Semester 2

Session 2.01 [21.02.2007]: Installation Art
Oliveira, N., Oxley, N. and Petry, M. (2004) Installation Art in the New Millennium: The Empire of the Senses. London: Thames & Hudson (Extracts)

Session 2.02 [28.02.2007]: Social and spatial production of sound
Lucia Farinatti, curator

Bull, M and Back, L.(2004) Introduction: Into Sound. In Bull, M and Back, L.(Eds) The Auditory Culture Reader. NY:Berg. Pp.1-17 .
Kester, G. ( 2005) Conversation Pieces- The Role Of Dialogue In Socially-Engaged Art. (Extracts). In Kocur, Z. And Leung, S. (Eds.) Theory In Contemporary Art Since 1985. Ma: Blackwell Publishing.
Bourriaud, N. (1998) Relational Aesthetics. (Extracts). Paris: Les Presse Du Reel.

Session 2.03 [07.03.2007]: Artist as theorist
Sullivan, G. (2005) Art Practice as Research: Inquiry Into The Visual Arts. Oaks,Ca: Sage Publications. (Extracts) Theorizing Art Practice As Transformative Research (Pp 93-102) And Reemergence Of The Artist-Theorist (Pp 173-181)
Fisher, J ( 2005) The Syncretic Turn: Cross Cultural Practices In The Age Of Multiculturalism (Extracts). In Kocur, Z. And Leung, S. (Eds.) Theory In Contemporary Art Since 1985. Ma: Blackwell Publishing.

Session 2.04 [14.03.2007]: New media and narrative
Guest speaker: arne sjogren/ topic: disrupted narratives

Manovich, L. (2001) The Language of New Media. Massachussets: MIT. (Extracts) pp. xiv-xxxvi.

Session 2.05 [21.03.2007]:
Cahdwick. W. (1998) Mirror images: Women, Surrealism and Self-Representation. Mass: The MIT Press. (Extracts)Self as masquerade/ self as absence.

Session 2.06 [28.03.2007]:
Weibel, P. Narrated theory: Multiple Projection and Multiple Narration (Past and Future). In Rieser, M. and Zapp, A. (2002) New Screen Media Cinema/Art/Narrative.London, UK:BFI.

hello, the nyc based artist-run project glowlab has just put online their new edition of glowlab featuring a selection of projects dealing with surveillance, psychogeography and urban space and including my arphield recordings. after our very last week’s discussion on panopticism i believe you’ll enjoy this as much as i do!

As a result of last week’s discussion it was decided we would invest the last session of this first semester trying to answer the following query: how to develop an art practice as a theorist? and how to write with critical theory?

For this purpose please prepare a 5 minute on-screen presentation of how you intend to use theory to develop your current research project and how you plan on writing about it.

Follow this method

• -give your future theory essay a title and subtitle
• -create a structured outline that lists its main sections and the topics you intend to approach theoretically
• -indicate how you intend to use post-structuralist/ semiotic /psychoanalytic/ intertextual theories and methodologies to organise your research and reflect on its results
• -include a bibliography of the essays you intend to reference in your final essay
• -upload this outline to your blog with images of the visual materials you intend to use

You will use your blog for your on-screen class presentation. Note that other audio-visual or hardcopy (printed version) methods are not an option.

In Hitchcock, by contrast, the male hero does see precisely what the audience sees. However, in the films I shall discuss here, he takes fascination with an image through scopophilic eroticism as the subject of the film. Moreover, in these cases the hero portrays the contradictions and tensions experienced by the spectator. In Vertigo in particular, but also in Marnie and Rear Window, the look is central to the plot, oscillating between voyeurism and fetishistic fascination. As a twist, a further manipulation of the normal viewing process which in some sense reveals it, Hitchcock uses the process of identification normally associated with ideological correctness and the recognition of established morality and shows up its perverted side. Hitchcock has never concealed his interest in voyeurism, cinematic and non-cinematic. His heroes are exemplary of the symbolic order and the law– a policeman (Vertigo), a dominant male possessing money and power (Marnie)–but their erotic drives lead them into compromised situations. The power to subject another person to the will sadistically or to the gaze voyeuristically is turned on to the woman as the object of both. Power is backed by a certainty of legal right and the established guilt of the woman (evoking castration, psychoanalytically speaking). True perversion is barely concealed under a shallow mask of ideological correctness–the man is on the right side of the law, the woman on the wrong. Hitchcock’s skillful use of identification processes and liberal use of subjective camera from the point of view of the male protagonist draw the spectators deeply into his position, making them share his uneasy gaze. The audience is absorbed into a voyeuristic situation within the screen scene and diegesis which parodies his own in the cinema. In his analysis of Rear Window, Douchet takes the film as a metaphor for the cinema. Jeffries is the audience, the events in the apartment block opposite correspond to the screen. As he watches, an erotic dimension is added to his look, a central image to the drama. His girlfriend Lisa had been of little sexual interest to him, more or less a drag, so long as she remained on the spectator side. When she crosses the barrier between his room and the block opposite, their relationship is re-born erotically. He does not merely watch her through his lens, as a distant meaningful image, he also sees her as a guilty intruder exposed by a dangerous man threatening her with punishment, and thus finally saves her. Lisa’s exhibitionism has already been established by her obsessive interest in dress and style, in being a passive image of visual perfection; Jeffries’ voyeurism and activity have also been established through his work as a photo-journalist, a maker of stories and captor of images. However, his enforced inactivity, binding him to his seat as a spectator, puts him squarely in the phantasy position of the cinema audience.

