3/8 Pipilotti Rist

Swiss artist and filmmaker, Pipilotti Rist is a video artist, musician, and professor who's work focuses on the unpredictable, the fantastic and the surreal. Rist focuses her attention on work that invokes audience interaction and reaction. She often encourages viewer response in hopes of creating a conversation.
I first discovered Rist 3 years ago, but to be honest I did not look very hard to far into her work. I came across something that I had written about her recently. It was a very shallow semi review of her work. Looking at it now the only thing I had nailed about her was her name. Her work with video is unlike anything I have come across to date. It is fun, and full of humor. She works around the taboos of what is appropriate and shatters all premeditated thought.
Her work is often full of vibrant color and upbeat music which seperates her from many of the contemporary artists I have reviewed to date. Especially her recent film Pepperminta.

Selbstlos im Lavabad (Selfless In The Bath Of Lava), 1994

Closet Circuit, 2000

Himalaya Goldsteins Stube, (Himalaya Goldstein's Living Room), 1999

http://www.pipilottirist.net/

http://www.luhringaugustine.com/index.php?mode=artists&object_id=68

3/4 : relevancy

As I progress further into my work and research I am really starting to question how relevant my work is. For me it is current and not dated, but I am a college student with a old standard television. Most of the work that I am doing I feel like has been done before. Frankly in the late 80's and all through the 90's. I feel connected with my work, but part of me feels like I am in the wrong decade. Television is not what it was and broadcast has become something completely different.

Large heavy TV's have now become something of a relic, something to put in your basement, or give away to the neighbor next door going off to college. TV's now are things you hang above your fireplace or at the end of your bed. They keep you company in the bathroom, and help you cook in the kitchen. These are not your 60-70 pound mammoth screens. Television has evolved into something that is almost a part of us. It is on your mantle because you look up to it. It has replaced the scenic photographs and paintings with Dancing with the Stars and House.
My parents house 2/10

3/1 Orlan

http://www.orlan.net/

http://www.english.ucsb.edu/faculty/ecook/courses/eng114em/surgeries.htm

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/jul/01/orlan-performance-artist-carnal-art

For me, Orlan represents the extreme. There is the obvious with the reconstruction of herself through plastic surgery in the 1990's, but its what she did with the surgeries that strikes me the most interesting. Orlan taped and broadcast her surgeries live to institutions throughout the world. She used the surgeries to sculpt her image into classical ideals of women according to the canon of art history. Orlan picked these women not because of their beauty but for the stories.. the anti-beauty- Diana because she is inferior to the gods and men but is leader of the goddesses and women; Mona Lisa because of the standard of beauty, or anti-beauty, she represents; Psyche because of her fragility and vulnerability within the soul; Venus for carnal beauty; Europa for her adventurous outlook to the horizon, the future.
These images of what it takes to be beautiful, or the idea or ideal beauty are gory and "carnal". Orlan uses this, she sees the whole process as a performance, or as a stage. She uses elaborate costumes to present a scene. Although this work was done in the 1990's, it for me represents the extreme of what can be and is transmitted on the Television.

2/25 AFHV

This is the movie that I have been working on lately. It is my first attempt with working with sound and I am not sure how I feel about it. I think it works as far as capturing the overall feeling of kind of an anxious frantic feeling but I'm not sold that that is what I want. These are shots of online and televised babies. From Americas funniest home videos and from Youtube-- some of the more popular clips like "serious baby" and "charlie bit me". There are also a series of different clips of babies on the toilet and in the toilet. I find it so interesting that parents want everyone on the internet and those who watch television to see their child in the bathroom. The sound is a mix of laugh tracks (which I find terrifying) and sound taken from the montaged clips from AFHV.

2/22 James Turrell

http://greenmuseum.org/content/artist_index/artist_id-11.html

http://www.pacewildenstein.com/Artists/ViewArtist.aspx?guid=05c48019-2fde-4e3b-be25-56419dcc2729

http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/turrell/

I first learned about James Turrell On the PBS series ART 21. It was the episode was Spirituality. I was surprised at the reaction that I had to his work through the Television. Even without being in the spaces he has masterly created, I felt an atmospheric involvement. Turrell's use of light is captivating. Without the experience of being within the space of installation I find all his spaces to be especially ethereal. Focused on self awareness and meditation.

Turrell talks about the qualities of light in relation to life. In death, he explains, things are always explained in terms of the quality of the light. Bright, dark, white, black. His work focuses on those aspects of light. How it can alter perspective, allow you to look inward. Meditation is a large part of Turrells work.

"The Light Inside"
1999

Skyspace at Live Oak Friends Meeting House, Houston, Texas
2000

"Roden Crater," East Portal Entryway
2000

2/18 YOUTUBE

Cat and Tv

little girl watching tv

cat and birds

all the single babies

news and health

4kids on tv

Spongebob

2/16 Hank Willis Thomas

http://hankwillisthomas.com/splash.html

http://www.artnet.com/artist/424601654/hank-willis-thomas.html

http://www.nyartbeat.com/nyablog/2009/03/unbranded-an-interview-with-hank-willis-thomas/
Opportunity Knocks

It Didn't Just Grow by Itself

Now that's funny!

Hank Willis Thomas is an artist who's work deals with the complex underlining issues in popular culture particularly in advertisements. The idea of the 'Other' came up quite a few times in his lecture, speckled throughout his work. "A person's definition of the 'Other' is part of what defines or even constitutes the self and other phenomena and cultural units." according to Wikipedia. This is often referred to as the Self/Other Dichotomy. By sectioning off a part of someone/something/cultures and compare them to yourself you end up defining yourself by what you are not. Social conditioning and Political norms is constantly evolving, but the need for the 'Other' remains. Thomas deals with the shift in the otherness from early 20th century advertisements using African Americans for their 'Otherness' the the now Middle Eastern caricature's that people now are barley blinking a eye at. Thomas highlights the branded conscienceness that people have programed into their heads, and asks the viewer to think twice.

We Both is Glad