Trip To Shanghai

After finishing my contract job at Art Taipei, I went to Shanghai straight the next day.  As a citizen in Taiwan, I had stereotype about China from its dictatorship government and all the policy towards foreign affair. 

However, guess what, In Shanghai, I think I have never feel this free than any other cities that I have been in. 

I still remember how my friend told me that he was treated in UK boarder by ruleless custom who treats him as a criminal asking my reason for coming to UK.  Although I was quite lucky in this respect, but I couldn't help wonder the necessary of assuming every human being as criminal. 

Also as an experiment that I did before in London in front of the Gherkin.  A security guard came and talk to me although he was kind, but it was well obvious that he is uncomfortable about my presence in front of the building.  London, the city with the highest number of CCTVs while celebrating its own cultural diversities, a perfect representation of post modernism, everyone can find its corner.  The movie 'Red Road' also shows the aspect of UK security system. 

Red Road by Andrea Arnold

I often thought about the point of living in a democratic city under supervision by a big brother.  This is no longer a new vocabulary for western society, you are constantly being watched, later on the term was popularised by British reality shows - Big brother shows.  However, when people thought they can remote control the actors by their Tweeter and Voting, they have no idea that they are the one who are being controlled.  They behave according to the designed climax from the show, and then they make choices (They thought they make their own choices, but who made the options? ) and the statistic were gathered by the biggest liar - Media.  

In Shanghai, there are scanners and policemen at every subway station to look at personal belongings in the bag. The policemen would wave their hands to ask passengers to put their bags on conveyor belt.  The funny thing is that people just walked by and pay absolute no attention to them.  

Traffic in Shanghai is horrific, a friend picked me up at a crossroad for lunch, after we met, he just got off from his bicycle and walked in the middle of the road. "Aren't we have to move to the sidewalk?" I ask, he said:"It's ok here."  Indeed, you can definitely see the drivers and cyclists have any respect towards traffic laws.  Every direction at the same time, there is no stop and then go.  It is a tactic way of life, you learn with every step you take, the chances are everywhere, there is no risk management or prevention that works in this state.  You will never know when or where a car might just go out and hit you, and that is the majority of time. 

Back to the reason why I found myself sometimes freer here in Shanghai than Taipei, I felt that it is the awareness makes me feel I am freer, I know the policemen are watching me. I know what might happen when I violet the rules, whilst in other city, at least the majority people weren't aware that they were actually being constantly recording by an invisible eyes.  Not to speak for the chinese people though, I have no idea whether or not they know anything at all.  It is not a racist comment, but it seems that people that I met at the stores, streets, friends, bars aren't really knowing the point of asking why.  

I still keep comparing the two different governments between Taipei and China, however I found that although I can vote for my president every four years, why am I still feel so powerless, alienated and frustrated over the nuclear plantation building, real estate brokers in Shida district... etc. just like the Chinese citizen? 

THE ACE RULE OF GALLERY MANAGING (?)

   

     I remember when I asked my boss how to make a living when you open a gallery.
He told me that: "You have to keep selling, selling and selling."

     This is one part of my first draft where I put into the footnote.  The original story is Dr. Frankenstein want to sell the whole installation as a whole, and forcing artists to sign an unfair contract before get involved in the exhibition.

     So here is my argument towards the selling of the installation.  However, in my final draft, I decided to abandon this crazy, fun plot and choose to make the story develop in a less Tim burton way.

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    Why can't we market the installation, and not just about artworks alone? Since our life has already driving towards a more aesthetic style, there are increased interest in the market since we seem to live under the condition of postmodernity, the process of democratisation has rendered aesthetic products/ experiences equal to many other activities that constitute the experience of everyday life.  That is, life is becoming more like the arts: ephemeral, experiential, and image or style-based. Through the commercial and mediator between the products and the recipients, the market (recipient/ consumer) was being taken a step further by the artist, the art market, advertising imagery, and representation by linking aesthetic processes and contemporary consumption practices, including the examination of representation as a key process of experiencing the world, and of photography as a vehicle for individual and cultural identity construction. 

     However, in order to construct the process of cultural production, it is important to understand how it create and consume not only physical products but also the symbols and meanings within the products.  In order to create symbol, and transfer f these meaning t cultural products.  These symbols is context dependent which operates as codes, or language, thus to construct the meaning (2006; Venatesh& Meamber).  According to Groys in ‘From Medium to Message: The Art Exhibition as Model of a New World Order’.

     In the course of modernity, the curator was considered mostly to be somebody who keeps pushing himself between the artwork and the viewer - and disempowering the artist and the viewer at the same time.  Hence  the art market appears more favourable to modernist, autonomous art than the museum because the works of art circulate singularized, decontextualized, uncurated, the market also functions according the rules of potlatch ... the artwork once it enters art market then it is beyond the justification which the artist is his/her own works’ sovereign origin.  

      But Groys also pointed out in the further reading of the text that the installation does not circulate as the installation is a medium itself which install everything we circulate in our civil life (film, text, object...etc) but the symbols were being privatized by the public exhibition space which as Groys puts ‘the private, sovereign decisions are controlled in our societies to a certain degree by public opinion and political institutions.'        

