Sunday, October 23, 2016
Fieldwork as Artistic Practice
I really related to this section of the book which is about art in public places.This section is written by Tatsuo Inagaki He says that it disturbed him that much of the public art did not tackle into consideration the region,the people from the area.He criticized that the art seemed to be more like museum pieces instead of art made specifically for the people living there.He decide to make art ,public art that was specifically targeted towards the people who lived there.He found that researching like anthropologists did was very helpful.His process involved interviews with local residents. For example... in these interviews he asked about their lives and their relationship with the place. and residents told stories of important memories here.As anthropologists begin with fieldwork and then place their findings into the form of ethnography or writings I the author used photographs of the people in their places and presented them in museums in that specific place.
My RESEARCH????...Hearing Faces,Seeing Voices:Sound Art,Experimentalism and the Ethnographic Graze by John Wynne
"The word itself,'research',is probably one of the dirtiest words in the indigenous world's vocabulary."page 49
This section discusses the difficulties for artist who choose to do field work as preparation and research for their art..he quotes Lippard as saying page 49.."..experience comes first and theory later once we realize what we should be thinking."she says the danger is that we,artists may become"tourists". However,that being said, "Thankfully, some artists,recordists and composers do take the time to think rather than blithely engage in that kind of sonic tor ism..":But developing self reflective research and production practices both in the field and in the studio(or at a desk)is as important for artists as it is for ethnographers and anthropologists."page 49 A discussion about sensory turn in anthropology activating the senses is important to an anthropologist and artist alike.Hearing Voices.. by Thomas Sobe 's work uses speech and sound so the viewer can experience and interact.
This section discusses the difficulties for artist who choose to do field work as preparation and research for their art..he quotes Lippard as saying page 49.."..experience comes first and theory later once we realize what we should be thinking."she says the danger is that we,artists may become"tourists". However,that being said, "Thankfully, some artists,recordists and composers do take the time to think rather than blithely engage in that kind of sonic tor ism..":But developing self reflective research and production practices both in the field and in the studio(or at a desk)is as important for artists as it is for ethnographers and anthropologists."page 49 A discussion about sensory turn in anthropology activating the senses is important to an anthropologist and artist alike.Hearing Voices.. by Thomas Sobe 's work uses speech and sound so the viewer can experience and interact.
Between Art and Anthropology..continued..PRACTICE WHAT YOU PREACH..LOOKING FOR TH E MEANINGFUL IN YOUR WORK
"Practice what you preach" that is what I take away from these pages.and the search for meaningful context for your work...
This section begins with a discussion about a year on a farm in a project called Overlay. Lippard's essay discusses about how she always wanted to be an archaeologist and she decided to leave out politics in this project and to create a difficult problem for herself,making her go outside her "comfort zone".She says that as she now looks back about this experience she approached it from an artist point of view,but she does say that this project OVERLAY..marked the beginning and the end of her artistic career as after this experience she came farther away from art criticism and began becoming a cultural critic.Now she is doing fieldwork all around New Mexico listening to archaeologists and she says the only art discussed in her new book is rock art.In this essay she discusses the common ground between artist and anthropologists is their ethics.This topic is rarely discussed in the art world,she says but is constantly discussed in the world of anthropologists. Her interest is finding out how each artist functions in society and how they choose their audience and social effects.She concludes that it is the "quest for meaningful context,and for meaning itself,has led these artists towards anthropology,which,even when it's trapped in it's own self-fulfilling prophecies,does offer significant contextual models."Page 25
Echoes and Parallels "makes connections between both artists'personal ill health and their interest in shamanism;..."page 37. Coates' interest in shamanism is attributed basically to his ill health,severe eczema which he had asa child Beuys apparently had experience any "psychic"and near death experiences with three traumas in his life making an impact on him as an artist and Beuys life once he was rescued by Tatars in Crimea during WWII and he was wrapped in felt and fat to keep him warm.37.Now Coates also had an interest in shamanism as he says growing up in suburbia one dreamed of an exotic wildlife ..Marcus coates..Dawn Chorus 2007 is a video installation and there is a clear engagement with anthropology in both these artists' work as Coates even mentions his preparatory work for this installation as".There is a photo of Beuy's I like America likes Me...where all you se is a blanket wrapped around a person and a cane sticking out...in Coates Journey to the Lower World,2004...you see him as a shaman dressed in" Field Work".However the author does say that there is similar interest in the "therapeutic aspect"of the shaman's role which is reflected in both Coates and Beuys work. The author raises the question about ethical issues in their work.Both these artists engage the audience in a dialogue "with a figure that has been conceived of as having been a victim of destruction".page 45.It is concluded that both their work reflect self identity issues with the shaman's role within western art.
