started to do them. Before the midterm critique I felt like a beetle on my back, legs all up in the air and going nowhere. I told all of my professors that at the start of my critique, that they could help me and flip me over, or squash me. I think, ultimately, they did set me on my feet but in such a way it felt like I had been squashed for a day or two.

I'm not going to go over the midterm critique because it was a little... traumatic is far too strong of a word, but unpleasant is not strong enough. I'm not going to go over it until I have to. I have a recording of it that I have not listened to yet. I do not think I am going to. I have had another interview, which I have not listened to yet either. I will, though, since I have to transcribe it.

Expect to see all the writing I've done pop up on here at some point-- my advisor may want us to keep a blog (or, has said that a blog format would be "okay")-- but either way those things need to be on the internet somewhere. Expect to see them in a week or two, because that's when I'm going to be putting them on a website portfolio thing.

So I'mn focusing on mediated and uncanny bodies now. I've always wanted to focus on the body as a site. I like that. These are parallel investigations, where I focus on the body in a particular way-- a mediated body, specifically a feminine body, specifically my own body. Uncanny bodies has to do with abstraction and alteration of the body. In both forms I'm focusing on the silhouette, the body as a whole shape.

Here's an in progress of some uncanniness:



So basically I made a cast of my body out of tape and stuffed it with newspaper in order to make a mannequin. I am going to all of my replicants Miss Kitty, after the best character on Gunsmoke. In private, at least. Anyway, then I'm basically making mummies-- wrapping these things in fabric, embroidery. Putting them in places. (What places? Who knows.) I had a big freak out because I only have one of these mannequins, and if I wrap my one mannequin, how am I going to make more? How will I even get the fabric off it in order to make more? so the solution has been to papier mache this thing in order to make a cast of a cast, and the papier mache cast will be the underlying structure of the actual sculpture bodies.

That is what I am doing tonight. I have another critique on Wednesday, and I hope to have at least one of these things in the wrapping stages to show. I have papier mache'd one side of Miss Kitty, and I am going back at 4am in order to do the other side, so that when I go back in the evening, when this class meets, I can put it on a stand and start on another layer.

I am tired.

Hopefully I'm also going to be using this blog to keep track of all the fucking books I'm reading. I'm reading a lot of Brecht right now. And Artaud. And this other book. And more. Geeeeeeeeeezzzzzz

I have more pictures of how my studio looks, in progress shots of Miss Kitty, pictures of some paintings I've done, and the best exquisite corpse in which I have ever participated. But not on this computer. Later, I promise.

I am so excited!

So recently, I've been researching Lucas Samaras because of his uncanny use of the body. (Most recently, I stayed up until 5am last night writing a paper on him.) I always bring up in conversation this certain photo-transformation. I have never been able to find in image of it... until now.


Lucas Samaras, Photo-Transformation (1973). SX70 Polaroid, 3" x 3"

Samaras's photo transformation series was basically Polaroids of him in his kitchen, and he would play with the emulsion as it developed to create wonderful things. I love this one in particular because it reminds me of another one of my favorite things-- teratomas. (Basically, tumors that are filled with hair, teeth, etc.) I read somewhere, I forget where which makes me an awesome academic, that somewhere in folklore they thought teratomas were demons trying to enter the physical world. Or maybe I read that in a fantasy novel. Sometimes I don't even know anymore.

First, let's look at the pictures.


(this is me exiting)

( two more brief videos, some pictures )

The basics are as follows: I'm in this death costume, on stilts, handing out cards. The cards said various things. A set were blank, a set only had a certain symbol on them (an Elder sign, because I'm a nerd), and three sets had phrases. The phrases were:
"What keeps you awake at night?"
"Watch your step."
"Are you really wearing that?"

I wanted phrases that were broad so they would stick with the viewer for longer as they tried to read into them. I didn't want to predict the future nor threaten (directly, with words). I liked the ambiguity of language. I liked how the only declarative phrase could be seen as friendly and as a warning. I also liked the humor of "Are you really wearing that?" because, after all, I'm in this ridiculous getup, so who am I to criticize?

I liked all the different reactions I received. I made sure to do this on family weekend, so that I wouldn't just have an audience of my student-peers, who would either be more receptive or dismissive because of its "wacky art" status at a "wacky liberal arts" college. (You know, ho hum, just another art student being weird!) I was giving out lots of high fives to students and small children. One girl wanted to give me a hug. (I gave her a high five because a hug would have knocked me over.) There was a dog that wanted to investigate me and another aggressively warned me away. Some people took the cards with just a "huh" and some didn't even look at them. I gave a "Are you really wearing that?" card to a well-dressed girl and she got really offended. Once when I was in the shadow under the campus center's balcony, a girl unexpectedly turned the corner and actually gasped and jumped back because she was so shocked to see this.