      My argument here on the possibility of the curator as an artists is positive. Not only curators should market their own aesthetic globally, but also by creating the exhibition installation which format itself as a narrative context that as a medium which opens to the public/ consumer to interpret its codes and language. Not only the curator now is not merely an mediator, but also the artists, he is playing a very important role when it comes to the biennial exhibition, it is essential to recognize that the decision to create a cultural product is ultimately a decision based on the market - that is, whether or not consumers accept (need/ want) the product (2006; Venatesh& Meamber). With the biennial culture and nomadism of most of today’s curator working life, since the consumer attaches to experiences and products, it is noted that a cultural product that provides symbolic benefits consistent with cultural priorities is more likely to be accepted than that one that does not.  

     Here, I am arguing again that the artworks as to artists is a finished products once its completed in the artist’s mind.  The curator who is no longer as a mediator since the installation has its double function as a medium also product to its own audience, a curator with his/her social engagement and aesthetic juxtaposition should posit him/herself as a writer speaks the narratives by curate, facilitate and make the use of artworks so to produces symbols and meaning that the audience can actively participate.  

Collage Works

This is two collages that I made for my Master Project!

WOW it was been a great, tiresome, exhausted enlighten journey for completing the project.

Making these collages are actually helping so much with my project.

I wish I had started right at the beginning. 

Hope you enjoy these two collages that I made. 

Hybridity and Collage and Grotesque

The other day I attended a seminar organised by History of art department with Film studies department.  The seminar ‘The cinema experience today and the current prominence of the grotesque in
cinema and visual culture’ was held by Professor Annie van den Oever from University of Groningen.

The reason that I choose this seminar is because I think hybridity is quite related to my research project.
The professor started to introduce an exhibition of Tim Burton which she enjoys a lot in Paris.  It starts with how Tim burton and Fellini construct their storyline by drawing the characters on paper first.  These drawings provides material for chains of events happens in the story.

She starts with the idea of aesthetic has three major categories: Beauty, Sublime, Grotesque.
Within this genre, the grotesque figure usually has a distorted figure, such as bigger eyes, weird skin colour.  These figures also impossible to be categorised in the normal categories, they have a rather distinct biological, ontological categories.

Another example was mentioned is the figure Jester, a man dresses upside down.

These monstrous, double faced, lower bodily quality but entertain characters, when they appear in the cinema, they are rather artful, full of craft skill. They are a fusion, disproportion, formless gigantic.  The grotesque as an artistic technique, through defamiliarisation would force the audience to see a common thing in a unfamiliar and strange way.  The best example that she gave in the lecture was the artworks from Giuseppe Archimboldo, his works features a way of organising daily objects (ie. Vegetables)

She also mentioned the Uncanny Valley, that by smoothing the human skin could create another grotesque, hybrid figure even if it looks perfectly just like human.
Some other interesting examples that she mentioned in the lecture are

1: Grandma's reading glasses –as the first close-up shot 1900

2: Cindy Sherman
3: Marlene Dumas

and some other interesting essays that I wished I had this seminar earlier so that I ll know these books and read them for my master project.

• Wolfgang Kayser 
  An Attempt to Define the Nature of the Grotesque 
• the grotesque in Art and Literature.
• Frances S. Connelly  Modern art and the Grotesque
• Noel Caroll 

all the audience walked into cinema, and the experience is natural, confrontational and sensational.
Followed by some discussion but somehow became a Fellini film appreciation society.  Similar situation could also be found in an art discussion, somehow become a memory competition of who can remember the more works from the same artists, or the artists who can be categorised in such way.

Sometimes I found that a lot of people come to discuss with a bunch of quotations they learnt from books or articles on their shoulder.  As if the reason they ask questions is really about to show other people "yeah, i remember this metaphor." "AHHA! Look how smart I am to use this expression."
and I am just wondering what is the point of participating a discussion in person, when you always quote, or speak somebody elses' thoughts instead of developing your own voice?

They seems to me are a bunch of A students that is always afraid about failure.  However, I don't think the word failure was defined correctly in most people's heart. So do I, the old me I would say.

I think failure should be something ends different in the way you anticipated which makes you sad or disappointed.

Anyway I enjoyed this film seminar.  I just really don't like how the discussion went, it wasn't only a Fellini film appreciation society, but also a competition of movie titles.

[Artist] John Stezaker

 

 John Stezaker

[ Artist ] Jens Fänge

Jens Fange http://www.gallerimagnuskarlsson.com/artists/jens-f%C3%A4nge

PAUL THEK YOU HAVE A GOOD LAST NAME

Paul Thek was exhibited in the Modern institue during the GI (Glasgow International) in 2012.  The exhibition entitled "If you don't like this book you don't like me." An exhibition shows the artist's private journals and pictures of his studio. As an artist in 60s, it seems that inevitably he carries a burden  with his uncombed hair and week but determined voice which you can hear in his interview video at the 2nd floor.