Artist Ken Gonzalez also did a series informed by the lynchings in California (see link below)
http://kengonzalesday.com/projects/hangtrees/index.htm
This section begins with a discussion about a year on a farm in a project called Overlay. Lippard's essay discusses about how she always wanted to be an archaeologist and she decided to leave out politics in this project and to create a difficult problem for herself,making her go outside her "comfort zone".She says that as she now looks back about this experience she approached it from an artist point of view,but she does say that this project OVERLAY..marked the beginning and the end of her artistic career as after this experience she came farther away from art criticism and began becoming a cultural critic.Now she is doing fieldwork all around New Mexico listening to archaeologists and she says the only art discussed in her new book is rock art.In this essay she discusses the common ground between artist and anthropologists is their ethics.This topic is rarely discussed in the art world,she says but is constantly discussed in the world of anthropologists. Her interest is finding out how each artist functions in society and how they choose their audience and social effects.She concludes that it is the "quest for meaningful context,and for meaning itself,has led these artists towards anthropology,which,even when it's trapped in it's own self-fulfilling prophecies,does offer significant contextual models."Page 25
Echoes and Parallels "makes connections between both artists'personal ill health and their interest in shamanism;..."page 37. Coates' interest in shamanism is attributed basically to his ill health,severe eczema which he had asa child Beuys apparently had experience any "psychic"and near death experiences with three traumas in his life making an impact on him as an artist and Beuys life once he was rescued by Tatars in Crimea during WWII and he was wrapped in felt and fat to keep him warm.37.Now Coates also had an interest in shamanism as he says growing up in suburbia one dreamed of an exotic wildlife ..Marcus coates..Dawn Chorus 2007 is a video installation and there is a clear engagement with anthropology in both these artists' work as Coates even mentions his preparatory work for this installation as".There is a photo of Beuy's I like America likes Me...where all you se is a blanket wrapped around a person and a cane sticking out...in Coates Journey to the Lower World,2004...you see him as a shaman dressed in" Field Work".However the author does say that there is similar interest in the "therapeutic aspect"of the shaman's role which is reflected in both Coates and Beuys work. The author raises the question about ethical issues in their work.Both these artists engage the audience in a dialogue "with a figure that has been conceived of as having been a victim of destruction".page 45.It is concluded that both their work reflect self identity issues with the shaman's role within western art.
Artist Ken Gonzalez also did a series informed by the lynchings in California (see link below)
http://kengonzalesday.com/projects/hangtrees/index.htm
Saturday, October 22, 2016
This is the third book I chose, called,Through Our Own Eyes,by Guy Brett
From the very first pages of this book ,Outsider Art or Naive art is introduced and discussed as an important expressive art movement."My position is between, and I wanted to take as a theme the relationship between people, moments of historical crisis,and the visual means of expression.p.6
The significance of this art movement lay in the ability for people to convey such pure and raw emotion when one is not professionally trained and feels more free to express."For they cross the crude barriers defining and controlling our knowledge of the historical events of our own time as they affect the mass people"p.7 This book seems to be more about the art impulsiveness,creativity, and approaches, the importance of the means of expression of a certain group of people."...here art becomes a means of communication in which facts are not separated from feelings,in which human beings present themselves clearly as both observers of,and participants in,events.On another level art becomes a means of therapy in order to survive the trauma of events....."p 8.Bingo!...this is what we are discussing in the course now and this is the guts of what my own work;my research is really about.These artists in this book have in common is their untrained ways to represent their feelings.These inages may seem crude or possibly precious.
