Carsten Holler, 'Baltic Phi Wall', 2002

"Baltic Phi Wall, 2002 was designed around a concept discovered by Gestalt psychologist Max Wertheimer in 1912.  If two dots are projected in rapid sequence next to one another, with a short moment of black in between, most observers ‘see’ an imaginary ball jumping from one to the other. This effect is remarkable, as it raises the question of how the viewer can ‘know’ where the second dot will be projected, when the imagined ball is already on its way towards the future site of projection. 

The Baltic Phi Wall, 2002 is an extended display of this phenomenon.  Four imaginary balls were seen ‘jumping’ simultaneously over a surface of 93 dots, thereby sometimes changing colour. The sequences were generated at random." (https://artsandculture.google.com/exhibit/carsten-h%C3%B6ller-baltic-phi-wall-2002/agKS93uzh3JZIg?hl=en)

As a consequence of the layout I have decided for my pages, this is the first of this set of research you'll see, whereas for me this is the final piece (a bit like a Doctor and River Song situation). Anyway, I described it at the start, so I should probably do it again here, but for the next 10 pieces of research I visited virtual exhibitions on Google Arts and Culture, spanning a variety of countries and timeframes (space and time!). In this work, the sequences are randomly generated, and so it can be concluded that it is in a state of chaos and entropy. However, tricks are played on the brain, making it look like its some balls bouncing around. I like to think this is symbolic of how we like to make order in the chaos to try and understand it, perhaps being a driving factor in me landing on this project theme...

Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, 'Resurrecting the Sublime', 2019, from AI: More than Human

"I also look at how technology fits into that picture, so how do you we use technology to enhance or reduce our relationship with nature?

Miao Xiaochun, 'Restart' from 'Two Big Video', 2008

"“Restart”, realize between 2008 and 2010, puts forward a series of decisively new approaches. Aspects of the clash of civilizations, the role of cultural-and intercultural- memory in commerce with our contemporary situation intersect in a medial attentiveness that lays before us the ambivalence, the seduction, and the disquiet in the experience of the virtual 3-D space and the – transbiomorphic – animation in a completely new manner.

Let’s be clear from the start: “RESTART” is frightfully beautiful, unsettling, and enticing all at once, and it thereby hits a nerve with our contemporary desires and fears without having to become involved in the subconscious innocence-deal of a crisis that has apparently affected us as unexpectedly as only a sudden extraterrestrial comet impact could." (https://artsandculture.google.com/exhibit/two-big-video/ARibU7sP?hl=en)

Having seen stills from the film, I conclude that this is a film that captures why I feel the human existence is one of entropy. 'People' clamber over other people, fighting and sprawling everywhere, and it is undoubtedly a metaphor for the human condition, fighting for supremacy over the planet. This violence (not necessarily physical) is implicit in our minds and in the media, and is why everything becomes so overwhelming at times, and is why I am creating work that pulls you out of that situation.

Chen Wen Ling, 'The Suspense', 2010

"Remember when you were a little kid and you’d take out all your toys and create fantastic stories about their relationships, pitting them against each other in epic battles? Chen Wenling certainly does. His recent exhibition is a highly emotional narrative on themes of conflict and domination, rich (as titularly promised) with the suspension of things—animals, time, disbelief, and justice, to name a few. Hanging from the ceiling of the cavernous space near the entrance is a scene from an epic battle: a fisherman, line in hand, has one leg buried waist-deep in a crocodile’s mouth, who in turn is being swallowed by a hippopotamus, who is shocked to discover a shark sinking its teeth into the former’s rear end. The fisherman’s line ropes them together, wrapping around the shark’s midsection, hooks digging into the hippo. The man holds on tightly at the other end. It’s quite the sight, and gives the immediate impression of action figures being slammed together by a small child, fighting for supremacy. But these figures are larger than life, so instead of being the omnipotent child we become a fly on the wall of some giant child’s room. This is no surprise coming from an artist who made his own toys because his parents were often unable to buy them for him.

The feeling of observing a child’s fantasies at play is repeatedly reinforced in this first room. Hippos are freshwater creatures, while sharks live in the sea; the odds of these creatures meeting are scarce. And then there’s the shark, chomping into the hippo, and the clear look of surprise in the hippo’s eyes as it turns back to face the attacker. The man is muscle bound in a way immediately recognizable to anyone who’s ever played with action figures: he’s like a G.I. Joe, and bears more than a passing resemblance to the artist. The effect is almost silly. It’s remarkably large, and delightfully funny, but only for so long, because these figures are inflicting brutal damage on each other. There is blood—lots of it—broken teeth, and torn flesh. The fishing line falls to the floor in bloody piles, wanders from a wall across the room, then around the corner and out of sight. There is a total lack of distance between the work and the viewer—the bulk of the piece is suspended at least two meters in the air, while the fisherman’s line darts across the floor and eventually out into another space.

Chen Wenling begs you to walk around, underneath, and through his work, immersing you in his trippy nightmare. But things quickly take a turn as we are presented with a photograph on the wall. It’s a crime scene, the place where Chen and his wife (then girlfriend) were robbed and brutally stabbed in 1996, and it’s horrifying. Blood is everywhere. Underneath the photo, Chen’s emotionless, matter-of-fact explanation is written on the wall. Suddenly the fun, childlike fantasy is over; this really happened. The line continues around another corner. Following it we find the aftermath—the crocodile, shark, and hippopotamus, all belly-up, all smaller and more real now, blood dripping from wounds and open mouths. The juxtaposition of sobering photograph and lifelike animals emphasizes how real and brutal this moment was. In the end, we’re truly left in suspense. Bloody footprints follow the fisherman’s line out a door into blackness; handprints on the wall suggest his struggle to keep upright and move forward. Did he survive or simply wander off to die alone? Assuming the fisherman is Chen, he has survived and then some. Exhibition materials tell us that he is establishing the “Suspense Foundation” to educate the children of his attacker’s village, and is searching for the third man in order to forgive him. Follow the line, Chen seems to say, and remember what it’s like to create fantasies in an attempt to control our violent, scary world."(http://www.leapleapleap.com/2011/03/chen-wenling-the-suspense/)

Next up on our Google Arts and Culture exhibition tour is this work, and whilst the imagery is wholly different to my work, I believe there are parallels upon which I can draw. Firstly, this appears, fantastical as it is, as a moment stuck in time, paused. Yet this moment is undoubtedly one of chaos and entropy, full of illogicalities that only add to that. Next up is pain- the pain in this work is prevalent in the violence and the context (which undoubtedly inspired the violence). This is Ling's way of managing the pain in his life that has caused such disorder, by expressing it through this way. To me this highlights how we all manage our own trauma in our own ways but when you get down to it, it is by replicating that pain in some way or another, whether its by having a shark bite a hippo's arse, or by suffocating yourself.