I decided to talk about his hair and AIDS rather than his artwork since the exhibition is mainly based on his private journals and drawings.  He was famous for his hyper realistic sculpture of himself dead, after one exhibit in Germany, the sculpture was lost or destroyed by anonymous or simply just disappeared at the end of shipping.  It has arrived where it suppose to be, but Paul never came to pick it up.  Some people said that it is because he doesn't want it to be exhibit ever again, some said that it is also because he was disappointed about the work didn't sell.

THe exhibition in Modern institue was mainly focus on Paul Thek's personal journal.  These private journals downstairs takes me to different places that Paul has ever visited, and the things that he saw and drew and everything that he decided to take notes for.  He is not a very good drawer I would say.  It is nothing precise about his drawing, there are several pages that he simply just marked lines in contrast with the ink line belongs to the notebook itself.  These private journal marked the Paul's life such as his breakfasts list or some questions has yet been made.

He seems to be a mediator constantly shifting between different values, sexs, dimensions or even more. He creates environmental art and installation, trying to build up dialogues between art and life, when art was getting more a mannerism in the US, he was trying to bring it to a state where art can meet with life, and being experienced more domestically.  He himself is a bisexual, sexual orientation is not for a single gender but depends on who you feel right with, he looks as if he pays a lot of attention to his body, you can not see much extra fat on his arms, and he is really fit, wearing a tight tank top. But he is definitely thinner than any men who does weight training would like to be.  His voice is solid and certain, but his looks give you a feeling that he might faint in any second, or scream out loud on nothing.

His famous piece is the life scale of himself, a dead body.  He creates and give birth to his death.  Experiencing the last journey by creating a possible representation of himself and then choose to lost it in a box.  A man who constantly in dialogue with things, with nature, with politics, and with rules.

I have always hated how there is a subject in academic institution called communication, or the sales man in Rocky horror picture show that shakes your hands with over performing friendly attitude.
Even if I saw and listen to Paul Thek's journals and interviews,  I would never being able to fully understand his thoughts or what he been through metaphysically.  No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't change the fact that we basically living in a total different time and space.

Should we abandon these history because they pull us back when we were being forced by time to move forward? Can anybody give me any answer?

All photos were copied from The Modern Institute.

Writing Process5: Allan Ginsberg

I have to say a lot of my writing is deeply inspired by the current situation and people around me.

I can still recall the feeling of seeing the London Riot, student protest when I was in Berlin.  Also deeply moved by the Occupy movements, by the people's voices.

They are true poets, they write words with their heart, and that is the other reason why I am so drawn to the Beat generation.

Although I still can't fully understand Naked lunch and all its mise en scene in the novel, but Allen Ginsberg's HOWL is definitely the reason why I related to these writers so much. 

Seeing my generation express how they feel alienated from the society, and seeing all the people (middle aged) or who has a position in the society that claim they have no control over the insane situation when they choose to shut up. 

I tried to imitate Ginsberg's rhyme and thoughts and put them into my writing.  Also my idea not only came from the occupy movement, also from the reading of Angela Mcrobbie on the young labour, and infinite internships, David Gaeber's sadness of immaterial labour.
After reading of Adorno's dialectical relationship between art and economy, saying that the financial income is actually a very important factor which supports Art's autonomy.  Well, well, I am not too sure about that.

Although I do feel stupid of imitating his writing, but apparently that is how writers practices writing.
You are either born with the gift, or you try hard and harder and more harder to become a writer.
你可能不知道駱以軍重打了幾次張愛玲的小說吧

[Artists] Marjetica Potrč 馬偕蒂卡 坡地胥

Lille: The Power of Pattern, 2009, ink on paper
56 x 76 cm

Burning Man: Tensegrity Structure and Waterboy, 2008, Building materials and energy infrastructure, Dimensions variable, Installation view at art berlin contemporary, Berlin 2008

Visionaries of the 60s Confront the Upheavals of Today I, 2007, Winsor and Newton inks on Fabriano artistico GF/CP, 300g/m2, traditionnal white paper, 56 x 76 cm, framed 63 x 83 cm

photo resources: Gallery Nordenhake 

Artists website: Marjetica Potrc

Writing Process 4: a post modern frankenstein

The Lips of Thomas (1976) Marina Abramovic

After starting to research on Post modernism and post humanism, also the idea of self- cannibalism that I started to get more interest on the idea of that the Doctor Frankenstein, the purpose of finding out the secret of creation of life, or the pursuit of God's power.  Instead, it is becoming actually rather freaky now. 

I started to have this idea that actually now, we are our own Doctor Frankenstein, but the idea we were being implanted by the mass media, self reflexivity, constantly criticising the self, the desire of wanting to be better and better, refusing to accept failure, finding another way out. 

We create our ideal social identity through our interaction such as posts and shares on Facebook so that we can show our friends that our interests and passion which now known as identity construction. 

other social media as such like twitter, creating witty comment and interact with hash words also tweeting constantly in order to catch up with new trends, using dramatic adjectives in order to increase followers. 

in this way we had to transform ourselves into another personality or agree, or pretend to be excited about things that we might not originally care. 

Here are movies and interviews that interests me recently and I found it is related to my research process. 

Also, I started to make these connection to what Judith Butler's argument on the performantivity of female  in the society. 

