collage blog

so i was thinking back on conceptual art...
and i can't remember the title of the piece, nor do i have the motivation at this moment to go back and look it up, but anyways, the piece with the copious numbers of boots bought from the salvation army and then photographed in numerous places...
well anyways, the point is that it reminded me (shallowly) of the expedia ads that have the garden gnome pictured in all the different parts of the world (like in amelie as well).
and it also reminded me (less shallowly) of this series of photographs that my aunt published back in the '80's that were of a huge canvas tarp that she took to all these different places and photographed with things and people. the series was called 'traveller,' and i can't find any trace of it online, sorry.
but anyways, those were a couple things i wanted to note.
also, i've been working on everything to have a final draft to turn in tomorrow. hypertext response [check]; blog [check]; final project/portfolio [mostly there - there're a couple more things i want to add to it if i have the time, but if not, it's no big deal]... so now i just haveta link everything to the main pages. oh and then there's one video clip that i've tried and tried to upload and it just won't. so hopefully i'll get that to work.
good luck to everyone else on their projects!

some ideas i came away from class on tuesday with:
-classifying elements of collage include intent, terminology, and cultural context
-ben and aaron's idea that maybe collage is just what we call something without another term or greater category - thus explaining why film collage is usually just called film, music collage usually just music, etc. because they fall into a broader category. as opposed to the old-fashioned cut-and-paste collage of yesterday, which can't really be classified as anything greater (not qualitatively) than collage.
-collage aesthetic vs. collage - the idea that film, etc. can be said to incorporate the collage aesthetic, but wouldn't necessarily be considered collage bc of above reason

on a different note, sorry i missed seeing what seth's class ended up with - i had a meeting to attend.

also, i really enjoyed the mccoys. the seemed like such genial people in general. plus their study of tv was accomplished with such an interesting perspective, esp. considering their love for at least one of the shows that they then broke down. the mission statement-type thing was incredible - using only words with four letters or less. i still have a little bit of trouble seeing what they do as collage however....

oh, but also, some specific examples of conceptual/installation art that i fould particularly pleasing are as follows:
-the fluxus performance workbook was pretty interesting. the musical theme made it more so. it's stange just reading the ideas and never seeing the outcome though. kind of makes it into a whole other form of art. maybe.
-allegories of debrisis one that i can't get my mind around. maybe i'm just missing the point, but it seems to just want to draw attention to itself and not have a clearly ascretainable idea behind it, or at least not a successful idea for me.
-i really liked the description and few samples of robert irwin's work, but wish i could see more...
-cindy sherman's 'untitled film stills' is a cool idea and she admittedly pulled it off quite well - a lot of them are convincingly realistic as far as style, etc. is concerned. and i always think its interesting when people use themselves as the star of their own art in such an overt manner...
-and i remember looking at nikki s. lee's 'young japanese project' before. i still think its an interesting idea, although the same ego point applies here as with cindy sherman
-and finally, i really like richard long's works. they demonstrate an interesting idea and the photographic style is just very appealing to me for some reason (probably because it's more of a traditional style that i'm more comfortable with?)

From the 'Guidelines for Happenings' excerpt:
"The line between art and life should be kept as fluid, and perhaps indistinct, as possible. Something will always happen at this juncture, which if it is not revolutionary, will not be merely bad art - for no one can easily compare it with this or that accepted masterpiece."
"It follows that audiences should be eliminated entirely. All the elements - people, space, the particular materials and characters of the environment, time - can in this way be integrated."
-flashmob = a Happening?

From 'Paragraphs on Conceptual Art' excerpt:
Sol Lewitt:"In conceptual art the idea of concept is the most important aspect of the work. When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. This kind of art is not theoretical or illustrative of theories; it is intuitive, it is involved with all types of mental processes and it is purposeless." which is funny, because i've always gotten the impression that conceptual and performance art are so intellectual and at times thematically impenetrable...
"Most ideas that are successful are ludicrously simple." awesome. case in point: christian marclay's installation piece of just gluing cds or records to the floor, or his work which was a record with no grooves on it. i feel like so much conceptual or installation art is very simplistic and that that's part of why people have a hard time accepting it as art, or even anything other than just bs.
"Art that is meant for the sensation of the eye primarily would be called perceptual rather than conceptual. This would include most optical, kinetic, light, and color art."
"It doesn't really matter if the viewer understands the concepts of the artist by seeing the art. Once out of his hand the artist has no control over the way a viewer will perceive the work. Different people will understand the same thing in a different way."
"Color, surface, texture, and shape only emphasize the physical aspects of the work. Anything that calls attention to and interests the viewer in this physicality is a deterrent to our understanding of the idea and is used as an expressive device." this makes sense, but i feel it goes against my own personal experiences with installation art at least, but i can't think of any specific examples....one moment...
"Conceptual art is only good when the idea is good."

