Critical Play: Lectures + Exhibitions

Lectures

Terry Marshall

I felt that Terry Marshall’s talk was more interesting than Joel Swanson’s. Perhaps this can be attributed to the fact that he included a little bit of humor and spoke a bit more enthusiastically. I find his themes to be relevant but, at the same time, felt a little put off. This talk was a little after the whole Michael Brown shooting incident, which happened in Ferguson, MI. It was natural for Terry Marshall to include it into his topics about black equality. Specifically, centering around black people being feared when compared with white people, to those who aren’t black. While I agree that there are stereotypes concerning those of black people, I think they may have been exaggerated just a tad bit. When talking about Ferguson, while I believe that the case did deserve attention, the fact that the community caused a riot  to gain it seemed to be entirely ignored. Although it didn’t help the argument that he gave, or his work’s message, I did wish he did at least address the issue existed.

As for his work itself, I found them to be a little different than the norm. Not in a bad way though. They were humorous and I thought that was great. One such example that I liked was the Black Survival Guide. It was a guide that satirized the actions that black people have to do when faced with certain conditions, in order to survive in society.

Clint Sleeper

Clint Sleeper is a professor at UNR. His theme is disappointment. While we (the class) went his last lecture in the previous semester, this lecture was notably different. Mainly, this lecture is not about one work, but rather the entirety of his practice. It was interesting to see his background in music in action, as it seemed many of them did include audio as a major component, especially in his performance pieces (of course), which seem to be quite a sizable portion of his collection. Some of the works were pretty hard to look at, such as the razor blades being played around with. Combined with the lemons being juiced in the midi and the chance of causing a fire or shock, I have to say Clint is pretty, well, “YOLO”. Nonetheless, his talk was interesting and some of his work is pretty funny. One outstanding example of this is “Teaching Capitalism to Nature”. I found the lecture interesting, and think most people would stay awake. If Clint talking didn’t keep them awake, then the noise from his work being shown most certainly would have. Definitely an interesting tactic. Keep up the good work.

Exhibitions

Pink Elephants on Parade

Fairly certain this exhibit is named after the sequence from the Disney movie, Dumbo. In the movie, Dumbo gets drunk after drinking from water that contained champagne. He then begins to see pink elephants, and shortly afterwards, finds out he can fly. Perhaps these sculptures are supposed to represent the things that we have to see before we too, can “fly”. These sculptures, displayed at the Sheppard Gallery, contain a mix of an assortment of everyday materials in classic forms. A combination of the new and old, it draws parallels with works such as Pac-Mondrian, from Prize Budget for Boys, albeit not quite as humorous. With a wide variety of sculptures on display created with diverse materials, it was a little difficult for me to read into the context. Had it not been for the provided papers, I honestly would’ve been pretty lost. Once reading the papers though, it does become quite clear. The concept is quite interesting: he focuses on the fakeness of modern architecture. In addition, the pieces themselves were interesting, with color and shapes running amok.

Flo Oy Wong: You Gotta be Brave

Flo Oy Wong is an artist of Chinese descent. She works with several unusual mediums including rice sacks, funeral paper, and American flags. Despite the various mediums, she remains consistent on her style, which is collage. Each work also has a distinctly Chinese background, with portraits littering many of her works. On paper, it says “she interviews people she finds heroic in order to explore disquieting matters that transform her and viewers to a place of healing, connecting and understanding.” Each piece invites us into a part of Chinese culture. As someone who is also of Chinese descent, I find these pieces to evoke familiar feelings, as the aesthetic is definitely something I’ve been around many times in my life. Thus, it is hard for me to judge this work from an objective viewpoint. I believe these works are targeted toward those unfamiliar with this type of aesthetic, because of the fact that it’s supposed to provide insight into the Chinese heritage.