From Angelina Jolie talks about Self-Harm.

Teens self harm

Film- In my skin (2002) by Marina De Van 

Related reading: 

The French Extreme Wave

Nation as an interpretative context for extreme cinema?

Research Process 4: On Art and Fear/ Moral Panic

Reading Paul Virilio's Art and Fear is just like having a conversation in a park with an old man, who is afraid of technology or an experience like when you trying to teach some old ladies to work Excel (I would say it is a badly designed software though).

I constantly having the feeling that the reason of the whole book is full of warning is because he is just too old and too nostalgic about the world when Hitler or Stalin can easily control or brainwash people with cinema or radio.

Although it seems pretty impossible to manipulate mass's mind as what they did in the past, it doesn't mean that it is impossible to implant or create influential effect on the mass.  Thinking about social networks which is already dominated our life, we don't have to, but we applied for it because other people were using it, the twitter trends, or different portal for blogs, we don't actually need it, and we could simply just say no, such as facebook, but when everybody is using it, the force of connectivity, not only virtually, but when there are a lot of things are happening on these portals, we followed our wills to consent to these things. They didn't force us, but they make us think that we need it.

Talking about the deafness of the contemporary arts in the age of the multimedia, with the tele- age coming, also the digital era, he addresses concerns

"Meta-musical ambient music' what this means is a style music of the spheres without sound, presenting the symptoms of a blinding that would be the exact counterpart to the silence of the lambs... electro-acoustic music will generate new form of visual art. Eletro-optic computer graphics will similarl erase the demarcation line between the different art forms."

He warns that the contemporary art has a crisis of meaning, NONSENSE, just like Camus and Sartre was on about.  However, there are some points that I do agree with Paul Virilio, as the contemporary art is getting hyper violence and hypersexual, the mean of art becoming promoting rather than communicating, later thinking about the media presentation, and the immediacy of art and its ability to be perceived at a glance, to be heard without delay, without the necessitating attention, our reflex was conditioned before we even had time to reflect.

     With the indictment of silence, contemporary art can't quite shake off the accusation of passivity, indeed, of pointlessness       - Paul Virilio


Therefore Paul Virilio in this book challenges the freedom of expression and reclaim the pitiful art and the politic of silence from an art world enchanted by its own extinction because to refuse pity is to accept the continuation of war.

At the end of the essay he said, also stucked me the most is:

What has recently taken place in Austria in the aftermath of the tragedy that has been playing out for ten years in the Balkans proves yet again that POLITICS, like ART, has limits, and that democratic freedom of expression stops at the edge of an abyss, on the brink of the call to murder - Limits blithely crossed by those already going by the name of THE MEDIA OF HATE.    -Paul Virilio 

[Artist] Zhao Renhui

Writing Process 3: Sickness is part of it.

Having eczema on my body for more than 4 months now which I had never gotten before.  I have been trying to eat more healthy also seeing doctors. They said it might be the stress that I am having so I keep having eczema.

Last month I vomited 4 times in two weeks, others I don't remember.  It wasn't because I was drinking heavily or whatever, but I always vomit before I went out to see friends, or after any sort of social gathering.  I guess I started to feel guilty to go out.

Also one of the situation really kills me is it seems I am all on my own.   Nobody ever taught me what to do, and what's not to do.  It seems like that when I accepted by the school, I should automatically equipped with research methods.  BUT I DIDN'T KNOW.

I guess this is part of my master degree symptom, it is such a solitary situation that I am in.
My emotion starts to change radically according to any incidents that happened in my life.
I cannot control my emotion, which I used to be able to. I have difficulties to talk with friends about it, because it would only make them feel bad.  Not to mention my family, because their worries don't really have any practical help.

[Artist] Dorothy Iannone

Dorothy Iannone was born in 1933, Boston, now lives in Berlin.  Her new exhibition in Peres Projects, Berlin titled Sunny Days and Sweetness showing her artworks depicting female and male sexual intercourse.  The way she portrait female sexuality is not repressed or exploited like the teacher in Ghost World would have loved.  The stiffness of her portraits these human figures and the deliberately white space on human subjects, in contrast with the back ground, clothing, accessories, vivid typography, makes me thinking of the old paintings in the cave, or on the wall when people still thinks the cave can just be the natural skin colour for human, or there is no need to put colour onto human skin. 

I am not sure about my attitude towards hedonism representation in painting yet, after all, I do think our generation is not so much hedonistic, at least not in 70s sense.  I think we really need a new vocabulary to represent the state of mind of our generation, although nothing can ever be fully represented - from lot of philosopher's point of view.  so we can only put words such as post-, alte- super-, alter- in front of or after to state the chaotic feeling that we can never make sense of unless we are remote to a certain degree.  

Photo credit: Peres Projects

Resources: http://moussemagazine.it/dorothy-iannone-peres/

Writing Process 2: Monologue.

So here is the thing, that I started to do writing that contains three different time and perspective in the same writing piece that I am about to submit at the mid may.

One of them I have decided to make it as a monologue from the writer.  The content will mainly concern with anything the writer encounters or interested in, and wanting to put in the novel but feel struggled to put in the novel.