Mythbusters, 'Duct Tape Island', S10 E1, 2012

It has occurred to me that I have not researched into the primary source of my inspiration of manipulating gaffer tape in order to construct the sculptures I am performing with. I loved watching Mythbusters when I was younger, twas my favourite show in fact, and they did a series of episodes where they pushed the material to the absolute max, for instance here where they created an entire boat out of the stuff:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLKfRtXgo88

This has been ingrained into my mind, and so I am very happy to be doing my own take, if a masochistic one, on the process. The key to working with the stuff is layering so that you have a smooth surface. This ensures strength, an finessed final product, and, if needs be, waterproofing (hence the boat).

Looking at the above image, however, with the gaffer tape in the context of the natural landscape, it does make me wonder about the environmental impact of gaffer tape, and whether I can justify using it in such a time of environmental crisis.

Mona Hatoum, 'Inside Out', 2019

"Mona Hatoum’s work reflects on subjects that arise from our current global condition, including systems of confinement, the architecture of surveillance and themes of mobility and conflict. The artist first became widely known in the mid 1980s for a series of performance and video works that focused with great intensity on the body; often the starting point for much of her work. In recent sculptures, Hatoum explores the form of the globe, executed in various different textural materials. The bronze, globe shaped sculpture ‘Inside Out’ is covered in an endless, circular, maze-like pattern, reminiscent of the coils of a digestive system or of undulating yards of gut."(https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artwork/95962/Mona-Hatoum-Inside-Out?moreInfo=true)

As a piece of work, this is without a doubt interesting, and the themes it tackles bear a resemblance to those which I am exploring, particularly those around confinement/ isolation. But the reason I chose this work is because it is one of the works shown on the online viewing room created by Art Basel, in collaboration with the White Cube. I am aware that the online rooms were not set up as a consequence of the coronavirus, but it is very good timing. This highlights another way artists can make use of the Internet to share their work, and hold virtual exhibitions. Furthermore, in times of isolation and quarantine, it seemed appropriate to choose a piece of work that followed along with those themes.

Promoting Self-Expression Through Art Therapy, by Raquel Chapin Stephenson, 2006

Reading into Lady Gaga's motives and struggles provided me with an alternative perspective to the work I'm creating, that is, using art as a solution to pain, which then reminded me of the practice of art therapy. The above text highlights the benefits it has for the elderly, although I believe they can be applied to anyone. It helped me to understand that mine and Gaga's experiences aren't necessarily different. The pain I am causing is self-inflicted and controlled so that I don't come to any actual long-lasting harm. I am inflicting it upon myself as a message, hence it is art. This art is then being used to try and find a way of distracting myself and temporarily escaping from the entropy of our existence, which is causing the psychological pain at a much deeper and much more damaging level (on that point, the sudden rise to fame and all the chaos that ensued for Gaga demonstrates the entropy of her life that made dealing with her rape, and the pain that then caused, all the more difficult).

'Entropy and the New Monuments', by Robert Smithson, 1966

Throughout this project I think it is important I regularly reflect on the original approaches to entropy in art, so that I can compare them with my own. Robert Smithson was at the forefront of discussions about entropy in art, and so above are scans from his essay 'Entropy and the New Monuments' which I have annotated. Throughout this project I have felt that there has been a conflict in the way I am using entropy in art, and the way established artists have used it, and this essay made me realise why. Smithson seems to view entropy as a destination: the point where chaos has increased so a state of absolute homogeneity. I, on the other hand, see it as a process of chaos, a journey if you will. Both are valid ways of thinking about it, but it explains why the work I create is so completely different to the likes of Smithson, Flaving, Bell etc. In this way it is comforting, because it has felt as if I have been doing something wrong, and now I know I am doing nothing of the sort.

Another thing that interested me in this essay was the fact that the works he describes as being entropic, he feels they exist outside of/ against time, playing with notions of space time: "the new monuments seem to cause us to forget the future... They are not built for the ages, but rather against the ages. They are involved in a systematic reduction of time down to fractions of seconds... This kind of time has little or no space; it is stationary and without movement". Recently I've been re-watching Dr. Who, and these lines remind me of a specific scene which I think would be good for me to analyse...

Maurizio Cattelan, 'Comedian', 2019

"Before we get to the banana, we should consider where it was eaten. Art Basel in Miami Beach is a franchise of a famous Swiss art fair that takes place far from the Alps, in sunny Florida – presumably because it’s too cold to sell art in Basel at this time of year. This surreal displacement adds to the sense that contemporary art, like haute couture, is a luxury for people with more money than sense, who can afford to follow their favourite art dealers around the planet like migrating birds.

Enter Comedian. That is the title of the artwork by Maurizio Cattelan, renowned for his stolen gold toilet, that has taken this sophisticated trade fair out of in-crowdy art websites and into mainstream news. Cattelan’s Comedian is a banana taped to a wall. Descriptions tend to carefully specify that it is fixed there with grey duct tape. Everyone stresses this somewhat bare technical fact, as if to find physical evidence that it really is, after all, art. At the weekend, after Comedian had already sold for $120,000, an artist named David Datuna joined the queue of fair-goers eager to take selfies with Comedian, but instead peeled back the grey duct tape, removed the banana from the wall and ate it. The piece was remade but then removed from the show, presumably to prevent further stunts. No such luck – a graffitist with few artistic pretensions wrote “Epstien (sic) didn’t kill himself” in the blank space it left.

