Kristen Pearson
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Currently on view at The Contemporary Austin is the 11-artist exhibition The Sorcerer's Burden: Contemporary Art and the Anthropological Turn. This exhibition includes multi-media artworks from multiple artists to showcase the relationship between modern advancements in technology and the globalization taking place around the world. This exhibit's key focus is to exemplify the ethnographic perspective of the modern world through the use of technology and artistic practices that are "experimental, exploratory, and reflective of the present day" (The Contemporary Austin) . One of which is Ed Atkins's work Material Witness OR A Liquid Cop, 2012 which uses a single-channel HD video on a constant loop installation. Another example is Marie Lorenz's Trap and Weir, 2019, a work that uses modern industrial materials such as steel and traditional materials likes ceramics and rope on a site-specific installation.
The Sorcerer's Burden exhibition gets its name from the literary work The Sorcerer's Burden: The Ethnographic Saga of a Global Family written by Paul Stoller in 2016. Instead of focusing on heavy-handed politicism this exhibition focuses on the fun, imaginative, and dark of the selected artworks. The title of the exhibition also refers to an early Parisian art presentation by Jean-Hubert Martin in 1989, titled Magiciens de la terre ("Magicians of the Earth"). Martin used the term "magician of the earth" as a replacement for "artist" or "witch", indicating that an artist is more of an imaginative individual with the ability to create their dreams and wishes out of thin air, like magic. This exhibit in particular had me wondering where the future of art and art criticism is going. The further in time we go the more and more the past is drawn upon when creating exhibits, allowing us to continue conversations on ideas and concepts like modernism and feminism. While looking to the future, the concepts behind these artworks seem to stay more traditional; whether that is due to the continued use of familiar objects like the ceramics used in Lorenz's piece Trap and Weir or the use of people in the single-channel installations by Atkins or other artists like Nuotama Bodomo. The beauty of this exhibition is that viewers are allowed to see this ethnographic display of our modern world and the mixing of new and old techniques and technology through these artworks. It is a great way to see how far we have come as a global unit from when museums and exhibition first started back in the late 17th century. - Megan Lowry “The purpose of anthropology is to make the world safe for human differences.” ― Ruth Benedict This November I visited The Contemporary in Austin Texas to view their exhibit The Sorcerer’s Burden: Contemporary Art and the Anthropological Turn, on view from September 14 - January 19, 2020. This exhibit functioned as a way for eleven artists to create new art under the theme of anthropology. A line from their exhibition description states, “The Sorcerer’s Burden aims to offer a fresh perspective through artwork that is experimental, exploratory and reflective of the present.” Three artists whose works stood out to me the most under these ideas were Kapwani Kiwanga, Nathan Mabry and Ruben Ochoa.
Next, is a collection of sculptures, which almost look like they belong in the “ancient” part of an art museum, set on top of very contemporary looking podiums. The very non-western aspect of his work is pottery. They are animals, owls, ducks and snakes, that look like they function as vases or water containers. All of them appear to have been crafted out of some form of red clay. However, the podiums that hold them up look like quirky Ikea shelves. They are rectangular boxes, with shelves inside of them of different sizes and angles, but in general very similar to each other. I thought the juxtaposition within these works was sort of funny, but also very powerful in the way that someone can put two opposing styles into one work. The last artist I wanted to highlight was Ruben Ochoa. Ochoa uses unusual mediums to create patterns on canvas, as well as creating large metal sculptures to accompany them. It was difficult for me to find the humanity when it came to his work, as it was cold and nonrepresentational. The metal sculptures are bent and rough, they almost look dangerous to touch. The canvases are very large, and an uncomfortable rust color. His work was another one that I needed clarity on to, and after learning that he enjoys working through the way people experience the collision of urban life and nature, the forms started to come together for me.
