RECORD/REWIND In-Conversation Event, February, 3 - 4.30pm

RECORD/REWIND In-Conversation Event

Gallery: Centrespace, Visual Research Centre

RECORD/REWIND In-Conversation Event: 2 February 2012, 3 - 4.30pm

To book for this event go to: http://recordrewindinconversation.eventbrite.co.uk/

To accompany this exhibition of an extraordinary selection of video works from Germany, an In-conversation event will take place at the Visual Research Centre of DJCAD; the home of the REWIND research project. Featuring researchers, curators and artists from Germany and Britain, this discursive event provides a unique opportunity to scrutinise the histories of the video art movement in both countries and to unpack the propositions, approaches and outcomes of these two prestigious historic European research projects.

Speakers include Malcolm Dickson, Holger Mohaupt, Dorcas Müller and Stephen Partridge, chaired by Deirdre MacKenna. (see biogs below)

* We would like to thank Goethe-Institut Glasgow for supporting us to invite the keynote speaker Dorcas Müller to contribute to this event.

The Preview of the exhibition follows the In-Conversation event and takes place between 6 – 8pm on the 2 February. The exhibition continues 3 February – 4 March 2012, Mon – Sun 12 – 4.30pm. There will also be a REWIND Screening Event on 15 February, 5.30 – 7.30pm.

RECORD>AGAIN! 40yearsvideoart.de - Part 2 is the second phase of a remarkable project40jahrevideokunst.de, initiated by the German Federal Cultural Foundation in 2006. Under the direction of ZKM Karlsruhe (Centre for Art & Media Technology), five leading German museums have worked in collaboration for the realisation of the project, which aims to preserve, restore and disseminate one of the most influential art forms of the 20th century; Video Art.

Including many works that have not been seen for decades, the exhibition features over 40 outstanding video pieces made between 1968 and 2008. Highlights include a rare work by Ulrike Rosenbach with her partner at the time, Klaus vom Bruch, the boxing match from 1972 that Joseph Beuys participated in at the documenta 5, and the first video synthesizer collages by Walter Schröder-Limmer.

The exhibition focuses exclusively on the medium of video and the core mission of the project, which is preservation, not canonisation. Many works from the history of video were considered untraceable, lost or no longer playable. The project’s main concern is to save these works from deteriorating while at the same time reconstructing the history of the video movement as a whole.

The REWIND: Artists’ Video in the 70s & 80s research project at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design provides a meaningful context for this exhibition to be shown at Centrespace at Visual Research Centre, DJCAD. The REWIND project through its focus on video works of the 1970s and 1980s provides a resource to address the gap in historical knowledge of the evolution of electronic media arts in the UK. Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) it has investigated, conserved and archived over 450 single screen and installation works from the first two decades of artists’ works in video. Building upon the success of REWIND UK, a new funding support from the AHRC enables the project team to embark on REWINDItalia; a 28-month project that explores the important history and narratives of video art activity in Italy between 1968 and 1994.

 * The exhibition and In-conversation event are presented in association with Goethe-Institut Glasgow       

  

Biographies of the speakers for the RECORD/REWIND In-conversation Event:

Malcolm Dickson is a curator, writer, organiser and Director of Street Level Photoworks in Glasgow. He has curated numerous projects including Lost and Found: video installations from the 70s and 80s (2010);Timeloop – Video Art from Germany (2007) and conferences about video and media art. He initiated the New Visions International Festival of Film, Video & Media and helped establish New Media Scotland. As an artist, he has exhibited at the Third Eye Centre, the Smith Biennale, Audio-Visueel Experimenteel, Arnhem and has played a key role in artist-driven initiatives Transmission, EventSpace and Variant magazine. He is an Honourary Senior Research Fellow at Dundee University.

Deirdre MacKenna has over twenty years’ experience programming contemporary visual art in Scotland and has been Director of Stills in Edinburgh since 2002. She is a jury member of The Margaret Tait Award, an Honorary Research Fellow of the University of Dundee Rewind Italia project and runs her own cultural production programme Cultural Documents in Scotland and Italy.