No one has yet accused Cattelan of hiring Datuna to eat his art – though he was suspected by some people of arranging the theft of his plumbed-in gold toilet from Blenheim Palace earlier this year. But there’s a curious similarity to these artworks and their fates. To point out the obvious, gold and bananas may be very different in market value, but they’re both yellow. America, as Cattelan called his loo, reduced gold from the precious to the base as it invited users to pee and poo on this most coveted of metals. A banana is another way of making the point: that we’re all organisms that eat, excrete and die. (After eating an overripe banana, Datuna may well have needed the loo.) Cattelan’s toilet mocked the money-obsessed art world by being potentially more valuable for its raw material than its concept – reflecting a market that can turn shit to gold. His banana makes the same joke the other way round by being glaringly not worth its asking price.

As Damien Hirst has said, art dealers are unpleasant people (to paraphrase) who “sell shit to fools”. Cattelan has been putting the same thing more wittily for years. Parisian dealer Emmanuel Perrotin, who unveiled Comedian at his Art Basel Miami booth and then had to deal with its destruction (by, well, getting another banana) knows being mocked is all part of representing him. In 1995, Cattelan got Perrotin to dress as a giant phallic rabbit.

Cattelan is acting out the tragicomedy of the contemporary artist. When Marcel Duchamp chose “readymades” such as a urinal or snow shovel, no one thought they had financial value – most were thrown away without a thought. Today’s museum versions were recreated long after the fact, when Duchamp became a hero to the conceptual art movement in the 1960s.

Nowadays, art can’t get away from money. That’s all anyone wants to know about it, and dada gestures are part of the capitalist miracle. Lo, this banana is worth $120,000 because ... well, just because. It’s the idea that is valuable, not the banana, insists the Perrotin gallery. Are you so stupid that you can’t see that? Every satire – including someone eating the banana – becomes another bit of added value.

Why can’t anyone just tape a banana to a wall and claim to own a Cattelan for free? Then again, who would want to? A banana stuck to a wall with grey duct tape just looks crap. Only an idiot would decorate their house with this.

It’s more than a century since Duchamp’s Fountain, yet the equivalent of putting a urinal in a gallery can still cause a global sensation. Comedian is a new low and a new high, as contemptuous a comment on the art market as it’s possible to dream up. The man who dressed his own gallerist as a giant cock has in effect told art collectors they are morons, and got paid for the privilege. Having made his latest world-weary gag, he sits sadly in his dressing room looking at his clown makeup while Datuna eats the banana to become the new king of comedy." (https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/dec/09/the-art-world-is-bananas-thats-what-maurizio-cattelans-been-saying-all-along)

I was looking for artists who use gaffer tape when I was reminded about this work and the palava it caused from a couple of months ago. The above article summarises the thinking behind it very thoroughly, so I don't feel the need to get into discussions about wealth and the art market and such. All the focus is on the banana, but I am far more intrigued by the tape, the innocuous material that is holding up the banana in the position of importance that gives it its value. It's one of those things that we take for granted, but is so functional and flexible in how it can be used, and I think that's why I am so drawn to it. It is subverting the functional, and by doing so, it can have massive ramifications: we've seen it with Duchamp and now this- I hope to follow in these footsteps.

Perhaps a more unconventional source, but it highlights how other artists are responding to the crisis. Baga Chipz (a drag queen) had a show cancelled as a consequence of the outbreak. In response, an action which many performers have taken, she recreated her show on an Instagram live stream (in what I can only assume to be her bedroom/ living room). I will reflect on it more in my contextual practice, but it is a really interesting method to consider, converting physical work into virtual. My final piece, for instance, could turn into a video which I post on my Insta. I think it is also interesting to consider the implications this has for future work, post-COVID-19. Will more work move online as physical venues fail to generate revenue? We could be facing interesting times ahead...

MUCH BETTA!

Stuart Brisley, 'Arbeit Macht Frei', 1973

From an interview with the artist (https://www.tate.org.uk/art/videos/tateshots/stuart-brisley-i-think-im-artist):

"People have said often about my work the kind of stress and strain and physical duress you put yourself under, I don't feel it because I have a purpose in mind, a concept that I'm trying to work on which to me has an importance way beyond my personal self.

From https://aestheticamagazine.com/stuart-brisley/ :

"One of his first pieces to receive widespread attention was And for today… nothing (1972). In a darkened gallery bathroom, surrounded by rotting offal with maggots hatching inside, Brisley lay immersed in a bath of black water, somewhere between sinking and drowning. In 1973, this work was reprised, but this time his face was wrapped in a latex caul, pinned under a Perspex sheet with the water rising to form a complete trap. This became the 20-minute film Arbeit Macht Frei (Work Makes Free), which were the wrought iron words above the entrance to many of the Nazi concentration camps. The film opens with a “bodily rejection” of the idea, a protracted, ritual vomiting over the strains of “God Save the Queen” played backwards. The film was created as an analogous representation of the abject disgust of genocide.

...

Brisley describes performance as a departure from this “ordinary social self”, and gaining “a sense of identity with the audience” that is neither social, nor intimate: it comes when it comes and fades away, often before the end of the performance, but it’s impossible to recapture. This sentiment lasts only as long as the performance: the message transmitted, the portal closes, and the social self that was is momentarily reinstated. His works were not about establishing a direct and intimate relationship with the audience. He was more like a mirror, reflecting back to the audience the social structures that existed within them. However, Brisley the performance artist and Brisley the social being were not always interchangeable."

Brisley was recommended to me due to the similarities in the methods and reasonings used in 'Arbeit Macht Frei' and my Isolation Tank piece, and in fact it is quite remarkable to compare the two when you consider that this is the first time I've come across Brisley and his work. Not only is he suffocating himself in a bath as I did, but, from reading the quotes above, it seems that he is trying to escape the demons of society in the same why I am trying to escape the entropy of our existence. The pain is a coping mechanism for existence, and as such I relate to the work unlike very little of the other artists I've seen so far, and so I think more reflection is required so that I can understand the implications of his work upon my own and the understanding of pain in relation to entropy.