I mostly consider this performance a success because of the physical effort I put into it. I didn't break my legs! This was the longest time I've been on stilts! I learned that I could walk up and down ramps! (I haven't tried stairs yet. I'm not sure I'm going to try.) I also consider it a success due to the variety of responses I received during it-- delight and fear at once.

At my midterm critique, which will be another entry in itself (maybe, if I feel like talking about it) a professor pointed out that this could be mere entertainment and therefore not art. I personally think that's bullshit. High art/low art (non-entertainment, rewarding intellectual experience/entertainment, rewarding baseness) is a fictional dichotomy. I'd rather it not even be an issue. I guess other people still think that way so it has to be.

I also started to talk about this piece in terms of the uncanny, and another professor pointed out that this is the easy way to freak people out and make them uncomfortable, which is true. The presence of a recognizable image gives the viewer immediate associations-- so if they were scared of me, it wasn't me personally but my personification of this other feared thing. In the future, I am going to be moving towards more abstracted ideas of the body and the uncanny.


(Interesting side note: Most people assumed that I was male. Interestingly enough, the coat I'm wearing is a woman's coat, and the jabot is based off of an Edwardian women's pattern. So I'm not intentionally cross-dressing or disguising my gender. I would say that Death as a character tends to be portrayed as male, which may have played into their perception. One Death figure I had in mind during this was Baron Samedi.)

hey, LJ! Sorry for neglecting you for so long, and I left you at a cliff hanger, too. How unfair of me.

So this is a brief update simply promising that I will get around to doing detailed posts about the things I have done soon. Coming up:

-Dada death (conclusion!)
-the realization (and failure of) gesture in the air
-altered photocopies (I don't know what I was thinking, really)
-feeling like a beetle on my back
-the nerve wracking and terrible midterm critique
-how I arrived at my new foci: mediated and uncanny bodies
-the beginnings of my package tape body cast/mannequin
-some photos I took of frogs and spiders, because they're cool

Expect a flood of posts Tuesday and Wednesday!

I mean, the main reason for starting this journal was to keep me on track with having a set schedule and thinking about art regularly. I should keep it up. Henceforth, I will try to update at least once a week, if only with a brief doodle and some gibberish about how I'm so busy I feel like I'm going to explode.

PS: I'm so busy I feel like I'm going to explode/collapse/combust/something else? I'm writing a paper about Minimalism and it's not going anywhere oh god oh god

But I have to run somewhere-- but you get this, and then something more in-depth later:

My camera refused to focus. The spider was as big as a half dollar coin. The feather was a seagull's.

I was thinking today about how the things that differ photography from regular vision-- blurring, etc-- while they might not mimic sight in the same way photography does, but they can be seen to mimic how the brain processes sight. It looks strange because a photograph is a suspended moment cut out of time and we are inherently always within time.

Last entry I mentioned that I have no conceptual or theoretical underpinnings for my current project. It was seriously not sitting well with me. But today, I discovered this:

(Context: Noland is talking about his own canvases.)


Did I mention that the project had been tentatively titled, figures at a distance/gesture in the air?

Art crisis: averted.

Here are two of the books that I'm reading because they might give me ideas and stuff:

Voilette, Robert, ed. Leigh Bowery. London: Voilette Editions, 1998.
(Features this scene: "He faced the audience and began to part his legs, still screaming, and in what seemed like a flash, a figure began to emerge from between his legs. It was a woman: bald, nude, slatered in 'bood', lubricant and sausage links.")

Thompson, Nato and Gregory Sholette, eds. The Interventionists: Users' Manual for the Creative Disruption of Everyday Life. North Adams, MA: MASS MoCA Publications, 2004.

me in my studio

Good thing about my senior thesis: I get my own studio. I've been forcing myself to go there on a regular schedule even if I don't have anything to do. Today I sat there and read for another of my classes because I am stuck.

Bad thing about my senior thesis: I am stuck. Originally I wanted to do this thing with masks (don't ask) but I decided that I needed to work big. Right now I have a large-scale performance piece in the planning stages. Right now it is on hold because I am waiting for fabric swatches in the mail! Once I get them then I can dye them and decide which one I like best, then order ten or so yards of it and pay for faster shipping. Then I can get it and make the damn thing and etc etc.

But what exactly is this performance piece? Well, there's this field on campus that intrigues me because there's a big hill at the end of it. ( It looks like this: )

Shortly I will be posting a transcript of my first interview. I will be scanning preliminary things... in the future.

I'm looking forward to practicing something every day. Or nearly every day. Ideally, every day. I was feeling rather accomplished as I set up the guide rope and put on my padding.

