Our Sea of Islands

Epeli Hau’ofa, “Our Sea of Islands”, A New Oceania: Rediscovering Our Sea Of Islands, Suva, Fiji: The University of the South Pacific, 1993, pp 2-16

Epeli Hau’ofa has a PHD in social anthropology from the Australian National University in Canberra. His professional life was spread between Fiji and Tonga as a keeper of palace records teacher and HOD at the University of the South Pacific

Described as an “inspirational writer, satirist and scholar “ “a man of the pacific” He was mentor to a new generation of artists, sculptors, dancers and musicians at the USP in Suva. As founding director of USP's Oceania Centre for Arts and Culture, he nurtured the talents and creativity of cultural workers from around the region. Died 2009

Theage.com.au – The Age – World (news) Nic Maclellan Feb 11 2009   obit

http://www.theage.com.au/world/champion-of-pacific-islands-culture-and-history-and-mentor-to-many-20090210-83h0.html access 1 May 2011

Read more:
http://www.theage.com.au/world/champion-of-pacific-islands-culture-and-history-and-mentor-to-many-20090210-83h0.html#ixzz1L3Adu0do access 1 May 2011

Creative practice – the idea of ideas, crossing back and forth across the pacific – as if the pacific or Oceania is a territory like the writer’s Tongan friend who flies kava from Fiji and T-shirts from Honolulu

Islands in a far sea vrs a sea of islands. (Hau'ofa) A play on negative and positive space in a sense. The idea that it is the sea surrounding the islands that is important – identity, food, place of knowledge and play

The idea that populations from island groups are resident in other pacific rim countries – numbering greater than those present on the island themselves – similar to NZ (kiwis off shore)

Bibliography

Hau'ofa, Epeli. A New Oceania: Rediscovering Our Sea Of Islands. Suva: The University of the South Pacific, 1993.

Is a Museum a Factory?

Hito Steyerl “Is a Museum a Factory?” e-flux journal reader 2009, Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2009 pp 28-42

Hito Steyer is a writer, film maker and has a PhD in Philosophy. She has a Professorship at University of Arts, Berlin and has taught film and theory at Goldsmiths Colleg, Bard College and Centre for Curatorial Studies (amongst others). Her films and video installations have been shown at documenta 12 in Kassel, at the 37th International Film Festival Rotterdam, and at a solo shows at Moderna Museet, Stockholm and Kunsthalle Winterthur, Switzerland

I think that Steyerl’s comparison of “spectator-as-labourer” (Steyerl)p39 and the labour of Fordist era factory workers very interesting. Does she suggest that a modern cinema experience requires little skill on the part of the viewer in a similar way that an unskilled factory worker carries out a simple task on a factory production line? Could she be comparing the time a cinema viewer spends watching with the time a factory worker spends labouring?

I think her comparison is suggesting that viewing is a form of labour - that a viewer has to work at the act of looking. This could not be more so today with the complexities of a complex mix of media, of imagery, of screens, screenings, all creating a multitude of independent viewers (p35). Let alone the politics of venue and privacy - what is considered as a public or private space – an art gallery, museum, blog, internet space?

I cannot help but think of her silent crowd “struggling between passivity and overstimulation” (p35) do we become passive in the face of overstimulation? Do we not need to think? Like the factory worker, faced with a repetitive all-day task, passively disengaging their mind as they clock-in, leaving their body to carry out the labour. Or do we need to engage fully? Is the potential of overstimulation in fact our gift to each other, reflecting the fantastically rich and diverse landscape of possibility everywhere we care to look? Then again the image of Charlie Chaplin engaging with the Bellow’s Feeding Machine is perhaps more engagement than we might wish to participate in. (Chaplin)

Bibliography

Modern Times. Dir. Charlie Chaplin. Perf. Charlie Chaplin. 1936.

Steyerl, Hito. “Is a Museum a Factory?” e-flux journal reader (2009): pp 28 - 42.

On Collecting Art and Culture

James Clifford, “On Collecting Art and Culture” in The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth Century Ethanography, Literature, and Art, Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1988, pp 215-251

Clifford has written a number books, prompting debate across the fields of literature, art history, visual studies and particularly cultural anthropology. He is a historian and holds a role as Professor in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California.