Overall, I felt as though the exhibit was exceptionally curated. Nothing was too similar, and yet it all connected back to anthropology and the way people exist. The amount of sculpture, painting and timed media all felt balanced. Much like the Ruth Benedict quote, “The purpose of anthropology is to make the world safe for human differences,” I felt as if many different human experiences were represented. Kayla Swinford . I could think of no better place to display a crime scene than a gallery room of bare white walls and dim spotlights. At the Texas State Galleries, there was an exhibit called Philosophy of the Encounter by Tatiana Istomina. In the middle of the room, there is a woman's stuffed body, disemboweled and decapitated. There is another body stuck in the wall in a similar position. Ahead is mounted to the wall or displayed on a pedestal. A stuffed brain and pieces of it are on another pedestal. And all around the room firmly, photographic paintings hang around but depict diagrams, objects, or nothing. Or maybe something, but where the arrows lead and what they reveal is unknowable. And it may remain so. Tatiana's inspiration behind Philosophy of the Encounter was the mysterious death of Hélène Rhytman, the wife of Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser. In the last days of her life, she was helping care for her husband's deteriorating mental health. Then the next day, he had strangled her to death. The phrase for every great man there is a great woman would apply to this story. If you did not know much about Rhytman, there are some text pieces in the back wall of a memoir, Fhilosofhy of the Encounter, that tells us about her intense relationship with Althusser as his mind deteriorated. However, the text has been cut up, arranged, and pasted. In succession, they become difficult to read if one tries. Everything around this gallery is just pieces. Pieces that could or could not be a clue to Hélène's mystery, and bring us little closure to what happened to her. Just like the video that plays out a scenario of her life, the transitions between pivotal moments fade into black, into lapses. I enjoy the experience of frustration this exhibit shows. The kind of frustration when one is trying to solve a mystery. There are no facts. It's hard to say so without proper evidence, unless one was a witness. And in this piece I also understand Istomina's exploration of three concepts: violence, knowledge, and abstraction. She mentioned them at the presentation I attended where she talked about her work and her thoughts. Violence is impulsive and quick. It happens in the blink of an eye, so it's hard to determine a few moments after a violent event, what had happened, what had caused it. A fatal gunshot and a fallen body. A tremor in the earth, but you can only feel the shocks. Its origin is a mystery and the cause unknowable in the moment. I think this the fascination with violence I see in her work. It's shown in Philosophy of the Encounter and The Budanov Case, a series of paintings about about the death of Yuri Budanov, a Russian Colonel. His body in these oil paintings is depicted at various angles. All of the paintings are off-center like photographic shots of a crime scene. The people are faceless with minimal details, the trees are nondescript and blobby green. But the general idea is there like a violent hazy memory. Knowledge is experience, hearsay, facts, all things we've accumulated for a purpose to put to use, to understand our reality. The diagrams, body, the text, is all information gathered to discover a greater knowledge of the violence, that which we are not present for. But whether it's useful or meaningless is yet to be determined.
Abstraction is in the dotted lines, the painted, filmy oil on paper. There might be some true meaning to Hélène's death, a vital clue to understand Althusser's state of mind. To someone these letters and formulas will make sense. But is it the right sense? I enjoy the presence of the giant brain. It makes me question knowledge and how much of what we know is representational or abstract, a deeper representation of something real but the true meaning is the one we give it. Like the words. The symbols and sounds don't have a meaning unless we can imagine the object, or remember the taste. We have to associate the word with an experience to really understand its definition. Otherwise, it'd be hard to understand words through other words we barely understand. Philosophy of the Encounter delighted me as it challenged my very perceptions of what was my knowledge through violence based on the murder of a woman who devoted her mind to her husband. It taught me the pervasiveness of abstraction, how useful we find it a day today, but we don't think about our knowledge that way. If you'd like to see more of her work and ponder on these three aspects, here is a link to her site. Experiencing the pieces arranged in a gallery is a unique experience. It's a work in itself. I recommend anyone to check it out when it will be displayed again. However, here's a link to the video, which was my favorite piece in the gallery, along with a painting of a glove. -Sam Medina What is truth? Tatiana Istomino delves into the ways violence, abstraction, and knowledge intersect and how they can be used to comment on a larger meaning of the things around us via artwork. For example, Istomino has a series of paintings just revealed this year about the Budanov Case, an assassination case of a former Russian Army Officer from 2011 as well as a video called No Fear in