Advanced Digital Media: Artist Lectures + Exhibitions + Paper

PAPER

LECTURES

Joel Swanson

Joel Swanson is an artist working with words in a mostly digital environment. He plays on the use of wording in the English language, such as the case with the 3d palindrome, a sculpture which spells the same word no matter which way you view it. Other interesting works include a work that transfers Lady Gaga’s tweets into morse code. I found the irony within the fact that modern communication methods are being intricately transformed into an old and (mostly) dead form of communication. However, while the works themselves were not too boring, I felt Mr. Swanson himself was not the most interesting speaker. However, one thing that he said, I believe, was that he did not know that much code, and that he only learned what he had to. His knowledge of code was built upon that. I thought that was pretty interesting, in that he was able to learn something just by doing art. However, the amount of code that he actually knows is still a mystery, so it’s hard to tell how how much weight that carries. With that in consideration, I would probably ask how much coding he knows (probably should be related to artistic practice but it’s really problematic for me). Secondly, I would ask what he thinks of the English language in earnest, because many of his works are based off of words and how confusing it could be, what would he do to perhaps revise the language. Alternatively, if he is fine with English as it is, what makes it so perfect?

Tehching Hsieh

Tehching Hsieh is a Taiwanese immigrant artist who is very dedicated in his performance of his pieces. This is most evident in the one year performance where he absolutely refuses to get inside the police building to remain faithful to his art. While Tehching Hsieh seems to integrate the idea of art and life together, as evidenced by the performances, he also seems to show the human perseverance through adverse conditions. Tehching Hsieh’s commitment to being on time and going through with his proposals are something of awe, and might even be considered of the sublime. While Hsieh’s fluency in English was not excellent, the troubles caused by it definitely did not detract from the works he had shown in his talk. That in itself made the lecture very well worth going to. Also, Hsieh kept the audience entertained with his own sense of humor. For example, toward the end of his talk, a member of the audience gave him a question worded very complexly. Hsieh responded to him by giving him a bit of a general answer and then apologizing saying that he gave a general answer because he could not grasp the full extent of his question. I thought internally that it was a little bit inconsiderate and unfair to use such complex wording for a question after hearing him give his presentation, but Hsieh pulled off his reply really well and it did make me respect him more. As a whole, I really did enjoy Tehching Hsieh’s presentation.

Two questions I would ask Hsieh are: 1) “What made you want to be an artist of all things?” and 2) “What kept you going, other than your mom’s ideals, what gave you such drive to be so consistent in all these works?”

EXHIBITIONS

Pricilla Varner: Emancipating Jane: Challenging the Representation of Legal Sex-Workers in

Fine Art

Quite a long title for the exhibition. First a little background. Varner is a photographer that commonly photographs children, families, and weddings. Quite a departure from this work. Nonetheless, the concept was interesting. Pretty self explanatory. Features a bunch of sex workers and attempts to fix society’s image of them being portrayed negatively. While the work does a fine job invoking thought on the subject, a couple of questions do come to mind. Should legal sex work be portrayed positively? What are the consequences of said portrayal? While I understand many people may objectify sex workers (maybe even worse), and that they are people as well, how far should we take this idea? The idea of working an unskilled labor job that no one wants to do surely means that something is wrong. It is an “easy” job but at the same time it is as far from “easy” as you can get. The mental strain and constant condescending attitude received from others is definitely not something most would like to cope with. That, backed with having no job and the lack of ability to get one can definitely be a reason some choose that path. So, in summary, my feelings are mixed about the subject at hand. I agree that workers should be treated as humans, because they are. But at the same time, if we do treat them as humans, would we be encouraging people to engage in such work? If there are no drawbacks, why would we not do it? Perhaps it would not matter so much if we are headed into technological unemployment, but that time has yet to come.

Tehching Hsieh

In Hsieh’s Exhibition, we find the paperworks he used for the videos he had shown in his talk. In this rendition of his work, we can find his proposals in still form, giving us close readouts of all of his work. This is crucial, because there may have been some points missed from his talk due to the language barrier (unfortunately). One important thing I had noted was that in each proposal he had so meticulously written down, there had been a calendar with circled dates, allowing the public to view him on those days, something that I had not realized in his talk.

When placed beside each other, Hsieh’s 1 year of no art and final work of many years of art completely symbolizes art as life. The contrast, when placed next to each other, makes it apparent that those two are supposed to be together. The timestamp performance pictures also differed from the video in that we can clearly see the amount of effort put into the project. When laid out, we can see Hsieh’s different feelings each time, although he tried to remain relatively neutral. We can say Hsieh is very dedicated to his piece, each time having the correct clock position to the dot. When seen through the exhibit, I believe that the idea of life as art is much clearer than when he showed his videos, which made me think about humans in adverse conditions and the will to live.