Ocean Liners
Ocean Liners: Speed and Style, V&A
Thinking about: Find out what the liners were to its passengers and people back in their heydays, find out what the ships meant to them and then try to see if any of the beliefs or values still exist today. What did they change into?
Shipping companies realised moving people around was a lucrative business, but they needed to polish their image; they need to turn something dangerous and arduous into something nice. Hence they hired designers, and "produced a wide range of promotional literature, often in the latest graphic styles... [to] give a taste of the facilities and entertainment found on board" (From the exhibition).
Branding for Cunnard's Queen Elizabeth 2, 1969, with Cunnard's booklet "The New Art of Going Abroad", 1929
Ultimately the companies and designers were altering the mindset of the people, that it's not enough to just travel, but to do so with style. The adverts needed to give a sense of modern living, and even booklets that instructed people how to behave were published. Aside from defining its own culture, they also adopted others. For example, with the rise of healthy living cruises started to have pools and other recreational sports on the lido of the cruise. This actually resulted in "an arena for new fashions in swimwear", with the swimwear company Janzten manipulating fabric to create the hourglass figure.
Ocean liners have been called moving cities, and with the wealth of products catered towards it, it's pretty crazy. I find it interesting to see going onto cruises as a new lifestyle, and its designers select what they see as luxury from their environment, then places it in their constructed world. What is also interesting was how fast ocean liners lost its glamour, with the rise of passenger jets the ocean liner's claim that it was a new standard of living was dismissed, and it really turns out that people only wanted to use it as transportation.
Dazzle camouflage on the American troopship, S.S Leviathan, with Bel Geddes's "Whale" Ocean Liner
Combine scale, speed, luxury and globalisation and you'll get an ocean liner, well back in early 20th century that is. These ideas made sense, with the seemingly limitless power that the steam engine can churn out, and dreams and visions of massive floating cities were eventually materialised into these liners. I feel nowadays the struggle of national identity and prowess has been taken onshore, into the heart of the city and in the form of skyscrapers, and the modern jungle.
Barter, Brick Lane Pt.1 + Farmer, Simon and Gurksy
Initial spot, Allen Gardens, Brick Lane
Later moved to Truman Brewery along Brick Lane, and still nobody brave enough to eat our bread and drink our tea.
Advertiser: Amnesty Intl
Agency: VCCP
"The first work for the charity by VCCP will invite real families to spend time in a large Perspex box on London’s South Bank, where the public can observe them sharing everyday joys of family life such as playing games, eating a takeaway and watching TV…The campaign comes ahead of the 16 March vote in Parliament on the Refugee Family Reunion Bill. "
Refugees are humans too, and Amnesty International places a real family in a vitrine for us to go, “hey look it’s a family doing some family things”. What makes this campaign effective is actually kind of cool because it’s the ignorance of its performers in it sends the message, that family time should be undisturbed, no matter “the mundane bits of” it. This reminds me of the early days of cinematography when films were made to dazzle with the audience in mind, when film was a novel new way of wowing people. Whereas now most people go to the cinema to see a story unravel before their eyes, with the actors carrying out their ‘lives’ on the screen.
The interaction can be considered passive, or actually not at all, but I feel whenever somebody real is performing live in front of me, it has to be an interaction piece! Maybe because you know, we are all social animals, but it’s a type of work that I feel I can directly alter the nature of it.
Doing mundane things in places where they shouldn’t be in is kind of like…speculative design (oh no not again), in a way because it doesn’t show the speculative or probable future, but what’s happening now and saying it could all be gone on March 16th.
Geoffrey Farmer:
Yup ok, scale is magnificent and good, but let’s talk about the process. Farmer wanted to be “to be transformed by the experience” while making this piece. He wanted to use “chronology as a composition” and he cutting up 900 LIFE magazines from ’35 to ’85 was pretty tough, so he employed the help of 90 people.
According to Farmer:
We had quotas to keep. We worked in shifts. There was a small group of us who, in the end, I think, were working 20-hour days. I was amazed at the generosity of everyone working on the piece. It was a communal experience. A lot of conversation happens when you are sitting together working around a table. If someone didn’t agree with the image selection or strongly felt an image should be included, they would hold the image up for a vote. We had meals together, a fantastic cook and friend came in to make lunches and dinners. I wasn’t expecting the piece to grow in the way that it did.
The outcome does not reflect the meals or conversations that Farmer had with his volunteers, but it made me think, should it be though? Coming from Farmer himself, this piece is about “factory life…Factory farming, the war factory…History emerging out of a factory. In the end, it takes on the appearance of a conveyor belt.” It sounds boring to me, but now that he made it with the help of others, and during that process probably lots of arguments about the direction of the work happened, and I am drawn more to that. The scale of the piece only makes me more curious.