Texas which both relate to various elements that she explained. On Monday November 4th, 2019, Tatiana Istomino lectured to our Art History 3300 class. Istomino is an artist from Russia and has been in the United States for quite some time. She got her degree in geophysics from Yale and her MFA from Parsons New School. She currently has a show on view at Texas State University called Philosophy of the Encounter, on view until November 12th, 2019. She began her lecture by talking about three concepts she has been thinking about for the past three months: Violence, Abstraction, and Knowledge. Istomino created a Venn diagram that intersected the three terms. She then connected two terms at a time. Violence and Abstraction were connected through history. Abstraction and Knowledge were connected through philosophy. Violence and Knowledge were connected through law. Lastly, the element that these terms have in common is math. The Budanov Case series shows different scenes from different points of view of the assassination of the former Russian Army Officer. The case was really controversial in Russia and Istomino knew this when she started portraying this assassination. I believe in Istomino recreating this murder, she was able to show what it was like, what citizens may have seen on the televison or in the newspaper. She, herself, was in the city when it happened and because it was already a high-profile case before the assassination, it blew up when Budanov was killed. I think she was able to convey what the scene following the assassination was like without taking a stance in favor or against Budanov. This is powerful because it contained all the elements she had been investigating: violence, abstraction, and knowledge as well as the things the elements have in common, history, philosophy, law, and math. Another project that Istomino shared in her lecture was a series of videos and interviews she acquired when she was in San Antonio, Texas. It is titled No Fear in Texas. She recorded conversations with various individuals and they commented on things going on in the country at that time, like the presidential election that would eventually elect Donald Trump as president in 2016. The sound of the conversations she recorded were then inserted into video footage of various animals from elephants to house cats that Istomino encountered during her time in San Antonio. The effect of this was brilliant, in my opinion. It combined the voices of the conversations and paired them with the animals and gave the allusion that the animals were the ones speaking. As someone who has always wondered what animals are thinking, or what they would think if they knew all the social and political problems humans have to face daily, it was an interesting insight, even if it was semi-hypothetical. In both works, The Budanov Case and No Fear in Texas, Istomino combines violence, abstraction, and knowledge with philosophy, history, law, and math. The Budanov Case is obviously commenting on law and violence with the nature of the scenario. It also comments on history, the history of the case itself and the history of cases and law in Russia previously. Philosophy and math come into play with the bigger meaning of why the laws are the way they are, what it says about the country, and so on. The math can be related to the process of everything. Likewise with No Fear in Texas, each element of her Venn diagram can be found in her recent works of art which compels the viewers of her art to have a more meaningful experience. Paige Kutchka
In Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (1970), Louis Althusser defines ideological state apparatuses as, “a certain number of realities which present themselves to the immediate observer in the form of distinct and specialized institutions,” such as: religion, education, family, politics, etc. Althusser then proposes that, “ideology represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence.” He further elaborates, stating that while ideological state apparatuses, “do not correspond to reality, i.e. that they constitute an illusion, we admit that [ISAs] do make allusion to reality and that they need only be ‘interpreted’ to discover the reality of the world behind their imaginary representation of that world (ideology = illusion/allusion)…what is represented in ideology is therefore not the system of the real relations which govern existence of individuals, but the imaginary relation of those individuals to the real relations in which they live.” Retranslation of this theory into more accessible terms: According to Althusser, ideology is a set of discourses and concepts through which individuals perceive and realize their relationship with reality; we believe that we are free subjects that conceptualize our own ideology totally autonomously, while in fact, our thoughts and actions are fully influenced by the state, family, education and other ideological structures. On November 4, 2019 artist Tatiana Istomina gave a lecture about her creative process and influences. In the same way that Althusser theorizes the relationship between objectivity and subjectivity in the development of personal ideologies, Istomina is exploring the same relationship in her artwork, operating upon three concepts: Violence, abstraction, knowledge; she explains that mathematics, history and philosophy fall in between each of these larger categories. Istomina is interested in the tension between objectivity and subjectivity that occurs within each of these notions. Istomina breaks down violence and