‘Blood on Paper’ in V&A Museum

While paper was invented, books became a media to record and transmit knowledge, information, images, memories etc. Nowadays, books and paper are commonly functional. The books selling in bookstores are in similar sizes and shapes. Portable, tidy and clear are the basic requirements. Also, there are international united sizes designed for papers, envelops and related stationeries. It is also the greatest difference between art and design while ‘design’ should help convenience people’s life. Books are more likely a tool for human life. But actually, books are also a multi-dimensional media for art-making. The exhibition in V&A Museum showed the books of different artists and reminded audience the meaning of books.

 

In this digital age, texts and image become intangible. They are stored ‘byte’ by ‘byte’, rather than ‘pages’ by ‘pages’. Though it provides us lots of convenience but it is not substantive enough. Tactile media is still irreplaceable. The books shown in the exhibition site showed us the ways of using books to make art pieces. The large scale book by Kiefer in the main entrance was impressive. It reminded and questioned me that it is not a must to keep books to be portable and light. If that huge book can be turned by audience, turning each page would likely be exploring and discovery of every two dimensional spaces and give audience a special experience.

 

Another impressive work for me is the ‘Danger Book: Suicide Firework’ by Cai Guo Qiang. His video also caught lots of audience’s attention. ‘Destructing’ is an alternate way to ‘create’. Cai used chemical to destroy the edges of the huge book and create unique and irregular edge. Also, the process he made it was a performance.

 

I love tactile materials. I appreciate hand-binded books and the texts and images wrote and drew by hands. All those recorded in sheets of papers are the real record of not only information but also the frame of mind of people in the moment of writing. While I read my old sketches and notebooks, I feel as if reading my past. The wore-off ink of each pen stroke as well as the old paper are the natural-formed art piece. Hope people still keep your own handwritings on paper by hands.

 

Fanny:)

Louise Bourgeois & Sophie Calle, post-trip post

Louise Bourgeois, @ Centre Pompidou (28/5)

<<Hearty and hard>>

That was the first exhibition we visited in Paris. We discussed a lot after the visit, I remembered that Linda asked me about the feeling; I remembered her question but forgot my responses.

What is interesting about Bourgeois for me is the diversed media that she has worked with. The materials that she used were somehow interesting, and the most interesting thing of all is the evolution of the usage of the materials, she chose the materials based on their qualities, e.g., flexibility. From marble ( like her work “the past being gotten rid of by the present” )to wood, then steel, then clay and after all cloth, the materials that she works with are more and more flexible as her artistic career goes on, because she needs the flexibility to mold her sculptures, especially those sculptures concerning body. She regards the body, her own body, as the only thing that can represent herself. Her own body has been a recurring topic in her works. Giving birth to her son has made a dramatic change to her body, she treated her body as a safe room to her child, maybe rather than a room, it is more like a house that can give him everything that he wanted. After the laboring, she experienced the negligence from her son; she felt sad about it and made artworks with the feeling. If she treats herself as a house, we can see her work like “woman house”, “house/wife” and “house”, then the resident should be her son, she might treat her son leaving her as a resident leaving his house, and the house became abandoned, as she might have felt of herself. Her works somehow can show the emptiness and loneliness.

And other resident of the house should be her husband, before her son lived in, her husband entered in the form of sexual intercourse. Her husband’s love disappeared; she treated it as another resident left her house. Her house is tough and strong, and the support of the family, can always protect its residents, just as other housewives protect their family always. But a house need residents, housewives need their family, in her artworks, the metaphor was strongly shown. Some of the sculptures represented the family and her, her image was tough, just like a sculpture we saw there, a steel sculpture that we could see her holding shopping bags, and her family was just beside her, everything around her seemed like supporting her spiritually. She was sturdy but at the same time we could feel the weakness inside her heart and her mind, through these series of artworks.

Would mothers feel themselves as a house? I think it just depends on one sense of responsibility. A mother can feel herself as resident, and actually she is, if she lives in a house like any other members of the family. The one who takes the responsibility is the one who protects the family.