The significance of this art movement lay in the ability for people to convey such pure and raw emotion when one is not professionally trained and feels more free to express."For they cross the crude barriers defining and controlling our knowledge of the historical events of our own time as they affect the mass people"p.7 This book seems to be more about the art impulsiveness,creativity, and approaches, the importance of the means of expression of a certain group of people."...here art becomes a means of communication in which facts are not separated from feelings,in which human beings present themselves clearly as both observers of,and participants in,events.On another level art becomes a means of therapy in order to survive the trauma of events....."p 8.Bingo!...this is what we are discussing in the course now and this is the guts of what my own work;my research is really about.These artists in this book have in common is their untrained ways to represent their feelings.These inages may seem crude or possibly precious.
Thursday, October 20, 2016
Collaborative Migrations:Contemporary Art in /as Anthropology by Steven Feld with Virginia Ryan Pages 109-125/Making Art Ethnography:Painting,War and Ethnographic Practice by Susan Ossman
This chapter is in response to Arnd Schneider's concerns over anthropology not including visuals and not engaging "a narrative textural paradigm with visual working the contemporary arts"page 109. So here three experiments in collaborative form are discussed.Virginia Ryan is the visual artist who invited anthropologist and sound artist Steven Feld to collaborate with her through written acoustic and visual media and each project relates and addresses these issues.This article goes on to discuss the collaborative process involved.For example 2001-5 Virginia Ryan staged many photographs like hundreds of herself in different situations in Ghana and areas around Ghana where she was actually living and working as an artist.Ryan and Feld chose some 60 photos with a discussion of why these photos were so important as artistic and anthropological viewpoints.For example, one photo is of a white woman sleeping and a black nurse sitting by her side. called "Malaria Attack". Another one is of a white woman dressed and laying in the same position as a black woman called "Castaways".
Making Art Ethnography:Painting,War and Ethnographic Practice by Susan Ossman 127-163 ends this book with a discussion and examples of how visual anthropology has actually aided anthropologists to"develop a keener eye"p.127
Anthropologists are now able to use sound,photography,film and video as a part of their process of research and as a manner to present their research which allow a new audience to view research findings and is actually more sensitive to how the people studied are presented.So we see that music and even poetry and theater of anthropologists has been used during research and findings presented but guess what???Painting has really been overlooked. Susan Ossman discusses here, the importance painting can be to fieldwork and that she argues that really painting is a "pertinent aspect of fieldwork"page 127.She painted a triptych in "Casablanca" in 1990 that was actually inspired by a trip she made to Morocco and she says, albeit not realistic, it does portray the region nicely and ties the landscape with woven colors and paint just as the women of Jebel area wear woven colors of white and red in their clothing when they work..so "Tables and Tabliers", a painting she did in 1991 , she says placed focus on the domestic work of these women,so she says she bought red and white aprons from the women and one of their work tables and made a painting about it it..However I see a major problem in that when looking at the paintings, one does not get any of that which the artists is saying so I think it falls apart as anthropology.You would have to read the artists words to know what she was doing.She goes on to describe her next projects which actually involve weaving red lines and she continues to push the limitations of this idea of red and white lines.but I feel her paintings do not convey what her words do...she concludes that a sketch or painting is like a field note...page 134...."it can focus attention on certain objects,regularities or connections.once it is hung in public,it can stimulate exchanges about aesthetics or politics."
I must say that these ideas resonate with me and especially with the art project I plan to do about the lynching of Leo Frank and lynchings of black people in the south.I believe I am taking this idea of combining anthropology and visual art further than discussed here by incorporating actual rope and other raw materials into this piece.
