Helmut Lang - Though solitude feeds him creatively

Today I had a big discovery of that Helmut Lang is showing at an NYC Gallery - Sperone Westwater-  which I think is newly opened quite close to the New Museum at 257 Bowery.

Without much understanding about his practice in fashion but I have been adore his clothing for a while. It's an absolute pleasure to be able to get to know his works again. 

I also enjoyed this article that W magazine did on Helmut Lang a lot. Here are some parts that I really enjoyed. 

photographer Bruce Weber on HL :  “I always felt that Helmut wasn’t really in the fashion world—he was in his own world,” regards Lang as something of an outsider artist.

HL''s latest incarnation is simply “an evolution, a progression,” not a break. “I wanted to explore everything I knew on a different level,” 

His approach—whether to making fashion or art—is the same: “to arrive somewhere completely different from where you started.” Risk comes with the territory. “Once I’m committed,” he says, “I’m unafraid of the outcome.”

Lang redefined the face of modern fashion largely by listening to no one but himself. When asked if he fears taking his work public, he replies with Yoda-like equanimity: “It will mean something or nothing—but that is also part of the purpose. It’s time to grow, and eventually, it is what it is.”

Roni Horn on HL: “His clothing design was always sculptural in nature­—very material based, very physical, and then sensual and sexual,” “It’s his way of living and relating to things.” 

“I wanted to take all the time I needed to feel comfortable with what I’m doing now, to transfer my voice to a different medium, to different proportions.” No longer ruled by the fashion calendar, he began archiving the clothes he’d designed and the notes and objects he’d collected.

“Selective Memory Series” for the avant-garde magazine Purple—80 pages consisting largely of digitally manipulated notes from Lang’s friends and fashion colleagues.

“accidental visual pattern” irrespective of time, rank or gender."

Curator:  Neville Wakefield. “materials that have the imprint of history on them,” . “There’s an extent to which he’s excavating his own past and stripping it of the associations it might have had and turning it into something new.” “Most people start with a tabula rasa, Helmut starts with something elaborate and often ornate and reduces it to its abstract essence, which is what he did in fashion as well.”

HL:“I was never so directly inspired by fashion,” Lang says. “It always came from somewhere else. Kurt gave me to understand that whichever way you approach things, that’s the only way to do it.”“I’ve never been interested in the event when I’m the center of attention,”

1996 Firenze biennial  Looking at Fashion

First collaboration with Jenny holder  I Smell You on My Clothes

 Lang created the scent for the room—a blend of “clean shirts, dirty linen, sweat and sperm,” says Holzer, who made two LED installations that hung from the ceiling, pulsing such poetic messages as YOU ARE THE ONE; YOU ARE THE ONE WHO DID THIS TO ME; YOU ARE MY OWN. The same text showed up in the Holzer works Lang later displayed in his clothing stores and perfumery, in which he also exhibited sculptures by Bourgeois.

“Alles Gleich Schwer" (All has equal weight) 

- “Fashion has an impact on our lives in terms of what we want to reveal or not, how we want to define ourselves,” he says. “It’s just one of the ingredients I’m interested in.” 

1998 he collaborated with Bourgeois and Holzer on an exhibition for the Vienna Kunsthalle.

 He used two songs that Bourgeois recorded in the soundtrack for his fall 2003 presentation.

2014  http://www.speronewestwater.com/exhibitions/helmut-lang/installations#2

Posthumanist again.

Here is the future that Kaku tells us.

"Mirror mirror on the wall, who is available tonight?"

Having orgasm while you are creating something.

Miranda July's new project "We Think Alone", has been proceeding it's 9th week.  Every week we received private emails of individual participants on different topics or their motif when they were writing emails.

One of the email from Etgar with two book reading attached in his email on what he's working on, a story "Unzipped" read by Miranda July.

It was mentioned in the reading that a Belgium writer- his penis would erect while he is writing.  I found that I have the same feeling before, not the erection though, but the feeling of falling in love. Whenever my thought achieved some kind of senses of enlightenment, I would feel my body just couldn't sit in front of the table anymore and I have to keep moving around or finding other more active things to do meanwhile biting my hands and accelerated heartbeats.

Having been enchanted by film "9 Songs" by filmmaker Michael Winterbottom, the lovers would always make passionate love after each concert they saw. This makes me wonder, maybe creativity is coming from a sort of desire that is to communicate, just like how sperms would automatically swim to the ovum, it is the desire of reaching something that creates the path towards the direction, no matter fast or slow, the path it creates is aiming at the moment, not the result, perhaps.  Apart from the example of the Belgium writer, I also have an example from the TV series "Don't trust the bitch at Apartment 23" where Chloe has difficulties about figuring out her life or next step, she would just go out to have one night stand with some hot guy and during their sex, the idea would come out.