Holger Mohaupt is an artist and filmmaker. He graduated from the Art Academy in Hamburg, Germany and moved to Scotland in 1995 to do a postgraduate diploma in Electronic Imaging at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design. In 2008 he finished a practice-led PhD at the University of Dundee, where he is a visiting lecturer in the department of Time Based Art.His current research is informed by locative media and social networking. He lives in North Berwick on the east coast of Scotland.

Dorcas Müller studied media art at the University of Design Karlsruhe with Professor Ulay (Uwe Laysiepen). She has received recognition for her artwork through stipends from the Kunstfonds Bonn and the Körber Foundation, Germany among others. As research associate at the ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe since 2004, she participated in numerous productions as video editor, video restorer and author (Thinking in Loop, Boris Groys, Hatje Cantz, 2008; RECORD>AGAIN!, 40yearsvideoart.de – Part 2, Hatje Cantz, 2010).

Stephen Partridge is an artist and academic researcher. He is the principal investigator on the research project REWIND funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC). He exhibited in landmark video shows including Video Show, Serpentine (1975), Installation Show, Tate (1976) and The Kitchen, New York (1979). During the eighties he became interested in works for broadcast television and was commissioned by Channel 4. With Jane Rigby, he produced the innovative Television Interventions project, Channel 4 (1990). He has also curated a number of influential video shows and touring tape packages:Video Art 78 in Coventry; UK TV New York; National Review of Live Art 1988-90; 19:4:90 Television Interventions; Made in Scotland I,II, Semblances, Passages. 
Other major collaborations include installations and prints with the artist Elaine Shemilt. He established the School of Television & Imaging at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design (University of Dundee) and is presently Professor of Media Art and Dean of Research. 

Centrespace, Visual Research Centre is part of Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design and is located on the lower floors of Dundee Contemporary Arts, 152 Nethergate, Dundee.

Share the RAGTALE...

MFA student, Rowan Richardson, is currently interested in the possibilities that come from an artist’s engagement with the public.  Her current project, RAGTALES, is to begin with a fundraising event this Thursday and Friday- selling second hand clothes, shoes and costume jewellery- where she asks RAGTALES shoppers to "Buy a memory and make it yours." Some customer purchases will contain a link to a blogged memory of that item and all customers are invited to contribute to the blog when their purchase becomes a part of their own memories.

Join the event on Facebook where you can confirm your attendance and view taster photographs of the items on sale. 

A Matter of Process: exploring the cyclical nature of creativity.
A presentation devised through collaboration by the 2011 Master of Fine Art group.'

Dear Friends,

We, the MFA group, have reached the end of term and have decided to challenge the assessment process and put on an exhibition where 'process' is the concurrent theme. We open up the process to you after our assessments by invitation to an evening event and a day-long public exhibition.

Come to see our work in process or simply mingle and enjoy the free refreshments.

There is a fourth year exhibition across the hall, on the same night, with live entertainment so it really will be buzzing.

For more information click here or here

Word is out, so spread it.

Hope to see you there.

MFA Students x

Epilogue: The writers view.

Continuing in retrospect:

Prologue to Blog Postings: Thoughts Concerning the 

Epistemology of Space and Visual Culture.

Part 2

This is not a new concept. Irit Rogoff discusses ‘In the same way both feminism and post-colonial theory have insisted on the need for a multi-subjectivity, so does the critical process of geography spatialzation insist on the multi-inhibition of spaces through bodies, social relations and psychic dynamics’[1] So if this rhetoric has been called on before, in the very recent past, can it be called on again and insist on a multi subjectivity into the epistemology of space and visual culture? 

