On Saturday 29 November 2014, Cooper Gallery presented the Roundtable Discussion The Process of Content: on a temporality in contemporary art. Drawn from the proposition that the work of Anna Oppermann acts as 'a practice of thinking', the roundtable discussion was a stimulating gathering of thoughts that elaborated and amplified the histories, politics and social reverberations of art practices in the 1970s and 80s, and the influence and impact they have on our thinking about art and culture today. The event included invited speakers Guy Brett (Curator and Critic, London), Lynda Morris (Curator and Art Historian, Norwich), Tobi Maier (Curator and Writer, São Paulo), Prof. Martin Warnke & Carmen Wedemeyer (Researchers, Leuphana University Lüneburg) and was chaired by Dr. Lisa Otty (Research Fellow, The University of Edinburgh). For more information please see here.
Accompanying the Roundtable Discussion was a series of readings from art writers in Scotland: Frances Davis, Kirsty Hendry, Alex Hetherington, Catherine Street & JL Williams, and Richard Taylor. This is the third in our series of blog posts on Cooper Gallery Notes to publish the texts from each of the writers who presented their readings at the event.
Alex Hetherington reading from his review on Anna Oppermann: Cotoneaster horizontalis.
Photo: Kathryn Rattray
Notes on the reading during the Roundtable discussion on Saturday 29 November 2014.
Alex Hetherington read to the audience his review of the exhibition 'Anna Oppermann: Cotoneaster horizontalis'. The review was previously published on Aesthetica.
You can watch a showreel of the readings by Frances Davis, Kirsty Hendry, Alex Hetherington, Catherine Street & JL Williams, and Richard Taylor via the video below:
Interested in critical art writing? Check out our developing collection of work by writers based in Scotland on the Studio Jamming Critical Writing Residency website. Group Critical Writing Residency, edited by Maria Fusco, was part of Studio Jamming: Artists’ Collaborations in Scotland curated by Cooper Gallery, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design in June-August 2014.
On Saturday 29 November 2014, Cooper Gallery presented the Roundtable Discussion The Process of Content: on a temporality in contemporary art. Drawn from the proposition that the work of Anna Oppermann acts as 'a practice of thinking', the roundtable discussion was a stimulating gathering of thoughts that elaborated and amplified the histories, politics and social reverberations of art practices in the 1970s and 80s, and the influence and impact they have on our thinking about art and culture today. The event included invited speakers Guy Brett (Curator and Critic, London), Lynda Morris (Curator and Art Historian, Norwich), Tobi Maier (Curator and Writer, São Paulo), Prof. Martin Warnke & Carmen Wedemeyer (Researchers, Leuphana University Lüneburg) and was chaired by Dr. Lisa Otty (Research Fellow, The University of Edinburgh). For more information please see here.
Accompanying the Roundtable Discussion was a series of readings from art writers in Scotland: Frances Davis, Kirsty Hendry, Alex Hetherington, Catherine Street & JL Williams, and Richard Taylor. This is the second in our series of blog posts on Cooper Gallery Notes to publish the texts from each of the writers who presented their readings at the event.
Notes on the reading during the Roundtable discussion on Saturday 29 November 2014.
Kirsty Hendry presented her reading in front of the projection of a still image, which read '<body>'. This image remained for the entire reading.
--start--
~self~storage~
Structural and systemic conflation of being and body.
Falsely pinned down by
the perceived solipsism of being a body -
- as if being a body isn’t political
- as if being a body
can ever be an individualistic pursuit
- as if ‘I’ must alwaysbe confessional
For anything afflicted with such a filthy pronoun could never have
socio-political resonance
The personal, performed politics of gesture is not a quantifiable data
set, and as such, a ‘useful tool’ for engraining ‘P’olitics as
something happening elsewhere. Beyond any-body but through the sprawling
and expanded bodies of power. Corpulent forms grossly inflect the shape of
social structures - their dominance derived from their agency to define (and
thereby confine) others corporeally.
Ever suspecting of pseudonyms, anonymity, guises - for identity is
useful collateral. Be yourself becomes a soft command that is both
affective and linguistic, as if a knowing presentation of self can ever be
authentic. Through a veneer of protecting and advocating authenticity, their
carefully curated norms duplicitously govern the production of a subject - for
the production of subjectivity is a lucrative commodity for the attention
economy.
In the fallacious pursuit of authenticity, meaning is contingent on the
complicity and coercion of time-sharing . . . recognising a piece of reality is
engendering a piece of reality.
The body is resistant to these forms of templating - it distends its own
edges by the very fact that its is incapable of rendering it’s own perimeters.
It’s edges drawn by the spatial/temporal matrix that it can only ever
fleetingly occupy - contributing to a rapidly changing entity.
body, bodies, <body> ~ perspectival construction of space
A future self enmeshed in textual anatomy.
Placed into abyss; the body is not conductor but aggregate accumulation,
a templum that reveals a social and political shape. Not total embodiment but
captured dismemberment
~self~regulation~
Reassembled it defeatedly gestures ‘I am this thing’ . . .
estranged by its own recursive entanglement of simultaneous
resemblance/dissimilarity.
The consumption and regurgitation of narration serves to unbind the
confessional ‘I’, admonishing its demands for urgent smoothness. Untethered
from the individual accountability that the market so desired, in it’s place
stands a reconstituted public ‘I’ - for any-body can masquerade as ‘I’.
