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.