knowledge into three categories: subjective violence, objective violence, systemic violence; subjective knowledge, objective knowledge and systemic knowledge. She explained that subjective violence designates a premeditated act of violence, such as homicide, while objective violence is an incidental act of violence, such as an earthquake; Systemic violence is an institutional form of violence, such as genocide. Subjective knowledge is a personal truth, a moral, while objective knowledge is something considered factual based on empirical evidence; systemic knowledge indicates a cultural norm or expectation. Istomina then defines abstraction as, “everything that is not concrete,” for example, music and language. She poses the question, “how do we encounter abstraction?” Through the lens of our experience. This brings us to Istomina’s show in the TXST Galleries: Philosophy of the Encounter. In 1980, Louis Althusser murdered his wife, Hélène Rhytman, in their room at the École Normale Supérieure where Althusser taught. Deemed mentally unfit to plead, Althusser was never charged or tried for the crime. Despite the murder, Althusser continued working and publishing many texts until his death, including a memoir titled The Future Lasts Forever, in which he directly recounts the murder. Among the multi-media works featured in Philosophy of the Encounter, Istomina re-edited The Future Lasts Forever to read from the perspective of Hélène Rhytman, highlighting her own accomplishments as a political activist and intellectual in her own right before she even met Althusser. Today, Rhytman is credited with converting Althusser to Marxism, influencing his theories, and even possibly contributing (unnamed, of course) to many of his published texts. It is clear why Istomina was drawn to the story of Rhytman and Althusser; philosophy and violence are clearly fundamental aspects to this narrative, but the tension of objectivity and subjectivity is the focus. For example, was the murder an act of subjective violence (an intentional killing) or could it be considered an act of objective violence (an unintentional killing), assuming Althusser really was unconscious of his actions? Additionally, The Future Lasts Forever cannot be accepted as an objective document because Althusser himself wrote it – most peculiar is the second section of the document titled “The Facts” in which Althusser recounts verbatim certain events already mentioned, provides further commentary on various theories and individuals in the Party, yet neglects to mention anything regarding Hélène’s death (even though his recounting of the murder intros the memoir itself). The most painfully ironic aspect of the Althusser/Rhytman narrative is that Altusser’s most notable philosophical contribution is, arguably, his theory of ideology which asserts that what we falsely believe to be objective truth is actually totally subjective, determined by external influences and experiences. In Althusser’s case, Hélène was the most powerful external influence on his work, yet he neglected to recognize this despite the extensive research and writing he conducted on the theory. In Philosophy of the Encounter, Istomina investigates the ways in which the relationship between subjective and objective truths confuse and construct meaning in violence, knowledge, and abstraction; and contribute to the canonization of micro and macro histories. By retranslating and reinterpreting archival materials, Istomina has re-framed the biography of Hélène Rhytman so that her legacy no longer hovers behind the shadow of Althusser. In viewing Istomina’s show I urge the viewer to reflect on his/her/their own ideologies, and on how these ‘truths’ have been informed by your personal background and experiences. Caroline Frost
Violence, knowledge and abstraction, three driving forces behind Russian artist Tatiana Istomina’s work. Abstraction and art are an easy enough connection to make for a body of work, but where does this interest in knowledge and violence come into play? How does it relate to her body of work that is currently on display at the Texas State University galleries? Istomina broke it down for us during her guest lecture at Texas State University on November 4th. This sent me even further down the rabbit hole of considering how mathematical and analytical Istomina was, considering her works hold the topic of violence that is often irrational, emotional and erratic. In her lecture she discussed her fascination with the abstract aspect of math, something I do not normally put in relation with art. This study of mathematics encourages her to abstract her work. She gave us the example of how numbers stand in place for concrete objects, and that makes the objects abstracted ideas. This is very reminiscent of weak abstract art, which can be something in our reality that has been reduced to a placeholder for the object or figure. At the end of Istomina’s lecture, she was able to answer some questions about her exhibition on campus. Philosophy of the Encounter, is a mixture of sculpture, video and word art. The sculptures are an example of her interest in the abstract, a clear example of weak abstraction. While that formal element is available to be picked out of her art, abstract ideas are another situation. So, if you viewed Istomina’s work in the Texas State galleries, without reading the descriptive text on the wall, did you feel her abstract themes of knowledge or violence running through her work? What about the history and philosophy, or maybe even a mathematical element?