This public ‘I’ co-opts the structures that were intended to govern it. ‘I’
becomes an algorithmic aggregator concealed within a generic pronoun, through
which collective public consciousness is performed
A roaming vector of selfhood
--end--
You can watch a showreel of the readings by Frances Davis, Kirsty Hendry, Alex Hetherington, Catherine Street & JL Williams, and Richard Taylor via the video below:
Interested in critical art writing? Check out our developing collection of work by writers based in Scotland on the Studio Jamming Critical Writing Residency website. Group Critical Writing Residency, edited by Maria Fusco, was part of Studio Jamming: Artists’ Collaborations in Scotland curated by Cooper Gallery, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design in June-August 2014.
On Saturday 29 November 2014, Cooper Gallery presented the Roundtable Discussion The Process of Content: on a temporality in contemporary art. Drawn from the proposition that the work of Anna Oppermann acts as 'a practice of thinking', the roundtable discussion was a stimulating gathering of thoughts that elaborated and amplified the histories, politics and social reverberations of art practices in the 1970s and 80s, and the influence and impact they have on our thinking about art and culture today. The event included invited speakers Guy Brett (Curator and Critic, London), Lynda Morris (Curator and Art Historian, Norwich), Tobi Maier (Curator and Writer, São Paulo), Prof. Martin Warnke & Carmen Wedemeyer (Researchers, Leuphana University Lüneburg) and was chaired by Dr. Lisa Otty (Research Fellow, The University of Edinburgh). For more information please see here.
Accompanying the Roundtable Discussion was a series of readings from art writers in Scotland: Frances Davis, Kirsty Hendry, Alex Hetherington, Catherine Street & JL Williams, and Richard Taylor. This series of blog posts on Cooper Gallery Notes publishes the texts from each of the writers who presented their readings at the event.
Richard Taylor reading 'Observer Singular'. Photo: Kathryn Rattray
Notes on the reading during the Roundtable
discussion on Saturday 29 November 2014.
Before starting his reading, Richard placed a
small clay Peking Opera mask in the hand of an audience member. He asked them
to pass the object around, after considering its size and importance, during
the reading.
The ****** points below are a replacement or
deletion of a given name or ‘person’. During the reading Richard closed his
eyes in silence to momentarily fill the gab before continuing with the
text.
--start--
I am
reminded of a very light touch made on the work of an artist I fail to…
A process to
makelink
…the
tableaux, it fails to be viewed from one point and is all-sided.
Setups that
are precarious and destroyed when encountered, discussed, read or seen. The
marionette dance from Escape to Witch Mountain was rendered squirming and
tagged to ripped sound from YouTube videos of Peking Opera. A collection of
opera masks, small, ceramic, entirely breakable. One falls to the floor,
breaks, ceramic, small. Ends up pushed into a body of unfired clay, along with
fake pearls and floral wrapping. Drenched in clove oil the encounter, it was
ritualistic.
Observer -
singular
They were
surely eating the delicacy whilst ritualising times gone by – a rare treat
filling the expanse made by years of different cuts, fried, baked and pressure cooked. They took it from the
newspaper wrapping and ate it raw in the living room,
on
the patterned carpet
with
the television buzzing fuzzy documentaries behind
–
a frame for their delicate consuming.
****** was less than seven years old and quite
small.
They thought
he could not see, but it was gorgeous for him to observe the light from the
screen play on the ridged silver-white meat, as it unfolded from his great
aunt’s hands.
****** never
met her husband, his great uncle, who died before he was born. But photographs
did provide evidence of his looks and his name was Thomas. This guy, the tripe
guy, he seemed familiar, he had a name that made ****** think of cigars.
The tripe
did not smell.
****** had
bathed and could only detect soap residue and talc under his nightgown. Now his
clean skin stretched to see how long the stomach lining really was. Elongated
to watch the ritual, ****** witnessed their smart living room enjoyment. The
cigar man must have found the meat at a specialist store, its quite rare to get
your hands on – in fact it is pretty much extinct. No one under the age of
forty has much experience of it. The next day Violet and Cigar man aka Sid (…his
great aunt preferred Vi instead of Violet) - would take ****** to the museum to
study fossils. But first they would fill their bellies. ******, his toes
started to feel cold.
Timber now cut with goggles on face
Cat wears perfect yellow rims to surround
bottomless black pools that switch to slits next to the fire. The room fills
with heat as each block of wood takes its place. The hearth offers depth from
which to gather warmth, and its gold trim provides support for the cat’s head.
Her eyes meet mine as I copy her posture to bask the same way she does, amongst
the wave of energy, which happily meanders against skin or fur. This position,
however momentary, is respite from a blanket of writing about another place.
Gullan Sands wind surf timber soaked in sea foam, bright skies, bitter cold. To
move forward now would be to burn. A reduction of hands to smouldering lumps
unhinged from use. To retreat back is the only option. Back to shadow, back to
cloth, back to the story of elsewhere.
A sculpture
made by Taylor
featuring a broken ceramic opera mask
sits on the
mantle piece in Strong’s front room.
This location is very specific, but the
delivery of the sculpture was not so.
Taylor had
an imperfect memory of the location of Strong’s house, and the sculpture was
first deposited in a neighbouring back garden. After realising his mistake
Taylor broke in to this garden again, retrieved the piece, found the correct
location, and proceeded to jump the wall in to Strong’s driveway. He reached
the back garden only to be highlighted by the security light – a perfect
illumination for the heavy yet small mass to be placed carefully on the patio.
I am reminded
of a very light touch made by the work of an artist… called….
--end--
You can watch a showreel of the readings by Frances Davis, Kirsty Hendry, Alex Hetherington, Catherine Street & JL Williams, and Richard Taylor via the video below:
Interested in critical art writing? Check out our developing collection of work by writers based in Scotland on the Studio Jamming Critical Writing Residency website. Group Critical Writing Residency, edited by Maria Fusco, was part of Studio Jamming: Artists’ Collaborations in Scotland curated by Cooper Gallery, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design in June-August 2014.
