morning walk one day in Barcelona

A 30-minute morning walk in Barcelona, June 5, from the youth hostel to La Caixa Forum

Dear Contributors…

Dear contributors,

I´ve been visiting this site every day and am curiously and earnestly waiting for all the promised contributions…

Here´s a list that we formerly agreed upon. If you want to modify your assignment, just leave a message on this blog or to this message in the¨Comments¨session.

Bill Viola @ Pompidou Centre’s permanent collection (Frankie) Figuration Narrative (Frankie) (Fiona LIU Chun) Sophie Calle (Cathy, Iras, Karen) Louise Bourgeois retrospective (Karen) The use of photography (Sheena, Celia) Quotation in art (Pin, Demi, Louise) Beyond documentary (Gary, Naomi) Stomp (in London), side-kicks and general matters (Joey, Fay, Millie) Blood On Paper exhibition (Fanny?) More to come…

Meanwhile, please upload some good selections from your album.

Hector and I will be back in Hong Kong early in the morning on June 26. I´ll upload my pics then.

Linda (in Las Palmas)  

THE ACTUAL TOUR AS IT HAD HAPPENED

CIL euro trip 2008 Actual Itinerary DOWNLOAD

about the camera

hi dear all students joined the cil tour,i’m carol who had one school camera on hand, i wonder who are holding the another camera now and the camera bags?? the production center rejected me to return the camera as some equipments are missed!

thanks

carol

some thought about art space

it’s now 5something amin Hong Kong, and after 5 hours sleep, I’m so awake, a mild jet lag.

The following is a writing I did for Wesley’s course, Creative City and Urban Critique, as a final paper. In the writing I tried to give a little thought about the change in ideology of art space through critiquing the local art practice. I think the writing might be quite inside the scope of our trip, so I would like to share with you the writing here. (Frankie)

All your tapes…

For all who have been keeping DV tapes of documentation of the tour, please hand all of them to Yuejin.

The Documentary group should meet as soon as everyone’s in.  A team leader elected among the members would help to kick off the work ASAP.

(Linda)

Mission/trip completed!

Our study tour rounded up yesterday with a long discussion under two big tress on the green grass of St. James’ Park after our last visit at the Institute for Contemporary Art.

Two additional discussion sessions were led by Louise, on the issues of quotation in art, and by Iras, on young artists’ need for space and models of art spaces.

8 out of 19 students have already departed for Hong Kong early Wednesday morning. Linda and Hector will continue to travel in Spain until June 25.

(Linda)

one good work and one bad work

This writing is probably going to be very personal and might be seen as unacceptably “non-academic” and subjective, but anyway, I just want to make it this way as the one of the issue I’m going to deal with is more about my own (artistic) faith and interest. But this, to me, doesn’t cause the discussion any less fruitful, as we are all “artists”, if any of us don’t feel like that, at least we are all art-students. We are supposedly building up our own artistic taste and approach to art-making.

From Figuration to Abstraction

Before any “personal” and “unfair” discussion, I’d like to talk about one work that I really like from the Figuration Narrative exhibition in Paris. This is a video work that I guess most guys might not pay much attention at. The video work is by Peter Stampfli called Ligne Continue (1974). The work is simply a video work that shot the traffic printing on the roads for cars. The camera was set on a car and during the recording the car kept moving so that the traffic prints on the road were shot as if they were in motion.

As the work was exhibited together with predominantly paintings and few video works under the title of “Figuration Narrative” (might it be “Narrative Figuration” in French?), it led me to think about the relation between the work with the topic of figuration. As the work as a good quality of “abstraction”, but still, the subject matter being shot in the work is indisputably recognizable by spectators, it might be over-simplifying to categorize the work as “abstract”, and more satisfying to be said as a work that falls in-between abstract and figurative, maybe that’s why it’s exhibited in Figuration Narrative. This has been what I’m always interested in – abstraction which is referential to materialist world.

To me, this is really a whole category of “abstraction”, and this kind of abstraction can really be a good training to an artist to build up a high sensitivity to little detail about “objects”. Maybe it’s not only about “objects” but details in life in a more “philosophical” aspect.

To view the relation between abstraction and figuration in this way, the said relation may be seen as dialectic pair, that abstraction-figuration-complex (Ligne Continue) might be the synthesized.

Please forgive me for being “self-promoting”. Here I would like to quote a collaborative work by Karen and me which has something in common with Ligne Continue: Pixel Concrete (documentation: ). This is a performance in which we attempt to experiment with the relationship between computer and performers (human). And in the project, we adopted worldly images and sounds which at the beginning of the performance might appear as if they were all computer synthesized, but as the performance goes, they become increasingly recognizable materialistically referential.