Fischli Weiss, 'Should I paint a pirate ship on my car with an armed figure on it holding a decapitated head by the hair?' @ Spruth Magers, 11/03/20

I have very polarising views of this exhibition, with there being an amazing part, a decent piece and a downright awful piece, which, handily, splits up nicely, in order, on the gallery's three floors. So, let's start with the bad, up on the first floor ('Untitled (Series Fotografias)', 2005). I don't have much to say other than this is a great example of why you do not present flat work, especially photos, printed on glossy paper with glass put on top, on TABLES!!! WHYYYYYYYYY???? It was a very well lit room so the only thing you could make out was the light being reflected off the work. I don't care if that was intentional, I didn't like it. Furthermore, there were too many tables, I felt like I was drowning in shiny examples of bad portfolios. NEXT!

On the ground floor is this humorous gathering of all sorts of odd objects (oddjects?) recreated in polyurethane and bunged together on a raft, hence it's title: 'The Raft', 1982-83. It's very cute and charming, with lots of little things hiding, which are fun to search for, giving the work a nice performative element. For me, it ridicules what it means to be human, for it appears that there has been some sort of Noah-esque flood, probably caused by climate change, and all that is left of humanity are these random objects (plus some pigs). It's a big ole joke, and I like it.

Finally, down in the basement, we have my favourite work, 'Kanalvideo', 1992, a photo of which is shown above. It is very simple, just a video that is over an hour long that follows what I'm assuming is some sort of robot through an empty sewer pipe. It is very hypnotic, and I was down there for quite a while, but I loved the situation of the piece just as much as the actual piece. For instance, there were no chairs, so the options were stand or sit on the floor. Naturally I sat down, but because I was so low now, the projection (which covered a whole wall) seemed even larger and all consuming, so I was drawn in even more so by the never-ending progression. Also, and I have no idea if this was intentional or not, but you could feel the ground vibrate as a train moved by underneath. It made you feel like you were underground with the lonely little robot, and I was just absorbed! Wonderful piece of work, and it really highlights the power of where artwork is located, a theme I am really interested to see how it plays out with Park.

"An isolation tank, often referred to as a sensory deprivation tank (also known as float tank, float pod, float cabin, flotation tank, or sensory attenuation tank) is a pitch-black, light-proof, soundproof environment heated to the same temperature as the skin. Flotation tanks are widely advertised as a form of alternative medicine, but beneficial health effects are unproven. The tank is filled with 10 inches of water which contains enough dissolved Epsom salt to create a specific gravity of approximately 1.275. This environment allows an individual to float effortlessly on the surface of the water. The primary function of the isolation tank is to eliminate as many of the external senses as possible. They were first used in 1954 to test the effects of sensory deprivation." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isolation_tank)

As part of my project proposal, I stated how I was interested in looking at isolation and sensory deprivation as a means of escaping entropy, so I thought it might be worthwhile to have a look at how the activity is usually approached, with the use of isolation tanks. Often it is reported that by going through such an experience, it causes hallucinations to occur, which, in the context of my project, almost feels like the body's natural response to isolation from the entropy around it is to create its own one, where it is in control and as such challenges the one that we all exist in. Now, although I'd love to try this out, I don't have the money, so I think I will create a few works that explore this notion, perhaps playing on the isolation tank theme with the involvement of a bath at some point...

Oskar Krajewski, 'COLONY ON MARS 2071', 2018-2020 @ 'MARS & BEYOND' at the Bargehouse

"‘Mars & Beyond’ merges two critical themes of the 21st century: firstly, the catastrophic rise in global warming, deforestation, animal species extinction and plastic pollution in our oceans; and secondly, the revival of the space race. The vast immersive experience, taking place across five floors of Southbank’s iconic Bargehouse, will explore the human race now and in the future. Examining the science of our planet and presenting imaginative alternative futures, ‘Mars & Beyond’ will be an unforgettable experience, aiming to educate, caution, entertain and inspire audiences of all ages. Set at the close of the 21st century, ‘Mars & Beyond’ looks back in time to the year 2020 – our present day creating a perspective, through the artistic lens, from which to consider solutions for the current state of our planet. The brainchild of visionary artist Oskar Krajewski, the show welcomes everyone, from young to old, lovers of art, the Earth and science fiction. Krajewski is the founder of creative studio Art-Recyclism, and for ‘Mars & Beyond’ will collaborate with more than 30 artists and contributors, including Greenpeace, Sci-Fi London and Flux. As we look for solutions and try to predict our future, things may not seem optimistic or sustainable.…but we believe art can play an important role in our survival!" (http://art-recyclism.com/shows/)

At long last I was able to go to this, and I am very glad I did. It's nearly impossible to talk about all of the work there, but most of them combined sculptural and 4D practices to create an overall experience that was really incredible, and perhaps more importantly, really made you think. This piece of work, for instance, by Krajewski, is an imagination of what a colony on Mars could look like, with an accompaniment sound piece to narrate the different sections. But as you listen, watching all the mechanics and the lights, you start to notice tea strainers, razor blade holders, toy cars, etc, until you realise that the entire scene is made from recycled objects (mostly plastics it should be mentioned). For me, it highlights the potential we have as a species, if we act soon- we are able to take rubbish and make it beautiful, but we need to start changing soon.

I chose this exhibition as one of my initial sources of research because I anticipated it would be this wonderful amalgamation of science (or perhaps more accurately science fiction) and art, which it is, but there is another element that has occurred to me. There are hundreds of pieces of work in this exhibition, including performances, and there is so much it is hard to take it all in. This is exactly the sort of entropy I discussed in my PPP I feel we live through in our daily lives, and I feel the exhibition embodied this. Whether that's a good thing or not for an exhibition I think is entirely subjective (I liked it- made it more of an experience rather than viewing separate works), it feels affirming to have this represented in this way. Now I need to escape it.

