Movie

Cindy Sherman - Nobody's Here But Me (1994)

As Cindy described in the movie, she was influenced by media, TV in her early life. And her work usually is composed of making a story of a character. As she grows up, Hollywood woman was sort of the model she desired. She creates her work intuitively with feminist background and her favorite movies are horror movies. In some of her work, she incorporates body parts and even pornography. Fairy tale is another source of inspiration of her work.

Cindy is not only the photographer, but also the subject. She expressed what she thinks and minds inside her through this movie. It is very personal. She is kind of artists that can break the boundary and create something unique. Not all the people could understand what she is trying to capture and sometimes it is shocking, especially in those horror movies. 

She shows an intuitive and often humorous approach to her images, and reflects on the themes of her work since the late 1970s. She talks about her pivotal series the Sex Pictures in which she addresses the theme of sexuality in the light of AIDS and the arts censorship debate in the United States in the late Eighties and early Nineties.

At the end of the movie, Cindy is having a dialogue with her parrot. She is really living in her own world, that is why she is so successful. The work she created is intuitive and original.

Georges Rousse

In the movie, he utilizes abandoned and derelict buildings as background to practice an approach that shifted the relationship of painting to space. Sculpture forms, transparent shapes and colorful geometry are some of the elements he used to revoke memory and needs of a space. His works create ephemeral, one-of-a-kind artworks by transforming these sites into pictorial spaces that are visible only in his photographs.

As a student majoring in landscape architecture, I am always fond of architecture and space. The experiential painting to space photography seems to be easily achieved by modern technology Photoshop with a transparent color layer. However, beautiful scenes with time lapse and angle shifting are hard to present without real painting set.

The color filter and transparent paintings give a new definition of the space, it could be time, material, structure, or function. Also, the selection of buildings adds a sad feeling to photos, since those buildings will soon be demolished after they finish these photographs. There is no way for both audience and photographer themselves to revisit these places.

In addition, some of his work could provide meditating and peaceful feelings to the audiences. Many geometry settings in his work can be used as fundamental practice for architecture student.



Wasteland

Wasteland is a 2010 documentary film directed by Lucy Walker and chronicled by Vik Muniz. The movie tends to depict the life of pickers who live and work on the world's largest landfill, Jardim Gramacho outside Rio de Janeiro. Vik Muniz himself is from a low-middle class family. To some extend, the movie remind some of his childhood memory.

Most of these pickers live in poverty and trying to make a living in the community. Each portrait has been made first by photography and then transformed into land art with utilizing their recycled materials. At the end of the movie, it is an amazing to see when photograph turns into land art, it creates a feeling of aging, like a young child turns into a old man.

It is controversial for film makers to take pickers to the auction. In the movie, they have a heated discussion about the life changing experience when pickers come back to the landfill. Though pickers would feel a little bit sad, it would rather to have these experience than not. At least, many of them have attitude change towards their occupation.

The charity effect of the movie is also a discussion point. Money created by the selling of the artworks was given back to the catadores and the ACAMJG in order to help the catadores and their community.


Jeff Wall

Since he wanted to be a painter at the beginning of his career, he regards his photography works as a storyteller or a piece of poem.

In some of his constructed photography, he intentionally adds some imaginary people or elements to make the photo looking less serious. Great observation as a photographer and emphasis on personal experience of photography works are the two main topics he mentioned as being good at photography.

He has great constructed photography works, like Picture for woman (1979), which really captures a sense of both portrait and documentary photography.  However, in some of his works, when he treats them as snapshot work, it is sort of hard to tell the uniqueness and beauty as an art work. It seems to be too normal and common.

While Wall is known for large-scale photographs of contemporary everyday genre scenes populated with figures, in the early 1990s he became interested in still lifes. Truth is relative. Many of his works focus on personal enjoyment. And he mentioned that there would be preconceived and previewed notion when he is taking a photo.

Since the early 1990s, Wall has used digital technology to create montages of different individual negatives, blending them into what appears as a single unified photograph. His works tend to create illuminated transparency and visibility.


Bernd and Hilla Becher

Their work mainly focus on the architecture of industrialization: water towers, coal bunkers, blast furnaces, gas tanks and factory facades. Similiar to Georges Rousse, some of their works are shot in abandoned buildings that would be demolished soon.

According to different styles of the structure, they arrange 9, 12, or 15 pieces in a grid form for comparison. They did so in an obsessively formalist way that defined a style. Each piece has some difference, but as a whole it forms a feeling of harmony.

As an architecture student, their works fascinates me in a way that is the selection of design, depending on function, aesthetic, and creativity. In addition, utilizing black and white adds a sense of unity to the picture.

Their work is consist of documentary sets. Time, space, weather and lights are some of elements that you can find from the series. It also a time consuming process to find those buildings and shot at right settings, since it is pre-digital age.

Lastly, viewing their work reminds of making selections when shopping, the comparison of information and similarity between pieces push the viewers to make a preference.


A Remix Manifesto

Copyright is always a sensitive issue, especially when it comes to the digital world. Today, people have easy access to the internet and they can recreate their own version. In order to respect the original artist's work, we need a mature copyright system and self-conscientiousness of each individual users. 

Then, here comes to the problem. First, not everyone are willing to pay if there is a free download version. Second, the money we pay for copyright is often ended up with institutions or speculators, but not the artists. Lastly, it is hard to define copyright in digital world.