Making Art Ethnography:Painting,War and Ethnographic Practice by Susan Ossman 127-163 ends this book with a discussion and examples of how visual anthropology has actually aided anthropologists to"develop a keener eye"p.127
Anthropologists are now able to use sound,photography,film and video as a part of their process of research and as a manner to present their research which allow a new audience to view research findings and is actually more sensitive to how the people studied are presented.So we see that music and even poetry and theater of anthropologists has been used during research and findings presented but guess what???Painting has really been overlooked. Susan Ossman discusses here, the importance painting can be to fieldwork and that she argues that really painting is a "pertinent aspect of fieldwork"page 127.She painted a triptych in "Casablanca" in 1990 that was actually inspired by a trip she made to Morocco and she says, albeit not realistic, it does portray the region nicely and ties the landscape with woven colors and paint just as the women of Jebel area wear woven colors of white and red in their clothing when they work..so "Tables and Tabliers", a painting she did in 1991 , she says placed focus on the domestic work of these women,so she says she bought red and white aprons from the women and one of their work tables and made a painting about it it..However I see a major problem in that when looking at the paintings, one does not get any of that which the artists is saying so I think it falls apart as anthropology.You would have to read the artists words to know what she was doing.She goes on to describe her next projects which actually involve weaving red lines and she continues to push the limitations of this idea of red and white lines.but I feel her paintings do not convey what her words do...she concludes that a sketch or painting is like a field note...page 134...."it can focus attention on certain objects,regularities or connections.once it is hung in public,it can stimulate exchanges about aesthetics or politics."
I must say that these ideas resonate with me and especially with the art project I plan to do about the lynching of Leo Frank and lynchings of black people in the south.I believe I am taking this idea of combining anthropology and visual art further than discussed here by incorporating actual rope and other raw materials into this piece.
Monday, October 17, 2016
Between Art And Anthropology
The interesting thing to me about this book, begins almost immediately in the discussion about Antonio Ole's work with the emphasis on color and that this is trying to help anthropologists remember to pay attention to color. page 2.."evoke a kind of sensory memory..."which he says is important to his film making...it is interesting when the book says that.."a kind of anti-aestheticism or ignore the affects of images has resulted in a climate where experimentation in formal and other terms is too often disintegrated. Anthropologists have for too long been overly dismissive of formal experimentation....."in terms of their methods and also in their presentation of research..well,it seems that there is more collaborative work being done between the artist and anthropologist but it is still"fragile"However a recent focus on senses within both anthropology and art roles of senses within cultures may bridge some artist and anthropologists. An example is ...smelling the odors of the streets and a project researching the smells in different languages..But this is a challenging new way to approach contemporary art and science...Teresa Pereda's work..Recolection/Restitution by this Argentine artist shows the sensuousness of materials from earth samples from parts of Argentina so in the form of giant wool balls becomes a social medium and symbol as she engages with people.Her performance which is weaving yarn between people ,physically.Another example of the collaborative nature of combing science and art practice is seen in Lucien Taylor,who calls himself a :Visual Anthropologist"and who runs a "sensory Anthropology lab at Harvard...has made films called Sheprushes as projections in art galleries. but this book really seems to be a call for more collaborations between the artist and the anthropologist.
Sunday, October 9, 2016
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:Katherine Boo
http://www.aarambh.org/
Unnati Tripathi started working for Katherine as a translator and
researcher in April 2008. Three and a half years later, Unnati had become Katherine’s trusted co-investigator and critical interlocutor, helping to bring the stories of Annawadi residents to the page. Over those years, she also took many photographs of a changing slum. Some of the more recent photos are on this website.
Mrinmayee Ranade was the first translator to work regularly on this project. In the first half of 2008, she joined Katherine in Annawadi and several other slums, helping to draw out individuals’ stories with sensitivity and precision and remaining unflappable even in mob scenes. Her deepest sensitivity was to the domestic lives and choices of women, particularly those who were balancing work and family responsibilities, as Mrin herself does. Fittingly, she is now the editor of Madhurima, a weekly women’s supplement for the Bhaskar Group’s Divya Marathi newspaper.
 | AARAMBH is a non-profit charity organization based and working in Navi Mumbai (New Bombay), India. This non-government organization (NGO) was created as a Community Service Center for the most marginalized families living in urban slum communities and rural areas. |
| Our goal is to provide educational, health and vocational skills tounderprivileged children and women. AARAMBH is registered with the – The Charity Commssioner –Mumbai, The Income Tax Department and the Home Minstry –(FCRA) Government of India. | |
AUTHOR
Katherine Boo is a staff writer at The New Yorker and a former reporter and editor for The Washington Post. She learned to report at the alternative weekly, Washington City Paper, after which she worked as a writer and co-editor of The Washington Monthly magazine. Over the years, her reporting from disadvantaged communities has been awarded a Pulitzer Prize, a MacArthur “Genius” grant, and a National Magazine Award for Feature Writing. For the last decade, she has divided her time between the United States and India, the birthplace of her husband, Sunil Khilnani. This is her first book.