From 'Sentences on Conceptual Art' excerpt:
"When words such as painting and sculpture are used, they connote a whole tradition and imply a consequent acceptance of this tradition, thus placing limitations on the artist who would be reluctant to make art that goes beyond the limitations." does the same go for 'collage'? and if so, in this case, is that even a bad thing? and for that matter, how is conceptual art a collage really?
"For each work of art that becomes physical there are many variations that do not."
"All ideas are art if they are concerned with art and fall within the conventions of art."
"One usually understands the art of the past by applying the conventions of the present thus misunderstanding the art of the past."
"The conventions of art are altered by works of art."
"Successful art changes our understanding of the conventions by altering our perceptions."
"Banal ideas cannot be rescued by beautiful execution."

um, so at the moment, there's not too much analysis or anything on my part dealing with this week's topic. and that's mainly because i'm way too hazy on it still. i've read about it and i've looked at some of the sites/pictures online, but i just can't grasp it. so anyways, more thoughts will follow after tonight's demonstration i'd assume.

so i updated my webpage a tiny little bit. i meant to do more, but then i forgot exactly what i wanted to add to it. oh well, more later.

so i meant to do this last week, right after class, but as always, i got distracted by other stuff and am just now getting around to trying to sum up some very vague thoughts on last week's discussion of film and video.
i don't remember who brought it up (maybe jim?), but i really liked the question of whether collage is inherently avant-garde. and while i disagree that that statement is true, i do feel like it helps me define some of my thought processes toward art in general. i know one of the main topics we tend to get off on during class is whether the week's given collage topic is art or not, and really, what is art after all? and well, i realized last week that i tend to only consider avant-garde art to be "real art" or "High Art" or something along those lines. it's kind of like that indie cred that's such a big deal to lots of people, but the more obscure and challenging and innovative something is, then the more artsy it is. which i think, looking at it consciously at least, is a crap way to define art. so yeah, now i'm back to the question of what, then, is art? which i obviously can't define, because no one really can. but i just really liked being able to dissec that logic a bit. sorry for the rambling. okay, onto other things brought up last week:
ben mentioned (and then many others added onto) the contrast between visual collage and narrative collage in film. another good point i thought. however, as was mentioned, i'm inclined to feel that all narrative is narrative collage and that there isn't any way of judging what degree of collage one is versus another. and yeah, technically all visuals are collage as well, but i feel there's more of an overtly collaged nature possible in visuals and that a range of degree can be set up for visuals in a more effective manner than with narrative collage comparisons...if that makes sense...
i made a note that jim brought up dogme 95 films with regards to film collage, but didn't write down what relationship between the two he suggested. so upon thinking over it, all i can come up with is that it's a more starkly realized collage of reality with filmic reality than most other film styles, perhaps? just because there so much more of an emphasis on maintaining the constraints of reality, down even to found objects as props, etc. but i don't like that link. so i'm going to keep mulling it over and try to come up with some other dogme 95/collage thoughts. i'm sure it's a really obvious connection that i'm completely missing...
and finally, i must applaud people's choices of clips to show. i agree with roody's judgment on 'american splendor' - it is after all a great movie. and then i always enjoy watching 'waking life.' and the rhcp video is pretty cool, especially since i hadn't realized when i saw it previous times that it was based on wurm's sculptures. and i liked other stuff as well, but my memory sucks - sorry.
the end.

so i played around with the prelinger archive a little yesterday and i put one of the results in my portfolio on my homepage. the editing in the beginning is rough and doesn't quite match up as well as i'd like quite yet. but by the end, it matches fairly well. and yeah, if you think it's crap, i'm not offended, it was just playing around. anyways, can't really think of anything else to say on that topic at the moment...

so, i'm impressed with all the projects that people showed at the mdst meeting thing tonight. really, genuinely impressed.

oh, and sidenote, it was malt liquor that the spoof of 'song of the south' had in it....

okay, the lost film festival... i saw it last weekend at jmu. it was cool as well. it has a distinct political slant that is lacking in the black maria film festival. it also used a lot of found-footage films though. there was one that did the oft-seen trick of taking bush public addresses and cutting and pasting to make him seem stupid (how clever) - i think this one was called 'terror, weapons, irag' or something along those lines and just had him saying those three words repeatedly. eh. there was a really scary vegan movie. showing cows with rotted out eyes, pigs being beaten with cinder blocks, etc - all the peta propaganda we're used to, but then meshed it with what is borderline softore porn, which made for a really disturbing association of flesh, violence, sex, and food. it still makes me cringe a little. then, what else? hmmm.... there was one that used found footage of people in a pie fight, but that movie seemed a little pointless. then, there was also hmmm, yeah i dunno. i don't remember it all that well at this point - it WAS a whole week ago afterall. but anyways, you can check it out at their website, which i posted to the links page of this week's site. oh, and a link i was going to add, but seems somewhat moot at this point is for the black maria film festival. but yeah, the lost film festival had distinctly lower production quality. but more of an agenda, so who's to judge which was better. they were both pretty good. that's all for now.

