Screenshots of Group on Facebook

Things to Come at Site Gallery

Graham Ellard and Stephen Johnston

From http://www.ellardjohnstone.com/assets/ThingstoCome.html

Things to Come
(UK 2011, 16mm, 6.00 mins.)
Things to Come is a 16mm film produced as part of a gallery exhibition at Site Gallery in Sheffield. Working from a series of unpublished photographs a large, highly abstract, metal and glass model based on Laszlo Moholy-Nagy’s set designs of a ‘future city’ originally made for the 1936 science fiction film Things to Come was built in the gallery space. From this model the 16mm film was shot, imagining what an audience would have seen had the director, William Cameron Menzies, actually included Moholy-Nagy’s footage in the finished film. It was claimed, by Moholy-Nagy in Vision in Motion (1965), that these images, now lost, were “so rich a visual result that the editor of the film did not dare to use it”.

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The production photographs, held in the Moholy Nagy archive in Ann Arbor, show an extraordinary ad-hoc studio set–up, comprised of mirrors, scientific glass, polished steel, and string, framed within simple but fantastic contraptions of armatures, pulleys, fly wires and a-frames, that are used to manipulate them.

The film consists of abstract synchronised movement across and around the set, to create a dynamic play of light, shadow, reflection, parallax, depth, surface and prismatic special-effects made possible by Moholy-Nagy’s set. The film, shot in Black and White, is formed predominantly from extreme close-ups and abstract details. These are intercut with extracts from ‘set-piece’ takes, which occured in the gallery in way very similar to short performances. These takes, around the constructed set, draw on the intense choreographed activity suggested by the production stills.

After walking into Site Gallery, the made up studio spaces were full of mirrors, black cloth and carefully placed lights to show reflections of light. Ellard was taking photographs as I walked over to one of the tables and explained that the lights and mirrors made it look like a city. Yet the city looked quite scientific and space-age. The photographs that framed the walls around the table were all black and white and some were more effective than others in connoting the idea of a space-age city. Ellard explained that he used macro photography to make the viewer feel as though they were in the city itself, which sort of transports the viewer to another place. 

Artist and Piece Statement

Kris West

My art practice aims to highlight issues I come across within British culture and daily life, using humour as both an anchor and a uniting element for the viewer. Using the mediums of video, inks and photography, I make pieces that are aimed for a reaction. I combine my creative processes with current technologies, such as social networking and blogging to involve a mass audience to interact with my work.

For this exhibition I am going to turn mass media to my advantage. By making works that use subliminal messages and hidden jokes, I aim to challenge what others value about what society tells us about trade and consumerism. We as a people are subject to unrelenting advertising and messages of attainment and excess; leaving us as consumers, not human beings. I aim to expose this idea to the viewer and leave them questioning where they stand within this consumerist society. 

“Don’t Listen to the Girl in the Video” (2011)

5x 9” TV monitors, 5 x videos

Everyday the public is bombarded with adverts and messages of advertisement from the moment they wake until they moment they fall asleep. The unrelenting pressure to buy and conform to the consumerist society we live in has made us numb and docile in receiving this propaganda. “Don’t listen to the girl in the video” features multiple examples of advertising mixed in with personal vlog accounts about consumerism to highlight how “normal” it is to be hit with subliminal messages. The fast paced cuts and mix of sound show the unrelenting waves that hit each and evey one of us.

What role do aesthetics and symbolism take to link psychoanalysis and contemporary art? [1]

 Aesthetics provoke a thought or a feeling, whether positive or negative, and that can be the most revealing about a person and their mind. The term “aesthetic” can be defined as “a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty”1 and “the study of the nature of sensation”2. With this in mind, my research takes me to show not only the use of “beauty” to unite the universal viewer, but also the “negative”, which I feel does the same job. According to Segal, symbol formation is the outcome of loss; if we lose something important to us then we begin to discover symbols that represent that object. If we use the term “ugly”, then “ugliness” is what expresses the state of the internal world in depression, the destruction of “good” and whole objects, whereas “beauty” is merely the “other”, the resurrection of the internal world perhaps.