Taryn Simon:
Paperwork and the Will of Capital, 2015
“The photographs and sculptures of Paperwork and the Will of Capital had twin points of departure: archival photographs of official signings; and George Sinclair’s nineteenth century horticultural study containing dried grass specimens, an experiment in survival and evolution cited by Charles Darwin in his groundbreaking research”.
A Polite Fiction, Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, 2014
I like Simon’s inspiration from botany drawings, because despite their educational purpose, the scientists developed a method of representing their studies—a huge picture of a plant with a few words on the side. There is a chronological progression in all these works and I think the small body of text coupled with its equally small pictures aids in progression; a small picture is like a still from a zoopraxiscope.
My outcome will be a mix of photo and text, and as a ritual procedure is important, and I’m wondering what happens if I produce a book with the pictures and text cropped at the edges, creating a sense of confusion?
Andreas Gurksy Exhibition
May Day IV 2000
Digitally recreated of a rave in Germany, Gursky pieced all the photos so that everybody is in focus, and makes this a portrait. In a similar way, 99 Cent, 1999, presents a digitally manipulated and overwhelming image.
I am not feeling the scale that others are, instead I started looking at the borders of the pieces and the people looking at the works.
For this piece, the people were pretty animated and super into dissecting this piece. I thought this was the most memorable segment of my trip; seeing people react to the photos and hearing what they said about it.
I left Gursky feeling a bit disappointed, because I did not feel the overwhelming powers that I was "supposed" to feel. Maybe because I went inside with the idea that I have to feel a certain way, but I didn't feel it. It also made pay attention to the structure of the shots, especially the one when the people scattered on the hills were like stars in a constellation, reminds me of photographers who construct entire scenes before taking a photograph.
In the end, I left with thoughts about frames and was more interested in the gallery goers.
Sources:
Campaign (2018) Amnesty International UK "The undeniable wonder of family life" by VCCP. Available at: https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/amnesty-international-uk-the-undeniable-wonder-family-life-vccp/1459033 (Accessed: 12 March 2018).
Casey Kaplan (2012) GEOFFREY FARMER DISCUSSES HIS DOCUMENTA HIT, LEAVES OF GRASS. Available at: http://caseykaplangallery.com/cat/news/geoffrey-farmer-discusses-his-work-at-documenta/ (Accessed: 15 March 2018).
Taryn Simon (2015) Paperwork and the Will of Capital. Available at: http://tarynsimon.com/works/pwc/#1 (Accessed: 9 March 2018).
Theoretical and Practical Research
Theoretical:
I borrowed these books originally to research the types of rituals involving food; however, I realised that despite there are numerous religious rituals surrounding food, they are actually in the minority. Both Fernaindez and Mallet states that cooking and eating is a ritual by itself, it "transformed society" and Culture begins when the raw gets cooked". When the hearth or fireplace was a gathering place for family members, the social aspects of the fire was magnified beyond just providing heat, it transformed food and nurtured relationships between people.
It was interesting to see that cooking and eating is a ritual we have been performing without knowing, however nowadays "food on the fly feeds the value of hustle, nourishes the anomie of postindustrial society. People eat while they are doing other things", which means we are actually going back socially. I thought it was fascinating to include this issue in my outcome, asking the participants to reflect on their meals, and if they realise it's the socialness of the meal that makes it a meal.
FernaÌndez-Armesto, Felipe. Near a Thousand Tables: a History of Food. Free Press, 2004.
Mallet, Gina. Last Chance to Eat: the Fate of Taste in a Fast Food World. Mainstream, 2006.
The first ritual that I thought of, the Passover Seder is a congregation that reminds the Jews of their exodus from Egypt. The unleavened bread Matzo symbolised the haste in which the Jews fled from Egypt, and throughout the meal there are instructions from the Haggadah that outline what to do with the Matzo.
The simple Matzo transmutes into something important during the meal. Staples were considered divine because everybody depended on them, and so eating say bread is a form of worship. Similarly, the communion when Catholics receive the wafer and wine is allowing Christ to enter the body, is also another form of worship. In fact, cultivation comes from the latin word cultus, which is the abject form of worshiping.
Gormley stacked a few thousand slices of Mother's pride to form a mattress, he then ate them to form two halves of his body (3:48). I found the reason why he chose bread very relatable, because "there was a straight forwardness about the way of thinking about progress and material and the origin of the material" and to "find within the texture of daily life something that then could then carry thought and feeling". In this case, despite sliced bread that smells like urine I can say it's something all of us relates to it to some level.
Home baked bread is highly evocative; to some it reminds them of family, deep conversations in a cafe or bakery. I, on the other hand am more interested in bread's evocative powers, and want to continue using bread in my outcomes.
Bread is normally quite big so it needs to be shared, so normally eating bread would involve sharing it too.
Gormley also stated that in his mattress, his body is actually the found object in the piece, and not the bread. That's pretty cool because found objects are stuff that you don't alter them, and rather integrate them into whatever you are working with. For my outcome, what really matters are the people in it, and the bread and script shapes and provides context to the people, the found objects.