Martin O'Brien, 'Until the last breath is breathed', 2018

"In the carpeted comfort of the Reid Room in Liverpool’s iconic St George’s Hall, Martin O’Brien is presenting a performance lecture. ‘Until the Last Breath is Breathed’, named for the video installation premiered in the heritage centre below. O’Brien stands at a lectern, naked but for a pair of cut away, white y-fronts. His face is bathed in the warm yellow light cast from an upturned green bankers lamp. An eerie shadow plays on the wall behind him.

He begins by narrating the scene played out on the video projection on the wall behind him. In a darkened space, he sits in front of a candle. He blows it out and immediately it relights itself. He repeats until it is completely extinguished. “We were in complete darkness. Now everything is different. Time is different, this is the beginning of the zombie years.”

What follows is a performance lecture which explores Martin O’Brien’s concept of the “zombie years”: the years which lead up to the expected end of his life. O’Brien is a live artist known for durational solo performances concerned with physical endurance, hardship, pain and excess. He was born with cystic fibrosis, a condition which creates a build-up of thick sticky mucus in the lungs, digestive system and other organs, the long-term effects can cause difficulty in breathing and recurrent infections. The life expectancy of someone with cystic fibrosis is 30.

As a result, O’Brien’s art practice is informed by the lived experience of his condition.  The texts he presents tear across a narrative terrain that is at times autobiographical, fantastical, surreal and apocalyptic. His anecdotal ramblings are heavily informed by Catholicism, queer culture, illness and the notion of the zombie apocalypse – and we are swept along for the ride. Inspiring uneasy laughter, he describes an apocalyptic zombie rampage with another “queer zombie”. The audience is lured into the description of an idyllic country landscape with a river running through it before it mutates into a river of mucus, thick and slow moving, green and sticky. A river of disease that affects everyone surrounding it. Lurching between humour, discomfort and the grotesque, O’Brien’s takes us on a visceral tour of his experience of illness and his way of dealing with it.

In the former cells in the basement of St George’s Hall, O’Brien’s three channel video installation is a durational piece filmed in an old abandoned morgue in south east London in the 30 hours leading up to his 30th birthday. He films an action on the hour, every hour, sometimes on his own, sometimes in collaboration with artist friends. These actions are, at times, uncomfortable to watch.

Lying on a stainless-steel gurney, he beats his chest with his fists until it is red raw and he begins to cough, hacking up a glob of mucus which he places in a specimen jar. When he has filled enough jars, he kneels on the gurney, looks at the camera and begins to use the sticky threads of mucus to style his hair.

In another instance, he places a rubber hood over his head. He slowly pulls in deep, rasping breaths making the hood cling to his face. He drops to his knees and slowly crawls around the base of the gurney. The tension becomes almost unbearable as his breathing sounds more desperate. Eventually, he comes to his feet, finally pulling off the hood.

O’Brien’s practice appropriates the sick body. Subverting his potentially passive, submissive and vulnerable state, in performance he has agency over his body and creates space to utilise medical procedures and aestheticise medicine. He says that “performance is the place where I can be sick in the way I want to be sick, or I can use medicine in the way I want to use it. I have total control over that space.”

‘Until the Last Breath is Breathed’ is a significant piece of work in many ways. It operates as a retrospective of an artist whose practice, until now, has been overshadowed by the presence of death and through performance has appropriated a condition which should have ended his life early. It’s a visualisation of O’Brien’s personal path of coming to terms with the situation and consequently a reflection on his identity as an artist.

Having worked on the piece for over a year, O’Brien found the most appropriate context to show it was this year’s DaDaFest International. The theme of the festival (‘Passing: what is your legacy’) clearly resonated with the work. DaDaFest platforms the work of deaf and disabled artists and aims to present the lived experience of disability. O’Brien’s work does exactly this in a way that challenges the viewer, demanding us to confront the visceral reality of sickness, pain and death. He talks about the significance of politics and the taboo within his practice: “I think with illness and death, it’s hard to talk about it, and it seems to me completely pointless to try and make it clean and pretty. So to actually bring or allow a dirtier or kind of difficult practice of work is really important.”

‘Until the Last Breath is Breathed’ is the artist’s rite of passage which marks the transition from one self to another. From the artist moving towards death to the artist “having death inside him”. Carrying this experience, O’Brien is currently planning a new commission which can take place over the next five years and being in the early stages, he does not yet know where the work will take him. With such a profound understanding of the fragility of the body and the passing of time it will be fascinating to watch how his future work takes shape in the zombie years." (https://www.thestateofthearts.co.uk/features/performance-i-can-sick-way-i-want-martin-obrien-dadafest/) 

This is a really interesting take on how to use pain in performance work- O'Brien is reclaiming his life that has been taken away from him by this condition. It's empowering, and I am full of admiration for him. And in a sense, it relates to the stuff I'm doing, using pain as an energy source to fight something that has no physical form (for him, cystic fibrosis, for me, entropy). I would even go as far to say that his disease and the way he's been treated are a symptom of the chaos that has defined our existence (in a roundabouts sort of way). Luckily, next month, he's performing at the ICA, so I will go to that and watch him first hand, to truly get an idea of the potential for this topic.

Athanasios Argianas, 'Hollowed Water', @ Camden Arts Centre, 20/02/20

I really loved this exhibition, particularly the film 'A Gesture, 24 Times (Hollowed Water)', 2020. It was so hypnotic and encapsulating due to how the video worked with the music, and how for each repeat (for, as the name suggests, it repeats 24 times), something is ever-so-slightly different, and you are trying to work out what's different about it and OOOOOOHHHHH I stayed in that room watching the whole thing a good few times because I just couldn't leave. In a similar way to how Tara Donovan repeats objects to create a large and dynamic mass of a sculpture, Argianas has repeated video elements and musical themes so that it feels incredibly sculptural- there is such a physicality to this film/ sound piece, perhaps heightened by the prominence of objects (the bismuth, the drum), and I love it, love it, love it. There is a conflict between man and nature here that I also really love: the bismuth is natural, yet forms these rigid and artificial-looking forms, the drum, symbolic of people in how it is a man-made object and its batter refers to skin, in looks and because they used to be made of animal skin, but then it falls into the river Kifissos which has all this socio-historical relevance attached to it. There are so many layers to it, with the music (which in itself has layers and builds up and up and up throughout the course of the work), the film, the objects in the film and the progression of how they and the situations they are in change so slightly each time, and all this is reflected in the strata of the bismuth. I just really love it, and I hope I can learn from it, particularly the chaotic repetitions within it.