A note about my set up: the back yard of my house is mostly a hill, the bottom third of which is a level brick patio with a wall. "Level" is relative, though-- there are two big evergreen trees on either side of this patio, and their roots make the bricks buckle. It's pretty treacherous, actually. It's no problem for me, though. The actual obstacles are the patio furniture and a pile of paving stones that are going to be used somewhere around the garden, someday, but until then they are just haphazardly stacked in a pile. So I string my rope between the two evergreens, I sit on the brick wall which is the exact height for me to sit and put on my stilts. I like my set up.

I fell once, trying to stand up from the wall by myself. My guideline was too slack to slow my fall. Then I remembered that I can get up from chairs by myself at my regular height and somehow that worked.

These pads are definitely worth it. Especially the wrist guards.

I walked around for a bit, walked backwards for a bit, walked without holding onto the rope for a bit. Right now my steps are small and shuffle-y. I should work on that.

Then I had the idea to go out to the side, open the gate, and go to my front yard. I got there, paused, and then decided that I shouldn't try walking up and down stairs yet. On my way back to the patio, I either hit a bump in the brick, or, and I think this is far more likely, the velcro on my right ankle strap gave out and I fell over again. It wasn't bad, thanks to the pads, but the end of the carriage bolt on the left stilt that's sticking out of the back of the knee brace dug itself into my left thigh. I should put padding around those. I knew they were going to be a problem. The velcro I used was the sticky back kind. I was too lazy to actually sew the velcro onto the webbing, but this right now isn't working out. I'm going to have to sew it all down before I practice again. (Which probably means I'll stay up tonight and do it.)

Today, I also got back my second roll of film from the printers. I didn't look at the prints until I got home, but it turns out that instead of being 4" x 4" prints, they somehow got turned into 4" x 5" prints. When I was looking at them, or, specifically, at the ugly white rectangle on all of them, I was like, "I can't be this fucking stupid, can I?" Luckily, I am not. I'll go back on my day off to see what they can do to be nice to me.

( But I scanned them anyway )

Something I learned about 400 speed black and white film: not the best for shadowy restaurants, excellent for sketchy alleyways.

yeahhhhh!

I got my first roll back from the developer's today. Some of them didn't turn out so great, but whatever, learning curve etc.

( Read more... )

Also, you can add me as a contact on flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/apiology/

I dropped off my first roll of film to be processed today! I am excited for square prints.

Also, I just bought a 35mm underwater camera.

I may have been influenced because it is orange. (And because I was looking at the lomo underwater casings and was like, hm, I don't have a camera that fits these.)

By the way, I need to get to a beach soon.

Jesus Christ, I just bought a Holga on eBay. But, to be fair, it was cheap, and the film at Local Photography Store is cheap. If I don't like it, I can just re-list on eBay for more than I bought it!

First, proof that I am actually doing something:



The beginnings of an altered book! I have no idea where I'm going with it. But I do know what I'm going to do with my copy of The Color Atlas of Intestinal Parasites in the future.

And this is what I did this past spring semester, ( finally. )

Today I found myself looking at Holga cameras on eBay. I don't even like lomography! Or maybe I do and it's just a deep dark secret. I can't even tell anymore.

It's summer! That means now I have time to stop being lazy and get this thing off the ground. In the coming days, expect to see some of the work I did during the semester: architectural design (tropical modernism!) and costume design (circus!).

I started this blog for two reasons: as a place to document my work, and a space where I can think out loud (so to speak) about concepts and ideas for my senior thesis. ( So now I am going to get wordy and talk about that. )

Fun things that are going to happen this summer:

1. I am going to build my own stilts and teach myself to walk on them! It's going to happen! I might be going out to get the materials today, or tomorrow.
2. I've given myself a goal to make something every week. Technically, I've met my goal for this week since I've made myself two dresses, but I won't count them. So that means I'll finally have content for this blog, woooo
3. Have I mentioned that I got a new camera? It's nothing super special, since it's still just a point-and-shoot. It's a Nikon L100, and it has fantastic optics. What you see outside is what you see in the camera. I love it. Also, it records video with sound, which my last camera didn't do. I am excited.

Okay, so this entry won't be useless and wordy, because I know no one will read a wall of text--
here are some photos I took last week. I'm not a photographer, but I loved this little private beach. It was such an interesting space; I was fascinated by the trees giving way to beach grass giving way to sand giving way to sea. There were also boats abandoned in the grass. I assume they weren't actually abandoned, just not in use at the time, and put in a convenient spot above the tide line. It was very eastern shore.

( six )

One last thing!



Specifically, 3:50. I hope you know how I feel about bees.

I have a lovely watercolor moleskine notebook that I haven't really gotten to use yet. Over break, I've been using it to practice with pen and ink.



( naked ladies within )