TRANSLATORS
Unnati Tripathi started working for Katherine as a translator andresearcher in April 2008. Three and a half years later, Unnati had become Katherine’s trusted co-investigator and critical interlocutor, helping to bring the stories of Annawadi residents to the page. Over those years, she also took many photographs of a changing slum. Some of the more recent photos are on this website.
Unnati has an M.A. in sociology from the University of Mumbai and is currently helping the Indian Association for Women’s Studies establish a digital archive. Previously, she provided research and editing assistance on a short documentary film, ‘Do Rafeeq Ek Chai,’ directed by Rafeeq Ellias, and wrote a report on madrasas in Mumbai for the Maharashtra State Minorities Commission under the supervision of Dr. Ranu Jain. An essay of her own, ‘The Precinct as Workspace: Snippets from Conversations,’ was published in Zero Point Bombay: In and Around Horniman Circle, a 2008 anthology edited by Kamala Ganesh, Usha Thakkar and Gita Chadha. Since 2009, she’s also been filming the annual Mahim fair in Mumbai. Her current intent is to make a short documentary on the religious significance and raucous beauty of the fair, and how it subtly illuminates the tensions and possibilities of the city.
Mrinmayee Ranade was the first translator to work regularly on this project. In the first half of 2008, she joined Katherine in Annawadi and several other slums, helping to draw out individuals’ stories with sensitivity and precision and remaining unflappable even in mob scenes. Her deepest sensitivity was to the domestic lives and choices of women, particularly those who were balancing work and family responsibilities, as Mrin herself does. Fittingly, she is now the editor of Madhurima, a weekly women’s supplement for the Bhaskar Group’s Divya Marathi newspaper.
Mrin earned her B.A. degree from the University of Mumbai and previously worked as a reporter and editor for many English- and Marathi-language publications, among them the Indian Express, Navashakti, Maharashtra Times, and Times of India. As a researcher and translator, she’s assisisted journalists from the BBC, The National Geographic, The Guardian and elsewhere. She’s also taught reporting and editing at Wilson College, V.G. Kelkar College, and Rai University.
Three other women also helped Katherine with translation in the first half of 2008. Kavita Mishra, an undergraduate at the University of Mumbai, helped interview residents of several slums in between the obligations of her coursework. Vijaya Chauhan, a veteran educationist, spent a single day at Annawadi and a second day watching Annawadi videotapes, and in that brief time taught Katherine boatloads. Shobha Murthy was an equally generous teacher when she took time from her real work, running educational programs for low-income Navi Mumbai children, to help Katherine interview parents and children.
INJUSTICE FOR THE POOR IN MUMBAI-THE COURT TRIALS AND JUDGE
pages 200
"while Abdul's father privately believed that the only Indians who went on trial were too poor to pay off the police....."sometimes 5-11 years could pass before a trial was held to the poor every day and that meant waiting meant a forfeit of wages.and to make matters worse these "fast paced trials"the judge could be reviewing 35 casses all at the same time...murderers,rapists and those who lied or stole were sitting next to each other all being tried at the same time..while waiting in prison you can imagine the fate.....and worse no one really cared about the outcomes of the trials of the poor.many could not even understand what was even being said against them in trials.
"while Abdul's father privately believed that the only Indians who went on trial were too poor to pay off the police....."sometimes 5-11 years could pass before a trial was held to the poor every day and that meant waiting meant a forfeit of wages.and to make matters worse these "fast paced trials"the judge could be reviewing 35 casses all at the same time...murderers,rapists and those who lied or stole were sitting next to each other all being tried at the same time..while waiting in prison you can imagine the fate.....and worse no one really cared about the outcomes of the trials of the poor.many could not even understand what was even being said against them in trials.