By the way, the view from the long corridor outside the exhibtion halls on the 6th floor of Centre Pompidou was nice, but it was too hot to stand there. No air conditioning in the corridor, unbelievable -_-

—————————————————————————————

Sophie Calle, @Bibliotheque nationale de France (31/5)

<<107 reactions of Sophie after she read the letter>>

I think the most suitable idiom I can use for the exhibition is 「百感交集」 - hundred kinds of feelings mixed together, this is my first impression on this artwork. When I situated in the library, (yes, the work was exhibited in a library), that was an emotional archive made by Sophie, she invited 107 women to respond to the break-up letter, I would guess that Sophie might be brave to publicize the letter, but felt weak to give a response to it. Or she didn know how to respond. Those 107 responses might represent her feeling to a certain extent.

I believe that different materials and different kind of performances can help expressing unusual feelings. Though the medium was not chosen by Calle, the variation of the expressions by the medium may be Calle intention. A static performance like writing, photography and drawing, or a dynamic performance like singing, dancing, acting, etc. Serious, hilarious, humorous, psychedelic and many other emotions that Sophie would like to express on this issue. But passively she invited 107 women to help her express. The interesting point in the work is those 107 women have different (professional and personal) backgrounds, they were from different walks of lives. So we can see 107 representatives of Calle to help her to respond. I agree with the point Carol made, the work could alienate Calle as she has put herself in a passive position in this work. This made me think of my work, a short novel about my mother, I tried to be rational and alienated myself from myself, as I thought the work could hurt me, but I felt the need to deal with it. I think Calle was kind of that, being alienated, that could be safer, and not being hurt so much, I guess.

When I came back to Hong Kong, I lost the letter. If Calle was as careless as me, might she feel better? Or has she ever felt sad about the letter? I think the wind blows it away. I am sure.

—————————————————————————————

Louise Bourgeois and Sophie Calle: Perceptual knowledge of love and hate

In Paris, we visited lots of the galleries and museums, for me, the most profound exhibitions must be Louise Bourgeois work in Centre Pompidou (28/5)

And Sophie Calle work in Bibliotheque nationale de France (31/5).

Since I chatted with Hector before, audiences and readers always compared them as two different styled artists, they used different materials to make art, but in my mind, they are very similar, when you think it deeply, and try to situate in their emotions and positions, but after all, I think I have to change my mind on this issue, I found that in the way of making art, the active and passive positions are different, as Carol said before, Sophie invited 107 women to make responses to the break-up letter from her boyfriend. And Bourgeois, she faced her problem alone, and make heartbreaking artworks on her own. I couldn’t say Calle is completely passive as she is the active one to find those 107 women, but about the artwork itself, I mean the respond, is somehow passive I think. As these were not the direct responses from Sophie. Maybe that why I think they are different, excluding the materials they used. They look similar but different, but they look different but similar, that a reaction after I went to both exhibitions.

Why I thought they are similar?

Because at the very beginning, I just concentrated on the reason why they made the artworks, and the background behind the artworks themselves. I found they were aroused by the relationship issue and love issue easily, like Louise, her sons and her husband seem like very important in her life, every steps every gestures they made would affect Louise much. And Sophie‘s boyfriend break up letter made her a chance to expose her feeling by 107 women. Maybe we can use a word”sensitive” to describe these two female artists.

(Karen) 7/7

p.s. I am trying to make a chinese version, if i have time, ha.

Let’s become a Psycho together!

 

 

  

 Source: guardian.co.uk

 

Psycho Buildings: Artists Take on Architecture

 

The Hayward is one of my favourite museums that I visited in this Europe study trip. I am sure none of you will deny me to use the word ”playful” to describe the Psycho Buildings because we do really like crazy kids running and playing gleefully inside!

 

The Psycho Buildings includes ten international artist’s works from Japan, Germany, Cuba, Austria, UK, Brazil, Slovenia, Argentina and Korea. Strongly agree with luilui, we should not miss one of them! The artists make good use of different elements like colour, form, shape, material, lighting and odour to create architectural and artistic designs which invite visitors to embrace and merge into the art works.