There is no doubt that artist's work should be protected. However, if we are using and referring artist's work without commercial attention, I think it is also acceptable. Similarly to writing a essay, people do quote and references.

In China, artists are struggling with copyright issue and some of the young ones can hardly make a living. Under copyright developed system in the US, it is an issue about whether Taylor Swift would make an another million dollar's or not. 

As long as the artist is paid as the amount they deserved, their work should be open to everyone. The problem is how to define “the amount". Vincent Van Vogh can't afford to live when he is alive, while his work worth a million now. 

At present, we are fascinated about creating machines and tools. Art is something underrated, while art is the core of a culture and fundamental things that we should learn as a human being. 


Cao Fei 

Cao's work, which includes video, performance, and digital media, examines the daily life of Chinese citizens born after the Cultural Revolution. 

Her work explores China's widespread internet culture as well as the border between dream and reality. Cao has captured the rapid social and cultural transformation of contemporary China, highlighting the impact of foreign influences from America and Japan. It reveals a repressive society that is undergoing loss of identity.

In the Art21 Video, she starts with hip-hop and cosplay type of works when she worked in an advertising company. As a Chinese, those type of culture is considered as subculture in the society, which is not quite acceptable in the eye of our parent's generation. In order to be so called 'good' student, it is better not to touch those marginalized or alien culture.

As for her work China Tracy and RMB city, it reflects the current trend of living in information and technology era. I think that technology is not a bad thing for improving our lives, but abusing living in the constructed world might separate us from the real world and devalue the function of technology. 

It is beneficial to find a balance between human and nature, present and future, east and west. Living in such a fast pace, mix of culture, information exchanging society, we should feel lucky, but cautious.

As an architectural student, RMB city has a special meaning to me. I like the pure black and white model rather than those with aftereffect production. RMB city is defined as a social media platform with 'realistic' constructed places, and it is trend that nowadays people focus more on the result rather than the process. It is like a comparison between a painstakingly crafted painting in 17th century and a snapshot from a smart phone. 

I do like her works that represent the fantasy of working class people in the factory. Living in the country that has world's largest population, people are facing fierce competition when it comes to short of resource and complicated human relations. It is really hard for those working class people to jump up if they don't have higher education or relations background.

Walead Beshty at The Curve, Barbican Centre, London

Walead Beshty is a Los Angeles based artist who was born in London. He is a conceptual artist and his work has a strong philosophical meaning with manipulation of optical illusion. Since he travels a lot, sometimes, his works express different political ideologies.

In his theory, objects have no meaning in themselves, rather they are prompts for a field of possible meanings that are dependent on context. In addition, he is not interested in a grand definition of a particular medium, but in the particular expression of a set of relations within specific contexts. He focus on the translation of abstract ideas, from abstraction in general to the materially specific. Lastly, in his work, he emphasize on the process of making objects rather than the outcome, particularly in a set of relationships and systems of those objects.
The curved space is interesting

Some of his work is done by photo-gram, picture made without a camera. He would roll portion of the paper and create interesting form by lighting and layering, which is completely based on chance to determine the work. This kind of work is a mixed art form of photography and performance. He is challenging the notion of documentary photography, which is documenting the process of making the photo.

In the video, he utilizes waste paper based material to record of his daily, every single act, reading a newspaper….. This entire piece is a visual manifestation of his diary, 365 days from 2013 to 2014. Also it is a reflection of how memory is captured, abstract the memory.

Those waste material including all the daily life paper, like bills, film ticket and newspaper. It is organized in chronological order for exhibition. In order to maximize the cover, he will try to fit as much as possible on the wall. Then it comes to his theoretical selection, which is passive of choices. In my point of view, it is sort of a representation of daily life, we have to make decisions about what is more important in different period of life and manage time to deal with it. For the waste material project, he has a book to archive every object to be displayed on the wall.

In conclusion, the philosophical and theory aspect of his work attract me more than the work itself, which i think is what he want to express through his abstract art form.



Penelope Umbrico

Penelope is an photographer best known for appropriating images found using search engines and sharing websites.

In the interview, she mentioned that her series of 'Never Ending Sunset' is not to show how photography is made, but how it is consumed and shared. In other words, sun is not the subject, the subject is how people take photograph of things and how sunset images function on the computer and website.

It is challenging the notion of the materialist of photography. She intentionally creates a perception of illusion by rearranging each individual photo of sunset. Photography is pre-programmed and each image is dissolved from one to another in patterns.

In addition, what she is looking for are those kinds of collective, iconic ideas of what a sunset is. She think of it as kind of a script, rather than a cliche, because it's following a certain set of patterns.

In other series, she has done similar collective process of TVs from Craigslist and Mountain series from Flickr. She intends to show some kind of absence when people taking photos, since there are so many similar photo of sunset, tv, mountain that everybody takes, so the showing the meaning behind it is crucial.

Brian Bress

At the beginning of the video, those black and white strips make me feel dizzy. Then the frame starts changing with artist himself cutting shapes. It is sort of collaboration of art forms, including video, performance and photography. I think that he is trying to tell the relationship between spaces that is inside & out, moving and still.

It reminds of walking down a shopping mall, and something luxury is in display. Setting those frames would also add a sense of mysterious feeling to the video, which draws audiences' attention to the things that happen next.

The video is too long and those strips are eye blowing if you are sight-shorted with glasses like me. However, if he shorten the video, we wouldn't experience the process of making this video.