'American Pastoral', @ the Gagosian, 20/02/20

There was quite a bit of cool work from some big names in this exhibition which looked at the perception of 'the American dream' through the eyes of artists over the years, curated in a way to criticise and ridicule the older paintings that fantasised about the concept, which I thought was interesting, if in a slightly harsh fashion. I particularly enjoyed this Lichtenstein ('Small House', 1997) due to the weird optical illusion is caused as you moved around it- in reality it is concave in form, but it appears convex, an effect amplified as you move around it, and it appears to shift between the two, causing a really weird feeling for the observer. It feels very haptic in this sense- you are drawn to it (the bright colours certainly help). In the context of the exhibition, it perpetuates the American dream as an illusion, tricking people into getting their hopes up, but this object is so performative, particularly in how observers (or at least myself) move from side to side to appreciate it. That's a really interesting thought to me- to create something that becomes activated by movement. This I feel plays on the themes of entropy too- it breeds this chaos of movement and energy, where control becomes weaker because people move differently.

Patrick Goddard, 'Trip to Eclipse' @ Matt's Gallery, 19/02/20

There was only one piece of work in this exhibition, but that's all that was needed- a bouncy castle filled the entire space, dirty, covered in drawings and posters, lit under a UV light, which gently bounced you up and down as you listen to Goddard tell a story about youth, rave culture and deprivation, whilst talking to his dog. The whole experience transports you to this semi-fictional realm where you consider your own youth (the bouncy castle helps with that, particularly how you have to crawl and squeeze your way in and out of it- in other words, you are no longer a child), but you also consider your surroundings, the reality of the fun of being young, due to the prevalence of the sound piece. In truth, it is quite saddening, because not only are you realising the death of your youth, but you are hearing stories of people whose youths have also been corrupted by the media and societal perceptions and such.

I think the use of the bouncy castle was really clever, due to how it interacts with the space- it gives the work a very sculptural feel on top of the sound element, and I think that would be something very interesting for me to do, to create/ record sounds and then apply them to objects/ situations.

This text (France, M., & Hénaut, A. (1994). Art, Therefore Entropy. Leonardo,27(3), 219-221.), provided an interesting comparison between art and entropy, highlighting how similar they are in many ways, and how the former can use the latter.

Ron Athey, 'Acephalous Monster', 2018

"Ron Athey grew up in a fervently religious household—a beginning that plays a fundamental role in his singularly visceral performance art. Athey incorporates aspects of religious iconography and ritual into his 30-year practice of bloody, masochistic spectacles. He has slashed and pierced his flesh and even injected his scrotum with saline in pursuit of epitomizing a struggle with sex, death, and resilience deeply colored by the AIDS crisis and his H.I.V.-positive status. In 1994, while the AIDS epidemic hung heavily in the air, he sent paper towels blotted with the blood of another performer over the audience. False, inflammatory rumors swirled that he had risked infecting audience members with H.I.V. As Athey found himself persona non grata in American art centers, he looked to Europe, where he lived and exhibited until 2015 when he moved back to Los Angeles.

Now, amid new national controversies, Athey’s work has taken on fresh resonance. His 2018 performance piece Acephalous Monster takes its name from the French intellectual Georges Bataille’s Acéphale, a public review and secret society that critiqued the percolating anti-Semitism and fascism in pre-WWII Europe, and was itself derived from the Greek word for “headless.” With excruciating urgency, Acephalous Monster, performed last November at Performance Space New York, examines the loss of individual coherence following the contemporary resurgence of fascism and the decline of organized religion.

...

Slava—Let’s talk about your latest production, Acephalous Monster. It’s quite an impressive cut up of various appropriated texts.

Ron—I always go back to the writings of Georges Bataille, particularly the essays in Visions of Excess. Also, Georges Bataille: An Intellectual Biography by Michel Surya. What the book left me with was this feeling that as WWII was approaching, people were still having these little bitch fights and separating into their little intellectual pockets. Sometimes you’re eclipsed by the reality that you’re living in, and all of that becomes meaningless. Being someone from religion, I relate to this idea that Bataille is leaning on—from the Nietzsche prophecy—that after the death of God there will be 1,000 years of chaos. This feels sensitive to me having what I call ‘a godhole,’ [which relates to] walking away from the fundamentalist belief system of my childhood.

Coming out of that, there’s a vacuum—and I feel like there’s one in America—where things don’t make sense. No one knows what they believe in anymore. So rather than just reading today’s news and freaking out, you find a parallel line. You start new rituals—or new ‘celebrations,’ to use Bataille’s word. This was what Acéphale was trying to do. It’s a continuation of that…of breaking down the wall of tradition. Then what are you left with? Just chaos? Of course the chaos has to take form. I think that was a starting point for Acephalous Monster.

Slava—Would it be fair to say that, in some ways, this headless warrior is a perfect metaphor for Trump’s America? Was it intended as a political satire of sorts?

Ron—Yes. There’s an ‘eat the rich’ section to celebrate the beheading of Louis XVI, who also happens to be a vampire." (https://www.documentjournal.com/2019/05/blood-christ-and-shock-value-the-gospel-according-to-ron-athey/)

One solution to all the madness is perhaps to add to it, as Athey does with his work, embodying the chaos and ridiculing it in a sense. This is layered over with themes of pain and masochism, acting as a solution to the madness, and both of which are certainly paths I would be willing to go down as a means of work generation.