Is it what platonic love really means? Is it how the eternity in an hour (William Blake) is about?
Speaking of platonic love, perhaps it was never about getting "the one" or "accomplishment", it was always about the feeling of longing, the rite of passage.  A good film performance by Nicole Kidman in The Paperboy that Charlotte develops affection towards Van Wetter from the love letters they exchange, he wasn't the only one that got her letters at the beginning, but he was somehow the only one that didn't mention about sex intercourse in the letters to Charlotte, as oppose to other criminals who were verbally raping Charlotte when they were writing the reply. This makes Van Wetter stands out and the desire between the two was so strong that they both achieve orgasm from distance when they met each other for the first time. Their love ends when Van Wetter got out of the jail and they live together.

This has no conclusion, because this post is never about finding out what happened after orgasm, but the process of achieving orgasm.

Post coïtum animal triste is too cruel to be written into this post, perhaps the endless longing for something else is the nature of human being, so why were we want it so much if at the end we won't appreciate it? 

Fail Better | Curated by Dr. Brigitte Kölle in Hamburg Kunsthalle

Bas Jan Ader (1942 – 1975), Fall 2, Amsterdam 1970 (Dokumentation), 16 mm Filmproduktion, schwarz-weiß, ohne Ton © Mary Sue Ader-Andersen / Bas Jan Ader Estate at the Patrick Painter Gallery

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter.
Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

----------Samuel Beckett, WorstwardHo, 1983

       美國社會學家Richard Sennett 曾說過在現今社會中，失敗已經成為一個新的禁忌。追求成功，卓越的職場表現，與創造最大獲利等價值觀隨著時代演變的愈是重要。如此價值觀擴張的情況下，「失敗」「幻滅/ 夢碎」「損失」「挫折」的接受空間則是越來越小。

      這場在hamburg kunsthalle由德國女性策展人Brigitte Kölle所策劃的展覽「Fail Better 」囊括了藝術家去看待失敗的角度，以及這些因為寄望成功而發生的失敗。在藝術的領域裡，失敗一直是藝術家在創作過程中必要之一環。作家Samuel Beckett 描述這種過程為“Try again/ fail again / fail better." 儘管失敗這個概念令人敬而遠之，但其代表的意義卻不只是達到極限與被擊敗；它暗示你新的事物，全然不同的選擇或意料之外發生的可能性。

      

       「也只是可能性而已。」小海補充。

       女學生說：「我們能做的，不是以『可能性』這樣的用詞來貶抑可能性，而是為『可能性』創造條件。」     

              ------胡淑雯 《太陽的血是黑的》

Exhibition works: http://www.hamburger-kunsthalle.de/index.php/fail-better-material.html

Elizabeth Peyton

Practice on Curating (2)

Failure has different currency in the realm of art.  

Artists have long turned their attention to the unrealizability of the quest for perfection, or the open-endness of experiment, using both dissatisfaction and error as means to rethink how we understand our place in the world.  

No one set out to strive for failure.  However, to strive to fail is to go against the socially normalised drive towards ever increasing success.  

When Failure is released from judgemental term, and success deemed overrated, the embrace of failure can become an act of bravery, of daring to go beyond normal practices and enter the realm of not-knowing.

                                    ---------- from Introduction of Failure, Strive to Fail, Lisa Le Feuvre. 

Practice on Curating (1)

Dieter Roth 

This is the day 1 for documenting the research and progress of my project on establishing a curating career from scratch.

Coming back to Asia after finishing my two years of master degree in Edinburgh, I experienced a lot of emotions that I have been prepared for, but still can't handle it very well.

The biggest one is the expectation from family members that was far different than I thought.  As soon as I came back to Taiwan, my relatives started to suggest me to do secretary-like jobs that guarantees me safe incomes and positive social status. My grandmother's biggest wish for me is to get a husband in short coming years also not to travel abroad so much as before.  My mother is hoping me to import luxury brands's products from UK, Europe to sell in Taiwan, or trying to work for any agencies as long as it's from a government organisation.

It is a strange situation that I am in, in the way I am glad that they didn't put too much expectation on the master degree I earned abroad.  What it means is that the sort of jobs that I am looking for, doesn't have to pay me tons of money, they don't expect that I am the one to support the family, but as long as it sounds like a nice job to my future husband's family.
As if to them, the biggest success is to find a good family to marry and to have a good job title.
It is not about my personal satisfaction also they strongly suggested that work isn't suppose to relate to your interest anyway, or it will always end up as a broken dream.

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.