General Comments
This proved to be one of the best study visits I have attended. We visited only two exhibitions and one symposium and there was plenty of time to chat with other students and discuss what we had seen and our reactions. (The symposium followed the time set aside for this chat and there was time set aside for a further period of reflection at the end of the day). It has always been a feeling of mine, and it is certainly true in my case, that many study visits try to cram too much viewing into the time available at the cost of thinking and discussion time. At large events, such as that at Derby, there are hundreds of images to see and after a time they merge into one and I have reached saturation point. At this visit there were a limited number of images in the Asco visit and the Geoffrey Farmer exhibition was a whole series of statuary and made objects and no photographs.
The Building
The day we visited Nottingham Contemporary was its 4th Birthday and I understand that it was 3 years in the planning and building. It is without doubt a striking building that cannot be ignored not least because it is so at odds with its surroundings. I knew the area very well, my first job after leaving school (1956) was with the Royal Exchanger Assurance Company who had offices at 7 Low Pavement (now part of the Marks and Spencers store) and I sometimes spent my lunch hour exploring the area around St Mary's Church and the Shire Hall (now a museum). I also have a family connection to the Lace Market as my maternal grandmother worked for a number of years as a lacemaker both in the district and at home. The houses of the rich merchants and factory owners who made their fortune from Nottingham Lace are still in the area together with the Churches their money built. The houses are now largely Chambers for Barristers and their clerks (the Shire Hall was where the Quarter Sessions and Assizes were held prior to the creation of Crown Courts as we know them today) but retain their facades and stand in stark contrast to the modern building in their midst.
I suppose if you do not wish to create something that is sympathetic to its surroundings then it is more satisfactory to create something that makes a statement about its modernity.
Internally the same 'brutal' approach continued and whilst the space is cleverly used, and there is plenty of it, I was left with the feeling that I had wandered into some abandoned warehouse that was being squatted in by a band of artists and stallholders. For photography, where the images are framed and behind reflective glass, the lighting leaves much to be desired. There comes a point where seeing yourself as a more than ghostly image in the display becomes a nuisance and I found myself constantly shifting my position in an attempt to reduce the excessive reflections. Also the very high ceilings provide poor acoustics for specific purposes such as the guided tour where the guide's narrative is difficult to follow.
It is perhaps appropriate at this point to mention the staff - the people who man the galleries. I spent a lot of my time talking to them. Without exception they showed a considerable depth of knowledge and enthusiasm about the works being shown. They were an invaluable resource for learning about the different elements but also, because of their previous training, they were able to provide context that helped understanding.
Asco
Asco, an artist collective, was created in the early 1970's by four Mexican Americans - Harry Gamboa jr., Pattsi Valdez, Gronk and Willie F. Herron III. At this time America as a whole was being riven by the controversy about America's involvement in the Vietnam War. It was also a time of unrest and dissatisfaction with agitation by various movements seeking betterment of the lot of women, youth, ethnic groups amongst others. There were also often violent reactions including riots to police brutality and other examples of violent state control. In the case of Mexican Americans they felt that, like their black counterparts, they were, as an ethnic group, taking more than their fair share of drafting into the armed forces that was more easily avoided by white middle class Americans. All groups of protestors felt that in some way they were excluded from mainstream politics and society.
The term Asco means disgust or revulsion in Spanish and relates to the reaction of the group and others to the perceived oppressive regime they felt was suffered by the American/Mexican community. Through their photographs and actions they tried to express this disgust. At this remove, some 40 years on, it is difficult to judge whether they were successful or not in achieving their stated aims. Other photographers experiences, such as photojournalists, suggests that the answer would be No. Don McCullin whose work covers most of the major conflicts since the Second World War in the Western world came to a negative conclusion about his impact upon war and conflict. In the catalogue for the 2013 Visa Pour L'image held in Perpignan McCullin admitted his distress and weariness: he saw that ultimately his efforts and commitment had served no purpose (p96). Perhaps it is the lot of photographers, who believe that their work will help to change the world in some way, are always destined to become a footnote in the history of the world with their only claim to fame to have been the start or instigators of some movement in photography. In the handout we were given by the Gallery staff in the exhibition areas relating to the two exhibitions on show one can read the following about Asco:
"Their way of parodying pop culture (fashion, rock music, the movie industry), its gender politics and distribution strategies (public access cable tv, zines, fotonovelas) make them in retrospect, important forerunners of postmodernism and post-punk culture in general".
What of the images themselves. Again we see them through a culture some 40 years into the future from the time these images were created. They failed to involve me emotionally and I found myself applying modern day critique of the photograph as an object rather than an image that was attempting to convey a message. It was difficult to see beyond the off key colours as though the images were enlarged copies of prints that had been stored for decades with the resultant damage to the ink structure. They were in a sense unreal and not part of my world now. I had seen similar images of the unrest in America on my TV only a few hours after the event and in retrospect the sheer volume of images had inured me to their message. It had about the same impact as watching a war film at the cinema. These images had about as much impact as heroic paintings of war - they offered some insight but left no lasting impression.