Even though I like most of the art works, but I would still like to choose the Best of the Best. Staircase created by Korean-born artist Do Ho Suh which showed on the second floor in The Psycho Buildings leaves me the deepest impression. This is not a playful art work like either the boating lake or the transparent dome, in reverse, you can only feel it by standing side of it. However, don’t look down upon the power of silence. The eye catching red semi-translucent fabric give me a strong visual impact and I like this work so so so so so much because it creates a very strong sense of contradiction. When I look at it, I feel surprised and only can say “dim ar…….”.For me, this art work is talking about inside and outside, active and passive, public and private, present and absent. I want to touch it but the red breakable fabric make me step back, I want to step on the stairs but the Staircase is extends down from the gallery’s ceiling which is suspended and not quite touching on the floor, it generates a sense of danger and on one dare to step on it. The most irritated point is obviously there is a way upwards to another space but it connects to nowhere! This brings lots of fantasy and imagination and I wonder where it should connect to. Based on the design methodology of the artist Do Ho Suh, I guess all these contradictions are special executions to tell us what the ambiguous human relationship is. Anyway, I love this Dim Ar Feeling very much that the artist tries to lure the visitors to knock on the door of his mind but he pretends nobody inside!!!!

Moon

The Hayward is a playground

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The Hayward is a playground.

It is one of the world’s most architecturally unique exhibition venues in London, including 10 atmospheric, enthralling and unsettling installations. They are just cool, and extraordinary. I love every single art piece in Hayward, just like the Staircase about the transcultural displacement, the Show Room about the frozen moment… to save my words, so I have better just to mention my most favorite one, the outdoor sculpture namely Observatory, Air-Port-City by Tomas Saraceno (the enormous sphere-shaped sculpture that you can see in the above picture).

‘Air-Port-City’ is a made up of some very thin plastic (sometime like 8mm the staff told) with 2 levels. The lower level is open to every visitor. I laid on the ground with eyes watching above the 2nd level. As the plastic is not totally transparent, only the body shape of the people on the upper level can be recognized. The main course is on the 2nd level. Not everyone is allowed, visitors have to do lucky draw (sooo weird). Thanks my dear MILLIE, she gave me her place as a birthday gift (yes I was my birthday haha!). The upper level offers me greater taste of fun, I no longer laying on the hard ground, but soft plastic in the air! Feel like clouds, or huge pillow. Tomas himself mentioned he is creating a floating metropolis in the sky, like a flying airport. The platform floats in the air, just as clouds do.

I can feel myself floating, indeed.

So what’s the point to make art playful? Or, what’s the point to let spectators play a part in art piece? Perhaps, it refines the way that we related to our surroundings, by letting spectators to have an inside-out feeling by immersing in the art pieces. Not only visually, it allows every part of my body to experience, to feel, to communicate.

Everyone should go Haywood. I am seriously serious. =]

by Lui

Quotation

In the tour, we have walked around many museums and galleries in different countries. It was surprised that many of them shared a common feature — used quotation in their artworks. For example, those works in Figuration Narrative, the works of Peter Blake, Picasso’s works and etc…The word “quotation”then became a big topic throughout our tour. Therefore, we are going to talk about what quotation is in art.

 

Quotation in art means using the meaning of others’ works in their own works, putting others’ works in their own works or using the title of others’ works in their own works. Of course, the artists themselves must intend to make the source quoted recognizable or added (or played with) meaning, criticizing or commenting. Otherwise, as Hector said in our discussion, everything in our life can be a quotation.

 

In Figuration Narrative, Arroyo and the Equipo Cronica made pictorial quotations a fighting machine against Francoism but also against the stereotypical visions of History. That is the art of diversion. In Figuration Narrative, we saw the use of quotation for narrative purpose. It was a new approach for painting. It is a language compounded with other forms of expression to free up new narrative possibilities. It doesn’t tell a complete story, but it opens onto a multitude of possible stories and thoughts.

 

Besides that, the painters also used quotation to twist the original significance of images and gave them unexpected meanings, suggested other narratives and highlighted their political implications. Painters are willing to use the grotesque, humor, derision to reintroduce the story and duration in the paint through the presentation of successive scenes in the same table, or carry a juxtaposition of images or metamorphoses. They want to compare the images of the mass and to bridge the gap with other means of expression.