-Kayla Swinford What separates us from robots? Is it the flesh on our bones or pulsing of our heart? Maybe it's neither. After his surgery to remove a brain tumor, Tsuyoshi Anzai found himself with diagnosed with epilepsy and classified as disabled. In response, he says he has “become unable to be sure what the difference is between able and disable, healthy and unhealthy, unbroken and broken.” In his exhibition Healthy Machines, Anzai connects the human brain and body to mechanical machines through kinetic sculptures. In connection to René Descartes belief that the body is just God’s machine, Anzai showcases how the mind functions and just how robot-like it is. Now don’t go and stare at yourself in the mirror just yet, we are not literally robots. Yet. The mind and body do function very similarly to something mechanical. We can think of our brains as the hard drive that helps us function during our day-to-day activities. It is scary to think that sometimes our brains can malfunction just like a computer. The mind is in control of our body whether it be moving limbs or even remembering how to breathe. So what causes our own “software” to malfunction. Is it just a simple error in coding or something much more complex? Looking more into Descartes’s Body as Machine, the topic of Mind-Body dualism pops up. In an extremely simplified, brief, explanation, this theory explains how the mind and body are separate; this means your brain is not your mind. Anzai uses this to help support his claim of the brain being similar to a machine. While our mind is what makes us aware, we do not tell our brains what to do. In fact our brains are probably what gives us the awareness we have. Confusing and scary? Sure, but also kinda cool. The idea that our brain works twenty-four hours in a day is nothing new. It probably seems like common sense to most people by now. However, the fact that our brain just chooses to keep us alive without our minds having to even think about it is a new level to the complicity of the human body. In Anzai’s exhibition, we get a closer look at how the brain functions like a machine in his case during his surgery. It depicts not only kinetic sculptures but MRI scans of a brain and videos of his surgery. After a while, it becomes more and more clear the difficulty Anzai has differentiating the two subjects that are the brain and the machine. Both are encoded with information that give it a task to perform when functioning, and both can face some sort of interference with that task when an error occurs, whether it be a virus or a tumor. It always seems difficult for a machine to work as well as it did beforehand, even after the virus is fixed. And I guess we can expect nothing less from our own brains as it attempts to repair itself and still carry out our daily tasks for us. -Sara Garner This past week on the October 22 we as a class visited the Blue Star Contemporary Art Gallery in downtown San Antonio, Texas. The gallery had four exhibits on show all with their own themes, mediums, and size. As the name of the gallery suggests the exhibits that were on show were of the Contemporary variety (so if you are not a huge fan ye be warned). Each exhibit has its own quirks that make them as separate from the others as is something you would expect from completely different people with completely different backgrounds influencing their work. The exhibit Healthy Machinescreated by Tsuyoshi Anzai is one such artist in this gallery. His art in this showing is based on not only his experiences, but he uses the very things he received during these experiences as part of the overall exhibit.