round 1: black maria film festival vs. the lost film festival

so i saw the black maria film fest last night at vinegar hill. pretty swank. there was a heavy reliance on found-footage films and collage-y films (courtesy of a one mr. richard herskowitz's request to comply with the va film society's collage theme of the spring). i had quite a penchant for found-footage films last year, really enjoying bill morrison's 'decasia' and just in general liking the idea of reuse and reinterpretation. my adoration however has been worn a bit thin. the festival was commandeered by john columbus. he showed bill morrison's 'light is calling' which was, um, yeah really similar to 'decasia.' other found-footage pieces that i didn't particularly enjoy were included as well, but i won't call anyone out on it. i mean they weren't bad, i just lost interest after the first minute or so. on the other hand, there were some really awesome pieces included too. 'bird bath and beyond' was fantastic, i thought. it was a meshing of semi-autobiographical films by mike kuchar, with voiceover narration by him as well, although the film was actually made by marie losier. first, it was just really amusing. but it was also a really cool use of collage as it excerpted parts of hitchcock's 'the birds' to overlay on kuchar's film as he told a story about lulu, the parakeet that he had as a child (presumably) and would put on a spinning turntable in order to let her exercise. the next film used pieces of 'citizen kane' and used the associated sound clips to create a song of sorts, as the video clips flashed on the screen as their samples were used in the music. (man, i suck at describing all of these, sorry.) then there was a really funny piece that was a german guy singing along to 'stairway to heaven,' but he had sung it all backwards and then played the tape backwards in order to make it come out correctly and it was really hilarious. then there was 'famous irish americans' which was a really great commentary on racial stereotyping. then three films by our very own kevin everson - of which the standout in my mind was 'chemistry,' for the sole reason that some of the found footage of it was from roanoke (my hometown, of sorts) from during the attempts at bussing and integration, etc. 'tender bodies' embodied everything i hate about animation. but then, 'fast film' and 'the spirit of gravity' redeemed animation and the collage film in general. 'the spirit of gravity' was just a funny little song-and-dance type thing. 'fast film' was amazing! by far one of my favorite films i've seen this year! it used all these clips from movies and folded them up into origami and then had everything mesh together and tell the story and i can't possibly put it into words... if you get a chance to see it, go! it's by virgil widrich, from austria.
okay, i'm tired of typing for now, so i'll get around to the contender, the lost film festival' sometime later...

updates the film page this morning/afternoon. not too much: just added some links and changed around the formatting a little. feel free to change it back if you don't like it. hmmm, what else? yeah, i dunno, i'll keep looking for stuff to add to the page or talk about in class... oh, i'm gonna bring in a michel gondry dvd for tuesday, so that'll be fun to look at. um, i believe that's all for now.

oh! just a little review, since i left class early for it and all, but seeing 'the song of the south' was a really weird experience. i realized after about a minute of watching it that this was one of my favorite movies as a little kid. i vividly remember annoying the crap out of everyone i knew by singing that 'bluebird on my shoulder' song incessantly. but anyways, of course at that age, i didn't get any of the racial connotations that make the film so controversial, and watching it now, i'm really kinda disturbed by the fact that those stereotypes were so blatantly put into my psyche at such a young age by none other than disney. but yeah, on the topic of collage, it was interesting to see how the combination of live-action with animation worked really well, even at such an early time as when this film was made. the eyelines matched up somewhat consistently and altogether it was effective as a collage. definitely not groundbreaking at this point in time, but when it was made, i'm not sure - i'd still assume not. anyways, yeah, the mixture of the two formats reminded me of 'mary poppins' and between the two films, i like how the animation is used to denote a fantastical world outside of everyday existence (excluding of course the final scene of 'song of the south' when uncle remus apparently loses it and starts seeing animation). it's funny too, because i vaguely remember seeing either an snl or madtv sketch where they spoofed 'song of the south' and made it an ad for lsd or something and thus explained the animation as hallucinations - which still are i guess fantastical experiences of the imagination, just of a less innocent sort. okay, i've totally lost my train of thought now, so i'll stop. more later perhaps.

revamped my website and continued collecting some stuff to dump on the film page (hopefully tomorrow).