Art has the capacity to create the visual language to communicate concerns of the epistemology of social relations. In his discussions on Social Space, Henri Lefebvre goes into great detail of the early emergence of sub-urban settlements around Venice and Tuscany in precapitalist Italy leading up to the industrial era, namely leading into the renaissance. With the growth of productive forces such as agriculture, craft, early industry, brought forward by new technologies, a new type of social space emerged. Lefebvre describes that these spaces came about from a surplus in production creating a new social class, which led to luxurious spending on palaces and monuments giving artists and architect freedom (and the money) to express. What emerged from this was a new language for describing space, this ‘perspective’ first given form by architects and geometers was then ‘discovered’ [2]by painters. Here changes in spatial perception gave rise to changes in visual culture, not that the two can be distinguished completely as one rotates in motion around the other. One inspiring, then being inspired by the other and here ultimately ‘knowledge emerged from practice’[3]

Philosophical abstract thought has many times been be put under analysis to arrive at a concrete conclusion, can Lefebvre’s cyclonical motion be employed within contemporary visual culture? Can the thought and questioning of the creation of new social spaces be the impetus to change society? Not the invention of a new built object in which to dwell but a rethinking of the epistemology of space and spatialzations. By introducing questioning of critical epistemology, subjectivity and spectatorship into the arena of spatialzation we move away from the central systems of power to the fringes, Rogoff discusses this and adds another element to the argument, she calls on the development of what she calls the ‘curious eye’ [4]to counter the old bourgeois term the good eye to communicate a contemporary way of viewing which is influenced by the subjectivity of the viewer influenced by all aspects of visual culture and culture in general. Within visual media the inventions have occurred, new tools in hand, and ‘curious eye’ employed, what will the artist create?

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[1] Irit Rogoff, Terra Infirma, geography’s visual culture, (Routledge, London, USA and Canada) 2000 p23

[2] Henri Lefebvre, The production of Space (Blackwell, Oxford and London) 1993 p79

[3] Henri Lefebvre, The production of Space (Blackwell, Oxford and London) 1993 p79

[4] Irit Rogoff, Terra Infirma, geography’s visual culture, (Routledge, London, USA and Canada) 2000 p30

Continuing in retrospect:

Prologue to Blog Postings: Thoughts Concerning the Epistemology of Space and Visual Culture.

Part 1

What is knowledge, how is knowledge acquired? How do we know what we know? Who decides and normalises that knowledge into common knowledge? And how is Space concerned? These questions call for an exploration into different interpretations of space as a means of analysing and questioning how we draw knowledge from all aspects of contemporary society through social encounter and the effect which that has on social and individual consciousness. Space is integral to this question as this is where we dwell and in which all these social signifiers exist. The nature of space, as discussed in previous blogs, allows for a constant reconfiguring of use and an exploration of the knowledge gained from that process. An epistemological study into contemporary visual culture leads us to reconsider and to remake opinions between Space Place and Public Agency. How people perceive space and how it is ordered into place and therefore think and act accordingly.

These epistemological questions lie at the centre of all fields of study which strive to communicate within social culture. As visual culture and visual media has evolved to encompass vast sways of our lives the need has never been greater to question the epistemology of visual culture and for a critical analysis of the spaces in which it dwells if ‘Space is never void of social relations’[1]. This may give a cultural barometer into social structures, opinions and the extent of hegemonic influences which colour our view. Henri Lefebvre argues spatial analysis negates the illusion of transparency which enables hegemonic manipulation of culture. This idea of ‘transparency’[2] lulls society into believing its social structure is open and inclusive and therefore society does not need to question excepted norms hence exists within its own individual culturally specific realities. Spatial analysis however allows space to become a vessel in which analytical critical discourses can take place on how we perceive. Can this discourse be taken further to influence the art making process? If we relate to a work of art through our relations to others and those relations are shaped by the spaces in which we dwell, could this participation be seen as the actual process of the making of art, if no object or viewer exists in a void and no thought without forethought?

Integral in art is the viewer. The interaction of the viewer with the object enables agency of the viewer (if they so choose) therefore providing the ability to change how the work is perceived through individual subjectivity expressed in future actions. This may take many forms, be they in conversation, the forming of opinions, blogging or the future making of one’s own work (in the case of the artist), even if not in direct reaction to the information assimilated but subconsciously. Therefore under what influences we absorb that knowledge which will shape our future perception, vitally must me questioned on a multi subjective level. Artists generally are aware of this. However can this questioning and theorising of knowledge employed on a more practical level by the artist culminate in the formulation of art practices? Can these art practices then become socially inclusive through the understanding of how social relations are formulated and how we assign Place’s to the Spaces in which we place our work and in which we presume culture as a whole can identify. Or do we want them to identify, this culture which supports us and which we should support? Or should we even try in reality to be inclusive when we are making work which after all is a form of self expression?