“The image is peremptory, it always has the last word; no knowledge can contradict it, ‘arrange it’, refine it.”3 – Werther

 The use of the image to capture “desire” has always been the aim of artists, yet the objects of desire are representational; the viewer doesn’t always agree. “Desire, which cannot be expressed openly because of the inevitable gap between the body and culture, between the thing and any representation of that thing, is subject to multiple disguises and subterfuges”4. Although discussing art and artists symbolism, through letters and essays, during his lifetime, Freud was more interested in the psychoanalytic fantasies and conflicts of the artists rather than the aesthetics themselves. He chose to explore the repressed thoughts of the artist that he felt were expressed through the artwork. As Mothersgill says “any individual (work of art) is beautiful if and only if it is such as to be a cause of pleasure in virtue of its aesthetic properties”5, showing the limits to Freud’s research; he doesn’t discuss the role of the viewer or the recipient at all. As Handler-Spitz says, “the objects presence figures an absence, induces a desire in the subject which it (the object) in an imaginary way, fulfils”6, leading me to believe that the viewer must see in the aesthetic of the art work, some “thing”, some image that triggers an emotional response or a repressed memory which is basically imaginary completion by the viewer. In our minds we see the desired object or image as the epitome of what we want, or as we imagine, what we need to fulfil our lives. One thing that is obvious is that “the pleasure of desire (is) located in the subject”[2]; we see in the image what our unconscious tells us.

 In order to distinguish between two ways of symbolizing: in the one, a symbol represents something and in the other the symbol actually is something, “concretely”. The artist manipulates this process to extend out to the viewer.

“Symbolism is a tripartite relationship. The symbol, the object to be symbolized and the self”[3] – Hanna Segal

 Hanna Segal developed many of the theories on psychoanalysis and art that Freud and Klein originally proposed, focusing on the idea of aesthetics themselves rather than just the artist behind them. “Freud had the intuition that artists try to awaken in other people the same feelings that led them to create their work of art”[4] was one suggestion made by Segal to establish the divide between Freud’s limitations and her own. She saw his efforts to identify the artist but became more interested in the aesthetic emotion that “arises because the audience identifies with the artist – with the internal suffering that impelled the artist to create all the way through to the actual production of the work of art”[5]. This demonstrates the full impact that the artist has on the aesthetics of artwork. The artist must draw on the pain of the inspiration and direct it towards making the work. To express this pain in symbolic ways, the “artists must be able to express the concrete in a much more symbolic manner. Art is very concrete – it appeals to our senses, to our eyes, to our ears, and so on”[6]. Segal goes on with this idea of the “concrete” reality, suggesting that “the artists job is to deal symbolically with the concrete while all the time being under threat from it”[7]. If you take from Segal that the threat is real for the artist and that they represent it as aesthetic, “you can see that the artist communicates at the same time both the destruction of the internal world and the capacity to repair it”[8]. The repair of the internal world, or of the symbols, becomes “beautiful” and attractive to the viewer. In itself it shows hope and aspiration, a uniting element of happiness.

 At first glance, Andreas Gurksy’s photography appears to epitomise the worst about western culture, in particular capitalism and overpopulated urban living. Yet if we consider Segal’s standpoint with the viewer, that “the aesthetic experience of the person who is sensitive to this kind of phenomenon comes from an identification with the writer’s or painter’s ability to look at what lies in the depths, no matter how destructive, overcome it and turn it into a thing of beauty”[9], then we must consider the beauty in the representation of culture by Gursky. His “May Day V” (2006) on the surface shows a block of flats and the viewer is able to see through the windows in the rooms beyond and see the occupants. The beauty of the image is shown within the life compartmentalised by the flat windows. His photograph “99 Cent II Diptychon, (2001)” also demonstrates the same sort of process but in a completely different subject matter. He highlights the issues of consumerism and mass production in western society but photographs it as “beautiful”. The photograph shows aisles of packaged goods, lined up in groups and all brightly coloured. The shallow representation of the photograph is of the way we are attracted to choice and colour, we are moved by the ease of selection and freedom.