My goal is to carve out a space, conduct a ritual around bread and food that addresses what food means to us, and to ultimately change how we see meals. Not everybody can obviously, have the luxury of time to sit down and have meals with their loved ones, but what I also want is also give people the idea that you can create your own rituals with other people. For me, I prepare and cook meals with people I meet here, because it brings us all closer. Food not only strengthens but can create new relationships, in a way it's speculative in nature as it gathers people in contact with each other, and numerous ideas can be exchanged as a result.
Food art to me still seems like a gastronomy venture to me, a solitary experience even with company, because what goes on in your mouth only you can feel it. This makes me think whether what we call etiquette and the rigidness of formal dining gets in the way of developing meaningful connections with people, because there are rules that clamp down specifically on what can be mentioned over the table.
Pratical:
I can't serve a loaf without a knife, so the final piece has to be tearable. This loaf was too dry and compact, that meant my initial ball of dough was too dry also.
First rise
Second rise, right before the punch
I realised that even after following some recipes, the bread ended up being too dry or hard. I haven't quite developed the dough sense yet, but I roughy know when the dough is too sticky or dry. This is the actual bread for tomorrow's Hearth Day.
Another Kind of Life + Michals
Jim Goldberg + Duane Michals
From Raised by Wolves, 1995
"Raised by Wolves documents the lives of teenage runaways who live on the streets of San Francisco and Los Angeles. Jim Goldberg spent between 1987 and 1993 on the California streets photographing and interviewing his adolescent subjects, their social workers and the police. They all lend a distinct dimension to the harrowing picture of American street life and the adversarial institutional culture surrounding it. A combination of photographs and video stills, found documents, and handwritten texts by the subjects themselves create a scrapbook of the stark and unsparing lives" (Magnum Photos)
Goldberg combines image and text to add a level of personality that photo alone can't achieve. In a way, this reminds me of Cornell's boxes, in Raised by Wolves Goldberg places mementos of the subjects with their photos; for example there was a piece where he stuck polaroids on top of cut out contact prints, and it feels like a montage of the baby's life.
Goldberg presented these portraits+ in numerous ways: he arranged six photos in a grid above a close up shot of a road map, the subject of the portrait next to some words she/he had written, and even a simple shot of the denim jacket that Dave wore oozes identity. The handwritten words gives us a glimpse what they thinking, while you can analyse their vocabulary or spelling, I thought it was interesting to just see how the text was orientated, like some were trailing upwards and it just shows they were really "in the moment".
The Most Beautiful Part of a Woman's Body, 1985
The Man Who Invented Himself, 1975
On the other hand, instead of adopting the journalistic style Duane Michals writes poems, stories and writes about himself on his prints. Michals uses photography to explain what he had experienced, and he believes that imagination is infinitely more important that what can be seen, so many of his works are his observations--scenes that are beautiful by themselves, and with the narrative around it reminds me of magic realism, like Murakami's books.
I took some photos in the Barbican, but none in the actual exhibit because they weren't allowed.
I took my negatives to scan in the school's professional scanner, but since they didn't have the film holders (which was weird) I taped my negatives on the scanner to make them flat. The results are very good, and compared to my scanner at home, they were less spotty and more defined. While scanning I realised the texture on the masking tape in a way, separated the narrative in the photo with the processing of the film, something I feel is often neglected when it comes to photography.
I immediately wondered what would happen if I had text next to the negatives while scanning, I could replicate what Goldberg did but all in one step. I really like the idea of separating an outcome into sections, it does prevent the cohesive experience you get from works like Michals, but if my work is about the work itself, the process of eating and cooking, shouldn't that be it?
Sources:
Artnet.com. (2018). Duane Michals | artnet. [online] Available at: http://www.artnet.com/artists/duane-michals/ [Accessed 21 Mar. 2018].
Burchard, H. and Burchard, H. (2018). THROWING KIDS TO THE WOLVES. [online] Washington Post. Available at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1995/09/22/throwing-kids-to-the-wolves/a47ebb87-caf3-496d-a6cd-142b8848482c/?utm_term=.181c30140d1b [Accessed 21 Mar. 2018].
Dcmooregallery.com. (2018). Duane Michals - Artists - DC Moore Gallery. [online] Available at: http://www.dcmooregallery.com/artists/duane-michals/series/photographs-with-text?view=slider#13 [Accessed 21 Mar. 2018].
Magnum Photos. (2018). Raised by Wolves • Jim Goldberg • Magnum Photos. [online] Available at: https://www.magnumphotos.com/arts-culture/art/jim-goldberg-raised-by-wolves/ [Accessed 21 Mar. 2018].
Pro.magnumphotos.com. (2018). Magnum Photos. [online] Available at: https://pro.magnumphotos.com/Package/2K7O3RB0IRNS [Accessed 21 Mar. 2018].
Raised by Wolves. (2018). [video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8TVXY3UXZ4 [Accessed 21 Mar. 2018].