The reason that I started to use monologue was because the other day at a dinner party at my friend's in Leith Walk.  We started to read The Vagina Monologue by Eve Ensler.  I was deeply moved by such performative literature, also I started to think about all the stand up comedian that I saw recently, not like I have seen a lot, but it just seems that they are the smartest person in the world.

Monologue as the speech in the play that the actor address his/hers thoughts to either another characters, or the audience.  From researching Monologue, I remembered an event that I partly attended during our FAIR presented by my fellow classmates Joseph and Lia, The Soapbox, simply speaks, soapbox is people who have anger towards the society but there is no one to talk to, they would pick up a soapbox and place it at the corner of a park or some public space and stand up to make a speech of their thoughts out loud which appears in a lot of labour party speech, the content is usually very political related, and these people were sometimes being treated as maniac.

Later I came across performance poetry, Laurie anderson, and then I endding up in the Happening initiated by Allan Kaprow.  The performance piece is in Spring, 1957. The key elements in the performances were planned, but its welcome improvisation and participatory audience,

later came across the Zombie walk, which was seen related to the Happening performance.

video from Laurie Anderson - The Language is Virus.

Writing Process

Today I finally came up with some idea for my art writing piece and I am quite exciting about it.

Thanks to my eternal inspiration resource : FILMS that makes it happened.
Since I started to write also doing research altogether at the same time, I thought it might be also helpful for me to document a little bit of my writing process.


Here are the movie that really strikes me this morning.

Stranger than fiction

This afternoon I bumped into Lewis in the library and the movie clip I was watching happened to have some sexy scene involved. I started to defend that the sex scene wasn't part of my research, and we laughed about it. But later I started to wonder why I feel the necessary to over explaining it. I found it is very interesting so I decided to to create a sort of writer's manifesto alongside of my writing piece.

Writing a fiction on contemporary art is actually very difficult.  It seems no way to rationalised the conversation between artists and those bourgeois.  By watching the clips above, I found out that a way to portrait a personality is actually not really about the way they dress or what they said when they are angry, but appears when they are trying something they were afraid of.

Check it out~

Mirror and the Self

It seems that the minimalistic has the obsession with mirrors, from this article from Frieze, talking about the exhibition 'My head is on fire but my heart is full of love" curated by Glasgow based curator, Toby Webster, and Will Bradley and Henriette Bretton-Meyer in Copenhagen, Denmark. 

Here are several photographs that dealt with mirror and the self, which reminds me of the exhibition ' Microstoria' that I co-curated with my classmates from Edinburgh college of Art last year. 

David Bowie

David Bowie and Mick Ronson.

Tomas Burr, 1995.

David Bowie
 

Tom Burr, Brutalist Bulletin Board (detail), 2001

  

Also came across this morning on "Individual mythology", and I was wondering what it exactly means, 

later I found an explanation on personal mythology which the swiss/German painter Paul Klee, has dealt with his personal mythology in his paintings.  

Notes on the autonomous of art 1

Just some notes on my reading today

From literature theory's point of view to look at poetry as a form of art, and why was it so special.
The lecture starts from Plato's definition that saying the poets are liars.
But Aristotle argues that Poet does not interpret the world as it is, but the way it should be.
Beauty is the form of the purposiveness of an object, so far as it perceived in it,

structure, organism, purposive, an aesthetic object can be purposeful.

Oscar wilde - all art is quite useless - it is an unique thing 

we don't have to have interest in it in order to appreciate it, or in the sense of owning a company. 

we can be objective about it, we can be distance ourselves from our subjective of wants and unwants ..like and dislike.  We can co exist with it in a happy and constructive way. that is good for both of us. 

the recognition of our own value.

the self efficiency of our own art. 

it is not a serving science expression merely to represent things than other in itself.

our capacity of being disinterested in 

a way of acknowledging the freedom that existence that i am free that the things are free from my intructmental  interest in that.

serving nothing -  autonomous 

sustains and keeps bringing back into 

simply for its own sake - Kant "Art of art's own sake. 

new criticism -  a school of the idea that the indecent status of the work of art/ it means the work of art can be appreciated within the complicity. 

the experience called BEAUTY is as it is beyond the power of ethical world precisely as it is beyond the animal passion. 

ethical will / animal passion = grounded in passion.

by the advertise / by the moral reason  ---- the other category (judgement?) 

naked and nude (the semi conscious way/ that a category of aesthetic judgement) 

wimsatt - the romantic understanding the literature

romantic - the poem is an expression of some passion or profound genius, working its way into a form, but the important is its expression. 

the meaning/ the subject matter - the way in which the reader can interpret the meaning.

a põem is not and an expression but an independent object with self contained meaning.

The success or failure of a poem depends on the realisation of the meaning. if the meaning is not clear in the poem, then we judge the poem as a failure, if we respect the autonomy in the poem, then we don't appeal to the authorial intension.  Hence, the design or the attention of the author is neither available or desirable as a judge of a work of literary art. 

it is not a representation of the things they are but the things they should be. 

all literature is in implication - a poem. 

counter- intuitive: in the history of word. 