 

For the “La Maja de Torrejon” by Eduardo Arroyo, Arroyo quoted one of Goya’s paintings — “La Maja”. Eduardo Arroyo is driven by a review of powers and traditions, attention to daily and a permanent humour. It establishes closer visual worlds and shapes mixed with a formidable precision. The posture of the woman like man and the name of the painting “La Maja” are quoted from Goya’s painting which called “La Maja”. Besides that “Torrejon” is a place in Spain where American army is located. He used this to criticize the American army is coming to Europe and is going to take over the Europe. Il établit des rapprochements visuels de mondes et de formes hétérogènes avec une redoutable précision. The works of Arroyo is actually based on the collage: “It is precisely this aspect serial, piecemeal, fragmented, these stylistic differences, these mixtures [...] all this inconsistency, which are the consistency of my work”.

 

There is another painting called “Portrait du nain Sebastián” has quoted one of Diego Vélasquez’s paintings — “Sebastián de Morra”. The general setting are similar to Vélasquez’s, however, Arroyo had made some changes. In the painting, Dali was drew as a sebastian and sitting at the center, but this time, there are some pins on top of his clothes and these pins are mainly national flags of different countries which is to mock Dali support the authoritarian Franco.

 

Besides that, in Figuration Narrative, the painting masters (Rembrandt, Velasquez, Matisse, Picasso…) accounted for artists of the narrative figuration a wide range of experiences. The diversion works by juxtapositions, distortions formal or additions brought out the masterpieces and their aesthetic and their cultural neutrality. Arroyo or Equipo Crónica make pictorial quote a war machine against the Franco regime but also against the stereotypical views of history. Cueco inscribed the myth of Danae in a newspaper today. The status of masterpieces (such Guernica for Recalcati) is now ambiguous: become products of cultural consumption, they remain driven by a strong force aesthetic but serve as a backup to a reflection on the world today. And it is very ambiguity that confronts here painters, inventing, among critical use and citation respectful, new reports to images from art and history.

 

The cycle “Live and let die or the tragic end of Marcel Duchamp” by Gilles Aillaud, Eduardo Arroyo and Antonio Recalcati, in which the three artists assassinate the forefather of Surrealism, Marcel Duchamp who they considered had sold out b and it is a silly first level call to murder typical of the less noble productions of Narrative Figuration. It includes faithful copies of Duchamp’s works. His assassins, ordinary fellows in jackets and ties who could be paper-clip salesmen, smoke while the artist slumps unconscious in a chair. And it represents of the killing of the inventor of ready-made causing a huge scandal.

 

The aims of using quotations are not always the same, for those artists in Figuration Narrative used quotations by changing their meanings but Picasso used it for a different purpose. For Picasso, he used quotation in a different way from other artists. He intended to make his drawing recognizable but he neither added meaning nor played with the original meaning of the painting he quoted. He used a way that he called as analyzing and interpreting to study the original paintings and then created a series of painting that you can easily figure out what painting he was quoting.

 

Between 1954 and 1962 he seemed to be possessed by a frenetic desire to scrutinize their work, an activity that would lead him to create a veritable laboratory in order to study and interpret three masterpieces: Algerian Women at Home by Delacroix, Las Meninas by Velázquez and Le déjeuner sur l’herbe (Luncheon on the Grass) by Manet. Among the three, Las Meninas is the one that made him facing challenge. This unique piece of work is the origin of fifty-eight oil paintings: forty-four inspired in the model, nine little pigeons, three landscapes and two free interpretations. The whole series are in which he plays with exterior and pictorial reality, art and life, to include views from the exterior into the series of paintings. It is because he is very interested in Las Meninas that has been defined as a veritable theology of painting. The painting/mirror, painting/trompe d’oeil, and the playing with reflections, encompassed all the ingredients to fascinate a Picasso who was becoming a painter of painting.

 

These paintings served to make of an exhaustive study of form, rhythm, color and movement. An imaginative game without limits is in which the figures were metamorphosed without varying the perceived space, volume and original light in any way.

 

At that time, Picasso was not trying to paint a unique piece, a masterpiece. What he really wanted was to systemize a group of canvases that had a common theme. Each piece of work is a link in the whole chain and whole is the main protagonist. The artist himself said that what he was really interested in was the movement of painting, the dramatic force of one approach or another, even though this force did not appear until he had finished them all. He was attracted more to the development of his thinking than the thoughts in themselves. He said that, ‘If anyone were to copy Las Meninas in complete good faith, and for example got to a certain point – and if I were the copier – would say to myself, and if I just put this a little more to the right or to the left?. I would try to do it in my own way, forgetting about Velázquez”.