“A picture is worth a thousand words”

Wikipedia attribute this idea across cultures to a number of people including Bonaparte and Confucius. Clifford’s Art-Culture Machine – A machine for Making Authenticity, provides a worthy example of this adage. Clifford goes to some detail in the text to support his deceptively simple diagram. He enlarges on his double headed arrows to describe the way art-works, curios, primitive works, even inventions, can be perceived to move or travel between his artistic and cultural zones of consideration. The diagram provides the reader with a visual reference, allowing them to come back to it for visible clarification while reading. Like a person using a map to navigate an unfamiliar city. Arrows provide direction and convey a sense that everything considered is on a continuum - not absolute, but existing in degrees. The text further introduces the aspect of time, for example, the shift due to age and rarity.

This diagrammatic approach to convey a complex idea is utilised by Rosiland Kraus in her discussion of sculpture and how it interrelates within architecture, landscape and site construction. (Krauss) As readers we would find it tough going to understand the model being suggested. It seems tough enough with the diagram but she at least shows the development of the idea through a series of diagrams that gain complexity and detail as she develops her idea in a sequential manner.

I think both these examples show that while the picture can act as a map, words add context and depth to the idea that the diagram cannot sustain without them.

Bibliography

Clifford, James. On Collecting Art and Culture” in The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth Century Ethanography, Literature, and Art. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1988.

Krauss, Rosiland. “Sculpture in the Expanded Field.” October 1979 Spring 1979: pp 30-44.

Chapter 3: Skilled

Glen Adamson Thinking Through Craft; Chapter 3; Skilled, Oxford: Berg, 2007, pp. 69-101

Glen Adamson has curated, written essays for exhibition catalogues, published articles and reviews and written and edited several books about craft and design in the 20^th century. He has a BA and a PhD in Art History at Cornell and Yale universities, respectively and has held positions such as Deputy Head of Research and Head of Graduate Studies at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

As a result of reading this chapter, Skilled, I cannot help but take a position on the question of the application of skill in art making. It also brought to mind an idea that Sol Lewitt espoused in his “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art” (Lewitt)

Sol Lewitt considered that the idea is simply the most important aspect of the work and independent of the skill involved in realising the work. Personally I take the view that good, even excellent execution can only intensify the idea in a piece of art. That this level of skill, allows the making to fade into relative insignificance, leaving the idea of the work all the more visible.

I enjoy Lewitt’s “Sentences on Conceptual Art” (which follow his paragraphs) and find some of them pertinent to this subject and what I think about it. Sentence number 30:

“There are many elements involved in a work of art. The most important are the most obvious.” is actually very telling. I take from this that an obvious lack of skill in a work (and I include lack of attention to detail and poor finish as examples of poor skill) as therefore being the most important as it is most obvious.

On the other hand I am also a firm subscriber to sentence number 32:

“Banal ideas cannot be rescued by beautiful execution.”

After all, life really is too short for banal ideas.

Bibliography

Adamson, Glen. Thinking Through Craft. Oxford: Berg, 2007.

Lewitt, Sol. “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art.” Artforum (June, 1967): pp 79-84.

Cast Away

Chris Kraus “Cast Away”, Video Green: Los Angelos Art and The Triumph of Nothingness, New York: Semiotext(e), 2004, p145-p150.

Chris Kraus wrote ‘Cast Away’ in 2001 and it is contained in her 2004 publication: Video Green: Los Angeles Art and the Triumph of Nothingness. Video Green considers Los Angeles art and art school programs and their place in the international art scene.

“...anything is permissible ... so long as it is pedigreed, substantiated, referentialised.” (Kraus) p147

If art production is permissible by this definition, then perhaps it supports the credence given to the undertakings we present as students at Elam. After all, Elam as a school of art, justifies these efforts such that whatever form they take, they should be regarded as creditable offerings, worthy of our interpretation and elevation to the status of work (of art). We do. But are we too kind – or too cruel, to speak our mind?

Yet I observe that an aesthetic of what we bring to our work at Elam is a reflection of what occurs in the outside (contemporary art) world – imitation, although not taught per de Duve’s obsolete academic art school model (de Duve) p22 – occurs naturally through osmosis. Thus in my view, the next work, the banal image, the flimsy gesture, while lightly pedigreed, substantiated, or referentialised, will continue to inform our progress.

Therefore, in our practice, we actively seek to support Kraus’ view by fabricating these qualifications around our work such that they act as a scaffold, framing and supporting our work. If we were to fail to do this, our work might suffer the ignominy of being relegated as peripheral non-art.

Bibliography

de Duve, Thierry. “When Form Has Become Attitude - And Beyond.” (1994). Theory in contemporary art since 1945. Malden MA: Blackwell, 2005. pp 19 - 31.

Kraus, Chris. “Cast Away.” Video Green: Los Angelos Art and The Triumph of Nothingness. New York: Semiotext(e), 2004. pp 145 - 150.