Over the past days I have had a very interesting conversation with Taiyo. It covers some of our ideas regarding appropriation, collage, content…
Taiyo has published excerpts of this conversation, typos and all. It is valuable to exchange thoughts and open out to new ideas. I was initially intrigued by the animations she has started to post and contacted her because I found correspondences with what she was saying and doing with my current thinking. It is fascinating how correspondences manifest in things which appear at the outset very different. Is this because there are common threads, are these links an artefact of perception, is it a response to the context and environment? I suspect it is a little of all three.
The documentation of this sort of dialogue is very valuable and unfortunately not that common. It arose spontaneously and without the aim of compiling a document. I must thank Taiyo for having formalised this ongoing exchange from the seemingly fragmented format of the email.
Lev Manovich’s essay The Practice of Everyday (media) Life was the focus of today’s conversation. The essay touches on a number of ideas I have been thinking about for some time.
Such as the idea of consumption and production of cultural objects and how the origination of material from scratch is being affected by the current environment that facilitates and enhances appropriation of material from other authors on a wide scale. I feel that this has had an effect on the idea of transformation in art works, particularly from the physical material to the idea and message.
The colonisation of the imagination by new technology and those that use it is another related issue. Michelle brought up the question of independence of artistic process in this regard and its corollary uniqueness in the context of commercial imperatives in the media. I feel rather pessimistic about this, it requires a great awareness and resolve to make an affirmative choice not to be swayed by the pressures around us including social media and advertising.
The tensions between strategy and tactics and those that employ them is an extensive subject area brought up in the discussion. The image below illustrates this tension: between the tactics of individuals in response to corporate/civic strategy in the context of urban living.
As Jonathan aptly put it…
the strategy of the city planners was the path went round the grass circle – the tactics of us the people was to say no and walk our own way – yes straight over
Amongst other things said, Pav mentioned rightly that qualities of tactics include creativity, critical analysis and intelligent problem solving.
Jonathan also added tentatively, individuality and community as in subcultures gathering around shared tactics. What Manovich points out is that subcultures have in recent decades become commoditised and commercialised so that their rebellious, subversive nature is subsumed into a larger field of social acceptance and monetisation. Perhaps one reason why subcultures change rapidly and new ones emerge as another example of tactics in navigating a controlled environment.
Tactics are decentralised, impermanent and unmappable (De Certeau), they are also adaptable and modular. Jonathan points out that unmappability is due to the sheer numbers of people creating their own individual tactics. However, Manovich suggests that Web 2.0 has made many tactics mappable (traceable), permanent and visible. Control has been handed over to the users but could this be an illusion? Are tactics shaped by the controls of the technology, is this part of a grand design, a spontaneous set of behaviours arising out of a chaotic and competitive field, or is it a question of individual freedom being manipulted? One way of looking at this problem is find out who owns the code, the data and who controls the data. I fear that the answer may not be that optimistic. It is an evolutionary process, inexorable and pitiless. How could this process be described?
When our attention turned to AMVs, Manovich’s example of user generated content, the discussion quickly turned to the aesthetics and merits of such videos and the process of making. However, the point was about the videos being the makers’ tactics. The question posed, are they subverting the original narratives of the anime films and the music or are they being colonised by the tools used? Does the tech and the appropriation of material shape the feel and look of the film too much? I think that seeing these are videos made by fans showing off their technical savvy and skill, they are meant to have a close correspondence with the original source material. However, I also feel that for the majority, the learning process is too tied to the style which might well embed itself in the aesthetic space of the makers stifling their individuality: one is pretty much the same as another. But could this not be said of any school of artistic practice?
One thing, it may limit the imaginative and creative possibilities in the future for those that learn through this pathway but it is empowering. As with many things there are pros and cons which cannot be considered dogmatically. The empowerment is a way of rewarding those that allow themselves to be controlled at a deeper level. Then again, the AMV maker of today might subvert the genre and go on to create something complete new and different, the one in ten thousand.
The overall sense of the discussion intersects with my own interests in the dynamics between the individual and the collective, group, corporation, state and the tools by which control and manipulation are exercised. And within this, the place of the artist and their role in a world where the making and consumption of art has become a mass commodity. Is new technology making a new space for artistic practice or is it controlling it?
Life is one continual tactical process with the occasional strategic goal emerging out of vision, dreams, idealism, experience, fear, and hope. As the title of the conversation points out, everyday life is something that one practises and it needs practice to constantly become more adept in dealing with what life throws at us and to adapt. Questions were raised about what I do in a positive sense. Both as an affirmation of what I do and also a way of reaching out. It makes me think that being an individual artist is a precious thing in the light of the corporate/collective storm in which we stand. Technology is a great enabler but I do not take it as an end in itself. To do so would be for me to abandon the origin of things and lose my way in a system that is dispassionate and sterile. It would be like dreaming of living in the jungle and at that moment being dropped into that world where survival becomes the only thing to do.