 

However, some other artists found in the same museum quoted Las Meninas had different purpose from Picasso. They usually add more meaning to the painting of the same composition like criticizing the communists, against society etc. While Picasso just treated Las Meninas as a study subject without adding other meaning into it.

 

For those works of Peter Blake which showed in Museo de Bellas Artes. There was a series of British Pop Art and many of them involved quotation. One of the examples is “Marcel Duchomp World Series” which conceived as a way to thank Duchomp for his art. He sent Duchomp a post humors world tour that meets people along the way. People came and went in the bus and Duchomp went to various happenings. In the work, Peter Blake not only use the famous artist Duchomp as the subject matter, he also try to involve made pop culture like the famous star Marilyn Monroe, Madonna and other boxing athletes or some works in other aspect like the literary work Alice in Wonderland in his world. Duchomp also meet Picasso in his “tour”. In Peter Blake’s work, you can see him tried to combine images from pop culture with art. Peter Blake think that involving the culture things in the works can regard as true and telling an account of the surroundings of the time as could be made.

 

Quotation can have many functions and effects. Artists may use quotation of existing work, the tremendous sources of mainstream images to make criticize on them. Critical thinking always requires quotation (e.g. Duchomp’s ready-make artwork). Also, it engages about / backs our culture and history. It also changes the status of masterpieces: It is now ambiguous. It becomes cultural consumer products which still have great aesthetic strength but now served as a support for reflection on today’s world. However, as artists play with meaning in the work, there are some culture things inside which we can call it a culture insider, something the work can only comprehensive by a specific group of people.

 

 

by Demie, Louis and Pin

About Sophie Calle’s work “Take care of yourself”

A group of professionals gathering together to discuss a breaking up letter, using their own method, using their “professional vocabulary”, This is a show about how an artist uses what others “have” and also the same reaction is given by the them – they offered what they “have”- “professionally”. Sophie Calle has responded to how she initiated the idea, here is her response:

“The idea came to me very quickly, two days after he sent it,” she said. “I showed the email to a close friend asking her how to reply, and she said she’d do this or that. The idea came to me to develop an investigation through various women’s professional vocabulary.”

At first it was therapy; then art took over. “After I month I felt better. There was no suffering. It worked. The project had replaced the man.” She feared he might come back seeking a reconciliation, which would have ruined the whole thing.

quoted from “Interview : Sophie Calle /World news/ The Guardian”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/jun/16/artnews.art

Inside the library, sometimes I forgot their role as women, little bear in mind that this cartoonist is a women, or that is a female translator, I found the text genderness, or sometime masculine, I like the choice to ask them doing reflection individually, but not a group of people discussing the break-up letter, this gives a chance for us not to look at each person inside as a kind of ” women”, one of the women. 

But certainly, in this work, instead sometimes it emphasizes they are a kind of “professional” , but we can see, under the profession there is struggle, there are something we knows is not that simply , there are a lot of differences between a self and what they did for living, and this is what I want to found out during the surfing inside library, to find out the mask the person underneath, if any.in response to a breakup letter from a man to a women, different actress  interpret them personally, act professionally, setting up the mise-en-sense themselves, the psychiatrist analyzing the letter in depth, and you will wonder how she actually feel about this men? I am curious about this women now, more than the text she has given. And the same happens to me in many works, I have curiosity on this particular creator too, I don’t want to generalize her, by her profession or anything, I want to know each person in this room, not to think what they are in common, while they are not .

In this work, the rule is explicit , the outcome is implicit, there are details, there are fragments, and there is thing that hold them together.

There is a thing interesting happened, inside the library Iras told me she had read about this artwork long time ago, she said this was her early work, the identity of the men is someone much older than her, is the friend of her father, she fell for him since her teenage, and than he dump her when she got a trip flying some where else. And this image is overlapping in my perception of this work , I kept thinking Sophie did it at her 20 something, and the whole setting is the movie Closer, Sophie is the Natalie Portman role, and than when i back Hong Kong after getting thought my whole traveller diarrhea things, researching on this work, turned out that this is her latest work in her age of 51, Iras have mixed it with her previous work Exquisite Pain, but still this image is ever inside my interpretation on this work, this is a nice misunderstanding, as I focus less on the famous artist herself, I have a background story already, then I look for the other things.

 Cathy Wong

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

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)