 As Segal’s theory developed into the idea that “the artist makes the unbearable bearable by giving it expression”[10], I realized that artwork can be seen as making something quite tense and uncomfortable, beautiful. With this is in mind, I can’t help but think of Jason de Caires Taylor’s work, a beautiful link between the destruction of classically beautiful statues and their change from just “pretty art work” into underwater reefs that develop the life of underwater creatures. I find deep, open water terrifying, the sheer expanse and the notion of underwater creatures. Yet when I see documentation of his installations, I’m left in awe of just how beautiful they look. His installation “Vicissitudes” is composed of 26 life-size figures arranged into a circle. One obvious aesthetic is that the water and sand contrast into bright blues and whites in the sunlight, which filters through the water and transforms the statues into classically tragic beauty. Likewise, his “La Evolución Silenciosa” (“The Silent Evolution”) is one of his largest installations, with 400 life-size figures arranged into groups that from afar look like natural rock formations. Again, the installation is made beautiful by the surrounding water and sunlight, as well as the knowledge that the artwork develops over time to sustain the environment. As some of the documentation shows, the statues become reefs to sustain the fish, and even they are aesthetically beautiful, making the statues almost appear like mermaids.

 Although aesthetics are usually discussed in regards to “beauty” and what the viewer finds pleasing, I have found that many of the images and symbols we relate to can make us feel uneasy, or remind us of something negative. I am certain that we have all come across at least one piece of artwork that has made us feel disturbed, or appears to show a part of ourselves we don’t want to see. In fact, the majority of artists choose to produce artwork that is destructive in its aesthetic. As Barthes encapsulates, “incapacity to name is a good symptom of disturbance”[11], and this incapacity to name becomes the idea of repression that was discussed by Freud. Repression is the idea that certain thoughts or dreams we don’t want to have are repressed into our unconscious. The process of “Sublimation” is a concept originated by Freud and is something that is also picked up by Segal in relation to artistic use of aesthetics. Sublimation is the theory that suggests that we divert an instinctual impulse or thought into a culturally higher or socially more acceptable activity, such as artwork. Repressed thoughts can lead to the idea of the uncanny, again discussed by Freud, who saw in his patients the disturbed idea that some image or object had the power to hurt them, “for this uncanny is in reality nothing new or alien, but something which is familiar and old-established in the mind and which has become alienated from it only through the process of repression”[12].

 I remember as a young child being taken to a number of psychologists, they being determined to discover the ratio between physical and psychological development, I determined to ignore them as much as possible. Yet I did notice the abundance of art supplies handed over to me: in the waiting room, in the office, in the hospital. It seemed as though they wanted me to draw the answers for them. There are scrapbooks and boxes filled with childish drawings of injections and hospital beds. Clearly the link between image and thought is important in suggesting at symptoms or issues. Freud tells us that the uncanny is what “arouses dread and horror” in us, whether it appears to be ridiculous or of real concern, and this is easily shown through deliberate repression of the original pain. We, as a viewer, “in general, prefer to concern themselves with what is beautiful, attractive and sublime – that is feelings of a positive nature- and with the circumstances and objects that call them forth rather than the opposite feelings of revulsion and distress”[13]. Yet artists appear to have a completely different view. They choose to focus on the suffering and pain to develop their practice and go to great lengths to expose the hurt to the viewer.

 “This factor of involuntary repetition which surrounds what would otherwise be innocent enough with an uncanny atmosphere, and forces upon us the idea of something fateful and inescapable”[14], such as a specific number, for example, the number 23. I remember watching a thriller film about such an occurrence and for the next week or so I found “23” everywhere: in my phone number, my house number, the shops on the nearest road to me. The number itself didn’t represent anything until I saw the film, where the protagonist went mad after becoming obsessed by the number 23. After I found the number everywhere myself I began to feel “creeped out” and nervous, convinced that something terrible was about to happen. As Freud’s essay on the “uncanny” explains, “what is feared is thus a secret intention of doing harm and certain signs are then taken to mean that that intention has the necessary power at its command”[15] – for example, the “evil eye” symbol. If we see the repetition, we project or transfer our uncanny thoughts onto the recurring images, imagining them to be powerful enough to effect us.

 Matt Calderwood’s “rope” (2004) signifies death and suicide by its immediate impression. The rope is looped into a “hangman’s noose”, the obvious connotations of execution causing tension in the viewer. The noose is upside down and caught on a hook on the wall is more of an aesthetic that attracts differential reactions. For example, I don’t see the reverse noose as a sign of life other than death, or as a reversal of the original impression, but rather as a sign of a disturbed world, where the usual rules of discipline and execution don’t apply. One further intrigue in the aesthetic of Calderwood’s piece is the fact that the “rope” is made of toilet roll. The idea of waste paper used to symbolise death only adds to Freud’s theory that the uncanny is the familiar made disturbing.