Research Process 2

I had tutorial with Neil yesterday, and I lied to him that I started writing.

will, actually I opened computer everyday and write something about art, but I think all the stuff that I wrote is shit. 

I am not sure about the frankenstein idea is a good idea, and I think I started to grow some emotion about my life here.

Thinking about my favourite taiwanese writer, who came to Edinburgh to study History.

She did MA, and then kept pursuing PHD in University of Edinburgh. But she gave up her phd research because she no longer see the reason to do research on History. 

The other day I was reading Deleuze and Guattari's view of the world which made me even more aimless.

Now all the things that I can think of is only eat and poo and eat and work out and pee.
So maybe I should just open an restaurant in Edinburgh or some sort.  But I don't think I am going to do the cooking.

Anyway the tutorial is like a nice chat with professor.
I will try to present a map that includes important milestones for my story.
or I will just write a dirty story about the monster's cock is actually from a man die from STDs because he went to art school and met a lot of performance artists who thinks nudity is a statement for womanhood.
And He rapes all the artists that wouldn't sign the contracts for the exhibition.  There is only one artists that has condom but he wouldn't risk to put the condom on the monster's cock because he is fucking selfish.

a selfish artist eventually being forced to proceeding oral sex with the monster and die.

~THE END~ 

Research Process

Just read something from Italo Calvino. (Reading Italo Calvino online free)

Just wondering if I should write about my breakfast this morning into the novella as well. 

Just in case Neil would like to know. 

Just thought the breakfast is also a very important part of my research. 

Just worried about if it's too late to approach post modern writing. 

Just wrote down a sentence 'I read Everything is illuminated' by Jonathan the Jew' on my blog. 

Just thought it is actually a truth but why it feels like a lie when I typed it out. 

Just decided that I should write about my breakfast also my weekend in my novella. 

Just confirmed with myself that my weekend is too interested to not write about it. 

Just grow another admiration for English.

Just almost teared a book of 'Billy childish' apart.

Just confirmed again that some of this artist's writing is unbearable boring. 

Just felt very regretted about taking the book 'Sex crime of the Futcher'
Just thought 'Ok, no the book is actually okay.'

Just tried to remember why I took this book.

Just realised that I took any book contains 'Sex' 'Rape' 'Erotic' 'Porn' 

Just thought about what would I do if I can choose my research project again. 

Just thought it's time to stop. 

Writing Process4: Thinking About these voices

     I can still remember vividly how irritated it is for me to read English translated novel.  I basically hate, deeply hated how these people writes.  They don't go straight to the point, the way they perceived their environment is shallow and borin, they failed to describe how birds sings and the difference between these melodies.  Basically, I think these translated-novels are the most boring books that I can see in the bookstore.  

     Their slang is mostly derived from life experience, but lack of historical stories as Mandarin.  The depth of language is because its lost of history.  Mandarin, as it has long history since it has first invented (Not sure about the one china uses though.), every words and characters contains how the ancient people perceived the world, how it changes through different dynasties, what type of aesthetic at then was valued by the Royal dynasty, and evolve into the language that Taiwanese uses now.  Mandarin writers, ancient or modern, past or now, most of them would know the importance of including the unspeakable in the written words.  And I think that is the beauty about Mandarin.  You can have a thousand way to describe flowers and each of them related to a story behinds them, which makes itself an connecting dot itself  that never stops expending. 

     Ever since I started to read in English, I was drawn to how expressive and nowness this language could be.  I felt this is a language for confession, for explanatory, for puns and witty humour to exist.  Although it is not as figurative as Mandarin is, but people who has a little bit studies in Graphic design would know, the typography in Mandarin is never possible to be clean and neat as the English one.  A language seems to be able for you to open to more experiment, more affront, more about what happens now. 

     I don't know if I can actually handle the language that well to write an fiction, but I thought maybe it is a chance for me to finally really writing what I want to say.  

Tutorial with Angela

So I decided to start from scratch this semester, but the idea of using Frankenstein as an allegory of how curator as Dr. Frankenstein collaging all the works of art by artists together, and therefore imposing meaning onto the exhibition, and these artworks will therefore being treated as parts and bits of fleshes from the body of artists.

Angela helps me to clarify several research point that I might want to be careful with in my master project.

•  Be careful with assuming 'why art is good.'
• David Graber's article 'the sadness of post-workerism'

The danger of assuming art is good comes from the modernist idea of art should be a good thing that helps to elevate the public to intellegent level.  But believing art is a good thing is not neccesarily true, also to create wealth (using art to create wealth could be a good thing)

Related reading could be found in Greenberg's writing, also examples from Jeff Koons ( the motive of making art shift from pure art to marketing.)

Remember to justify the assumption and approach.
why I m using this fiction writing to illustrate the scenario.
who I trying to effect.

How the assumption works in the contemporary art world?
assumptions as

• art is a good thing
• why should not creating art in order to serve as a market value.
• morality of artist

Try to present the modernist idea of 'Art is a good thing' in my essay in order to present the shift of the postmodern idea of why art and why art makes us a better humanbeing?

The commodification of art ----> demolish the idea that art as an alternative space? really?
maybe not, because maybe the commodification of art is also another alternative in its value setting.  There are rarely any rule and precisely apply to art market (at least for living artists).