Friday, October 7, 2016
TRASH
I see that many of the students are discussing trash and how to make the public more aware of this problem through art.I relate to this because my book one is all about this issue and the cool thing is that Abdul(character in my book)whose livelihood is collecting,sorting and then selling trash to the big recycling companies, to make money for his family to survive in the slums of Mumbai,,,...is not doing it for any other reason but to make money as it is the most lucrative job in the slums..but he doesn't even realize the good he is doing by collecting and getting rid of the trash,,,,interesting
Tuesday, October 4, 2016
The last Gardner in Aleppo
https://www.facebook.com/Channel4News/videos/10154001524696939/
My students in Contemporary Crafts are creating what I am calling an IN MEMORY project...informed by this video.They are making sculptural gardens and have to research and choose one person who was killed in Aleppo and create this sculptural/crafts garden in their memory and of course incorporate the crafts techniques we have learned thus far..
My students in Contemporary Crafts are creating what I am calling an IN MEMORY project...informed by this video.They are making sculptural gardens and have to research and choose one person who was killed in Aleppo and create this sculptural/crafts garden in their memory and of course incorporate the crafts techniques we have learned thus far..
Sunday, October 2, 2016
WEEK 5
This chapter discuses a woman in the slum called"Fatima""the one leg"woman, because she was born with only one leg and shamed and kept hidden by her parents till she was married off."All I heard was that I had been born wrong"P 72.I talk about the Monsoons,consistently throughout this blog and it relates to the book about ECO Art that the Research class is reading. Because of the long damaging rains"daily wage workers braced for hunger"during this time...the rains lasted 4 months"for a week the rain came down like nails"but for the one leg woman,it was twice as hard labor to use crutches and get around in the soft muddy soil.She became mean and angry and using the crutches constantly to hit her children and her much older husband.During the days she took men callers even while her children were in the hut. No one could go outside during these times.Then her young sister dies,she had drowned in a pail at the age of 6 and Fatima's daughter witnessed this...But young girls in the slums died all the time so one became immune to this.and even worse that sickly children in the slums were"done away with" because of the cost of their care could ruin a family for life.But after her sister died Fatima also became liberated.She drew on black dramatic eyebrows on her face and put white powder on her cheeks.She seemed to feel beautiful with the men whom she invited into her hut. and her husband worked 15 hours during the day sorting trash and then was treated like trash by Fatima at night.The constant longing to leave the slum and the extreme difficulties arise all the time espeically for women and girls.Six months ago, five contemporary European abstract artists were invited by Ashwin Thadani, founder of Galerie Isa, to showcase their vision of the monsoon through artworks. As the season approached, the works arrived, and are currently on display, as part of The Monsoon Show.
Old-cassette-tapes-modelling-clay-LED-lights-one-man-s-junkyard-is-another-man-s-art-proves-a-group-exhibition-at-Galerie-Isa.Six months ago, five
contemporary European abstract artists were invited by Ashwin Thadani, founder
of Galerie Isa, to showcase their vision of the monsoon through artworks. As the
season approached, the works arrived, and are currently on display, as part of
The Monsoon Show.
Four of the seven artworks used recycled day-to-day items. German artist Gregor Hildebrandt is known to make art out of music cassettes; Welsh artist Dan Rees makes art using Plasticine (modelling clay) and Artex (a building material); Russian-Tunisian artist Nadia Kaabi-Linke takes imprints of walls that are hundreds of years old and transfers it on to her artwork; German artist Anselm Reyle uses found objects such as LED lights, car lacquers and foils and reinvents them through her works.
The exhibition also showcases artwork by Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson’s water-colour and pencil-on-paper work; Eliasson has previously worked with elemental materials such as light and water. Also featured are works by Spanish artist Oliver Roura, whose leitmotif is geometric shapes reminiscent of microscope slides.
Four of the seven artworks used recycled day-to-day items. German artist Gregor Hildebrandt is known to make art out of music cassettes; Welsh artist Dan Rees makes art using Plasticine (modelling clay) and Artex (a building material); Russian-Tunisian artist Nadia Kaabi-Linke takes imprints of walls that are hundreds of years old and transfers it on to her artwork; German artist Anselm Reyle uses found objects such as LED lights, car lacquers and foils and reinvents them through her works.
The exhibition also showcases artwork by Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson’s water-colour and pencil-on-paper work; Eliasson has previously worked with elemental materials such as light and water. Also featured are works by Spanish artist Oliver Roura, whose leitmotif is geometric shapes reminiscent of microscope slides.
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