visual pleasure and narrative cinema(1975)-laura mulvey, originally Published – Screen 16.3 Autumn 1975 pp. 6-18

film techniques :
1=creating distance between the male and female protagonists
ex-rear window= photojournalist jeffries is immobilised w/ broken leg and becomes fascinated in what he sees through his window. His erotic interest for girlfriend is only reignited when she enters the other apartment and jeffries sees her at distance
2=creating distance between the female protagonist of a movie and the movie audience
ex-rear window=the camera often occupies the position of the hero. The audience sees what he sees and the women in the film are distanced from the audience as they are from him

gillian rose: visual methodologies

at harrow campus library

the camera itself takes over the enunciation…it first shows scottie sitting at a bar and then detaches itself from from his searching gaze to conduct its own search for the woman through the restaurant. finally it comes to rest in a long shot of a woman seated…at a table, with her back to the camera. romantic music emerges slowly on the soundtrack and the camera moves slightly forward. it cuts back to scottie looking and to a point of view shot of madeleine, who gets up from her chair and walks into a closeup of her profile. only much later will we be able to see her entire face and only at that time will we get to hear her speak.

this camera movement establishes madeleine as the mute, only half-seen object of a man’s romantic quest

Tania Modleski, The women who knew too much: Hitchcock and feminist theory available at harrow campus

my top reading this week in gender and film theory, with links to the harrow campus library where you can find them

1- annette kuhn- women’s pictures: feminism and cinema

available at harrow library

2- robert stam et al- new vocabularies in film semiotic: structuralism, post-structuralism and beyond

available at harrow library

the semio-grads: an interesting article about the usa-based semiotic pioneers, the students at the brown university semiotics 66 module

hi, i’ve just returned from zurich/switzerland where i went to the opening of the show ‘love & anarchy’ at K3 where i participated with the 4-section collective score ‘what are we doing what’s happening to us what needs to be done i prefer not to’, which i played live in the opening night event “a vinyl LP documenting the ongoing project Protest Academy, an inquiry into Tactile Audio and the sonification of protest. From political demonstrations to intimate acts of personal resistance, the project examines the relationship between sound and political intention and pinpoints emerging forms of audio organisation including artistic collaborations, activist practices and ad-hoc impromptu performative actions.” (from K3 press release)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/msdm/sets/72157594350653024/

i’m also posting to my flickr account images of the exhibition by rodney graham ‘renaissance man, works 1400-1977′ I saw at hauser &wirth gallery, as i would like to discuss his work, so check the images on my photoblog or on the gallery’s website where you can also find the press release.

in the meantime i realised that my reading list might be of interest to you and i would like to know what are you reading besides cavallaro and chandler. so post it to your blog!

my top 6

1- jonathan harris: the new art history -a critical introduction

about jonathan harris >

2-christian metz: film language- a semiotics of the cinema

robert stam outline of metz’s book

3-william mitchell: the reconfigured eye-visual truth in the post-photographic era

review of the book by fred ritchin (art in america, 1994)

4- jessica evans & stuart hall (editors) : visual culture- the reader

5- john a. walker: art in the age of mass media

6-gillian rose: visual methodologies 

at harrow campus library

note: very useful as a guide to develop a project that involves interpreting visual material

t-shirt from http://www.philosophyfootball.com/

Welcome to the art media practice theory blog!

I will use it to post all the information relevant to the module, from syllabus to assignments, recommended readings and links to useful stuff to read and browse online.

I encourage you to start your own blogs as this is the most interesting way to engage in a discussion of ideas and exchange of information.

There are many examples of blogs for critical art practices, exploring the intersection of theory and action. for example, the critical spatial practice blog at http://criticalspatialpractice.blogspot.com is a good starting point but there are many more.

In the resources page you will find links on how to start a basic blog so you can start posting with your comments to the assigned readings and links to your online research.

To find out more about the theory module, browse through the several pages, keeping in mind that it should be seen as a flexible draft that will develop as a result of our weekly meetings. hope you enjoy the module!