Thinking about the double side of human being, good ---- bad. 

it seems to be a much bigger project than I would ve thought at the beginning of my 2nd year. 

2012惠特尼雙年展聲明/ Whitney Biennial 2012

2012 年惠特尼雙年展(2012, whitney biennial)將於三月一日開展：惠特尼博物館要求兩大主要贊助公司撤資聲名，與對於所有參展藝術家公開致歉。

雕塑，畫作，裝置藝術與攝影，以及舞蹈藝術，劇場，音樂與電影將於最近的紐約惠特尼雙年展展出。。自1932年開辦惠特尼雙年展（博物館成立於兩年前）以來，惠特尼雙年展持續與所有參展的藝術家藉由此屆雙年展來探討現今美國當代藝術的情況，並於今年邁入第七十六屆雙年展。

今年惠特尼雙年展決定將與多年贊助此雙年展的主要廠商- 蘇富比拍賣會(Sotheby's)與德意志銀行(Deutsche Bank)終止合作關係。鑒予其營業方針已對於雙方的合作關係造成不可彌補的障礙。

關於我們的贊助者

惠特尼要求贊助者撤資後仍會持續努力讓今年雙年展開幕，可惜的是在蘇富比提出對其他藝術資產擁有者的惡意要脅之前，我們已經與其簽約。去年蘇富比在拍賣會上創下價格新高，並且獲利超過十億美元，他們支付六百萬給其執行長。然而卻刻意利用合約從八月開始停止支付其員工薪水，在2011年年底，這些員工因此而失去他們及其家人的醫療保險。

惠特尼發現這些藝術作品在被二度拍賣時，大多數的獲利全被富有的投資客納入口袋，而真正創作的藝術家，連帶搬運工人，設展員工，技術人員皆被排除在此的獲利之外。我們瞭解藝術家（以及那些必須兼差來維持生活）與員工皆有權享有基本工資與應有的勞健保，而蘇富比拍賣會對於此勞工權益的霸凌與惠特尼博物館理念 ‘支持與收購在世藝術家作品’背道而馳。基於以上原因，惠特尼博物館決定不再讓蘇富比拍賣會玷污惠特尼雙年展的名聲。

惠特尼雙年展也要求與德意志銀行結束合作關係。基於德意志銀行正面對多起法律訴訟案件與詐欺案件的起訴。美國政府起訴德意志銀行貸款詐欺，並索賠超過10億美元，德意志銀行虛報其發放按揭貸款質量，使美國聯邦住房管理誤認這些貸款合乎發放保險標準，從而獲得政府擔保，目前該行正被聯邦住房管理，教師保險，與年金管理協會起訴。德意志銀行的行為已經對社會造成許多的負擔，並且使許多人失去工作與存款甚至家園。惠特尼博物館基於該行的各種行為與雙年展探討議題產生衝突等原因決定不再接受該行的贊助。

向所有參展藝術家致歉

惠特尼博物館很榮幸的能夠重新分配過去被大型財團與投資所霸佔的資源給與應得的藝術家。特別是在現今政經社會中，所有資產分配被集中於少數有錢人身上，而大多數人面臨破產與無家可歸，無法負擔健保，無法負擔食物的現象。然而，惠特尼雙年展仍意識到有些贊助者會希望藉由贊助此次雙年展來漂白其形象，並藉雙年展來隱瞞其對於社會資源的耗損與累積財富。這些贊助者借機將創意、智慧財產、文化資本化，基本上將整個社會改造成無法生存的世界。惠特尼雙年展意識到許多新秀藝術家為了參與主要博物館的展覽造成其職業面臨威脅，並間接允許前贊助者對於藝術家們的剝削利用致上歉意。本館希望此次參展藝術家能夠與我們共同譴責過去贊助者的錯誤，並信任藝術家們會利用此次的資源孵育出一個更有活力、能夠生存、公平、持續發展的世界。

Translate from:  http://whitney2012.org/
Translated by Yen Yi Lee

The Shocking Value of Art

Monument to Pro-Life: The Birth of Sean Preston by Daniel Edwards 

     Reread the introduction of Art and Outrage written by John Walker reminds me of the anger after attending several gallery exhibitions in Berlin during my visit there. 

I remember i wasn't very interested to go into any sort of gallery opening anymore, not only because they stop giving free booze (I don't think I will have to create any footnote for this) but because of the reason that after seeing so many penis in different gallery shows, I evolved a great confusion of art. 

although, it is nice to know that I am not alone.  John walker pointed out in his book that the combination of avant garde ideology + capitalist market in art = encouraged individualism and extremism. 

We went through the age of harmonious, organic compositions to now the value of beauty was replaced by cults of the primitive and the ugly. The change shows that artists' desire to shock and startle the bourgeois class, and their work refused to provide meaning and context because it meant to be experienced as a shock! by withdraw the meaning will direct the reader's attention to question about life and feel the need to change it. 

      However, what happens now when this kind of works have become the norm.  When avant garde became institutionalized, gallery visitor being 'trained' to prepare that being shock before they entre art galleries, maybe the shock value is no longer as significant as they were before. 