Anzai himself went through a rather traumatic health related series of events and continues to be effected by these events today which is where his main inspiration for this exhibit comes from. He had brain cancer and received a surgery to enucleate the tumor. The unfortunate aftereffects of this life saving surgery was epilepsy which has caused him to be considered by his home countries health care system as a disabled individual. These very events are what has driven Anzai into creating this particular work in the gallery. Not only are his MRI scans on shadowboxes on the walls for the audience to peruse, a document of his medical history, but also a video of the surgery itself is able for view on the floor playing on a cell phone. His focus of art also stems to kinetic sculptures that reside in the room along with the scans, and aspects of his medical treatment. The sculptures themselves are not currently moving, but there are monitors that are playing how they move above them as well as instructions on how he made the sculptures and how they work. A main feature of his machines are their instability as they themselves look as though they are about to fall apart at any moment. There could be a possible connection between the instability of the machines and the human condition. Much of the life a human is unknown and we as a species can be easily taken down by illness or injury. The fact that Anzai suffered from brain tumor and now suffers from epilepsy could be why he has chosen to focus not only on his own illness, but also how the human body can be broken down to just a mechanical sense of being. The surgery being the remedy to a broken or breaking down machine (the human body). The health of the human condition or body is what drives Anzai in this exhibit as he has chosen to focus on his own journey, after effects, and his experience with the change in society status as a disabled individual. Everything that individual’s experience in life effect humans’ personalities, how we react to our surroundings, and our later experiences in life. Olivia Armstrong At the Blue Star Contemporary gallery in San Antonio, there is an interactive and colorful exhibition that presents a unique adaptation that is currently happening in our oceans. When I entered the gallery and made a left from the entrance, just down the hall there was this wooden stage with binoculars placed along a rail. Beyond that rail was a floor covered with organic cut prints, each displaying a colorful structure that looked like a pile of hamster tubes and party frills. But when I looked through the binoculars at one of these structures, those frills and tubes became cut up soda bottles, caps, and stacked tampon dispensers. This is Margaret Craig’s Sea Islands and the structures on the ground represent various anemones, barnacles, and other aquatic micro-organisms. When I read the scavenger hunt on the right wall, she informs the viewer of this new adaptation all these creatures are undertaking due to the abundance of microplastics in their environment. Craig draws from expert knowledge in Biology and her skills in printmaking to make this hyperbolic demonstration of the plastification of these creatures. And for me as Geology student, is a foreboding occurrence. Take for example the species Mollusca Polyethlena she mentions at the bottom of the frame. It’s a mollusk that processes calcite, an abundant mineral that is found in limestone and marble, a rock that makes up most ancient and modern reef floors, in a similar way to ancient Ammonites used to make their shells. To give you an idea of just how abundant calcite is, one of the most common sedimentary rocks found all over Texas is limestone because half the State was once an ocean floor. The white beaches and reefs of Florida are made of limestone sand and rock. And that’s just a fraction of the world. The fact that plastic is saturating the oceans more than calcite, is disturbing. “Life will not be contained. Life breaks free. It expands to new territories, crashes through barriers, painfully, maybe even dangerously.” -Dr. Ian Malcom This quote from Goldblum's character in Jurassic Park that ties in well with Craig’s purpose, to show this unexpected direction ocean life is taking. These creatures are recycling the plastic they find, just as Craig did in her process to make and represent them with the discarded plastics she collected. However, unlike human beings that have a choice to use plastic, these creatures aren’t making choices amongst the natural resources they find in their environment. Rather some have adapted to the abundance of plastic the keep absorbing because it’s become more available than some natural resources such as calcite. The fact the amount plastic in these oceans has become impactful enough to encourage these adaptations, inspires a foreboding line of questions, much like the DNA research conducted in Jurassic Park. Whether or not this adaptation will be seen and helpful or harmful to ocean ecosystems remains to be seen. I don’t believe plastic manufacturers or generations past that encouraged its use could’ve predicted the present we’re in. But when I look at these structured organisms, it makes me ponder how much people have adapted to plastic as a livelihood like these creatures as a material for our daily consumption. It contains vital water, transports our food, and organizes our everyday needs. But unlike these anemones and barnacles that hold onto that plastic for their survival, we often treat it a disposable one-time resource and have had to teach ourselves to recycle it into other things. Food for thought. This was just my unique experience with Margaret Craig's exhibition, given our related scientific backgrounds. As a work of art, I find the interactive element of the binoculars to be a clever representation of microscopes. The close up I posted, does not do the experience justice. Her playfulness with scale and the fished eyed effect of a binocular’s lens really invokes that lab experience. I recommend the reader experience her exhibition which will be on display till January 5th of 2020 at the Blue Contemporary in San Antonio. For more information about Sea Islands, you can read her Artist’s statement here. Sam Medina |
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