Larry Bell, 'Untitled', 1971

""You need light to see, you need space to work," Larry Bell has wryly stated on more than one occasion when asked for his thoughts on the Light and Space movement with which the celebrated artist has been associated since its inception in the mid-1960s. More of a loosely affiliated group of artists than a cohesive movement, Light and Space is a distinctly Southern California style, concurrent with the Finish/Fetish trend, said to reflect the influence of the distinct light of the region and the inclination to use non-traditional, often industrial, materials to explore this phenomenon. For Bell, the singular concern with light, or rather the visual properties of light on a surface, remains a lifelong subject of exploration. His iconic glass cube sculptures, for which the artist is best known today, are mesmerizing examples of this investigation. The translucent cubes, at first stoic and austere, slowly reveal poignant experiences to the faithful viewer. The minimalist geometric sculptures offer a kinesthetic experience, as illusory shapes appear and evaporate within the cubic volume as one moves around the work.

Bell's desire to toy with the viewer's perception is a trait shared with other artists affiliated with Light and Space, most notably Robert Irwin and James Turrell. The legacy of Bell, however, is not only material but also conceptual. For the pursuit of industrial materials represented a rejection of art as an object, a dominant theoretical underpinning of Minimalism, in pursuit of art as experience. The use of glass, mirror, metallic films, paper and leftover scraps of Mylar were, for the artist, a means to an end, not the end itself. There were materials through which Bell interacted with his primary medium, light, and was able to transmit that experience to the viewer." (https://www.theartstory.org/artist/bell-larry/)

Entropy was a popular theme among artists of this period, fusing it with Minimalism to create mesmerising sculptures- the use of glass allows the viewer to see through the works, with the forms only appearing semi-solid, and enabling the observer to see how they stretch off into uniformity (the prospect of entropy). They are entrancing and incredibly performative as you move around them, stimulating a strong emotional reaction as you realise your existence stretches into nothingness...

Ken Thaiday Snr, 'Black Hammerhead Shark Eastern Island Dhari Warrior Headdress', 2009

"Ken Thaiday’s practice is a contemporary interpretation of traditional Torres Strait Island ceremonies and their associated headdresses and dance masks. Through the intersection of traditional materials, such as bamboo and feathers, with atypical contemporary materials, including plastic and plywood, Thaiday represents common themes about native animals that hold personal and cultural significance.

While the headdresses are performative they also represent clan identity. The shark is one of Thaiday’s family totems, and he is drawn to the hammerhead for its authority: ‘I usually refer to the shark icon as a symbol of law and order, boss of the saltwater. Just like a judge or policeman in court who has the power to send you to jail, the shark is the same." (https://www.mca.com.au/artists-works/works/201023a-c/)

I think these works offer a nice comparison to the rather dark and dreary works so far (which I love, but you do need a break every now and then)- they use performance as a celebration, as something to bring together community, and I think it is very important not to lose sight of this (for the sake of my mental wellbeing if anything). The works use images that are significant to the group of people that wear them, and this could be easily applied to the Western context, perhaps with phones, fashion, or even art itself.

Rebecca Horn, 'Finger Gloves', 1972

The above text is from Sculpture is everything by K. Weir, 2012.

""Looking back at my first pieces you always see a kind of cocoon, which I used to protect myself. Like the fans where I can lock myself in, enclose myself, then open and integrate another person into an intimate ritual. This intimacy of feeling and communication was a central part of the performances."

Gong Yuebin, 'Life's Crossroads', 2010

The above text is from The language of mixed media sculpture by J. Scott, 2014.

Although these works are not strictly performative, I don't think anyone can deny the sheer performative effect of these large scale installations- you become immersed in these monumental dystopian scenes, transported to a possible future with fear in your gut. Whereas many of the previous works I've looked at have incorporated sound as a significant aspect of the work, this is an example of how light can be used, in this case using UV light to make it seem like the trees are bleeding toxic blood. It elevates the works massively, and is an interesting way of using more 4D techniques to change sculptural work.

The above text from 'The Practice of Art and Science', G. Stocker and A. Hirsch, 2017 examines how art and science can and should be incorporated without the resulting work being tacky/ ineffectual.

Erwin Wurm, 'The half truth', 2016

"Erwin Wurm is famous for the One Minute Figures and One Minute Sculptures that he has been making since the late 1980s. In these, he gives instructions to himself, a model or member of the public: the person is asked to perform a certain action, or to interact with an everyday object in a specific way. Falling somewhere between ephemeral sculpture, performance and relational aesthetics, these incongruous (or even absurd) moments have been documented in photographs, drawings and videos. This interrogation of the very definition of sculpture is applied not only to human beings, but also to objects. In his three-dimensional works, in which he variously uses wood, Styrofoam, resin, paint, ceramics and textiles, Wurm often connects deeply emotional and psychological conditions to the human body as an ‘object’. In so doing, he deliberately challenges traditional forms and pushes them towards precarious states of distortion and tension. Humour permeates his oeuvre, which is also underpinned by a fierce critique of consumer society and contemporary culture. Recent projects, such as Melting Houses and Drinking Sculptures, return to the participatory aspect of his earlier pieces and involve the viewer in the making or the activating of the artwork." (https://www.xavierhufkens.com/artists/erwin-wurm)

Wurm is a classic example of actions becoming sculpture, and I think on the side it would be beneficial for me to take inspiration and regularly create my own 'One Minute Sculptures'. But what I think is perhaps more interesting, as discussed in the text I've annotated and scanned in ('Erwin Wurm', by C. Steinle, 2017), is the notion of the 'Radical Autonomous Individual'. The writer argues that only art can be a radically autonomous individual, because it is the only thing that sets its own rules, an uses this to say that humans are not RAIs, just AIs. However, I disagree. Whilst there are rules that govern us, we set them upon ourselves. Whilst we are bound by the laws of physics, so is a sculpture. For me, a life is an artwork, sculpted by the decisions we make every day. Every single little thing we do is a performance in my eyes, and so I believe that humans can be RAIs. It would be very interesting to explore this as a territory of interest...

Amanda Coogan, 'How to Explain the Sea to an Uneaten Potato', 2008

"The activities of the body are core to my live performances and the body of the artist, my body, is ground zero. That body, it is important to note, is female, is able-bodied and, in literal-visual terms, has white skin, blond hair and blue eyes. My work is an embodied practice, both in form and concept. Using cigarette smoke was, for me, about a substance going into the body and coming out of it. That is, I grant you, completely simplifying the Smoking in Bolero performance (it is also about excess, destruction, carnival, sex, disobedience) but what I could do to manifest something of the inside of the body outside was an important key for the conception of the work.