 Jonathon Allen’s “Tommy angel # 8” (2005) is one art work that definitively makes me uncomfortable. Within the photograph is the character Tommy Angel, apparently an alter ego for Allen that takes the form of a Deep South preacher and Vegas showman. The ventriloquist act depicts various magic routines or “miracles” to parody the shared imagery from Las Vegas and Christendom. Yet it is the doll itself that makes me feel uncomfortable, and I find myself never able to look at the photographs for long.

 What remains clear is that aesthetics are important in conveying messages within art; the artist is able to connote various themes, desires and opinions within a piece that is recognisable to the viewer. Some artists consider this transference as a basis to whether the artwork is “successful” or otherwise. Photography is one example of a medium that contemporary artists use to replicate an experience or emotion to the universal audience. In “Camera Lucida”, Roland Barthes describes the process of capturing an image as “something has posed in front of the tiny hole and has remained there forever”[16], quite a humble and naïve explanation that removes the sense of artistic presence. Yet it is still correct, what we put in front of the lens and capture is simply “there” forever, with no sense of time. But how do we determine whether the aesthetic of an image is “beautiful”? Or even worthy of an emotion from the viewer?

 We have to consider that “we have, in aesthetic experience, the staging of a peculiar drama in which the presence of an object intensely engages a subject”[17], where “the relations of art work/artist/spectator imply a dynamic characterized by subtle reversals, complex alignments and shifts of position”[18]. The object changes its “power” due to the representation by the subject, whose repression lends the emotion to the object. Of course, photography has meant that images can be consistently reproduced and repeated to the viewer. The repetition of images has a drastic effect on the meaning conveyed by the original image; it makes the image become uncanny, the viewer begins to pay it more attention than previously before, “what the Photograph reproduces to infinity has occurred only once; the Photograph mechanically repeats what could never be repeated existentially”[19]. I suppose that in reproducing images so often, photography mimics the Freudian idea that “an object found is an object refound, and the refinding rather than the intrinsic properties of the found or chosen object is of prime significance”[20]. One such example that explores this idea for me is within Robert Mapplethorpe’s photography. I first came across Mapplethorpe’s work at an exhibition in a Library in the centre of Sheffield. His photography practice is mainly portraiture; dozens of subjects captured in a moment. Yet as much as I enjoy Mapplethorpe’s work, I always notice the pose of the subject foremost. This is also discussed in Roland Barthes “Camera Lucida”, where Barthes notices a particular photograph “Phil Glass and Bob Wilson”, a partnership that composed the experimental operas, including “Einstein on the beach”. Barthes initial impression, “Wilson holds me, though I cannot say why, i.e, say where: is it the eyes, the skin..?”[21] explores what I consider to be the “humanity” that linked me to Wilson; he isn’t beautiful by far, but he holds my eye, whereas Glass could easily be ‘photoshopped’ into the image, despite being the more classically good looking, or “beautiful”. What appeared to attract Barthes was the “right moment, the kairos of desire” that he found from the “gaze” of Wilson, the figure on the left who appears as a humble, creepy sort of character, and yet is full of life; he appears to lean out of the photograph and stare at you. Barthes suggestion of “what founds the nature of Photography is the pose” becomes, for me, the exact link between Barthes and myself. We both notice the “pose” of the subject and look for the unusual, or the “unbeautiful” within photography to find something that appeals to us.

 In my own experiences with media and art, I use semiotics to unite or segregate the viewer as a whole, particularly in film, where I use the “familiar image” to build some sort of basic theme. Graffiti is one form of contemporary art that uses the idea of aesthetics to reach a mass audience. The use of self-expression to unite strangers makes for exaggerated aesthetics. Shepard Fairey is one such artist who uses aesthetic to unite the viewer. His graffiti artwork features political imagery, particularly portraiture, which the viewer will instantly recognise and form an opinion on. His use of celebrities lends to the attitude of aspiration felt by many viewers, who see the celebrity lifestyle as desirable. The other aesthetic of Fairey’s practice that suggests in some form, a sense of “beauty” due to the bright colours and simple shapes that mirror cartoon drawings.