Ear Cutting

Another work I would like to talk about is another video work that we saw from White Chapel. For this work, I have no interest in checking the artist name and its own title (sorry about that, as I’m too angry about that work), here and afterwards, I’m going to call it “Ear-cutting”, guess you guys should know which work I’m talking about as we had a nice discussion about it outside White Cube I in an afternoon.

In that afternoon, I questioned if it could be a work of art. This I admit is an emotional and irrational comment on the work. But after all, I don’t think it’s really a work that is worth a chance of exhibition in such a historical art space. Before further discussion about the work, I should make it clear that I’m not being morally dogmatic to be harsh about the work. As the artist adopted the easiest way to bring the least fruitful “impact” to his audience.

As in the discussion, some of us asserted that the work could wake up some quality of humanity in the audience. And most of us were able to notice little details about of the work apart from the “stunning”, breathe-taking ear cutting scene. But what I see was that, the violence (that I most of the time don’t have bad feel about) has overtaken every elements from the work in such a way that, what can be felt from the work would be predominantly violence and nothing more. In other words, the work is only successful in provoking sensual shock in audience.

It’s easy to understand my point, when we all know which work I’m talking about by simply saying it’s the ear-cutting work.

Some of us questioned about my reluctance against violence, but this is not what I feel bad about the work. Generally speaking, audience is shaken by the work, but the shake is a sensual one that doesn’t lead to any critical thinking about “humanity” that many of us think the work is about. The ear-cutting scene has shaken audience in the way as that someone shouts deafly next to other’s ear, one would felt hurt in one’s ear this is simply physical and nothing more.

The way how the artist provokes impact to audience is way too easy. And this after all is not about humanity at all. First, as mentioned before, the violence in the work has taken over everything. And further, the whole thing is a staged event, and no one is actually hurt and no ear is actually cut off. But some questioned about the importance of the authenticity of the event. As there’s not much “background story” that we can obtain from the work, what we saw from the work is a stage event that an actor was acting to have her ear cut off. Apart from the immediate sensual excitement, audience don’t feel like someone’s ear is REALLY cut off. The impact can only be “overwhelming” in such a short period of time that no critical thinking about humanity can be encouraged.

To end the discussion, I should once again make it clear that I’m not opposed with the use of violence in art-making, but violence, like everything used in art creation, should be used not as a “trick” to impress audience.

 

I know I’m finishing it roughly, but hopefully this little writing could initiate constructive discussion afterwards. Thank you.

 

Last but not the least, I would like to take this opportunity to thank Linda, Hector, Yue-jin and everyone for making this trip not only possible, but colorful, meaningful, playful… Thanks a lot.

 

- Frankie

wrote on the last night in Europe 11/06/2008

Upcoming: art reviews & journals

In the coming few days, more and more reviews will be posted on this blog by the 19 participants. Here’s a “coming soon” list of topics:

Bill Viola @ Pompidou Centre’s permanent collection (Frankie)

Figuration Narrative (Frankie) (Fiona LIU Chun)

Sophie Calle (Cathy, Iras, Karen)

Louise Bourgeois retrospective (Karen)

The use of photography (Sheena, Celia)

Quotation (Pin, Demi, Louise)

Beyond documentary (Gary, Naomi)

Stomp (in London), side-kicks and general matters (Joey, Fay, Millie)

Blood On Paper exhibition (Fanny?)

More to come…

(Linda)

 

Sophie Calle @ Bibliotheque nationale de France, Paris (1)

this is one of the best exhibition i saw in Paris. it’s a multi media installation by sophie calle. she asked 107 women and female animala to response to a break up letter from her boyfriend.

i was amazed by this work because the varieties in changing roles. for example the exchange of active and passive roles, author and audience . sopjie calle who was the reciever of the break up letter, but she tried to take an active role in responding to this event. and she also tried to give the power to women who were usually looked as victims or weaker character in relation,love affairs. in addition,the action asking many women to response also can be regarded as an action to deconstruct the man ,her boyfriend , as the letter is the last thing from him. this also changed the man’s role from heart breaker to victim in this event. the second important exchange roles in this work is the exchange between author and audience. the artist asked other women to response for her personal break up letter, instead of responding by herself. the 107 women seemed have taken the power of the author is not only because they responsed to sophie calle’s letter,also because they took the authorship or the creative power in this installation. their response formed major part of this work and their response can not be totally directed by the artist.so to some extend , even the artist said to be trying to take an active role in her break up event event, acturally she’s quite passive in this work too. she became an audience to look at how people response to a break up letter, which her personal idea was excluded. since all these responses somehow are unreal because their response are something influenced by their personal experience and can not reflect the feeling of the real letterreciever. this is also a change of roles between private things and public things. a personal lettre became a public research about break up letter . when all these unreal response put together and set up in a liberary,it created a virtual spatial feeling to me. i think if i’m the artist who standing inside this exhibition, she may feel alienated from this break up letter. maybe that’s her purpose too.

(Carol)