Sometimes I’m a little old school and DIY when dreaming up performances. I try it out on myself or see if I can produce something in, on or with my body first before inviting other performers to join me. Victor Turner said performance art is about ‘making not faking.” This is perhaps a little outdated as a generalization of contemporary performance practice, but I like that school of thought so I explore what my body can do.

It is still a potent statement to make women’s bodies visible on our own terms and by our own hand. I made a very simple but excruciatingly difficult performance some years ago called The Fountain. I had to urinate, copiously, for the performance and I cursed myself when I dreamt it up, knowing that I would have to actually do it with my own bodily fluid. It sprung from an exploration of the capabilities of the female body, and so I had to make it, not fake it. I had to cross so many personal and social taboos and break myself down to be able to make the piece that I think the process contributed to making the piece completely magnetic." (http://artpulsemagazine.com/dynamic-instability-an-interview-with-amanda-coogan )

Something that comes across to me in Coogan's work is the humour everything she does is tinged with, something I very strongly relate to- there's a playfulness and a joy which I feel is reflected in my own work. I am also interested by how she says that her performances are explorations of the limits of the body- I have used this practice to examine the limits of space or of some phenomenon, but the body has been somewhat secondary in what I do. I think, therefore, it would be wise of me to create something that makes the body the focal point, and push it to the extremes, much like the Ken Unsworth work.

Julia Pello & ATOM-r, 'KJELL ØR THEY', 2017

"Using an episodic structure, the visual choreography of KJELL ØR THEY is haunted by queer histories and future bodies, occupying sites of anatomy and theater to create an atemporal surreality. The film was made in conjunction with ATOM-r’s performance work, Kjell Theøry, and shot on location in a surgical museum, a gay strip club, and a black-box studio. The performance and its film-based permutations respond to The Tits of Tiresias (1917), a surrealist play of gender transformations; and Alan Turing’s theory of morphogenesis, a mathematical account of embryo formation that he named for a male Norwegian lover. The sources are ritually interwoven through the misappropriation of a neo-pagan fertility ceremony.

In KJELL ØR THEY Julia Pello and ATOM-r draw on Turing’s theory, turning it into a series of visual and poetic and choreographic moving images for the screen, blurring the boundaries between the binaries of physical and virtual space, past and future, male and female, and human and machine." (https://vimeo.com/223831596 - contains the video of the piece, as well as this description).

I am very passionate about LGBTQ+ issues, and try to incorporate them into my work where I can. These films not only do that, but they consider a different path of sculptural performance. By using very sculptural costumes and objects around them, they transform the work into a Matthew Barney-style spectacle, using the audience's discomfort and confusion to explore themes of sexuality and gender and such. They allow the artists to tell a story (for instance, when one of the characters is birthed out of the big sack), and so this use of objects, in a more theatrical way, perhaps, is an interesting method it would be good for me to explore with the work I will create.

Ken Unsworth, 'Five secular settings for sculpture as ritual and burial piece', 1975

"Unlike many conceptual artists of the 70s who reacted against the doctrine of formal abstraction, Ken Unsworth extended it by reincorporating human emotions into the arrangement of form and space. In his early sculptures of suspended or propped rocks, Unsworth enhanced such concerns through the use and control of the forces of gravity. The tension produced by supporting an inherently heavy material with thin wire or wooden sticks added a theatrical element akin to viewing a tightrope walker or balancing acrobat. 

'Five secular settings for sculpture as ritual and burial piece' is an extension of Unsworth's work as a sculptor. This carefully staged series of performances held at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Sydney in 1975 used theatrical lighting and a curtain between the action and the audience to reveal each 'setting' in turn. Requiring a great deal of personal endurance, the actions used Unsworth's body as an element within a formal sculptural setting to convey a tension much like his work with suspended and propped rocks: when the curtains opened, they revealed Unsworth suspended upside down from a pole, or in another setting he was suspended by his neck from two vast beams. Each of these settings had a strongly sculptural quality even though they were ephemeral.

The final 'burial piece' differed from the 'Five secular settings' in that it entailed both sound and a theatrical build-up of tension. Unsworth's body, standing inside a glass box, was slowly covered with sand while his heartbeat was monitored and amplified. The audience listened while he was fully covered, until the dramatic conclusion when an assistant smashed the glass box with a sledge-hammer and the sand poured out onto the ground. Unlike his other settings, this was not so much a formal sculptural pose but an action sequence and one that was set up to be theatrical in its effect.

In his subsequent work, Unsworth developed and expanded two important elements of these early performances: first the idea of performance as installation, and second the use of theatrical lighting and sound including musical scores. In later works the installation itself became more important and Unsworth's own presence within the installation played a lesser role. For the 1982 Biennale of Sydney, he exhibited 'Rhythms of childhood', an installation with light, sound and mechanical movement that included the ominous presence of himself sitting silently in the corner wearing a mask. In other installations, the performative element was played solely by mechanical elements combined with light and sound." (https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/85.1976.10/)

These works highlight the extreme nature of the relationship between the body and the world around us- it tortures us, subjects us to an onslaught of horrors, and we can do nothing but be subservient. Hence there is a hidden sexuality to all this masochism, and I think that is the only logical way to explain how humans are so tolerant towards adversity- we are, for the most part, all inherently submissive. The concept of 'torture art' has always intrigued me, as I feel it allows for pure, unmitigated emotion to be unleashed, giving you a clear view into human psychology. Furthermore, the fact that this is a 'sculptural performance' simultaneously creates that emotional between the art and the audience, but also degrades the person to the status of an object (again, very sexual), making the end result even more powerful than if, say, he used a mannequin. This is why I want to create works in this realm, because I feel it is the most powerful way to trigger emotional reactions. The scientific element also cannot be ignored, and Unsworth has used notions of gravity and tension masterfully to direct the work- physics is in control here, and humans are just puppets. I will consider all of these factors, in particular the sexual themes when talking about sculptural performance in relation to the physical world, when I create my work.