For me, the act of making and thinking during and after that act is everything in the moment. The message arises only after. The message is not something I wish to control or should I. That is why responding to open calls is something that I have to consider very carefully. My making is a expression of my relationship, communion with the world, not an explication of it; it is a net and a funnel, a bottleneck, an hour glass; both rational and irrational, a distillate and a generality, an acquisition and a gift, latent and active. If it transmits something, then that is its message, swaddled in its own making.
Today we had a talk by Xavier Sole Mora. It was interesting to see how Xavier reaches his audiences making use of his advertising background to attract people to what he does. He also generously showed and explained his proposal brief for the Aspen Commission. This showed his approach to the competed for commission. This video of his talk that includes the Japanese footage has been blocked by Nippon Television Network Corporation for copyright reasons. I have commented on this below.
There are a number of things that I took away from the session in terms of the artist’s position when it comes to placing work ‘out there’. These are all very worldly things and perhaps only have importance when facing a critical audience or placing in the commercial sphere.
Precedence and originality
Make sure you research what you do in terms of precedence to establish originality of idea or;
show how your work extends preceding practices.
Publish what you do constantly in some form to establish precedence in case you need to show that your work is original.
Commissions and who owns the work
Establish in a contract who owns copyright. If this is pre-set as is the case in many competitive commission call outs, try to negotiate some kind of access and use of the work after handing it over on completion. Many companies commission work for tax reasons, as branding and or because they are a requirement of funding or planning permissions. Clarify who owns the work if the commissioning body is incorporated into another, bought out or closes down. Otherwise the work could well languish in obscurity, archived or even ‘skipped’.
If such an agreement can be settled on, secondary rights could also be clarified which can have financial implications in the case of sale of work or organisation (see below).
Copyright, attribution and appropriation
If work, whether images, audio or any other form of intellectual property is appropriated, copyright issues might ensue, particularly in a commercial context.
This is a complicated part of the law and can differ from country to country which makes it particularly complex in terms of digital work which easily crosses jurisdictional boundaries in all kinds of ways. For example, if a digital work passes through a particular server, the jurisdiction in which that server resides could well apply. Since much of the world’s digital traffic passes through the USA in one way or another, it is likely that a digital work will fall under US jurisdiction. Proof either way can be complicated and expensive.
There is no problem if all work is sourced and or generated by the artist although there are obscure terms which can define copyright owned by software companies although this has not been tested in court to my knowledge.
Obsolescence
The aesthetics of digital mediums is very much governed by fashion and fast changing paradigms of taste, appreciation and acceptance and is also subject to what is possible at that time and subject to rapid change: digital work is very prone to look out of date. For this reason the content and message of the work has to be considered, whether it stands in its own right. It is all too easy for digital work to land in the area of entertainment. It is often hard to separate aesthetic and functional experimentation from art in the early pioneering stages of a technology. It is also difficult to know how such work will be seen in the future, work which will also be subject to technological changes.
Such technological changes will affect how current work is presented in the future and in many cases access may be seriously compromised due to the obsolescence and or disappearance of working hardware, software, technicians capable of renovating and or using them and importantly, money to finance the necessary processes. Some formats are more future proof than others such as PDFs which were designed to continue well into the future due to their coding simplicity and universal adaptability of the information contained.
Need for working in teams
It is clear that work is not always feasible for one artist alone. Film, public art, architecture are such examples. Often large teams are required to process the large quantities of material and large scale process. However, when an artist is compelled to project manage, fund raise, lobby and recruit they are taken away from the primal work of making.
Large scale projects have a significant impact on an artist’s practice and life. However, by involving large numbers of people in a project the work can reach much further in a shorter period of time than working alone. Leading a team, delegating and project managing can be a very powerful way of reaching audiences and influencing people. However, the direct contact for the artist with their material can be somewhat compromised and involving many people brings in relational politics which can become overwhelming. In addition the financial requirements for large scale works usually necessitates the involvement of a wealthy third party, whether a gallery, government, individual or organisation, to support the realisation of the project. Such involvement almost invariably places pressure on the artist to conform to external needs which may not be part of or contradictory to their own philosophy.
Summary
Some people are well suited to work this way, others are not. It is very much a case of navigating a way through the vicissitudes of working as an artist, and perhaps not being swayed by the powerful propaganda that resonates in the ether of the art world, often obscuring a different reality for the artist.