Having said that there were three images that were linked to each other. The artist portrayed felt that he was being held back from creating the work that he considered was his purpose by a 'doll' that in some way prevented him from achieving his aims. In the three photographs we are offered a view of how the doll was part of his world and in the final photograph we are shown the doll in flames. He was destroying the block to his ambitions. Seen individually the photographs were simply of interest but once I understood the link they became a powerful message. Here lies the problem for all photographers who wish to convey a message - how much text should be provided to encourage the viewer to see what you want them to see. I have to confess that on first viewing I had failed to see the message and found the images puzzling. Later I was talking to one of the gallery assistants who explained the connection to me and all was revealed.
Later in the afternoon we met as a group over a cup of coffee and a common theme was the block experienced by students as they tackled specific assignments and I was reminded of the three pictures seen only a few minutes before. There was a general agreement about how difficult it was to move forward as though something was holding us back. I had never thought of it being anything other than my own reluctance to place my knowledge or lack thereof in the general domain. Certainly I had not created a 'doll' although my internal reasoning constantly sought excuses/reasons outside of myself without any 'target' for the causes. I am not too sure that setting fire to an effigy of my tutor would have helped me move on but who knows!?
Geoffrey Farmer - Let's Make the Water Turn Black
Unfortunately the exhibition, which combines artefacts, music and light to create the complete show was not working, so we were only able to see the artefacts created by Geoffrey Farmer. However it did give us a chance to see the creation without the distraction of other things going on around us. Not that we could necessarily understand the whole show but we could see the placement of things within the exhibition space. I was reminded of the Clock in the Victoria Centre in Nottingham that was designed by Ronald Searle. On the hour it comes 'alive' with wheels turning, flowers opening, and music playing. Seeing Farmer's exhibition allowed led me to imagining a workshop in the world of Searle where all the pieces are laid out before assembly so that whilst, perhaps, sense can be made of the whole, each individual piece is wrapped in its own mystery inviting the viewer to try to work out what each part does.
I could not help thinking that the creation would have benefited from allowing young children to play, unfettered, in this wonderful fantasy world.
The Symposium.
The symposium was entitled "The Poetics and Politics of Disgust". To quote from the Nottingham Contemporary website: "Through reading and discussion, four sessions led by Tracey Potts of the University of Nottingham Centre for Critical Theory address disgust within art, theory, and the social realm, bringing in references from theories of abjection to TV documentaries". Unfortunately we only attended one session and we seemed to have missed half of that session. It would seem unreasonable to draw conclusions on the whole programme from a very limited part. Hopefully other speakers were more competent than the one's we had to endure. I have to confess to two pet hates in listening to presentations - one is where the presenter simply reads, almost without taking breath, from a prepared script and the second is saying "quote"......."unquote" whenever using a quote from another person. The first speaker was guilty of both and the second was a 'reader'. The overall quality of the presentation was severely damaged by the first speaker being unable to answer a question from one of her peers and instead of stating so tried lamely to talk her way out of it finally saying that "perhaps she should have thought of it."
At the first opportunity I left the theatre as did others. However the first speaker did raise an interesting point. She showed stills from a performance art presentation where the artist had tried to forcibly feed himself hot dogs having swallowed tomato ketchup which he had also smeared onto his body together with mustard. We were told that this was a comment on the consumerist society. His 'stuffing' of his face apparently reached the point that his body was attempting to vomit the whole mess. In the presentation there was comment on the disgusting nature of what the artist was doing i.e he was being disgusting; and the reaction of the audience who were disgusted by the performance to the point of feeling the need to vomit. Apparently the artist had first presented this spectacle to a small invited audience of his friends. This proved to be so stressful that he stopped giving live performances and produced a video. We, as an audience, saw only two stills.
The question was asked whether the method of presentation affected an audience's reaction - was the disgust greater in a live performance than in a video? Certainly I was not disgusted by what I was being shown on the screen - in some ways I found the whole thing risible. The interaction between the artist and a live audience is necessarily more intense than say a video or still portrayal. We can feel as well as see the whole performance and our bodily reactions will become affected by our natural reaction of disgust at such behaviour. Further seeing and hearing someone retch and gag is likely to provoke a sympathetic reaction in ourselves.
To sit and watch a video is a common experience for most of us and modern presentations have pushed further and further the realism in what we are shown. It is not unusual now to be shown the gory details of a murder close up and even post-mortems are offered in every minute detail. We learn from this a technique, unique to ourselves, that protects us from the reality. It is though through many years of experience of watching television we have discovered a way of strengthening our ability to see as unreal anything that is shocking. Such reaction applies to even real events so that our sympathies and emotions are dulled. Any video presentation is going to suffer from this deadening of our visceral reaction.
Stills are even easier to reject as unreal and therefore containable by our emotions and empathetic reaction. The famous photograph of the young Vietnamese girl running, screaming from the pain of napalm only impacts upon us the first time we see it and then only initially because to accept the reality of what we are being shown is to risk madness because only madness can cope with insane actions.
There is much more to consider from the day but this is only likely to happen over a lengthy period of time as the lessons seen, but not necessarily understood, come up against life's experiences.
No comments:
Post a Comment