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[1] Henri Lefebvre, The production of Space (Blackwell, Oxford and London) 1993 p22

[2] Henri Lefebvre, The production of Space (Blackwell, Oxford and London) 1993 p22

Continuing in retrospect:

The Space as an Agent.

Exhibition in the cooper gallery,  22nd Oct - 5th Nov 2011

As one who has been witness participant to the previous actions of A Cut A Scratch A Score the feeling of absence envelops you as you stand and view the artefacts from the actions. However I suspect those that have not held vigil to the performances may guess that they are viewing the aftermath of a happening. You are struck by that absence and notice the space between the images and the objects. You consider not just the beautiful things but the positioning of those things around the space; you see how they relate to each other and the viewer. In that action the viewer becomes one of those objects. As you wander around the space you see the viewer’s reflection against the projection on the gallery wall. The stage dividing the performative space, interesting as the stage is normally the space where performance is done, you can walk right up to it, the distance between performer and audience is shortened. There is a feeling of playfulness, you again have free reign over your experience.

The script is being typed on projection; you wonder where the writer is, whether this is a live element continued in the work and consider that the writer may be watching you. You are being observed observing. Not the case though, it is a video of Savage’s live script writing and she is writing the movements of the artists. Agency of the artist returns. Standing in front of the video projection the viewers shadow appears on the gallery wall and is put back in the action. The silhouetted viewer reoccurring as with previous rehearsals, now giving agency to the viewer.

All these elements feel familiar however unobvious in their new configuration, you try and tick some of the boxes from past experience of the work; sound, movement, live elements, viewer interaction. The fan positioned at the end of the stage is inexplicable. Is it also an artefact from the rehearsal, an object from the making process when the viewer was not present? Does it simulate the outdoors, or is it there to add a live element to the work?  It stands like a person in the room humming its tune like the hum from the heating system in the botanic gardens. I went right up to it, invaded its personal space and then was shocked to discover my invasion was being documented. The process of viewing is in fact subverted. You realise you are being recorded by a camera out of view above the entry door, pointed directly at the fan. Did the artist suspect that you would be intrigued by the humming little figure? Or was it being documented as it hadn’t been documented before?

The whole experience feels disjoined and unusual, like stream of consciousness, but replayed and repeated, however each time slightly different as a new agent steps into the space and plays its part unknowingly. This space between the image the object and they idea comes into play captivating the viewer. The space holds silent vigil, passive jet nevertheless it is still an agent of the work. Holding charge of its little humming machines (projector, fan, camera) performing their actions rhythmically as the sounds from the performance take centre space. The room plays its role well, reflecting back that action on the brass of its doors. The aesthetic fits; the building designed by Architect James Wallace in 1937 reflecting shapes and colours reminiscent of Kandinsky, performing overlaid with a video of McLean and Bourret making movements; A little nod to modernism.

In the entrance space you sit and are absorbed by the song of The Choir, Lixemburg and Belinfante, it washes over you as you are afforded the space to ‘see the music’. Less of a distraction, the discarded shapes and silhouettes, remnants of previous performances, lean against the wall. They feel like ghosts, their energy still vibrant from pervious action. The bench suggesting there is indeed something to sit, view and contemplate. The yellow wall behind and bench below you indicates these objects may seem like an afterthought but on the contrary you are still under the influence of the artists. There’s a melancholia to the discarded cardboard cut-outs, cardboard that most disposable of materials. Outside the main gallery they are ignored initially as you travel straight towards the imposing sound, as the viewer spectator was drawn to the action by its audio in those previous public places.  As with before the audio completes the enveloping experience. With open gallery doors the sound travels and invites, however the passerby can travel by without interruption this time. It’s my turn to be interrupted, two girls chat loudly as they wander passed, jolting me from my experience.