What we look for within art is identification, the sense that we know, or our unconscious knows of some link, some thought that agrees with the representation made by the artist. As Handler Spitz says, “aesthetic pleasure is due to an identification of ourselves with the work of art as a whole and with the whole internal world of the artist as represented by his work”[22]. We look for the same pleasure and uncanny that the artist feels, especially if “what the artist aims at is to awaken in us the same mental constellation as that in which him produced the impetus to create”[23], which is what Freud tells us. We want to know that someone else feels the same as us; we want to feel united by artwork and the artist. Perhaps after all, the role of aesthetics to link art with the viewer is to enable unity.

-       Kirsten West

Video examples

Exhibition

The group exhibition was located at the Showroom Cinema in the centre of Sheffield, running from March 16th until 19th. I exhibited two pieces of work; one a collaboration wall/text piece with Georgina Christian, the other a multiple screen video piece. Both were set up in the same corner where the viewer was able to read the text or settle down on beanbags in front of the videos and be subjected to adverts and subliminal messages, as well as incorporating the vlogs already on this site.

John Jordan

"We may see the overall meaning of art change profoundly- from being an end to being a means, from holding out a promise of perfection in some other realm to demonstrating a way of living meaningfully in this one"

The Real Experiment (1983)

Allan Kaprow

John Jordan is a performance artist, known for his work with "reclaim the streets" and the "we are everywhere" book. Jordan learnt from theatre, he did drama and noticed the gap between the audience and the performance. They were always separated by the stage; the audience stayed in their seats- no matter what. After this observation he became interested in the type of art that lives in culture. The audience is on the streets and not separated from the performance anymore. Art shown in the public sphere has the opportunity to become more radical and not just be seen as art. It measures an effect on society and comments upon it.

11 Provocations
1. Invisibility trick
To avoid what Jordan calls the "prisons of the art world", he creates art work that no one thinks of as art. For example he created a fake company called "Effra Redevelopment Agency" and set them up in a shop with the false promises of corporate videos that claimed to be focused on river redevelopment. None of the public realised that it was an art installation.
Another example was a protest Jordan was involved in; he threw himself onto a bulldozer to stop it. This created an interest in the media and Jordan also appreciated the theatricality of the moment. It was beautiful and real; direct action.

2. Give up representation
Artists use desire to change the mind of the viewer or to instill a feeling with them. Facts and figures don't change the world; desire does.

3. Reclaim the streets of possibility

'Reclaim the streets"

This project was about urban common versus privatization within cities, and the idea that means and ends are the same thing. Within the guise of street parties, the art piece became a comment on city scapes and how the public can change the world with one idea. Yet the art work was also fun and involved the viewer completely. The parties became raves, anarchism was the sole politics and artists were able to make radical work.

4. Make the material the movement

5. Craft frames that enable creative chaos

Artists want to control aesthetics, yet in the public sector you can't control that. One example Jordan discussed was a choreographed crowd in 1999. Using coloured masks and shouted instructions the crowd were coerced into becoming an art piece.

6. Liberate the disobedient body

"Clown Army"

The "Clown Army" is one of the most successful art pieces that Jordan has been involved with, in terms of humour, participation, reaction from media and viewer and also aesthetics. By creating an army of clowns, Jordan mocks authority as well as the idea of obedience and hierarchy. One group of recruits tried to join the army still dressed as the clowns, but the office they approached ended up closing early because of them, which is also a success. The clowns also kissed the policemen's riot shields in protest rallies; the shields were covered in lipstick kisses making the police look harmless, even laughable. As Jordan becomes the "trickster", he changes the idea of confrontation in protests to confusion from the point of view of authority. 

7. Don't pretend to do politics

"Disobedience makes history" - Tate Modern

Jordan was asked to set up workshops by Tate Modern about radical art and protests. He decided to take them at their word and set up projects about the BP oil spill that was currently in the news. Unfortunately he received an email from Tate saying he was "not allowed to protest against Tate and it's sponsors", including BP. However Jordan felt this was a type of censorship, and despite Tate's attempts at sabotage, created work where volunteers spilt oil all over the paving outside the gallery and over their clothes.

8. Create edges and doorways

Look at eco systems, "Perma-culture"

9. Perform post-capitalism

"Climate Camp"

10. Make passionate adventures

Think of treasure maps, adventures, boats and rum.

11. Cultivate the unexpected

"Down with Gargamel!"

Artists and sub-cultures work together to create radical work. In Poland, Jordan began a project involving graffiti and garden gnomes to create a gnome revolution.

12.(?) Occasionally take holidays in representation

"Les Sentiers de L'Utopie"

(book and film)