     It is certain to me that most of the human attention being attract to deformity, ugliness, sensational objects, which happens to be what mass media mostly interested in, which attracts the most publicity, however the combination of shocking art production and make profit out of shock lead to a recipe of disaster. Producing art that wishes to disgusted where no man has disgusted before is not artistic, but rather for startling people. 


    From another book 'Art and Fear', Paul Virilio was telling about how the contemporary artists live in the time which impacted by Nazi concentration camp and accepted the side-effect produces pitiless art, and how the technology development makes genetic become a culture thus artists started to abandon ethics. 


I have always interested in the ethics in art, and actually that is my original idea for my master project, which now develop into a form of Frankenstein.  I found it is very hard, such a challenge to present the ethical argument as Shelly did in the novel. 

C U R A F I A

This is a game workshop that I put together for the FAIR.  It will happen on 27th February and will be recorded on video. 

Right now I have been more interesting in the idea that I think we don't actually share any common knowledge in contemporary art world, but only mutual knowledge. And I think this is one of the reason that we can't not fully anticipate how to be successful in contemporary art world by following established path. 

The players of the game each held partial information, and they have to made judgement based on partial information otherwise they will be eliminate from the exhibition planning because they construct threat to the curators. 

When artists put themselves in other people's shoes, they also have to anticipate the fact that all the other people but this set of rules can or cannot being operated in a world where rationality isn't necessarily being required to be the prior elements for their social interaction. 

[Art Dealer research] Jay Jopling.

Rave Reviews

I am currently collecting some of the information and gossips on gallerist and curators.
I wondered how they became successful, and how's their public imagery being established.


Starting from Jay Jopling from White Cube Gallery.
I collected several dialogue that he has, or statement he made regards to art world and artists.


"Jay is very funny and he's the last person standing at a party. It's amazing. He has got incredible energy." He is often frank, to the point of being risque  - Matthew Slotover, the co-director of the Frieze art fair

"He is loquacious and very attentive to his artists, but it takes a particular talent to convince collectors and to go to all those parties and be a generous host. The appearance of generosity is very important."

Jay Jopling-

"To be that successful you have got to be strong in two areas," he says. "You have to choose the right artists and keep them happy, and then you have got to be able to sell to collectors and museums. It is unusual to be good at both."

Jopling has described his work as a "means of establishing a bridge between attitudes"

Frankenstein Game Trial

Curator Jérôme Sans and others /during the opening of This is Fucking Awesome 

F E E D B A C K   A N D   C R I T I C

     This afternoon I gave a trial on my game intervention on the Mafia game, there are several suggestion from the players that I found very useful. 

also it was very fruitful that people who were playing with know each other to a certain degree, and willing to play, and actually put into the role. 

The moderator is a very key factor for whether or not the game would be successful or not, also as a moderator, I have to be careful that what I said and my behavior, body language might affect players judgement.  

• It might be good to walk around the room, so that people wouldn’t be able to guess who I am. 
• Try not to reveal any of the character during the night cycle. 
• Being able to impose strategic thoughts into the players mind. 
• Try to find out a way to manipulate the whole game as the moderator, because the moderator has the ultimate power (MEGA-CURATOR)
• Will the metaphor work?

I found it is very interesting if I keep reminding people that they have to base on their understanding towards each other, also making judgement based on previous events. 

The moderator can play with the memory, and I found it is good to suggest people that they should suspect people’s behavior. 

HOW THE IDEA CAME FROM

Basically the idea came from several texts that I have been given during the seminar discussion, it was involved with a lot of discussion on authorship and the shifted nature of contemporary art scene. It is important that I found the role of the curator requires the ability to not only be a observant also be a predator, Mafia and curator shared several common feature are 

• Dominate Character
• The possibility of collusion (Price fixing with the collectors and auction house) 

It is not to accuse people’s morality, but to think of what is the mean to get what you want. 

It is hard for artists to think they are the civilian, and this is not all true as well. But considering the possibility that after all, it is not everybody who will going to be a predator, so we need to know how to work and how to create the best scenario even if the role that you taken is not the dominate role.  I found the common feature between artists and civilians are 

• Working as a collective
• May or may not have sufficient power.
• The information they know, and the resources they can use, are often limited, and being filtered.
• Emerging artists might often work collectively
• The information of the economic value of their work, the placement of their works aren’t being controlled by the artists during the most cases.  

During the accusation period, is the only time that the artists may have certain power to eliminate the curators, but they have to be careful because the face that curators may affect the situation by accusing another person, or even the critics, and then the artists might ending up eliminate the role who helps them. 




Key to win the game: It is essencial to do during the accusation time (Day circle) for Curators (Mafia), Critic(Detective), Academic scholar(Doctor) to put your feet in other people's shoes, to estimate how they would think and act during the night time. 


It is also very important for artists to question, who is accusing and trying to guide people to support their own goal, rather than consider others benefit? ( Who said this is good art, and how to manipulate the auction price?) 


There will be more allegories for exhibition scenario and the role of academic scholar, Critic later on my blog.  So stay tune.